"The thing to remember is that you can't help," Mrs. Ramsbotham said kindly as she tied Moira's hands. "You'd only be in the way here, a distraction for poor Alastair while he deals with the mess. It's a blessing I'm taking you home with me."
Moira disagreed, but dare not voice the sentiment. Alastair had shrugged and asked her to bear with what she must. His concern for Celie overrode all else. Moira shared it, yet knew herself powerless. If it helped her master that she be taken for a week or two by this fearsome middle-aged woman she was willing to bear what might befall.
"You don't need to tie me quite so tight," she ventured unhappily. "I have had the flogging. I'm very well trained."
Her new owner paid no heed, but placed the passive hands palm to palm and pulled the cord. Moira winced, not so much from the pain as from the knowledge of what would happen next. When the strands were passed around the fearful place her protest was involuntary. "Please don't tie my elbows." She looked back over her shoulder at the intent face of the woman with the cord. "It hurts terribly and I can't possibly get loose anyway."
"I haven't got hold of you a moment too soon," Mrs. Ramsbotham said with honest satisfaction. "Properly spoiled, you are. Do you always complain like this?" She gave an admonitory tug that flattened the captive forearms against each other and elicited a gasp of dismay from their owner.
Moira resigned herself. She was a slave girl and had best remember the fact. The affection she had found at Soniaive would be absent from her immediate future. She was leaving a honeyed captivity to enter one in which gall and wormwood would be a part, and it was the latter which was most real. Slave girls were not expected to enjoy themselves. It was unlikely the woman who was now tying her so savagely would feel any obligation to give her happiness. In the hierarchy of slavery she had returned to square one.
"I'm sorry," she said humbly. "In the past few days I haven't even wanted to escape. I expect I've forgotten what I am. Please tie me as tight as you wish."
"That's much better!" Mrs. Ramsbotham-passed another loop round the punished elbows and edged it into place.
"You've just fallen victim to the Landseer charm, my girl. Alastair and sexpot Celie can even twist me. A few days of my treatment and you'll be right as rain again. No real harm done. You're a nice girl. I can tell." She made her final tug and knotted it shrewdly.
Dejectedly, Moira allowed herself to be led to the car. There would be no good-byes, no touch of loving hands. She had become separate. Her elbows were on fire with the searing pain she had come to loathe. With the implacability of the cords within her flesh the wish to escape had returned. She did not want what was about to happen, but felt quite certain she would be vouchsafed no faintest possibility of running away from it. Unhappily she watched the opening of the trunk and the spreading of a pair of blankets that would only slightly cushion the pain of the impending ride.
"No sense putting clothes on you," Mrs. Ramsbotham said cheerfully. "You'll be safe and out of sight in here. Bit uncomfortable, I suppose. But that will be good for you. I'm a great believer in the elbow thing, keeps a girl in her place and lets her know she's looked after." With amazing ease she picked up the impotent nudity and deposited it on the waiting rugs. She then tied the ankles as tightly as she had tied the arms and slammed the lid.
Cramped in the darkness with the whirr of motion all around her, Moira quietly shed her tears. She told herself vehemently that she was but exchanging one servitude for another. She could never escape from either, so what did it matter! But the premise held no comfort. She wanted Celie and she wanted Alastair. No matter what punishments they inflicted on her she wanted them. She wanted Ginevra too. But her beloved was, in a sense, as much a slave as she herself. Angrily and hopelessly she wriggled to seek a comfort that was not there, then lay quietly savoring her pain. She was thankful she was not gagged.
Mrs. Ramsbotham's pride and joy could never rank as a major invention, but it was ingenious for its function'. It came in two parts, the first of which was no more than a four inch pillar rising from the drawing room carpet to a height of thirty inches. It was obviously a solid fixture, it had been decorated to blend with the decor. The naked Moira knelt with her back against its solidity, her waist tightly strapped and her hands and arms stringently corded from wrist to elbow one on each side. She was sitting back upon her ankles which themselves were strapped to the floor. She could move only her head. She felt sure she knew why!
Part two was less punitive. It was a padded seat, the legs of which straddled the captive's thighs so that the seat itself could be thrust beneath the captive chin. A "U" cutout enabled it to pass on either side of the captive neck and connect with the pillar so that Moira found her head almost surrounded by a padded invitation to someone to sit down. Once again she was certain she knew why.
She knelt within a small opaque world of her own, divorced from sight but not from sound by the satin sheet draped over her head to cover both herself and the quaint contrivance that held her motionless.
All about her was the bright chatter of a ladies afternoon tea. From the voices she divined a goodly company. It was a quivering suspenseful sensation to know herself the piece de resistance after the cakes and sandwiches had been disposed of. Disconsolately she waited without impatience for her role to begin. She did not relish it. As usual, she hurt. Mrs. Ramsbotham was a devotee of the cord. She tied them very tightly in ways that caused most pain. Moira found herself thinking longingly of Celie's handcuffs.
The chatter was both artificial and polite. It scarcely paused when the satin was whisked away and the naked sacrifice to Sappho was revealed in all her glorious readiness to serve. But there were remarks.
"Doing us proud, Honoria, I must say!"
"I suppose Alastair picked her up? One can always tell... "
"She doesn't look as frightened as the last one."
"She's sitting on her hind end, d'you have to whip her much?"
It drifted on with a casual but bizarre good taste of its own. There were no four letter words. It was not until they made her protrude her tongue that they induced their subject to blush. Their approval of her attributes was as glowing as her cheeks. The interested appraisal lasted until Honoria Ramsbotham was struck with inspiration.
"Sally, m'girl! Washed your quiff lately?"
The demure maid stopped, petrified, in the act of dealing with cups and saucers. A blush, rivaling that of the bound girl, mantled all of her that was visible. She was obviously much in awe of the woman who had made the intimate inquiry. "I had a bath this morning, madam," she affirmed stoutly.
"Good! Try her out then."
The maid squirmed. "But, madam, I don't... I'm not-"
"You're not what?" her mistress demanded ominously.
Sally flunked the awful word. "I just couldn't do it, ma'am. My mother wouldn't like it."
"She isn't doing it, you are! Would you prefer twenty with the cane?" Honoria chuckled. "If you would you can go and fetch it."
Moira shrewdly guessed Sally's reluctance stemmed more from the watching eyes than distaste for the proffered privilege. The maid's next words were confirmation.
"Do you wish me to undress, madam?"
"Just toss off your panties, child. But hold your skirt well up so we can get a good look."
Faced with the inevitable, Sally became forthright. A pair of pink panties was dropped to the floor and a nylon clad leg straddled the waiting seat. "I really did wash, miss," she whispered in embarrassment as she edged forward to thrust her pubic hair in a tickly bush upon Moira's waiting lips. A susurration of muted handclapping slithered its way around the room. At least they had an appreciative audience! Moira reflected wryly as she sent her tongue upon its task...
A casual or uninformed assessment of a Ramsbotham Tea Party might easily dismiss it as faintly obscene, ludicrous, or simply embarrassing. It was none of these! By the exercise of a sporting temperament peculiar to the British the assembled daughters of Lesbos had contrived to elevate it to a higher plane in which "Form", "Cadence" and "Dressage" provided subtleties and nuances often discernable only to themselves. A round of applause might leave either girl uncertain which of them had earned it. After the first fleshly contact, Moira came to realize herself as the focal participant in an esoteric rite. She tried hard to please. She was quite sure she would be terribly whipped if she did not.
No two females respond to orgasm or its approach with quite the same oh's and ah's and gasps and moans. Nor do the stoics with their monolithic placidity always control inward ecstasy without visible reaction. Moira came to glimpse the infinite possibilities of the game being played. But she dearly wished herself among the audience. Her role demanded such a steady application of the only faculty her bonds allowed that she had little chance to observe or to record. She desperately wished for her hands, they would ease her work and improve her technique. To have them free would relieve her of the steady burning pain of the cutting cords at wrist and elbow. It is hard to give one's best when pain saps courage. She considered asking for the loosening of the cords on the score of improved performance, but shrank from the enormity of her crime and its punishment should her plea be denied. Busily and determinedly she sent her lips and tongue into battle.
There was applause, there were wagers, there were dares and challenges. There was even an intermission during which the bound girl was given drinks and praise. The Group recognized honest effort when they saw it. Loose pubic hairs were extracted from her mouth, her hair was tidied by loving hands. She was a treasure, but a treasure tightly bound! Exclamations were made about the tightness of the cords, but no one loosed a knot. Honoria Ramsbotham beamed maternally on all.
Moira had been warned, but when the first skirt was chastely draped over her head the claustrophobia was worse than she had expected. It was a hot and pungent intimacy in which her tongue strained in darkness to find the elusive clitoris. She worked desperately upon the bud of flesh, using all her skill to bring about the wailing moan that signalled release from a peculiarly female prison. When the skirt was taken from her she gulped air in a greedy and urgent need.
The hurtfully tied captive would have been thankful had there been but one such ordeal in the dark. But there was The Challenge! A wager said that a personable young matron could not be brought to climax. Smiling knowingly, she straddled the seat, winked enigmatically at the upturned face against which she pressed her sex, then dropped her skirt. Moira's tongue went questing in the gloom.
There were no real rules. Conversation was not forbidden.
When the hard working girl heard the owner of the clitoris on which she was frantically working engage in animated conversation with friends about friends she knew herself confronted with the battle of the day. The challenger was not going to allow herself stimulation from either erotic words or bland silence. The discussion about a cousin's bankruptcy would do nothing to hasten a climax. Moira guessed herself between the legs of an old campaigner. She remembered things she herself had sometimes done... !
But the owner of the current clit was not without sympathy. From time to time she lifted her skirt to replenish the air and to affectionately pat the damp hard working head. "I don't think you can do it, kid." She encouraged, "But keep at it. I'm enjoying every lick." Back fell the folds of cloth. The conversation switched to the rising hotel rates in Monte Carlo. Moira knew herself tired and defeated. When the wager was conceded and the bet paid she was exhausted to the point where a compassionate voice demanded: "The poor girl's had it! She's done damn well. What about her reward!"
Moira could have kissed the owner of the voice. Gratefully she spat out hairs and downed the brandy. So much praise was lavished on her that she even felt a modicum of pride. When the seat was pulled away and the strictures taken from her wrists and arms, she could have wept with relief. When the straps were unbuckled at tummy and ankle she smiled at the blur of faces in heartfelt gratitude. She had lost count of the number of vulvas she had penetrated and appeased, but it had been many. She had earned the second brandy which she could now hold in her own numbed hands. So cramped had she become that when she sought to stand she was glad of helping female hands.
But something was afoot. There was much giggling and some whispers. Apprehensively Moira recalled the mention of reward. It could all too easily refer to some new ordeal. At the moment the only female sex she wished to see again was Ginevra's. She stood naked among them all, trying with her fingers to iron away the furrows in her flesh the cords he'd cut. Little by little she grasped the import of what was taking place: Lots were being drawn, the loser to be bound as she had been and to service her as she had serviced others. She did not know whether to laugh or cry.
The loser was a sulky wench, obviously not overjoyed by her immediate prospects. She was prepared to argue. "There's no earthly need to tie me," she stated firmly.
"What! And have you back away at the first whiff of a quiff!" Honoria demanded authoritively. "Nonsense! Sit on your haunches, back to the post." She glared at the sullen face. "Don't be an ass, Gladys. Be a good sport. If you need help we can cane your bottom."
Gladys seemed unimpressed. "Couldn't you be satisfied just to strap my middle? I can't back away then."
"You lost the toss. Pay up."
"I'm not one of the Landseer's ruddy slave girls, y'know!"
"But you're about to sample one of their cunts. Be a nice change for you," proclaimed a voice from the crowd.
Gladys looked around in dismay. "Look, I've got a thing about being tied. It scares me. I hate it! Cane my bottom instead. I'll bend over nicely, I'll even strip. You'd all enjoy it. You know you would."
"You'll strip anyway, m'dear," Honoria said emphatically.
The unhappy loser of the draw looked around lugubriously as though seeking moral support. There was none. "Dammit!" she exploded, "I'm offering to accept a whipping. Won't that hot up your pants better than watching me lick a slave girl's clit!"
There was a deep silence. Every eye was on the loser. Gladys shrugged and knelt. Every girl must meet her Waterloo.
Moira watched with interest and an uncharitable satisfaction. It felt so damn good to see someone else tied up for a change. But her pleasure was short lived. Someone took her hands behind her back and placed them in the all too familiar palm to palm position. There came the bite of cord upon her wrists. She did not struggle or protest. What was the use! But some unknown sympathizer did.
"Don't tie the poor kid like that," the voice complained. "That elbow thing hurts like hell. I know, I've had it. She's supposed to get a reward, not be tortured. Tie her wrists, she'll be helpless enough."
Again, Moira could have kissed a voice. Its message was heeded. Her wrists were crossed and tied, far too tightly but infinitely better than it might have been. She sighed thankfully, wondering if perhaps there might be some small pleasure in her reward. She looked down without much sympathy at the girl who would service her. Gladys's ankles and tummy had been strapped. Mrs. Ramsbotham was now busy with the biting strands upon the arms. Her victim did not spare her winces or her gasps. But they were of no avail. She was soon as tightly trussed as Moira had been. It was easy to see she felt shame in the indignity. She would meet no one's eyes, but looked stonily ahead as the padded seat was thrust beneath her chin. She licked her lips, perhaps as one last gesture of freedom.
Suddenly, Moira knew herself on center stage. Even with hands tied she felt a delightful faculty of motion. Honoria had given her little enough respite from rope and chain. She felt like dancing round the room. But the watching eyes told her what to do, and then at that moment she knew herself shy. For someone who had experienced the things she had endured it was absurd. But there it was: she was shy. She did not want her cunt tongued before a multitude, nor see their avid faces as she writhed in orgasm. She knew herself too well to believe she could withstand or repulse the seeking tongue. She was cruelly and gorgeously responsive to her glands. Her moans might easily be the most ardent of the day. She looked appealingly around the room, then shrugged resignedly and thrust her thigh across the seat. Willing hands positioned her, for with her own tied as they were she could do nothing herself. She looked down in time to see Gladys glower at the approaching bush. She was unexpectedly happy. She was in the catbird seat!
But Moira was "Nice", that absurd and ineffable English euphemism that excuses all and prohibits everything'. She sat there naked and helpless for all to see while a resentful but compulsive female tongue entered her body and explored for the sensitive bud that would spell release for both. She should have been entering a glowing fleshly Paradise, but all she was aware of was the hungry watching eyes. She sat nude, twisting her tied wrists, longing for the searching tongue to find the mother lode that would render her oblivious to all else. The female panacea for all the ills of all the world. Gladys found it unexpectedly and laved it with intent if not with love. The watching faces faded. Moira delivered herself to the age old sacrifice. Nothing mattered any more! Her moans filled all who heard them with a private ecstasy of their own. It was some sort of consummation.
Moira had ample time to remember Honoria Ramsbotham's praise of her own dungeon. It was indeed quite superlative! There would be no escaping from it, the massive door and the barred windows made sure of that. These factors alone rendered chains redundant, but there were chains aplenty. There were times when Moira felt they all were fastened upon her nudity. There were also cords. Honoria made certain a slave girl entrusted to her care was safely held and constantly aware of her situation in the scheme of things.
Moira sat naked upon a wooden bench. She kicked petulantly at the fetters securing her ankles to the wall. She clinked the metal links that joined her wrists. She shook her head angrily so that the chain that ran from her collar to the ring jingled musically. She stewed in, frustration and thought of the afternoon of the Tea, now long past, and of Celie and Justin and, of course, of Alastair. She longed for the might of Hercules to tear her chains asunder and batter down the door. Instead, she sat a nude and forlorn female in a durance she did not deserve. She wished Honoria would come and whip her, anything was better than just sitting chained so that she could not even walk around her prison. She surveyed the metal band, around her tummy and reflected grimly that it was surprising her fingers and toes did not bear shackles too. Mrs. Ramsbotham did things right!
When Alastair entered Moira knew she was dreaming. He belonged in Soniave, hot in Honoria's dungeon. He was searching for Celie, not for a chained and naked slave girl who would be returned to him in a week or two, more or less intact. But, even so, she leaped towards him with a cry of gladness, uncaring that her chains cut her short and brought her to her knees. It was thus that Moira once again found her Master.
"Damn gal's in love with you," Honoria complained as she poured the whiskey and the soda. "D'you realize she doesn't have a damn thing on! Chains, I mean! She's flitting around as though she owned the place." In benign tolerance she looked at them across the desk in her office and took a deep draught of the Scottish nectar.
Alastair chuckled and produced the handcuffs. A glowing Moira held out her hands. There were the usual clicks, and then a shining eyed girl lifted up two slender wrists joined close together .by shining bands of steel. "See!" she proclaimed happily. "I'm a prisoner. I can't possibly escape."
"Humph!" Mrs. Ramsbotham dourly eyed the bracelets she despised. "You're spoiled rotten. You need to be tied with some good thin rope. Something that bites." She shrugged resignedly. "Why the hell don't the two of you get married!" She chucked amusedly. "He'd probably keep you tied with pink ribbon. Damn good mind to whip that silly smirk off your face." She mused for a moment at some vision of her own. "What's this business about that young bastard, Justin?"
"He's got Celie and the latest captive, Cherry," Alastair said soberly.
"Always thought you gave that little minx too much leeway," Honoria mused as she took another sip. "Should have kept at least her ankles chained". You should have tied her elbows together at least once a week. She got too big for her britches."
"Celie owns Soniaive." Alastair said gently.
"What difference does that make!" Mrs. Ramsbotham demanded. "I inherited a nice little packet, but it would have done me a lot of good if anyone had possessed the sense to whip my arse once a week."
"The young bounder's making the most outrageous demands." Alastair's voice had become hard. "We've got to get them back."
Mrs. Ramsbotham eyed him over the rim of her glass. "Alright, what can I do to help?"
"It's not you, it's Moira."
Honoria seemed miffed. "What the hell can she do!" she chuckled mischievously. "Even with handcuffs!"
"The bands are still on her ankles."
For a moment his words arrested all motion, then Moira stuck out an unfettered foot on which gleamed, as though painted within her skin, the strange metal circlet Justin had imposed.
"Herbert had Ginevra's cut away," Alastair continued. "So she's out of the picture. He got at Celie through those earrings. Janice says she does not know who placed them on her tray. That just leaves Moira. The young cad is not likely to pass up the chance of turning her into some sort of advantage."
"Don't like him, never did." Mrs. Ramsbotham affirmed. "But the young tripe hound's a bloody genius. To get that appalling Cherry woman to transform herself and do what she did... ! I still don't believe it. We're none of us safe."
"He has to get his contacts fixed on you before he can use his force," Alastair explained. "We have to suppose he pushed the right buttons to compel Celie to simply lead Cherry out to his car and drive away with him."
"What's he want?" Honoria questioned grimly.
Alastair shrugged as though the question was irrelevant. "I doubt if he knows. He's pure mischief plus a bundle of resentment that none of us have much admired his methods. He's given us several little packages to choose from. One is that he marries Celie and gets both her and Soniaive. An alternative to that is a million pounds in cash. But then he comes to what I suspect he desires more than anything else. He wants Ginevra delivered to him naked and handcuffed and with poor old Herbert instituting proceedings for divorce. In other words he wants to own Ginevra totally."
"To torture?"
"I suppose so. It's his way of loving."
"Does Ginevra know about this?"
"We're keeping it from her. Herbert knows, but she mustn't. She'd do the nobility thing and deliver herself in return for Celie."
"What's he get out of Cherry?"
Alastair grimaced. "The poor girl's probably just coincidental. He's probably practicing his volts and amps on her right now. For him she's expendable."
"I haven't been feeling anything. From the anklets, I mean," Moira said, puzzled.
Alastair grinned. "I think he's gone beyond those physical sensations. He probably keeps 'em just for fun. Now he's managed to reach the mind with some sort of suggestion or hypnosis. He'll plant a directive in your head. You won't be aware of it consciously, but you'll follow it at the first opportunity."
"Not properly chained the way I keep her, he won't!" said Mrs. Ramsbotham.
"That's the point. From now on she must be clothed and free, but in the constant company of you or your staff. When she heads for the street, we follow. Under his compulsion she'll lead us to wherever he's hiding."
"Oh dammit man! Have some sense. The little filly will just trot her backside out of here and that's the last we'll see of her." .
"I won't! I won't!" The protest burst from Moira's lips like a small explosion. She gazed at Honoria pleadingly. "I love Celie. I love Gin'. I want to help. Oh please... I won't run away. I promise!"
"She won't, y'know," said Alastair. "She's special too."
It was strange to wear clothes again, but it was fun. The biggest fun of all was to watch the face of Honoria Ramsbotham as she resigned herself to her first loss of a slave girl in her charge.
When the two of them descended upon Regent's street the martyred matron made it quite clear she expected to return home alone. That a slave girl accustomed to the whip and to the chains should find herself unequivocally free, and yet of her own will return to bondage, was a premise the good woman was not prepared to countenance.
The mind of the slave girl herself was not without its own question marks. Moira was very much aware of a prisoner's moral obligation to escape. She supposed the question a moral one, she knew an irrational guilt in allowing this glorious chance of freedom to lapse. She felt no doubt that when the crisis was over she would be returned to all the appurtenances of bondage that had become as familiar to her being as her fingers and her toes. Wearing chains for the rest of her life, would she think back bitterly of opportunity scorned! Why! Why! The inward voice beat at her. She had no answer. Can one love someone who had whipped you and will again! It was too absurd, but that was the way of it. But who did she love, Alastair, Celie? And what kind of love did she feel for them? She looked out and beyond, beholding there the shape of a destiny doomed to denial: Ginevra! Resolutely, Moira set qualms and queries aside and comforted herself with a fine feminine conviction that something nice was sure to happen... sometime!
"Dammit gal', you've properly upset my apple cart," Mrs. Ramsbotham complained good naturedly over dinner. "How the devil can I whip your saucy little rump or put you back in the tongue and groove business after the way you've behaved today!" She sighed at vanished treasure.
Moira was excited and in pixie mood. "Oh please! I don't want to spoil anything for you," she exclaimed compassionately. "As long as it doesn't interfere with Alastair's plan you must do both to me any time you wish. I'll let you tie me and I won't complain," she giggled. "At least, not very much."
Honoria examined the phenomenon. "I expect it's your glands," she suggested darkly. "I remember when I was your age... Being a gal's just one bit of nonsense after another. I expect yours is Alastair... Can't blame you, really." She brightened perceptibly. "Damn decent of you to... well, offer what you have. You're a damn good gal! What d'you say to getting a good quick caning with a few drinks this evening? Do us both a world of good."
"Thank you, I'd love it," said Moira as though it was the truth.
Even a tender bottom did nothing to impair Moira's joy in her freedom and the guest bedroom that would be shared, in accordance with the master plan, by the maid, Sally. It was nice to have feminine things again and dress and undress like a girl. It was an exercise she had almost forgotten. Perhaps it was the drinks or some euphoria shared with Honoria Ramsbotham, but the caning had been unexpectedly bearable. It had hurt every bit as much as always. But the recipient of the stripes was forced to conclude that a girl's state of mind had much to do with degrees of agony. Moira had insisted on being stripped and tied, for she knew Honoria's pleasure in the cords. Allowing herself to be bound, she discovered that there too existed a surprising gulf between coercion and the willing gift of liberty forsworn. Wishing to please, she even asked for the hated strand upon her elbows, and received its cruel bite with a sweet smile and a demure thank you. It had been a very good evening.
Moira fell asleep while Sally was still in the bathroom. The drinks had been considerably in excess of a slave girl's ration, their effect was potent. She chuckled at her own admission of finding in them some small measure of anesthesia. She was certain her evening would have been more painful without them. Thus it came about that she had no knowledge of time when she was awakened by Sally's shaking of her arm. She sat up, blinking in the brightness of the switched on light.
"I'm terribly sorry, miss. But madam thinks you'd better come... real quick like." Sally radiated concern.
It took only moments to dress. Such a summons could mean but one thing: the battle with Justin had been, in some way, joined.
With cheeks flushed in apology, the anxious maid held up the familiar steel of handcuffs. "I hope you don't mind, Miss. Madam said it was important. I feel awful queer doing it."
Impatiently and absent mindedly Moira held out her hands. She could have cared less.
"I'm afraid it ain't that way, Miss. Behind your back, she said." Sally was obviously in an agony of embarrassment.
The slave girl swung on one heel and reached back her proffered wrists, It was a familiar gesture, automatic. There came the metallic clicking and the snug bite. Once more she was captive.
It was not until they were out in the street and beneath the light that Moira saw and admired Sally's earrings. She had not noticed them previously.
"Come through the post, they did, miss." The maid giggled, with pride. "From an unknown admirer, the card said. Ain't they lovely!"
Without pause for thought they got into the waiting car. Moira was certain there was something not quite right: the feeling of having left something burning on the stove, but she dismissed it. There was work to do. She supposed they were on their way to Soniaive. The handcuffs were suddenly very tight upon her wrists.
Had anyone looked behind they might have seen the car pull from the curb and follow at a cautious distance.
* * *
"I suppose it serves me jolly well right," said Celie without conviction. "I've been terribly unkind to you." She giggled. "And some of the others. And now look at me, hoist with my own petard! I've always thought that a damn fool expression, but it fits."
Moira looked indeed. Celie was entirely naked, her hands were tied behind her back, she sat astride a pole set on trestles, her toes barely touching the floor on either side. Her ankles were pulled well apart and tied down to rings.
"I think Justin picked this up from some old book on torture." Celie continued equably. "They called it "The Horse". He's modified it a bit so as not to damage his principle asset. The way it's supposed to be: I'd be sitting on a sharp edge and my toes wouldn't touch the floor. Just to be real pally they used to hoist a girl's arms up behind her so she had to sit forward with her weight on her dear little quim. It must have been awful!" she sighed resignedly. "This isn't exactly a bed of roses either. I sit for a bit and then try and stand for a rest. Either way it's pretty bad."
"I'm ashamed of letting myself be caught like this," Moira said angrily. "It's worse than a lamb to the slaughter... I was supposed to help."
"No different from me, darling." Celie wriggled her nudity and grimaced in discomfort. "Justin enjoyed explaining how he got me and Cherry and how he was going to get you by way of Sally. Poor Sally! She doesn't deserve the things he'll do to her."
"Why aren't I being tortured?" Moira queried bitterly. "He's wasting time. Torturing girls is all he really enjoys, isn't it?"
"I expect you will be, darling. Don't push. Justin likes us to talk and find out how clever he is-say, darling, you do look super, dressed! He'll have 'em off you in no time, but while you're in 'em you're gorgeous! I suppose your hands are cuffed behind your back, are they?"
"I let Sally handcuff me. I must have been out of my mind!" Moira was still bitter. She was struck by an obvious thought: "Look, Celie, I'm only handcuffed, and you're tied with cord. If I do a few contortions I can probably get you loose."
Celie brightened, then drooped again. "I don't think you'd hotter, sweetheart. Justin would use it as an excuse to punish us both with something worse. I'm not enjoying this, but it isn't killing me."
"But he may leave us here for hours!"
"He may. But he's cautious with me. He treats me as though, by torture standards, I'm fragile." Celie fluttered her shoulders in frustration and pushed down hard with her toes. "The silly ass has some sort of notion The Special One's will accept him back and treat this little lark as a boyish prank. He knows that I'm... well, special to them. I am being held in reserve for something. So he'll just be mildly cruel and send me home more or less intact." The bright young voice suddenly dissolved. The words that came now were broken and uncertain: "At least I hope he will! I hope he'll send us both home alright... I hope he won't torture us... " The hurt but shining eyes sought Moira's in desolation. "I mean really torture...!"
"You girls will have a lot to talk about," said Justin affably.
The girls kept silent. "You won't mind being stripped again, darling? I'll have to tear the odd bit," he inquired solicitously of his new prisoner.
Moira stood, furious but unprotesting, as she was stripped naked. The torn and lovely things Honoria had bought her made a small pathetic pile upon the bare floor as Justin took them from her one by one.
"I'm going to be the perfect host and allow you to sit face to face." He explained brightly. "But we will make one small change. I'm sure darling Celie is tired of this pole for a seat." Deftly he removed one trestle and withdrew the pole from between Celie's wide spread legs. She sighed in ecstatic relief as she stood naturally without pain, but her surcease was short lived. Reversing his motions, Justin replaced the round pole with a squared and planed timber of similar dimensions. No sooner had the sharp edges found Celie's waiting flesh than she cried in protest.
"Justin, don't be a beast! It's twice as awful!" She turned piteous eyes on their cheerful tormentor. "You don't have to torture us like this."
"You're dead right!" Justin agreed instantly. "I'm just plain soft hearted when it comes to you girls. I indulge you." He turned and bowed courteously to Moira, "If you'd just slip a leg over, please."
"And what if I don't!" Moira could have kicked herself for the silliness of her defiance.
"Then you may join those other somewhat plebeian damsels in some electrical research they are aiding me in."
Moira slid her thigh over the bar and edged herself into position. Even before she was tied, it hurt. When her ankles had been pulled apart and bound, it hurt a lot worse. The handcuffs held her wrists with total efficiency.
"We may have Tea together in the afternoon," Justin assured them cordially as he left them to their talk and to their pain. The door closed with a very solid click.
"Sadistic bastard! Why don't I hate him more!" Celie vehemently voiced a puzzlement that Moira shared.
"I think it's because you and he are so much of the same class-I mean, the same social strata: you both belong... " Moira offered hesitantly between gasps. "He just narrowly misses being a really nice boy you'd love to marry. I think we all feel we could reform him if he'd just stop torturing us and give us half a chance."
"Dreamer!" Celie mocked. "You'd spend your wedding night stretched on the Rack with an electrode shoved up your little what'sit instead of his male thingummy... dammit, this hurts something awful!"
Moira parted with a moan or two as she felt her crotch slowly torn asunder. "What got him started? Does anyone know?"
Celie actually chuckled. "Well, I don't suppose this is the reason, but I remember something when I was quite small. I was allowed to watch as a special privilege. A pair of girl cousins much older than me or Justin-he must have been about fifteen at the time, took us on a picnic in the woods. They jumped poor Justin, they were really hefty girls and he wasn't all that big, and they tied him to a tree, unzipped his flies and pulled out that silly thing men have between their legs." She paused musingly and for a fresh twist and gasp, then interposed: "I do think us girls are much... well, tidier in that particular spot. I've never been able to understand how men have the nerve to walk around and look us in the eye with that absurd tail effect dangling in their trousers."
"It doesn't always dangle."
"Oh, I know all about that! But it's still absurd. Anyway, the cousins were having no end of a giggle, with me looking on, bug eyed, and poor Justin as scarlet as he could get. He even perspired. He threatened them with everything in the book, but they just laughed and started to pull their hand up and down while they had hold of his silly object." Celie grinned reminiscently. "I don't know all that much about traumas, but if Justin missed getting one, I didn't. Except for Alastair, I've never been able to see males as anything but a bit pathetic. You can guess the rest: Justin's appendage got as hard as a brass rod and all of a sudden shot out a great big charge of what, I have learned since, is called semen. It's really supposed to go into us girls and make babies-ugh! But his went on the grass. The cousins roared with laughter. I thought Justin probably needed a doctor. Goodness knows what Justin thought! I'll never know. But he looked as though he wished he was dead... or maybe he wished we were. After that they just went on and on. Justin pleaded and begged, but they paid no attention: just milked him, milked him again and again. I watched all that stuff come out and wondered what it was. Often, now, when I look at men I think of cows, it wasn't all that different."
"What's it matter now." Moira said dispiritedly. "Justin is the way he is and we are sitting on this damn sharp edged bit of wood." She switched to the question that must always be uppermost in their minds. "If he keeps us miserable with punishments like this, do you think he'll lay off his beastly electrical torture? I can't stand it."
"That's mostly what I think about." Celie admitted. "No girl can stand it. It's a rotten thing to wish, but you and I can only hope he satisfies that urge on Cherry and poor little Sally. I don't regret Cherry so much, she's a bitch... I say darling! I don't suppose you know: she's still sewed up." Celie could not repress a giggle. "Justin loved it. Say's every girl ought to have her thingummy sewn tight. He's inserted a plastic tube, so goodness knows how long he can keep her like that. I hope it doesn't give him ideas, I don't want mine sewn shut. I know you've had yours sewn, but I don't suppose you want it again... I say, is Alastair badly cut up? About me, I mean? I hope he is. Wouldn't it be awful for a girl if nobody wanted to ransom her... "
The two girls sat upon the cutting edge and gazed at each . other in forlorn love. When they were not engrossed with moans, they talked.
The promised Tea was a bitter disappointment, but quite in keeping with Justin's way of doing things. Celie's and Moira's hands were freed, that was all.
"You're an awful cad, Justin." Celie complained.
"We are a dying breed, Cherub." Justin acknowledged. "I am one of the last of the line. Think how lucky you are to have known me."
"I can't think of anything fixed like this."
"Don't be silly. Your sweet little minds are full of thoughts on how to do poor Justin wrong."
"Our troubles are a lot lower down! Oh, Justin, let us loose! Even if it's only to have Tea."
"A girl's cunt is an amazingly durable facility, darling. You's will come through with flying colours." Justin busied himself with the trolley so that each girl found herself using numbed hands to hold a cup and saucer whilst she sat astride the punishment bar with ankles tied tautly where she could not reach them.
Moira drank her tea, it was hot and strong and encouraging. "We must look awfully silly doing this." She said tentatively.
Justin had brought a chair. He sat on it. "You look delightful. Er, by the way, on the crockery: there's a penalty for breakages."
"There's a penalty for everything around you." Celie sniffed. "Aren't you going to give us a second cup?"
"When I've had mine, Cherub. I'm going to sit and sip and admire that sacrosanct nakedness of your's. What's it feel like to be ogled by a lecher?"
"I like it: being naked, I mean. And you're not a lecher, you're an electrician. Please, Justin, help us endure your torture with a sandwich or something."
When he had again played the solicitous host, Justin sat and admired. Moira could almost feel the intensity of his gaze. "You've come a long way, Moira," he said thoughtfully.
You've developed."
From him, even praise was suspect. Moira munched and said nothing. She was mostly concerned with the pain down below and a longing to ease it by thrusting at the punishing seat with her hands. But a plate and a up, in her situation, were almost as inhibiting as the handcuffs. She was sure Justin was aware and quietly enjoying her dilemma.
"You have a quality." Their captor quietly reflected. "I watched the same thing happen with Ginevra. Soniaive brings out a sort of radiance, an enhancement, or maybe enchantment is the word. Some of the little bits Alastair picks up go the other way, they shrink. But not you, and not Gin'. You thrive on what Soniaive does to you. You glow."
"Therefore you want to torture us?" Moira asked bitterly.
"Not all the time." It was as though he gazed into her future as his thrall. "You are very much female, it would be nice to have you around."
"Are you proposing marriage?"
He masked awkwardness by a motion with plates and cups. "I would have married Gin' if she hadn't escaped Soniaive by marrying all that treacle."
"But would she have married you?"
"Why not!" Moira recognized reason in his quiet voice. "Remember, she was a slave, whipped daily and chained at night."
"I'm whipped daily and chained at night! Look at me now!" A pixie perversity was prodding in Moira's mind.
A small charged silence fell upon them all. Justin did indeed look, and looked again. "Very well." He said soberly. "Will you marry me?"
It was as though rehearsed. Quite unreal, yet within the context of the Play. Intuition had robbed Moira of shock, she had seen the hunger in Justin's eyes, a loneliness that hid behind the repartee, the banter and the cruelty. She was suddenly irradiated with a sense of power as Ginevra must once have been when Herbert Harcourt opened her gate to freedom. The scornful words of rejection died upon her lips. She looked at the boy who was torturing her, seeing him for the first time as human and vulnerable. Through him there need be no more sitting on the bar, no more chains, no whipping of her nakedness! But, quite apart from these, her pixie was prodding hard. She was intrigued. Besides, it would be fun to shock Celie.
"Thank you." She said demurely. "I'd love to marry you."
Justin nodded slowly, seeking time to assess her sincerity. "You actually mean that, don't you?"
"Yes," the single word took more courage. But to the naked girl whose sex was crushed against the sharp edges of her perch and whose wrists would soon be cuffed once more behind her back, there had come a vision. If, by the irrational convolutions of male desire, Justin had come to transfer to her all the hunger and the need he had felt for Ginevra then their battle was won. Everyone, save she herself, would go safely home.
He had read her thoughts easily enough. He would not readily discard cynicism. "Want me to name your terms?" He asked sardonically.
"Please do, darling." Monica knew herself risking the whip or worse, but she was in the grip if a compulsion she felt no wish to stem.
Justin laughed at her insouciance. Thus Ginevra would have been! He felt a pleasurable excitation. "Number one." He mocked. "Send darling Celie home complete with maidenhead. Number two: Return one slightly used maid, only lightly shocked voltage wise. Number three: Don't kidnap Ginevra." He laughed frankly at his avowed hostage. "That one's the most important of the lot, isn't it!"
Moira flushed. He was shrewd. "What about Cherry?"
"I thought we'd keep her." Justin admitted blandly. "She's an admirable subject, robust and screams well."
"Would that release me from your experiments?" Moira was shocked by how little sympathy she felt for Cherry.
"Oh absolutely! After all, my wife...!"
"You mean I wouldn't be... well, punished?" For the first time Moira was incredulous.
"I didn't say that, beloved. You'll get about the same from me as you'd get if you married Alastair as you'd like to do." He laughed at her chagrin. "Oh, I know!"
"Alastair wouldn't whip me every day!"
"He would, y'know. You're in the silly stage about him. He whips Gin' quite brutally every chance he gets, even now. Ask Celie."
"A whipped wife could go to the police." Moira felt argumentative. She had nothing to lose.
"You wouldn't. You've been at Soniaive too long. Besides, after every whipping I'd keep you chained until you got over your peeve. And, anyway, I won't take my bands off your ankles. Just a precaution. You girls are so damned unpredictable."
"I'd still be a slave." A sudden lovely vision was becoming tarnished.
"No! There'd be good things, a lot of them." Emotion had entered his voice. He was vehement. "It only takes thirty minutes to whip you and you wear chains like jewelry. There are twenty-four hours in each day. In most of them you'd be glad."
Moira had been conscious of Celie's stricken gaze. She smiled reassuringly. Celie and Sally and Ginevra: three for one! It was a bargain she had best accept. "Oh alright." She said flippantly. "I'll be a good girl. I'll accept my whipping after breakfast and wear my handcuffs as a dutiful wife should... " Struck my a sudden and obvious thought, she asked coyly. "Wouldn't it sort of fit this occasion if you released me from this beastly thing I'm sitting on?"
"I'm not going to." Justin said evenly. "It would be no way to start. You can understand that, I know you can."
Strangely enough, Moira did understand. It was in keeping. Without protest, she put her wrists to be handcuffed behind her back, and watched as Celie's wrists were similarly fastened with cord. She was still thinking of an appropriate retort when the man who had proposed to her turned and left them alone. As always, the door closed with a solid finality.
"My cunt hurts and I'd like to cry." Celie's statement was unequivocal. She tugged petulantly at her tied wrists and made one more struggle in the losing battle to ease her pain. She was strangely subdued. Urgently, her eyes sought Moira's. "You're not going through with it, darling." It was half statement, half question. .
"It doesn't look as though I'm going through with anything except sitting on this blasted bit of wood." Moira said morosely.
"Oh, that's Justin's way of keeping his end up. I think he'll go through with the deal if you will."
"It's much the best way." Moira sought conviction. Celie's words came slowly. She had obviously been thinking. "Y'know, sweetheart, while the two of you were tossing your lives around I wanted to shout the whole thing down: why should you make such a sacrifice!" She shrugged captive shoulders woefully. "But then it struck me: at the worst you're only giving up one slavery for another: at the best you might be one of the Special One's same as Herbert and Gin'. It's easy for me to forget you are a slave, but you are. At Soniaive I'm ordered to keep you chained or tied. Old Mother Ramsbotham and the rest, when they had you, wouldn't give you a chance to wriggle... " Celie grinned affectionately. "I'd better keep quiet and let you do the choosing."
"I hurt too much to choose anything. I'm like you, I just want to cry." Moira admitted unhappily. "Let's both shed a few tears. I wish we could touch-" The door crashed open. They stared, shocked.
It was Joel. Behind him grinned Lew and Bill.
* * *
Moira and Celie were too shocked and too helpless to do anything but stare. Joel gave them an affable nod and sauntered round their shaming perch, gauging it's import. "Bit of cunt stretching, eh!" He said approvingly. "Damn good idea! Do it often?'."
"We'll get you all the money you want." It was the first thing that came to Moira's mind.
"Who said anything about money!" Joel demanded. "Didn't notice much last time" He turned mockingly to his cohorts. "You see any cash?"
"Take it out in trade this time." Lew affirmed.
"Fuck the arse off 'em." Bill agreed heartily.
The two girls looked their desolation.
"Cherry will want a bit o' time with you, no doubt," Joel mused. "Don't suppose the poor dear's had too good a trip, judging by the way you're fixed. Haven't found her yet. Empty old rabbit warren, this is. Your boy friend rented it for the duration. Lucky we followed you down last night. Bit o' luck, really. Just chasing a hunch."
"We'll search the place," Bill said as the two men left.
"Let us down please," Moira pleaded. "We can talk."
"Nothing to talk about. You can stay where you are, good place for you." Joel looked shrewdly at Celie's nudity. "You're the one they value, aren't you? Missed you last time. What d'you figure they'll pay?"
"I have no idea." Celie looked at him with loathing.
"You're worth more if you're not fucked, I believe?" Joel asked casually. "Some sort of rite they want to perform on you, isn't it?"
"I don't know. You have to believe it... I don't!" Celie was frantic.
"You are more likely to profit if she's unharmed," Moira told him reasonably. "Look, take us off this thing. We're exhausted. You can keep us helpless."
"Bend a bit more forward, love," Joel requested. "Get more weight on your cunt. I like the effect. You can sit there till kingdom come for all I care."
Moira knew a great need to pierce his urbane indifference. "Free us. We'll do anything. I'll spread my legs for you. I'll write the letter... There is one, I suppose?"
"I said lean forward. Do as I say. You'll not bargain with me."
"They obeyed and rewarded him with moans and gasps that were frighteningly real. Without warning or preamble Joel loosed their feet. Thankfully but helplessly each girl stumbled to the floor, their bound hands aiding them not at all. They crouched, hands behind their backs, watching him like animals at bay. The sex of each screaming a delayed protest.
"Well!" Joel's eyes sought Moira. "You made a promise."
She had made a promise, a tug at her handcuffs told her she had best keep it. With an admonitory glance at a wide eyed Celie, Moira chose her place upon the floor, lay on her back on her pinioned arms and spread wide her legs. It was a price girls had been paying for a long, long time. Joel accepted it with great competence.
When he was gone and the door locked on two naked and helpless girls, Celie asked, hesitantly and ashamed. "That's it, is it? Being fucked, I mean. I've never seen... "
"That's it," Moira acknowledged with a cheerfulness she did not feel.
"I've just been fucked. Actually he's quite good at it."
"But it looks so... so, terribly silly." The younger girl was looking at her as though expecting production of an instant baby. "He... he looked like a tortoise. It wasn't... it wasn't human."
"I don't think we are human when we're doing it. We revert to animals."
"But, the way you gasped and moaned, darling. It was the same as when you are being whipped."
"I was being whipped. I was being punished for being a woman." Moira grinned ruefully. "No, that's being dramatic. It's really the other way round. Men whip us because the whip on our skin makes us utter those sounds. It means they can make an orgasm last for as long as they like... or, at least, for as long as they keep whipping us. Either way we lose."
"You mean that if you did not utter a sound while being whipped the men would stop whipping you?" Celie showed an animated interest.
Moira shrugged. "It's my own theory. I've never been able to test it because I've never been able to stop making a noise while I'm being whipped. Even if they gagged me they'd get their thrill out of the way I writhe. You probably noticed, we do that too when we are being competently fucked."
"But, darling, competence...?"
Moira laughed as though she needed it. "Oh yes! Believe me, men vary a lot. Some can make a girl just go absolutely bonkers. But there's others who can't even speed our pulse. It's quite a field of study if a girl had the time and the pills."
"You could have a baby from what's... what just happened?" Celie was awed.
"I suppose so. But I doubt it. Wrong time of month."
"And they're going to do it to me! I'll get that funny stuff inside me." Celie sounded as though she could not believe a word.
"We have to try and stop them. Make them think that if you're soiled you won't be ransomed."
Celie considered. "Are you soiled? You look just the same. Darling, is this maidenhead thing so terribly awful?"
"Stop thinking of it as a possibility," Moira warned. "If you think of yourself as inviolate they may see you that way too. Oh sure, a girl's maidenhead makes it hurt like hell the first time. It's a bit of membrane the male breaks. It's no fun. But after he's broken it anything can happen."
"You mean I may enjoy it?"
"I'm afraid so. Sorry, darling. Wish I could tell you different."
Celie pondered. "Do you think that's what's planned for me on this day the Special One's are so concerned about? It's an awful word, but it's beautifully explicit. I mean, will Alastair, or someone, fuck me while they all look on?"
Moira could have laughed or cried at the charming naivete. "I've wondered about that myself," she admitted. "But more probably you'll just get a right royal whipping." In sudden awareness she demanded. "Turn round and hold still. I can untie your wrists."
It was not difficult. The link of the handcuff gave enough freedom. After a few minutes of blind tugging the cord fell to the floor, Celie was free. She flew to the door and pulled and pushed. From there to the boarded windows, the nails held firm. "It hasn't helped much." She mourned, "Oh, darling, what can we do!"
They did the only thing they could.
Moira knew that nothing really mattered any more, she was lost. There would be no mercy, no reprieve, probably no ransom. She was not the treasure Celie was. Darling Celie who had stood against the wall with the rope around her neck and her hands once more tied behind her back when Moira had been taken away.
"Be a nice change for you after all them cunts," Bill suggested.
"Nothing like a good stiff prick," Lew said helpfully.
Moira was still handcuffed. There had been no need to free her. Handcuffs behind a girl's back were a most adaptable bondage. She tugged at them now as she examined the two rampant male organs unzipped and exhibited for her attention. "Bill's first," Lew said without envy. "We tossed for it."
Moira knew that she should fight, scream, denounce... and get soundly whipped for her efforts. But the whipping seemed a bit much on top of all the rest. She wished she could strike a nice balance between compliance and loathing to properly register on her captors, but short of the whip she could think of nothing. Driving thought away, she advanced and knelt before the smirking Bill. Lapping his penis between her lips, she started on the woman's work that is never done. Bill grunted, his eyes glazed. Lew watched with anticipatory joy.
"If I can give you so much pleasure, why deliver me to Cherry?" Moira bargained. "Keep me. I'll make you happy. You can keep me handcuffed so I don't give you any trouble."
The pair she had so ably serviced exchanged sheepish grins. "Be alright with us, miss. You're a right good little tart, and all. But Joel, he's got some deal with 'er ladyship. 'E'el let 'er whip your arse for sure. Ain't much we can do."
"Take me to London. I'll get you a lot of money."
"We're supposed to whip you... Leastways, Cherry's supposed to whip you when you offer that." There was a faint regret in Lew's voice.
"Well, what the hell am I supposed to offer?" Moira demanded angrily.
Bill produced a thin cane and a huge grin. "Bend over, love."
Moira endured the shaming cuts. There were only six. The British six, as she had come to think of it. "Do you want me to say thank you?" she asked pleasantly as she straightened up.
"Try us and see," Lew suggested.
She said her demeaning thanks and was amazed at the potency of feminine submission. Two sets of male flies were zipped down and once more she returned to the fray. She suspected she possessed a natural aptitude. When she had licked the last glans free of semen she looked up at the red faces of those she had emasculated, and asked. "Isn't this better than giving me to Cherry?"
"Proper scared of 'er, ain't yer?" Bill asked curiously.
"If you were a girl, would you like having your cunt sewn tight?" Moira tried to give it to them with both barrels.
"Is it that much worse than being whipped?" Lew asked with interest.
Moira knew it hopeless, but she tried. "It's all awful.
Terrible beastly stuff. Why bother with it! Why spoil me! I can give you so much pleasure. Do you want to see my skin cut and wealed and all sorts of obscenities... "
"'As a proper time with yer, don't she," Bill said diffidently.
"Are you afraid of her?"
"We ain't going against Joel, we ain't. If 'e wants 'er to 'ave yer, then you've 'ad it."
Moira cried. They watched her tears dispassionately. They watched her tug at her handcuffs. They admired the beauty of her nudity. They helped her to her feet and escorted her to Cherry. She was sure they parted with her" sadly.
Celie was lying naked on her bound hands. Her ankles were tied and stretched up and to each side. Cherry was whipping the helpless girl's exposed cunt with a thin sliver of cane. The victim was whimpering in a most satisfying manner. Cherry looked up in irritation, but her face softened at sight of the new captive.
"Give 'em a bad time, don't yer, love," Lew commented without much interest before they left.
"I'm going to give you a bad time," Cherry said to Moira as though offering a great treasure. "Watch me now as I warm up little Fanny's cunt."
Moira watched. What else could she do! She thought of kicking the woman with the cane. But a girl can not kick effectively with bare feet, especially if the enemy has no testicles. Cherry plied her cane and Celie jerked and squealed. Moira realized it could have been worse. Perhaps only a preliminary bout before the main event!
She tried not to meet Celie's anguished eyes.
The next act was quite out of this world. Cherry was enjoying herself immensely. Celie had been released. She was surprisingly free of all bonds. But she wept quietly on her knees. Paying no heed to the weeping girl with the well whipped sex, Cherry stood in front of Moira and posed. "What do you see, bitch?"
Cherry's cunt was sewn. After all this time it was as tightly ligatured as when Celie had first applied the needle. The small plastic orifice was surprisingly unobtrusive. "Cute, eh!" Cherry jibed. "Think how yours is going to look."
It was no more than Moira had expected. It had been almost inevitable. "The men are using me," she said dully. "I'm no use to them sewn shut."
Cherry laughed. Moira could understand her joy. "Men don't want cunts these days," she explained soberly. "Any chap with a prick can get all the cunt he wants. Most of 'em look higher. You've got pretty lips."
"I've used them steadily in the past hour," Moira told her bitterly.
"Swallow it all?" Cherry was interested.
"That's part of the deal, isn't it?" Moira asked. "But holy Joel fucked me. He won't want me sewn."
Cherry laughed sardonically. Producing handcuffs, she fastened Celie to a ring. "Come on," she said. "You ain't got no monopoly on fucking."
Moira followed in dread. She expected 'only one defeat after another. Coupled with her sadism, Cherry had a score to settle. There could be no hope... "Doesn't that hurt?" she asked with an involuntary concern. "I mean, walking about. Your, your...?"
"My cunt, you mean?" Cherry cooed. "Of course it hurts, you little bitch. It hurts like blazes. But I've stayed sewn for a reason. But for now there's something else you'd better see."
It was a pathetic picture. A bare room with only Sally. The maid who should have been busy with Honoria Ramsbothem lay upon a bench. Her wrists were tied, her ankles were tied. But the latter in such a way as to leave her pubic hair a bushy exhibit, and the lips within an open invitation. She smiled wanly at Moira. "Have you come to fuck me too?" she asked dispiritedly. She struggled to show her impotence. "They keep coming... the men. They fuck me and fuck me and fuck me... Oh, miss, please, can't you take me home!"
"I could tie you like that," said Cherry cheerfully.
They went back to Celie.
"You put the stitches in, you can damn well take 'em out," Cherry told a wilting young woman with her right wrist cuffed to a ring in the wall. She produced a razor blade. "Have you got the nerve, kid?"
Celie was distraught. "Please, you'd better do it yourself. You've whipped me so much, I'm shakey."
Cherry shook her head. No! It's got to be you. But nick me just once, one little spot of blood, and I'll hang you by the thumbs and whip you raw. I don't give a damn about ransom."
Celie considered her plight. "Alright, I'll try," she conceded in a tired voice. "I suppose I ought to... "
"Damn right you ought to, you little sexless whore!" Cherry agreed. She produced a razor blade and straddled herself naked before the kneeling girl she had released from the wall.
Moira watched, tense and fearful. The task was difficult, but not impossible. She shrank from considering the penalty of failure. In a last minute hope she pleaded. "Let me do it."
"Shut up!" Cherry dismissed her. The woman who controlled them both protruded her vulva for Celie's attention. "Get with it, kid."
Celie completed her assignment competently. She cut and plucked away the threads and laid aside the plastic tube. While Cherry was still grimacing with the pain of withdrawal and clutching at he wounded labia she leaped to her feet, kicked her taskmistress backwards with a lithe thrust of an agile foot, and fled, Cherry had not bothered to lock the door.
In an instant reaction Moira moved between the open portal and an avenging Cherry. If, with foot or tooth or shoulder, she could delay pursuit it would give Celie the only help her handcuffs allowed. Once again she cursed the shining metal on her wrists, they diminished her to near impotence. But she need not have moved. Cherry was unconcerned. She rose to her feet, one hand still tenderly comforting the place that hurt. "Going to play the noble heroine," she sneered. "Get away from the door and stand still or I'll break your leg. I'll be O.K. in a minute and we can get on with our business."
A scuffle on the landing heralded Celie's return. Joel had a hand twisted in her hair and her arm thrust high on her back. Releasing her, he kicked savagely so that the naked teen-ager sprawled across the floor and sat dejectedly striving to wipe away the tears she could no longer control. Looking up at Moira, she smiled a wan apology for failure.
"Did you lose something, love?" Joel asked his woman sarcastically. With an air of purpose he found a wooden box, placed it against the inviting door and sat down. He leered complacently at the three females who Surveyed him with varying emotions.
"I won't be losing the little snippet again," Cherry said furiously. "I'd like to cut the tendons in her ankles. See how far she'd run then."
Joel passed over Cherry's practical suggestion. He had business on his mind. Laughing at the ruffled slenderness of the girl upon the floor, he said casually: "I think they'll pay for you. We're in touch. The bastards are a damn sight more reasonable about you than they were last time with the others." He turned his regard to Moira. "But you, love, you don't have much of what the Insurance boys would call a cash surrender value. The Soniaive lot seem to think I should toss you and the other little trick the boys are busy screwing in for nothing, a sort of package offer."
He was enjoying himself. Moira saw him a man on top. Luck was coming his way, he was savouring it with relish. "Mind you, we're not hurrying." He continued reflectively. "Cherry's got the right idea about that. We've got you, so we may as well have a bit of fun. We won't damage the merchandise so it's value is affected. Just superficial wounds like the whip and screwing... " He winked lewdly at Moira. "Screwing comes under that heading, wouldn't you say?"
"Do you want me to lay down again?" She asked tartly.
"No he doesn't!" Cherry's Voice was firm.
The man on the box laughed indulgently. "Little Flossy on the floor's starting to look foxy. Tie her ankles, love, would you."
Cherry accepted the suggestion with zest. She knotted two strands so that they cut the skin as a punishment quite apart from inhibiting Celie's urge to run.
"That's better." Joel approved. "It's that little moppet that's going to make us rich." He looked admonishingly at his second in command. "Just so long as she gets home in one piece, that is."
"She can keep her holy hymen for all I care. It's you men that enjoy busting it, not me." Cherry sounded miffed.
"Well, since you're the official custodian, so to speak, I thought you might combine a bit o' pleasure with your duty as guardian of the sacred slit." Joel left an inference hanging in the air.
All three of his audience froze. One in delight, two in a cold fear of understanding.
"Keeps us naughty boys out of temptation." Joel added pleasantly, then chuckled at-an inward vision: "Just imagine poor old Bill or Lew coming face to face with that...!" He slapped his thigh and guffawed in pure enjoyment. "Worse than a man coming home late and finding the door locked."
Celie saw Moira's agony. "Don't worry, sweetheart. Sort of inevitable, I suppose... " She twisted about, seeking comfort for her tied feet.
"We have to hand it to little Flossy, she's got guts." Joel addressed himself to Moira. "Now it's you we have to consider." He laughed at the consternation on her face. "No, no, love, we won't stitch your twat. It's going to be a busy little passageway while you're our guest. I was thinking of cash. Know anyone who'd pay a hundred thou'?"
"You know I don't."
"Well, love, flesh like you's just has to be worth something." Joel mused reasonably. "You could sell me to a brothel."
"I'd keep you myself if I wasn't pretty well looked after in that direction already. You've got spunk. I like it."
"I'm sure Bill and Lew would buy me for a small sum. They could keep me in the tool shed."
"Funny, funny!" He looked at her hungrily and sighed. "We'll think of something... " The words said clearly that the 'something' was already thought of. "We have lots of time. The Wizard picked this place well. No one will ever find us-"
"Where is Justin?" Celie interjected.
"None of your business, love. He's where we want him. And you'll have to learn not to interrupt when your elders are speaking." He grinned at Cherry, "Give her three."
Moira choked back protest. What was the use! Celie eyed the preparations for her punishment with interest. Cherry flexed the yellow length with a pure sensuous enjoyment. "Just get up on all fours, love." She ordered happily.
Celie did as bid. Like Moira, she guessed that protest spelt pain. Her tied ankles were no hindrance. She assumed her four footed pose as gracefully as she could. Under the authoritative tapping of the cane she obediently arched down her back and thrust up her bottom. Her lissome youth enabled a surprising exposure. For seconds all three admired the loveliness of the unsuspected contours. Then Cherry swept the cane in a zinning arc and bedded it deep in the youthful curve.
For one bare second the recipient of the cut did not move nor utter sound. But then, in a wide eyed fury of motion, she screamed and fell sideways, clutching at her wound. She writhed and twisted and sobbed, quite oblivious of the watching eyes. When she partially managed to master the pain, it was to Moira she uttered the broken gasping words: "Oh, darling, I didn't know... I didn't know...!"
"Well you know now, love." Cherry said cheerfully. "And that one won't count. You fell over."
Celie knelt, rubbing the tender ridge of flesh that would take long to heal. Her ligatured ankles were puffed where the cords bit. She looked appealingly at the man who held her destiny. "She's right, y'know. You'll have to take the three and take 'em proper. Make a noise if you want, cry all you like, but hold still for the next one." Joel explained helpfully. He turned to the radiant woman with the cane. "Dammit, girl, you don't have to belt into her like that. Give her three she can handle."
Wincing with each cut, Moira watched Celie's slenderness accept the three she could handle. Cherry made them hurt, but modified the intensity of the first. The victim hung her head, wanting to none to see the shock of discovery on her face, discovery of an agony she had often dispensed but had never previously experienced. She held her curved posture in a tense determination to acquit herself well. She cared not for Joel or Cherry, but wanted no hypocrisy about her pain: she had given it to others, to Moira, she would absorb it herself without complaint. When it was over she did not move, but asked pathetically: "May I sit now, please?"
"Best rest on your hip, love." Joel advised. He turned to his smiling woman, his voice suddenly brisk. "We'll go along with the plan as discussed. Prepare both of them. In fact, do the whole ruddy job if you're in the mood." He grinned slyly. "I expect you are! Call me or the boys if you want help." He picked up his box and was gone.
Celie made no quip. She was understandably subdued. She longed, awkwardly, tenderly, inwardly damning the cord welding her feet. She longed to run. Moira knew a fresh disquiet. Neither freedom or Soniaive seemed in her future. She sensed a deeper captivity than she had previously known. Cherry thoughtfully tied Celie's wrists behind the young girl's back, and loosed her ankles. "There's another room that's better than this." She explained. "Will having your hands like this be enough to keep you sensible, or d'you want something round your neck?" She looked from one to the other.
Moira shrugged. "You know we're helpless." She admitted resignedly. "Just tell us what to do. I'll try and behave."
It was not a long walk and the room was not much different. But it was light from well barred windows on a top floor. It had a few bare furnishings. It's principle feature was the two posts that went from floor to ceiling. Moira felt no doubt they would be bound to them. There were cords and handcuffs and bits of chain... a small table held things she did not wish to see.
"You can face each other." Cherry offered magnanimously.
They stood against their posts, hands bound, waiting. Each girl knew that what was about to happen to her would be bad. Cherry tied them with care and skill, almost with love.
Celie first. Moira had watched the familiar passes with the cord, the compression of the flesh, the growing awareness on the young face that she could not move, that she was delivered to cruelty. Now, as her feet were tied to the wood and her handcuffs removed, she stood passive as the cords nestled within her tummy and across her shoulders. When her arms were corded from wrist to elbow against the pillar she knew herself in readiness for whatever might be done. She could not even twitch. Her breasts leaped forward inviting torture, her traitorous nipples hardened from some erotic stimulus of their own.
"We got this from a hospital." Cherry explained. "I got the chap to show me how to use it. He says it's so intense you don't feel a thing, but I'm glad it's you and not me. Does a bang up job. You'll be pleased... "
Moira sensed herself as being first. Wide eyed she examined the thing with which she would be tortured. It looked like a curling iron, the long flexcord, the handle, but it ended in a filament like sliver of metal already glowing red and rapidly turning white. "You'll have to tell me how it feels." Cherry said conversationally. She picked up a large size rubber eraser and positioned it firmly along the side of Moira's left nipple. With her other hand she raised the incandescent wire...
It is not easy to watch the piercing of one's own flesh or the burning of our skin. But Moira could not turn way from the fascination of what was taking place. She had received no inkling. This was nothing she had imagined. Her nipple was to be pierced, she knew not why. She saw the white electrode enter her, she moaned in indescribable anguish and flung her strength against the cords, but her breast did not even quiver from the effort. She watched the swift and steady penetration until the smell of burning rubber told of completion. Cherry pulled away the eraser. Moira's nipple was exposed, transfixed neatly by a filament of heat that the older woman now cautiously withdrew.
"May as well see how well this works before we go on to the next one." Cherry observed casually. She caught Moira's anguished eye. "I'm not doing this for fun, y'know. It's dead serious business."
Cherry went to the table and picked up a scintillating bauble. Moira recognized it as one of the earrings, those fatal and deadly earrings, presented to Celie on the stage at Soniaive. It's metal inserted through her nipple hurt less than she would have expected, but enough! There was no clasp or clip. Cherry brought two ends together, touched them briefly with the glowing heat, and allowed the loveliness of the trinket to hang from the out-thrust breast. "It can be cut off and replaced with something else." She explained consolingly. "But you can't get it off with your fingers, so don't hurt yourself trying." She stood back and admired the effect. "Like it?"
"It's beautiful." The words escaped before Moira could trap them. Being uttered, they could not be retrieved. She let them hang in the air as Cherry once more picked up the eraser. Moira was female. She did not want the thing being perpetrated upon her, but since it would be done anyway she could not deny it's erotic loveliness. She watched the white glow slide through her right nipple. She did not moan, she was breathless with the strangest sensation of her life. When the second earring had been welded and was pendants from her breast she exhaled a great sigh of relief and knew an angry guilt that behind her pain there was a glowing pride.
"That's not the lot, love." Cherry laughed at the consternation her words evoked. "But don't fret. This will be easy." She took a firm grasp on Moira's ear.
"But my ears are already pierced." Her victim wailed. "So are Celie's."
"Not quite the way we want them, dear." Twice the white hot sliver did it's task. It was but a momentary thing, at the end of which the bound girl knew her ears available to rings of far greater dimension than she had ever worn. Surely she was not going to be chained by her ears... How absurd! And yet... !
"And now the Vestal Virgin." Cherry took Celie by the ear and repeated the process. But now, when she was done with the piercing, she completed the effect so that Moira was able to discover how she, too, would look when decorated as desired. From a small box on the table Cherry extracted the rings. They were not small. "This box of treasures came from the Wizard." Cherry informed as she slipped the golden things through the waiting apertures. "He showed me how to do the welding bit. I think the secret's in the metal he uses, it's quite light. Needs to be for the size of 'em. What d'you think?" She stood back and studied her work.
Celie looked stunned by the rapidity of what had been done to her. She shook her head tentatively to test the pain and the weight of what she must wear, then looked inquiringly at Moira.
At first glance, Moira had thought the rings far too large. She would not wish to wear such circlets. And yet... ! They had a beauty of their own. Barbaric perhaps... ? The more she saw them the more she liked them. If they came from Justin it meant they made Celie vulnerable to his wizardry. But he was no longer practicing, so what matter! But, again, the thought arose: could a girl be thus chained... !
"Busy afternoon, I'm afraid." Cherry was looking directly at Moira. "Ever wear a ring in your nose?" She laughed delightedly. "You're going to now."
It was too bizarre! Instinctively the bound girl tested the strictures upon her flesh, save for her head she could not move.
"I'll put a strap over your eyes and round the post if you want me to." Cherry offered. "That will hold you tight enough. But if you're willing to be sensible I'd just as soon have your head so I can pus it around a bit. I want to do a decent job. Will you help or do you want the strap?"
"I'll help." Tied as she was it was silly to fight.
It took longer. It hurt. It was frightening. It was done.
"Don't I get one?" Celie asked suspiciously.
"Not today." Cherry told her laconically. "Another time. I'm still busy over here."
Too busy! Moira's mind whirled. Where else could she be pierced! It came quite suddenly. Miserably she guessed the thing that would next be done. "Why... oh, why?" She asked plaintively of the woman who had bound her.
"Can't tell you, love. Don't know myself." Cherry sluffed the question and knelt to her fresh task. She took a pubic lip and tested it's depth and quality.
This was much the worst! Moira guessed the ring would be large.
There is a poignancy in the loss of something long possessed. The knowledge that it is gone, never to return, is bitter. There is an atavistic compulsion to seek and to destroy the robber. Moira felt it now. In terms of flesh and blood her loss was infinitesimal. Yet never again could she be exactly as she was an hour since. She was not intact. She was vulnerable in places and in ways never previously known. There was a portent in what had been done to her, she was certain of it. But what! In the unknown she found only fear.
"And now for the main event." Said Cherry with tremendous relish.
Moira jerked herself out of self pity. The thing about to be done to Celie should not be done to any girl. It was a thing so outrageous that, beholding it, half the world would laugh and half would weep. She herself was close to tears. It had been a bad, bad day! A fresh puzzlement came when Cherry picked up the little box and the electrode and, giving them a grin and a wink, left them alone.
"At least she didn't give us that one about "Don't go away". Celie offered tentatively. I hate that joke when someone's tied up tight."
"I'd really run if I could." Moira said bitterly. "Oh, darling, I'm so sorry! I wish it didn't have to happen."
"I expect I'll howl. It hurts like blazes, doesn't it? But never mind me. What about you! It's beastly what they've done. They'll never put a ring in your nose. It's just to scare you."
"I am scared." Moira admitted. "I have a feeling they'll get you ransomed. But they have something else in mind for me."
"I'll get you safely back to Soniaive." Celie affirmed vehemently. "If you aren't sent back when I am I'll make Alastair and Herbert and all the rest of them shell out whatever they have to. They must! I'll make their lives miserable until they do. Ginevra will help. You know she will." Celie was panting with the urgency of her feelings as her voice trailed away. She changed her tone. "I say, darling, I'm truly sorry for being such a little beast to you... I mean with rope and chains and whips and things. It's always been such fun: I'm a bit like Cherry, I suppose. I never realized how bad it was, even just being tied like this. When Cherry hit me with that cane across my bare bottom I thought I was split in two. Honest... ! I wouldn't have been surprised to find I had a wound I could have put my fist in. And all it really was, was a great big welt. I'm sure I'll come out of this with a greatly strengthened character."
Celie was adorable! So terribly sweet, so elfin, so infinitely wise. The courage with which she faced the needle that would pierce her again and again made Moira feel inadequate. She could not match the enchantment of this youthful sprite. Irrelevantly she thought of Alastair's face when his beloved child was returned to him with her labia tightly sewn... but at least that would be all. They would not dare anything else!
"It's really been a delightful day." Celie said thoughtfully.
Moira raised her head and blinked. Had she heard alright!
"These earrings are super," Celie giggled. "I nearly died when she burned those lovely holes in your cunt, darling. A really big ring is going to look gorgeous there."
Moira gazed doubtfully at the lovely nudity tied so tightly to the other post. Celie was inclined to being pixie, but this was a bit much. "What did you say, darling?" she asked gently.
Celie giggled happily. "I wonder how the boys will manage to fuck you with the ring in place." she mused brightly. "Will they lift it up and push their silly things into you underneath or will they stick their what'sits through the ring first? You'll be able to say: 'With this ring I thee wed!'." She giggled as from too much champagne.
The mystery was explained by the return of an animated Cherry and a curious Joel. "You have to watch this to believe it," Cherry told her companion. "It's just out of this world. The bastard's a genius. I've only got a hazy recollection, but what I did and what I said doesn't bear thinking about. You'll see it now."
Moira was about to plead, to beg, to protest. But the sudden memory of the show upon the stage stopped her short. Cherry had loved it! Cherry had not hurt. Cherry had felt no pain! It was going to happen anyway, why not let the anesthesia of Justin's evil box make Celie's ordeal painless... Why not!
"You're going to sew my cunt up tight, aren't you, darling?" the teenager cooed to the enraptured older girl. "Have you got one of those nice curved needles? They do help."
"Well I'll be damned!" said Joel fervently. He had brought his box. He sat on it and mopped his brow.
"I'd open my legs a lot wider for you, darling, but I'm so tightly tied," Celie apologized. "Can you manage alright?"
"You'll do just fine, sweetheart," Cherry assured her. There was affection in her voice.
"It's awfully good of you to take the trouble." Celie continued in the same vein of semi-apology and humble gratitude. "Those awful men won't be able to push their ridiculous pricks, or whatever it is they call them, into me. I won't get 'all that messy stuff inside. You're really sweet. I think every girl should have her cunt sewn up tight when she's quite young. Maybe it would grow together... " She giggled delightedly at the thought. "That would really fox 'em, for sure. They'd have to stick it into each other." She gave her audience a bright informative glance. "Someone told me how they do that. It's up the... you know, the other side. They use vaseline... "
"I don't believe it," said Joel in ecstasy.
"You'd better believe it, lover," Cherry told him laughing. "You've got a bigger treasure in that boy and his box of tricks then in the whole lot of these temperamental cunts."
"I used to think that was a really nasty word," Celie continued in the same happy lilting voice. "You can call it a quim or a quiff or a Fanny or a twat, or all sorts of things, but cunt always seemed the very end. You know, nice people used a synonym." She giggled again happily. "I have an aunt who refers to it as a 'private part'."
"When it's sewn up tight, how are you going to pee?" Cherry asked, testing the validity of her victim's euphoria.
"Oh darling, don't be silly! You know you insert that little plastic tube. The one I took out of you will do fine. 'I'll wear it with pride'. Who was it who said that?"
"We could make a fortune out of her on the stage!" Joel was in a seventh heaven of merriment.
"Would you like to fuck me first, kind sir?" Celie asked him anxiously. "It's soon going to be too late. You know." She added coyly, "I've never been fucked. I've always wondered... "
"Don't answer that," Cherry ordered the bemused Joel.
"But you're keeping poor dear Moira to be fucked, aren't you?" Celie sounded glad there would be no problem of availability. "I think she likes it. But she says some men are better than others."
"Would you like a drink first, love?" Cherry, in victory, was very human.
"I think that would be nice," Celie said judicially. "You must have one too. It isn't every day you sew up a girl's cunt, is it."
"Well, stone the crows!" said Joel with deep feeling. "If I live to be a hundred...!"
"Would you like to nibble my nipples?" Celie asked him compassionately. "I'm sure you'd like to. I don't think Cherry would mind."
"Sit down," said Cherry firmly to her illegal spouse. "I'll do all the nibbling that's going to be done." She turned in interest to her bound captive. "You ever have an orgasm, kid?"
"Oh yes!" Celie looked as though she would have jumped up and down in excitement had she been free. "Give me one now, please. I'm sure you have a lovely tongue."
"And keep it in your mouth, love," said Joel darkly.
"Oh alright!" Celie pretended to be miffed. "You two screw. Go ahead and exchange your sperms and germs and things." She looked lovingly at Cherry. "Go ahead, darling, sew me up just as tight as you can."
Moira felt she was the only sane entity in the room. It was all too fantastic! She longed to make some such exclamation as Joel had made. The cords welded her tightly to the post, she could not move, she hurt all over. She longed for freedom with an infinite longing...
"Oooh! Isn't it beautiful," Celie exclaimed with shining eyes as Cherry demonstratively held up the gleaming curved needle and threaded the nylon. "It makes me all quivery to think what you're going to do with it. I'm so sorry the Special One's can't watch, they'd love it."
"Any time, love. Just call Cherry the seamstress," Joel chuckled.
The young captive eyes sparkled. "But I'll be nicely sewn up when I go home, won't I! Promise you won't take the stitches out. Oh, I think it's perfectly scrumptious!" Celie gave momentary thought to a sudden idea. She giggled shyly. "You know, darlings, I've just come by an absolutely priceless notion: If you can sew up a girl's cunt, you could sew up her lips, couldn't you!"
Cherry stood in suspended motion. Watching, Moira could understand the immense appeal the innocent awful words would hold for the sadistic woman. Uttered, as they had been, almost in longing they held a shocking plausibility. Why not! She found herself instinctively clenching her own lips tight together and thinking of the agony of the binding threads.
Placing placating fingers on Joel's arm, Cherry smiled winningly. "I'd love to sew your lips together, dear. Would you like me to do it after I've sewn your cunt?" Her voice was honey.
Moira realized the question as rhetorical. Cherry was testing. Yet any subject discussed with a semblance of rationality can easily become real. Supposing the Special One's were tardy in Joel's eyes... ! She had a horrific vision of Celie's return to Soniaive as a distorted caricature of the laughing child she was. What dark cranny of the mind had Justin tapped!
"Oh, afterwards, please!"' The cruelly bound nakedness once again gave the impression of jumping up and down with excitement. "You see, when you sew my lips I won't be able to talk and I do so much want to tell you about my cunt and what it feels like." Celie's eyes had a far away look. She laughed delightedly. "I won't be able to eat either, or drink. I could do without food for simply days and days, but do you think you could manage a little water through a tube?"
"Of course we could, love," said Cherry heartily, "but I think we'd better get on with the main job now. Ready?"
"Oh yes, oh please! I'm so excited. I do wish I could see better. But I'm glad you tied me so tight. I wouldn't want to wiggle and make it difficult for you."
Moira watched with an avid interest of which she was ashamed. This darling sprite must surely scream and Justin's spell broken when her flesh was pierced. She saw the big needle seek its mark within the dark and curling fronds and pass through the fleshy lip that Cherry fingered for convenience, the thread followed in a steady progression. The woman who plied it had a steady hand.
"It feels all goosey." Celie observed with clinical interest, looking down eagerly at such of the operation as her strictures allowed.
Moira breathed a sigh of relief. The darling child felt no pain. It would come later as it had with Cherry. But the ordeal itself would plant no trauma. She was selfishly thankful there were no screams, they would have been hard to bear. She gave up speculation or involvement. She could influence nothing. She was, herself, brutally and painfully pierced, the sparkling things pendant from her nipples were an enigma. Best not to think, simply to watch...
The woman with the needle exhibited a surprising competence. True, hers was a labor of love. But she parted the pubic hair and aligned each ligature with a breathless precision. The stitches were many and close, but the only times the constant penetrations registered on Celie's animated features was when, after both labia had been pierced the needle continued on into space pulling behind it the nylon thread, and at the end of its journey the small but positive tug to ensure the tight joining of the slit as though it was forever. At such moments there came a veiled look in the tortured child's eyes as though puzzled by something shrouded in the mists of memory. But that was all.
Night brought another bare room and handcuffs. It brought a return of awareness and bitter pain to the girl whose vulva was now denied even to herself, held within the stitches was the vital small plastic tube that was a faint obscenity. Night also brought a mattress on an old metal bedstead to which each girl had an ankle chained. The window was boarded, the door locked, escape was scarcely worth a thought. They were exhausted and cried themselves to sleep huddled nakedly together in a vital need of each other's warmth and being.
It happened quite suddenly about noon of the following day. The two captives had been fed and attended to by an amused Cherry who, now that her side was winning, had lost much of her sullenness and her scowl. Being, as she pointed out, a member of the club, she compared notes with Celie on the subject of pain. Moira's excursion into the needle and thread field was deemed inadequate to render her an authority. She watched, with a feeling of unreality, as the girl and the woman explored themselves and each other with cautious fingers and eager eyes. It was obvious that Cherry was still hurting, and that Celie was hurting very much indeed. Yet the knowledge that each felt pride was inescapable. Celie was allowed the trust of wrists handcuffed before her. Moira, evidently considered a security risk, had hers behind her back. There was a something in the air as of events pending. It was the entry of Joel that made them start to happen.
"O.K. The money's paid. The boys will take you home," he announced brusquely but jovially to a startled Celie.
It was quite shattering. Celie's face registered all the appropriate emotions. Her fellow captive's heart melted with love when the young ecstatic voice demanded, "But what about Moira?"
"No sale," Joel said heavily. "Nor on the other kid, Sally. You go, they stay."
There was a stricken moment before Celie said urgently, her eyes only for Moira the Soniaive slave girl. "I will get you! I'll make them! You know that, don't you?"
Moira knew it, but not with hope.
They were allowed a brief goodbye. It was sad fumbling parting, handcuffed girls can not easily express the outward manifestations of love, nor do they want their farewell watched by impatient strangers. The last Moira saw of her first Mistress was a grinning Bill and Lew binding a black bandage across her eyes.
"I'd better tie you, love," Cherry said matter-of-factly, "I think it will hurt too much for you to just stand still."
Moira did not care, she felt lost and abandoned. Surely Alastair could have done something... ! She backed against the post and even helped as best she could to get herself firmly bound. She guessed the purpose, it was best.
The chaste golden ring had an austere beauty, but it was frighteningly large. Cherry laughed at her consternation. "It isn't for keeps, love. These things are clever. You can't see it but there's a snap. Push in this little spot with a pin and it will spring open. They both work the same. Hold still."
It did hurt, her wound was fresh. She suspected she would be made to wear the rings so that the apertures would not close. But the pain was as nothing to the strangeness and the humiliation of the obtrusive metal hanging from within her nostrils down over her lips. Why on Earth would anyone want her like this!
The placing of the second and larger ring through the lips of her sex was more painful still. But she had been bound so that she could not move, and must perforce bear with Cherry's thrusting fingers without even a quiver of protest. She gasped and she moaned as the metal was passed through the freshly cauterized wounds, but knew her suffering would have been far worse had they been inflicted by other than the white hot wire. When the audible click announced that four rings of metal were now suspended from her flesh, Cherry lost no time in freeing her. "You look lovely," she said with a trace of envy. "You wear them well."
When led to the bathroom, Moira pleaded. "Give me my hands, please. Let me do my own washing. I can't do a damn thing handcuffed."
"You'll wear 'em and like 'em," Cherry said with finality. "If I set you free I'd just be worried all the time. Besides, having your hands behind your back like that gives me an excuse to fondle you... If I need one!" She laughed shortly. "You're a captive, girl, don't forget it."
It was almost luxurious being bathed by female hands. Moira took what comfort she could from the service. Cherry was not unduly cruel in the necessary handling of the rings. Moira wondered why, and ventured a question. "Why am I being bathed like this, something's going to be done with me?"
"You're going to have company, love." Cherry happily plied the soap.
The naked girl tensed. So that was it after all! "You're going to prostitute me?" she accused.
The frightened assumption amused the older girl. "Come off it, love! Can you imagine a line-up outside the door with all the Charlies holding their ten pound notes. We'd have the coppers visiting in no time. Just hold tight, you'll soon find out the deal. Actually, I'd say you were a lucky girl. What I wanted was for Joel to keep you just for me with the boys fucking you every Wednesday on your afternoon off." She slapped a wet and soapy bottom playfully. "You wouldn't want that now, would you!"
Moira did not want it at all, but thought it politic to say nothing. She confined her conversation to inanities as Cherry skillfully ministered to her journey through hairdo's and the magic of perfumes and cosmetics. At the end of it, and placed before a mirror, the still handcuffed captive gasped in wonder at the thing of barbaric splendor she had become. It was like meeting herself in another life and another world.
"You'll do," said the mistress of ceremonies with a tinge of pride. "Come along, love, we'll use you while you're fresh."
It was another of the rooms, made presentable by a few rugs, a desk and some bits and pieces of furniture. Any distinction it possessed emanated solely from the man who rose courteously when Moira received the last thrust of Cherry's palm and heard the door behind her discreetly close.
"My name is Fazal Safdar, Miss Robbins. If you will kindly stand before the desk... " He waved a directive hand and resumed his seat.
Moira obeyed. He wanted a good look, let him have one! She had long ago ceased to be coy. Certainly she was well prepared. In sardonic amusement she realized the rings made her feel clothed as she stood naked for his inspection.
"I propose to purchase you."
"By the hour?" she asked acidly, uncaring.
"I have heard of Soniaive," he said gently. "I thought they dealt with sarcasm."
She looked at him for the first time. He was smoothly handsome. For a man, he was the right age. Her grandfather would have called him a "Wog". He was probably better educated than most Englishmen. His smile was as gentle as his voice, but in it she found an almost pleasant tingle of fear. "I am sorry," she said frankly. "I am tired and I am afraid."
"The rings?" He lifted an amused eyebrow.
"Yes. So much has happened... "
"You resent it all... Fate has used you ill?"
Moira found herself unwilling to deal in self pity before this man. She shrugged. "I have been made a slave. I have been twice kidnapped. And now... " She looked him levelly in the eye.
"A slave leaves one slavery only to enter another." It was said by an old-wise man of my people long ago.
"You mean I was born to be a slave?" she felt a challenge in him.
"We are all born to something, Miss Robbins. We escape neither ourselves or Fate."
She would not fence with him, his mysticisms would elude her. "I only know that I stand before you naked and with my hands chained behind my back." She retorted evenly. "This is my reality."
He smiled in understanding. "You are very beautiful."
"I know that." She said wearily without pride. I have to know it. I would not otherwise be standing where I am."
He nodded in shrewd appraisal. "Is it the loss of a man that leaves you thus distrait? Or perhaps a woman...?"
Moira felt no reticence. "There was a woman, yes. Then a man... and I felt love for the girl who was ransomed from here this morning. They are all gone."
"For a slave girl you have done well." Fazal Safdar commented dryly. "Surely there will be others?"
"Will I find them in a dungeon or tied to a post!"
"I could cure your dolor with a whip." He suggested helpfully.
Moira jerked herself out of bitterness. He was polite and kind. Almost she deserved to be whipped for gracelessness. "The whip cures everything in a woman, doesn't it-" She saw the flash of anger in his eyes and hastily interjected. "No... please! It's not sarcasm. It's true. When I'm being whipped everything else vanishes. After I've been whipped I see everything differently. I'm not proud or glad about it. I'm not even sure it's good... I mean, in the moral sense. But there it is." She stood disconsolately before his desk, her hands twisting and pulling at her handcuffs in unconscious frustration.
"Would you like me to whip you now?"
She knew he was not being facetious. It might indeed do her good. What she wanted was a day of gayiety in the West End. But a slave girl might as well wish for the moon. The lash would at least cleanse her consciousness of the loss of Celie and of Soniaive. But it was too absurd! To ask to be whipped because she was unhappy. What strange distortion of the mind had Joel and Cherry and Justin worked upon her! "No." She declaimed awkwardly, "But thank you."
"I am piqued by your lack of curiosity." He was still assessing her.
It was strange to be talking with the nose ring heavy on her upper lip, it put her at one more disadvantage. She tossed her head in a futile motion to dislodge it. "Forgive me." She said slowly, uncertain of what to say. "But you have already told me that I can only exchange one slavery for another. At Soniaive I was whipped and chained, here with these kidnappers I have been tortured and violated. Might it not seem morbid if I asked you for details of what you will do to me!" Moira lifted her head high and tried to stare him down. "That is what you want me for, isn't it, a female diversion reacting to pain?"
Fazal Safdar nodded approval. "A neatly posed question."
He acknowledged. "Quite charmingly euphemistic. You take torture for granted, don't you?"
"Do you wish to tell me different?"
He sighed. "In honesty, I cannot." He admitted. He lifted an enquiring eyebrow. "Would you like me to relieve you of those handcuffs?"
"Oh, would you...!" It seemed the ultimate beneficence.
He laughed at her sudden animation. "No, I will not." He watched the shadows cross her face. "You are a slave. I wished only to remind you. I think you easily forget."
Moira shrugged resignedly, she had nothing to say.
"Do the handcuffs hurt?" He was probing.
"No, they don't hurt." She admitted wearily. "It's just that I'm always kept in them. I've almost forgotten what it's like to possess hands. I have not yet even managed to touch these... these things fastened on me. Are they yours?"
"No, they are not mine. But I will admit they intrigue me." He chuckled, "I suspect this, this Joel believed they would add to your price." His lips thinned and his eyes became hard. "After all, I am only a barbarian with cash. No doubt he believes I have fourteen wives, all with rings through their nose."
"Well, haven't you!"
"You are being purposely insolent, testing me. You know it will end in pain. Why do it?"
Moira asked herself the same question. Once more she tossed her head in futile irritation. "Children do it, animals do it. I suppose it's part of being a slave. It's silly and childish, I'll stop it. I'm not asking to be punished, I'm not a masochist." She matched his smile with a sheepish one of her own. "Perhaps you'd like to brief me. Will I be a concubine, a wife, a slave, or a kitchen maid?"
"Not the last. The rest, yes. As I man need you."
"And if I fail to please, I will be punished?"
"Of course." He gazed at her earnestly. "Miss Robbins, consider. Without the knowledge of punishment, none of the other would be possible."
She knew it was true, and hated it!
"The whip, I suppose?"
"Can you name something better?"
She could not.
"Nor can I. There are other things that suit a particular transgression, but the whip is constant. Women respect it. If they are slaves they expect it. I have known slave girls saddened by it's absence."
Moira had never been as aware of her slave state as she was now, standing naked before a man who would purchase her for money. Her sale set a seal upon her as nothing else had done. He who would buy her was an unknown quantity. He had tolerated her ill humour and the semi-repartee in which they had indulged, no doubt as a test or for his own amusement. Naked, ringed and chained, she stood before him with a slave's knowledge that there are degrees of slavery. With this man she would eventually discover hers. It was like the army: the corporal hops to be a sergeant: the sergeant aspires for a lieutenant's authority. A slave girl, if she learns how to obey and, above all, how to please will wear fewer chains and fainter stripes. It was the eternal cruelty of hope!
An errant memory prompted the question. "There was another, a servant girl: a maid, who was taken as I have been taken here, kidnapped. Are you buying her?"
Safdar chuckled. "Never fear, our avaricious host has already quoted a price. It is too high. She is of the lower orders, a plebeian. Her body is good, but there are qualities of the mind that make a woman more than a vessel, she would bore me."
"She is being brutally used here."
"And you think I would treat her more kindly?" She could see he was pleased.
"Yes." Her single affirmative carried sincerity. "Please buy her. If she remains here she will come to harm."
He lifted a sardonic eyebrow. "You expect me to provide you with a serving wench?"
She flushed. "The woman here, her name is Cherry, is a sadist. For her the whip is not enough."
He nodded gravely. "I expect that partly explains your so beautiful rings. But has it not occurred to you that I might be more cruel than she?"
Moira shrugged. "You have chosen me. No matter how cruel I might think you, it could not affect a decision a slave girl cannot make. I do not think you will be as cruel to me as she would be."
"Yet I will be cruel to you."
"I must accept that, I am s slave."
Safdar eyed her with compassion so that her heart froze. "In this talk of buying and selling and of ransom there is something that, in honesty, I should tell you since they will not. Soniaive offered your ransom."
"Then why...?" Her mind was chaos.
"The price I paid for you is higher."
Her stricken eyes told him of her grief, but her words were only faintly bitter. "May I ask... my price?"
He told her, quite simply and without emphasis. "Of your poor sad British pounds, one hundred thousand." He saw the tears start from her eyes, and turned his back to pound upon the door. When Joel came, Safar's words were crisp. "I will buy her. We will complete the transaction as arranged. We will leave immediately."
Once again, the evidence of Cherry's improved financial circumstances manifested itself in a manner almost kind. "Well, kid, you're sold, and I've got to wrap you up. His nibs had his own plane, but it's at an airport. He's taking you in a box, simple and no questions asked. But I can offer you a choice. Would like a hypo so you wake up in Baghdad or Shangri La or wherever he lives. Or would you like me to tie you nice and snug. I promise it won't be tight enough to injure such costly goods as you turned out to be. We should have sold the young 'un along with you. Goodness knows what she'd have fetched."
The hypo repelled, she did not trust it. Oblivion would have been welcome enough, but it was a running away. Best to learn what little she could of what was being done with her. A box was not likely to be worse than the boot of a car.
Moira was relieved to see the straps. She would not escape from them, but they would not harm her or stop the circulation. She let herself be guided to the moment when she stepped into the wooden case and was helped to sit. Cherry immediately strapped her ankles. When they were made secure the slave girl knew there would be no turning back. Even when her handcuffs were removed, the freedom of her hands was brief.
"Please, let me stretch my arms before you strap them down." The simple request suddenly seemed a vital privilege.
Cherry laughed and stepped back, dangling the handcuffs from one finger. She was in high good humour. "Old moneybags and brought these too." She tossed the shining things and their key into the box. "You'd be lost without 'em anyway, wouldn't you."
Moira did not care. Sitting up in the box, her ankles firmly captive, she flexed and stretched her arms like a gym instructor. Cherry watched with amusement. "Are handcuffs really that bad, kid?"
"They are for the time I've had to wear them." Moira looked up at the woman who controlled her. "Thanks for the stretch. It means more than you know."
There was a strange intimacy about the straps and the buckles. There was one wherever one could be adapted to the female frame. They were part of the box itself and had only to be fitted and tugged tight. Moira nestled herself within their embrace and lay limp while Cherry encircled tummy, knee, wrist and elbow with the leather and pulled them firmly into their final notch. A simple task which, when completed, left the naked girl powerless to move.
"Please, not my neck." Moira pleaded.
"I won't pull it tight, love." The implacable hands fitted the band beneath the captive chin and buckled it. True, it was not tight enough to be dangerous, but it kindled claustrophobia.
"Please, oh please!" Moira loathed the feel of it.
Cherry did the strangest thing of all. Bending, she kissed the forehead of the girl she had sold. "Don't take on so, love." She said softly. "Be reasonable about it, can't have you banging your head about."
Moira understood their need of her total immobility. But it was the gag that made her think longingly of the hypo. "No, oh no! Oh, please don't gag me." She pleaded as Cherry readied the ugly thing to thrust it in the helpless mouth.
"But love, you've got to be sensible. Stands to reason, don't it. Can't have you howling your head off every time you hope someone can hear."
The captive knew it did indeed stand to reason. Fazal Safdar would not want the embarrassment of a piece of luggage that screamed and cried for help. "What if I choke?" She temporized.
"You won't choke, love. It's got a plastic thingummy that goes over your tongue, inside is a hole all the way. You can breathe, I'd guess you could even drool. Not to worry."
"Oh, Cherry, must I?"
It was as close to communion as they had ever come. The older girl kissed the forehead of the slave once more. The lips held a faint tenderness. Moira did not fight. The plastic tongue entered her mouth and filled it, but it was true, she could breathe. The strap was buckled. In conjunction with the one round her neck, it held her head as motionless as the rest of her. She had never before been rendered so totally impotent.
"Good-bye. love. You're a damn good kid." It was Cherry's accolade. The lid slammed down, there came the click of locks. Moira the slave girl was ready for her journey.
Moira was thankful for the faint cracks of light that let her know she was still in the world and still alive. She could not move at all, save for her fingers and toes. She was a competently wrapped package in transit. But she was handled with great care. It would not have mattered much had she been tossed around, the straps would have held her safe from harm as they held her secure from escape. Once again she had the awareness of slavery. She was female flesh consigned to a destination determined by the male who had purchased her. On arrival she must learn to do as she wished or else be whipped. It was delightfully simple, not a single decision! The whip would arbitrate any contention she might wish to demonstrate.
There was nothing else to do but think. She made her usual struggle just in case something might be loose, but nothing was. She found herself wishing that the owners of slavegirls would use straps more often. True, they were as implacable as the handcuffs, but they hurt far less than the cords, they did not impede circulation, and they saved the slave worry as to whether she should struggle to get free. She couldn't, and that was the end of it. She let her mind rove.
First, there was a great welling of happiness in the knowledge that Alastair had not abandoned her. It was matched by an equal grief that his ransom had been outbid. Yet she was grateful to Safdar for telling her the heartbreaking truth. If some chance had not placed Joel and her new owner in contact, she might now be in the tweed clad arms of the man she adored. It was infuriating, it was cruel, but it was so! For a long time she quietly wept in the grip of the cruelest 'might have been' of all Celie would be safely home, and quite probably proudly exhibiting her tightly sewn sex. Moira would have gladly sacrificed her female labia to have been there too.
But what lay ahead! She could not view Fazal with the same apprehension as she viewed Cherry. She guessed he would alternately use her. body in carnal ways and subject her to various cruelties. Perhaps there might be 'in betweens' of a pleasant enough communion in which he would use her as a sounding board, a partner in repartee from which she could be arbitrarily divorced when she was winning. Wryly, she supposed the secret of being a good slave girl would be never to win. Had Scheherazade known this in the telling of her tales! Moira was certain she had.
She supposed that, from now on., escape would be a word she had best forget. For a girl to escape from a Harem made her delinquent in the eyes of all authority. Probably even the police would return her to her bondage should she manage to contact them. Perhaps in this new but ancient land where she was being taken her position in society would be such that she need not be chained, there were compensations in everything... the hum of the motors sent her peacefully to sleep.
Nothing is as expected. When the lid was lifted from the tiny prison in which she was strapped there was no male eye. Instead, it was the face of a girl child that peered interestedly down at Moira's helpless nakedness. "You're awfully pretty." The young lips pronounced judicially. "I'm sure Daddy will be pleased with you, I know I will. I'll only whip you very lightly the first time."
The gag was removed, but Moira was cautious. She guessed her role from now on would be to speak only when spoken to. When only her ankles remained fastened, the child found the handcuffs and their key. "You will let me put these on you, won't you?" She asked anxiously. "Or do you want me to call Mustaffa?"
Moira had no wish to meet a man named Mustaffa, so she meekly put her hands behind her back. It was about par for the course. The child clicked the metal through it's ratchets with intent interest. "You can't do anything when you've got these on, can you," she said with endearing air of discovery.
"No," said Moira, and waited.
"Please get up." The child requested when she had loosed Moira's ankles. "You're terribly beautiful and I want to see."
The slave girl was stiff. Without her hands it was absurdly difficult to get out of the box and stand erect. But she managed it under the interested scrutiny of the child who had all the air of inspecting a new toy. Awaiting instruction she stood while the girl fingered the rings within her flesh. It hurt, but she would not enter the new regime in protest. She bore the pain and watched the animatedly youthful face in it's eager discovery.
"They're beautiful." The child breathed the words in pure envy. "I wonder if daddy would let me have such lovely things, or do I have to grow up first." She looked up at her adult slave with cheerful assurance. "You do understand you're a slave girl, don't you?" she asked innocently.
"Yes, I understand."
"And that I'll whip you if you're not obedient?"
"Yes, I understand that too."
The child sighed in relief. "You sound awfully well trained. I didn't think you would be, coming from England." She paused and fingered the big ring through Moira's female slit. "I go to school in England." She giggled. "Aren't the rooms cold there! I'm oh holidays. My name's Nicole, I know yours is Moira. I'm thirteen, but you'll have to be frightfully polite and obedient to me."
Thirteen! The child looked much older. "You're looking at my breasts, aren't you," she said proudly. "They're really lovely. I like them myself. I'll show them to you when we bathe. Have you had your breasts whipped?"
Moira supposed girls matured earlier in this climate. "You didn't learn to ask such questions in England, did you?" she asked Interestedly.
"Well, actually yes," the moppet admitted. "Surprising things go on in the dorm after lights out." She viewed her new possession, puzzled. "Didn't you ever go to school?"
Moira felt herself on difficult ground. "You do have nice breasts," she agreed brightly. "They're the kind and shape I've always admired."
"You're not just being polite, are you?" Nicole demanded suspiciously. "I've never seen such lovely breasts as you've got. Mine will never be like that."
Moira wondered if the exchange of compliments would extend to their other female attributes, but for several moments they stood awkwardly until Nicole clapped her hands and exclaimed: "Daddy says I must look after you, and there's something to get done right away. Let's bathe and then I'll show you."
The handcuffed captive allowed herself to be led and washed and perfumed. Everything was Moorish and belonged in fairyland. It was all exquisite and spoke of wealth and privilege and a hot climate. Nicole's fingers were pleasant and just a little worshipful. Moira's request for her hands that she might wash herself was firmly refused. She did not care, the moppet was amusing and had not yet produced a whip. "Am I allowed to know where I am?" she asked cautiously.
"Why, in Jedrah, of course!" The child looked surprised, she giggled. "This is where all the money is, y'know: all that silly oil."
Moira quailed inwardly. Jedrah was far from Soniaive and England. To be a slave here was probably a very normal state, a condition from which a girl could expect no rescue and no help. Other societies would never argue with so much wealth.
There were pantaloons and something like a bra', filmy stuff and scanty, but more than the captive had envisioned. When Nicole provided yashmaks for both of them it was hard not to giggle. "We go now among men." The child announced in a business-like tone.
The men proved to be a lean and obsequious craftsman and a beady eyed youth, both gave full attention to Moira's bare midriff. The place came as close to being a silversmith's workshop as Moira could guess. Certain items hanging from the walls told her their errand.
The silver chains were quite breathtakingly lovely. The inks and the bands, which contrived a lock with only the slightest curve to betray it's presence or mar the symmetry, must have taken much loving care in their creation. Yet their purpose had nowhere been betrayed, they would hold a girl captive in an inexorable grip. They had been fashioned as heavily as was consistent with their feminine application. They were heavier than they seemed. The girl on whom they were to be fastened suspected that beneath their silver lay modern chrome steel. They were beautiful and deadly.
The slave girl was served with much the same striving for perfection as she would have received from any good couturier. She sensed that these men saw in her a possible path to a Master's approbation. It gave her a small thrill of satisfaction to know that, even in irons, female beauty is never entirely without a weapon.
She stood while she was chained. With sparkling eyes Nicole watched, delighted by her prisoner's obvious pleasure in the aesthetic virtue of her restraints. The task was quickly done, for here was no anvil and no forge, no thudding blows of hammer on rivets hot or cold. Yet when the metal band encircled her ankle it closed with a snap of decisive finality that sent a quiver of apprehension up Moira's spine. It was as though the closing of the lock had said the word, forever!
The linkage between her ankles was generous. But Moira knew, from Soniaive, that whether the span was short or long it inhibited escape. She might walk gracefully enough to the music of the links, but she would never run. Never!
The band that, next, was fitted round the narrowness of her waist came as a surprise. It, too, locked fast, but at its back above the curve of her bottom it held a ring wide enough to accommodate the chain by which her hands would be held in thrall. With a sliding rattle the links slid through its aperture, the silver wristlets were clasped upon the passive wrists and added their own click, click to the orchestration of her bondage.
"You look good enough to eat." Nicole's tribute was heartfelt.
"They're so beautifully snug," the captive girl said, puzzled.
Nicole giggled. "We have quite a stock to choose from," she admitted. "You aren't the first, y'know. Azzim can just look at a girl and know her size."
Walking back to what Moira supposed to be the women's quarters, or perhaps simply the place of her captivity, was like a return to an old employment. The links swirled and rattled as she walked, but she retained the same grace of motion she had learned at Soniaive. "You've been chained before." Nicole said with certainty. "I can tell. Most girls fall flat on their face the first time."
Most girls! Moira almost asked about the others, but was not sure she wanted to know. Would she soon be tossed in among twenty other chained and naked damsels awaiting their master's pleasure or his whip! She explored the chains upon her wrists and found them ingeniously practical. The heavy ring on her belt enabled her to see-saw the tether back and forth at will. But it gave her the use of a single hand if she was willing to jettison the other and place it as far behind her back as it would go. She could thus perform small tasks and look after most of her needs, yet she would be quite helpless if it came to a tussle. She could allow her hands to fall, one beside each hip, but could not bring them further forward in unison. She almost regretted the passing of her handcuffs, they held her more helpless, but with an infinitely lesser weight of metal. The metal belt round her tummy would never let her forget it's presence.
"It's so you can use one hand without being able to bop one of us when we're not looking." Nicole volunteered helpfully. She looked up, concerned. "You wouldn't sooner have the handcuffs, would you?"
How absurd it always was! The child's eager solicitude rendered complaint churlish. "Oh no!" Moira lied ardently. "They're really gorgeous, and so practical. I'll soon get used to them. See, if I bend down a bit I can even scratch my nose."
"Wonderful!" The child enthused as though she had devised the manacles herself. "Let's have something to eat, you must be starving."
It was with a sudden hunger, yet utter unreality, that Safdar's new slave girl realized her last food had been given her by Cherry back in England.
The girl who served them showed only a mild curiosity at Moira's chains and she who wore them. Moira noted the bands about the girl's own wrists and ankles, and wondered...
"After we've finished eating I'd better take you to Adah." Nicole mused thoughtfully as she peeled a peach. "She easily gets offended."
"Oh, in England you'd call her the House Mother or the Matron or the Housekeeper or something. She looks after us women. She'll whip you."
"What on earth for?" The captive glimpsed an old abyss.
"It's only your bottom." Nicole assured her airily, laughing in pleasure at the consternation she had so easily invoked. "It's an old custom to let the new girl know who's in charge. She doesn't have to have done anything."
Moira was irritated at the bland assumption that a girl should feel grateful if it was only her bottom that was whipped. True, there was some validity in it, she possessed far more tender places than her derriere, but a whipping was still a whipping any way you looked at it. "I've been whipped an awful lot." She offered tentatively. "Are you sure it's necessary?"
"Even if I was, Adah wouldn't be. She'll insist on it. If you try and beg off she'll only get angry and whip you harder. She can really make it hurt."
"You mean...?"
"Oh sure!" Nicole confessed. "I get whipped too if I'm bad, or if someone thinks I've been bad. In Jedrah all women get whipped sometimes. There's all sorts of proverbs about it. You know, the spare the rod and spoil the child sort of thing. One of the more adult ones comes out something like: 'A caned seat makes warm lips.' " She giggled. "It's true too. Whenever it happens I always dash off and find one of the girls. I'll use you next time," she promised generously.
"Does your father want this, this Adah to whip me?"
"Full of hope, aren't you!" Nicole laughed. "Father takes it for granted. You're no different from any other female. He wouldn't dream of interfering in so ancient a custom. If you complain to him he'll have you whipped a second time. That happened to me once."
How strange, the English idiom on the lips of this sultry child of a far land speaking of the unmentionable! But no stranger to the heavy ring from her nose hanging on her own. "Is it always Adah who punishes?" She asked, "I had thought your father...?"
"Daddy! Oh, of course. But it depends on his mood and how wicked you've been. Just be patient, you'll find out." Nicole paused and giggled at a recollection. "There was quite a to-do about it when one of our Oil Sheiks married the daughter of one of the European Ambassadors. The silly girl hadn't been told, so when she was sent downstairs for her introductory caning it was a bit of a shock. They had to jump on her and tie her up, of course she got a double dose for misbehavior. When she got loose she went to every embassy in the place with her story. But none of them would listen, not even her own. She finally went back to her husband because there was nowhere else for her to go, women don't roam around loose in Jedrah, and needless to say he sent her right down again to get about twenty more. Everybody laughed their heads off over it."
Adah spoke no English. She had no need. Hers was a function of action rather than conversation. She produced a horrific sliver of what looked more like whalebone than cane. With it, she pointed to Moira's new pantaloons.
Nicole laughed gleefully. "I made a mistake," she admitted. "I should have wrapped you in a sheet. Only Daddy has a key to your chains, so we can't get your pants off. You've got to be caned on the bare, y'know."
"With that awful thing!" Moira was not happy.
"Oh, she won't lace into you too hard this time. I told you, it's just a sort of welcome affair." The pert child once more engaged in a babble of Jedrah. "She says alright I can pull 'em down for you when she's ready. You have to stick your neck in those stocks over there. You can't manage your hands the way they're chained, but just your neck will help you stand still."
There was no help for it. Moira assessed the lithe and sullen Adah as a woman best not to cross. Unhappily she did as she had been told. When the top yoke compressed her neck she wondered how many other girls it had held thus to be whipped. It was frighteningly effective. It bent her well over and held her helpless, fearfully she raised her fettered hands as far away from that part of her to be beaten as she could, she knew the agony of being sliced across an unwary knuckle. She felt awkward and silly, they were probably laughing at her.
When the time came Moira wished herself naked. Her slavery was filled with inconsistencies, but there was something honest and complete about being totally bereft of all covering. The scanty things she wore made her moderately, decent, she had found some joy in them. But already, as a slave, she had need to be stripped. She knew it foolish and irrational, but she felt a deep shame as Nicole's nimble fingers tugged the pantaloons down over her hips and sent them cascading round, her fettered ankles. Her bottom was bare for the cane. She felt like a delinquent child.
"There! Wasn't that absolutely super." Nicole had danced gleefully round the stocks to make her exclamation face to face with the fastened girl whose exposed bottom had just received its first stroke from Adah's frightful wand. "Adah says she wants you to count and to say thank you after each one. She won't tell me how many you're gong to get.
The captive was still gasping and Trying hard not to make a noise. The pain was every bit as bad as she had feared. If this was only a welcome, then a regular caning at Adah's hand would be something to avoid at all costs. "One," she enunciated nervously, but her thank you was demolished by the second stroke which cut it off at the first syllable.
"Adah said you didn't say that properly, so it won't count," Nicole said innocently.
The subject of the welcome savagely bit out the desired humiliation, but when the third cut fell instantly on top of her words Moira cried out in a wail of agony, her chained hands tugged desperately and one fettered foot raised and bent in mute protest.
"Does it hurt that bad?" The excited child asked interestedly. Moira was trying to tell her how awful it was, when the next slash extracted the scream she had hoped not to utter. There ensued a rapid chatter in Jedrah. The hurt girl had an odd sense of being sundered from herself. All the places to be hurt were behind her, vulnerable and without hope. All she herself could do was stare wide eyed at the floor or at a part of the room in which nothing was happening.
"She says she won't hit you quite so hard." The moppet translated cheerfully. "It's a new cane. She says she's just bought it. I think it's lovely, but I haven't had it used on me " yet."
The rest of a total of eleven strokes were indeed lighter. They were cruel, but Moira did not disgrace herself. She had reached a point in slavery where she always hoped to reserve her screams for the whippings that were, by any standard, unbearable. Where her bottom was concerned, she wanted to be as stoic as she could. It was a matter of pride, and screaming too readily was like a soldier wasting his ammunition. There was always a worse pain somewhere, a slave needed reserves.
She was close to tears when Adah raised the yoke and she was allowed to stand, a slim pathetic nudity with a wispy ruffle around her breasts and another gauzy cloud upon her feet. The feminine stuff was oddly mismatched with the stark reality of her chains. Supposing the act required of her, she strove to bend her knees to allow one chained hand to reach for the covering for her wealed bottom. But the chains defeated her, flushed and chagrined by impotence she looked appealingly at Nicole. The child nodded in understanding and was about to perform the small task when Adah saw the ring. A small flutter of Arabic ensued with the result that the coverings of the captive breasts were whisked away to enable the intrigued woman to admire all the metal pendant from her victim's flesh. By the time her scanty coverings were replaced Moira was sore from the rough explorations of her bizarre jewelry. She longed for Soniaive with a heartbreaking nostalgia. Moira was thankful that Fazal Safdar's summons came after an hour of relaxation with the bright eyed child had restored her courage. The pain of being whipped, even on the bottom, is a tiring thing and demanding of the nerves. She had no wish to go before her master with tear stained cheeks. When the youthful hand propelled her through the portal she was newly briefed in the matter of address. "You sent for your slave, lord?" She asked humbly of the man who had purchased her.
With a suppressed eagerness his slave was quick to note, Safdar rose to greet and to inspect his possession. He was immensely pleased with her. "I believe you have just received our good Adah's welcome?" He inquired with a hint of laughter.
His slave girl struggled with the waistband of her nether garment. "Does my lord wish to see my marks?" she inquired, poised to do her best against her constraints.
Safdar waved an all forgiving hand. "I will take them for granted, I am sure they are superlative. I will admire them when you are more naturally attired."
"You wish me naked, lord?"
"Of course. I will speak to Nicole."
"It was when I was taken to be chained, lord. There were men... Your daughter believed my body was for you alone. But now that I am chained these things must be torn from me, unless you use your key." Moira flushed in embarrassment. "Even then I cannot perform the task myself."
Safdar laughed, delighted by her dilemma. "Your chains please you, I hope?"
"Thank you for things so beautiful, lord. But, in them, I am very helpless. I shall not run away."
"You would sooner have your faithful handcuffs, I suspect?"
She made a move of disparagement. "I became used to them, they seem a temporary thing even when they are not. The chains you have placed on me have weight and are very, very permanent. I will get accustomed to, to what they allow."
"And the child?"
"She is entrancing. I already adore her."
"Good! Yet she can be cruel. She will whip you."
"I would sooner be whipped by Nicole than by the woman who whipped me today."
"You think her arm would be lighter?"
"No, it is not that." How difficult it was to put into words! "It is simply that when you feel... well, warmth for the one who whips you, the agony is less."
"Thus all things are of the mind?"
She flushed. "For me it is not that simple. Even though I loved the one who held the whip, I would still scream."
"But not as loudly?" He was laughing at her earnestness. "Forgive me. I should not tease you so," he said placatingly. "I called you here for a quite different purpose. There are things that you should see. We will walk together... slowly."
The slave girl knew she surprised her master by her facility of motion with chained feet. But in hot climates there can be much stone and marble on which to walk so that their progress was accompanied by a constant clink and rattle from the swirl of chain. "I'm sorry I make so much noise, lord." She apologized, knowing full well his awareness that she was not sorry at all. She hoped it bothered him.
"The sound of a slave girl's chains are music to her master's ears," said Fazal Safdar sententiously as he shot back the first bolt on the first door.
The girl was young, she was naked, she was of Jedrah. Nothing else was normal. She lay upon her back across a trestle. The edge of the plank that took her weight was no more than two inches wide. She had fallen naturally into the shape of a bow, her feet slightly lower than her had, but almost perfectly balanced as a see-saw might have been. She remained in her agonizing teeter-totter under the lax compulsion of chains from ringbolts in the floor. Each of her wrists and each of her ankles wore the metal circlet from which the chain spread her wide as an 'X'. But the chains were not under tension, she could move wrist or ankle several inches as she chose, but without grave danger of making her condition worse she could change nothing. She lay, gasping, in an agonized balance. Moira wondered cringingly how long a girl's spine could endure such punishment, but the girl was young and youth is resilient.
"Come, my dear, let us pay our respects to this foolish child." Safdar took Moira's arm and led her to where they could gaze down at the terror stricken eyes above the gag. "It is best to inhibit the cries of these silly creatures." Safdar observed in urbane detachment. "They do but distress themselves and others." He chuckled. "They are much given to promises of good behavior."
Moira gazed at the tortured girl who, under happier circumstances, would have been a beauty. Her breasts were stretched almost flat as was her stomach, her sex proclaimed itself within, a black and hairy bush, her hair fell back and down, trailing on the stone, her lips were stretched and pained by the ball strapped within the tender mouth. But it was the eyes that were hardest to bear, they cried a mute appeal and also a vivid apprehension. Moira realized with pity that, for this girl, their advent did not necessarily spell a mitigation of her travail, but perhaps the opposite.
"I will remove her gag," Safdar said quietly. "But only long enough that she may tell you of her sin."
Always the incongruities of gentleness and pain, kindness and cruelty! Moira ardently wished that if they were not to release the girl they simply leave her alone, but the Master would decide. She watched the loosing of the strap, the extraction of the wet rubber ball from the stretched mouth, and the victim's frantic efforts to salivate so that she might speak. "Well, child, what have you to tell our guest?" It was hard to judge the emotion behind Safdar's words.
There were swallowings and the play of a busy tongue. The confession, when it came, was in laboured English. "I betray my lord." Another effort to swallow. "Is with boy who work in garden... I not know name." She gulped and wet her lips. "Was very quick...!" Her eyes implored, but she spoke not of mercy or her pain.
Safdar replaced the gag. The pathetic mouth opened to receive it without complaint, only the eyes were eloquent. Safdar ignored them. "I have found this a most excellent correction for the young," he explained conversationally. "But only for the young. To balance, let us say, Adah thus would be to invite loss."
"Yet will it cure her of being a girl!" Moira herself heard the criticism in her voice, and quailed.
Safdar was in a benign mood. He patted her gently on the arm. "My dear, if you balanced so from noon to midnight would you seek the gardener's assistant on the following day!"
He would always have an answer, and they would be logic. But it was logic for a slave. A free girl would go dancing away into the sunlight. Moira lifted her chained wrist and looked at it, perhaps she would never dance again. She looked once more at the tortured girl, she was not much older than Nicole. Moira wondered if the daughter too, should she transgress, would lay in this agony. When her master led her from the room she did not look back.
There was another door and another key. Their entry revealed an odd tableau which, initially to Moira, was dominated by an obscenely bent and stretched female posterior from which the anus winked its welcome and the vulva contributed a well developed mound and hirsute tuft. When she straightened out the strained convolutions of femininity they resolved themselves as a white female of about her own age laying on her back upon the floor, her arms stretched wide and tied at shoulder level, her knees bent up and compressed against her body by a strap running beneath them and around the captive's back, it was very tight indeed. But these things, a punishment in themselves, were but a preliminary. Above the anguished face was what might have been a shelf, but which was in actuality a set of Stocks in which were neatly imprisoned the ankles arising from the posture already described. A pair of feminine feet were thus held immovably at a level of about thirty inches from the floor, their vulnerable soles looking upward to the sky.
The head shaken in denial and disbelief made Moira's nose ring hurt. Completing her incredulous absorption of the scene she beheld a bored young woman sitting comfortably beside the trussed delinquent and lightly striking the exposed soles with the tip of a sinister length of cane. The motion could scarcely be called whipping, but was certainly more than taps. It evoked from the ungagged recipient of the attention a constant moaning sobbing protest. Moira got the impression the torture had been going on for a long time.
As though by a prearranged signal, the punishment mistress rose, fell to one knee in a submissive curtsey, placed her cane across the chair and left the room. No word was spoken. The whimperings of pain continued as though she who uttered them was unaware of interruption to her torture. "You have heard of it, no doubt," Safdar suggested. "The bastinado."
Moira had heard of it. She had not heard of the grotesque binding. This girl must have doubly erred. "Why is this one not gagged?" She supposed a polite interest was expected.
"This particular discomfort evokes its own remarkable responses. It seems a pity to waste them."
"You enjoy her screams?"
"There is an inference there I do not like. Would you wish to take her place, Miss Robbins?"
It was instinctive and born of what she had seen. Without volition, Moira bent her knee as the girl had done, and knelt before her master. "I am sorry, lord. It is all so... so, so new. I will try very hard." Afterwards she might hate herself in shame, but at the moment she was trembling in pure fear.
She remained kneeling, head bowed. She did not dare to look, but awaited judgment. "A slave who knows she is a slave is beyond sapphires." Safdar quoted. He lifted her by a chained arm and raised her chin so that for several moments they stared face to face. "You are very beautiful," he said irrelevantly. "Perhaps too beautiful... "Together they lowered their eyes to what they had come to view.
The girl under torture had become aware of them. She choked her sounds of pain and gazed up piteously. "Forgive me, lord." Her breathing was labored, her outstretched arms twitched and jerked.
"Miss Robbins has come to learn the reason for your distress. You will tell her," Safdar ordered politely.
As with the former girl, there was no hesitation in the acceptance of guilt. Moira assumed that here confession was not only good for the soul, but for the feet. She narrowly avoided an absurd pun "I escaped, I was caught." The simple words told all. The girl was from somewhere in Europe Moira could not place, but her English was near perfect. She obviously had little hope of mercy, but she tried: "Forgive me, lord. I will never try again."
"No, I am sure you will not," Safdar agreed affably. He picked up the cane.
The escapee's eyes widened in an awful understanding, her nostrils flared, she struggled madly within the confines of her strange bondage. "Oh please!" she begged hysterically, "Not any more... ! Don't hit me, lord! Don't... "
The whip cut short the words uttered in such futile hope. Moira had supposed the feet would be the target. But, understandably enough, it was the cruelly but quaintly out-thrust derriere that attracted Safdar's attention. Its skin was almost virgin. Only the faintest traces of a previous caning were visible. It was a seductively feminine invitation. The Cane sliced and wrapped around its curves with a whirring slash that made Moira flinch, and the girl who received it scream. The screams continued as blow after blow etched their ridged scarlet weal upon the soft flesh. Each cut was separate and neatly placed. It took eight of them to emblazon bars of agony that covered the curved area but did not lap over upon thigh or back. It was pure artistry.
The screams continued after the cane had stopped. But followed the familiar pattern of falling away through moans and sobs to silence. There were no more words, probably because there was no more hope. The only appeal was in the anguished eyes.
It was not done. The girl knew it was not done. Her gaze never left her master as Safdar stood and flexed the cane. His eye was bright, his lips compressed, his breathing fast. His arm swung in the cruelest blow of all, it impacted along the full length of one helpless female foot. Her scream made all the others seem a mere whisper. She fought the cords, the strap, the stocks in a frenzy terrible to behold. She managed only small ripples of motion.
Moira dared not remonstrate, dared not even speak for fear of an inflection in her voice. She recognized her courage as inadequate to lay where this girl screamed and have her feet cut so that she might never walk again. As the blows fell upon the unprotected soles with the same precision as they had fallen on the lovely curves of the bottom, Moira realized that Safdar was matching the punishment to the crime: This girl had run away: tomorrow she would not run, or the day after... perhaps never again. The screams pealed higher and higher and became more wild, more elemental, 'till suddenly they ceased. It had taken twelve blows upon the sad small feet to give their owner the mercy of unconsciousness.
"Lord, forgive me. But will she walk again?" Moira had to know.
"Yes, child, she will walk again, but not for a long, long time. While she nurses her chains and her wounds she will make good resolutions. She may even keep them." Safdar replaced the cane upon the chair and turned to leave.
"Lord, have you shown me these things that I may know my own punishment should I transgress?"
"Of course! It is a kindness, is it not! It would be wrong that you should not know." He shrugged sardonically. "Yet both these girls you have seen in their punishments were shown what you have seen. They knew! Have you a greater wisdom?"
Had she! Moira wished she knew.
Her master chuckled at his slave girl's evident dismay as he fitted a third key within a third door. Moira had seen enough, she wanted no more of visions of herself tortured as these girls had been. She knew herself human. If they had sinned within the master's eyes, she might sin also and scream and scream as her feet were beaten and broken. She shivered. She did not know Fazal Safdar. He had treated her as kindly as she might dare expect, she had felt a liking for him. But perhaps these other girls had liked him too, perhaps he had been kind to them. She had yet to discover her duties or what she must do to please him. She dared not face the possibility that all be wanted her for was pain! The key turned, the door was thrown open, a firm hand gently ushered her within. Moira found herself gazing in incredulity at the anxious features of Sally, Honoria Ramsbotham's maid.
"Your friend, Joel, proved susceptible to a reduction for cash." Fazal Safdar explained gently, his voice held laughter.
"Oh, miss, you do look lovely." Sally's voice, anxious though it might be, was a breath of home. Moira turned shining eyes, "Thank you, lord." He could not doubt her gratitude.
It would have been normal for the two girls to embrace. The urge was there, but not the freedom. Moira realized, once again, the totality of the chains upon her wrists, she could embrace no one or nothing. But Sally's condition was infinitely worse, Moira took stock of it with one more shudder of disbelief.
Sally was naked. She sat upon a low wooden bench, save for her feet she was completely free of bonds. It was the small innocent feet that were the focus of Moira's anguished exclamation. They were fastened with metal clamps to a circular metal hearth, within which there glowed the red of live coals, a tiny wisp of smoke rose idly to proclaim the means of Sally's torture.
Without thought of consequence, Moira clinked her way to the side of the pathetic little tableau, her first thought the scorched feet of the innocent youngster. But the feet were not scorched, they were not even hot, the embers in the centre of the ring were insufficient to generate enough heat to reach the naked sacrifice, but beside the circle of the hearth lay wood and coal and a bellows in mute testimony of intent or possibility.
"It's alright, miss, I ain't been hurt." Sally seemed more concerned for the newcomer than for herself. She lifted her free hands in a poignant need of communion so that Moira leant and allowed herself to be fondled while they kissed. It was very comforting. Her own hands strained uselessly at her fetters, the best she could manage was the fingers of one hand.
"You do look super marvellous, miss." Sally seemed fascinated by the chains and by the wisps of costume. "But that thing in your nose... Oh, miss, that's simply cruel. They're an odd lot, they are."
"But what about you? Why are you like this?"
Sally was obviously ill at ease. "It ain't so much me, miss. I think this... this way I'm fixed is on account of you."
In her pause of astonishment, Moira examined the clamps on Sally's ankles, they were threaded circlets on which nuts had been tightened with a wrench. Sally could touch them, but she could never release-herself. The metal would not burn away, but would hold her as she was while the heat consumed her feet. The conception was fiendish.
"But why?" Even as she asked the question, Moira knew it rhetorical. She guessed. Turning to the man who owned her she choked back her anger and asked humbly: "Lord, please tell me what you wish."
Fazal Safdar laughed, he was pleased. This new slave was proving all he had hoped. Intelligence was everything. "I see you have divined my purpose." He said. "Soon I may fear this intuition of your's, but for now it saves so much, explanations from me and stripes upon your skin. You please me very much."
"Thank you, lord. But there is something you would have of me?"
"Always there is a price, eh! You are cynical, but you are correct. Tomorrow evening the charged affaires of a country that does not matter is giving a reception. I propose to take you to it as my lady."
Fresh vistas! A slave girl would never be sure. Whipped today, at Court tomorrow. "You trust me!" It was her first thought.
He shrugged and made a Gallic gesture towards Sally. "I trust you, so does this young woman."
"You mean that if I do not... do not behave, you will extend the fire?" It took all Moira's will to stifle indignation.
"You are perceptive. As I said, I am pleased with you."
"I will do whatever you want of me." Moira said, striving to keep her voice level. She bit back the savage words: 'I damn well have to!' "And this quite attractive member of the lower orders will sit through the evening as she now is. The fire will smoulder. But the bellows will not be used unless you will it so, she will feel no heat."
Moira longed to revile him and all the privilege of his wealth, but her chains weighted heavily upon her awareness of her state. She was utterly his, even the movements of walking or eating were governed by a key in his pocket. Tears of bitter frustration welled in her eyes, but she blinked them back. "What must I do at the Reception?" She asked. Despite herself, she felt a small thrill of excitement.
"Simply be yourself, your very beautiful self." He paused and eyed her pensively. I suppose that, in honesty, I should tell you that you will not be gowned."
It took a moment to sink in. Sally's plight as hostage became double plausible. "You will take me there... naked?"
"Why not! By doing so I prove a point meaningful to me. You are accustomed to nudity, but you will not be nude, you will wear your chains and your rings." He chuckled, "Your ensemble will be completed by a tashmak. If you are shy, you can hide behind it."
Moira was torn, not by decision, but by fear and hope. To walk naked into a diplomatic gathering! Was it a first for Jedrah, or had it happened before! How satisfying it must be to such as Safdar to flaunt his possession of a white girl! He would not be doing it unless he was certain the incident would pass. On the other hand she would be among a group of influential people, surely one of them might help.
"Thank you, lord. You do me much honour. Sally's feet will be safe from me." She sensed his knowledge of her thoughts, but she had nothing to lose.
"Wonderful!" He approved. "I will take you back to Nicole and warn her not to whip you until after tomorrow evening."
Moira bent and kissed the hostage to her acts. "I won't let you down." She promised. As she was led from the room she prayed inwardly that it was a promise she could keep.
"There are many forms of bondage." Said Safdar piously.
Nicole giggled. "Daddy says I must not whip you tomorrow, he says it would not be nice for you to wear too many marks at that affair he's taking you to. Daddy is very diplomatic. I'm quite disappointed, I'd intended to whip you just a little to get started. If I don't whip a girl every so often I get irritable and cross."
"You can whip me the morning after." Moira offered consolingly. "I expect I'll howl just as loudly." Nothing sounded absurd any more.
"Do you always howl when you're whipped?" Nicole sounded sincerely curious.
"Mostly I do. Why, don't you like it?"
"Not real screams, they scare me." The moppet snickered. "They remind me of when I get whipped myself, I make a lot of noise. I used to try and be really heroic, but what's the sense!"
"You can gag me."
Nicole brightened. "That's a good idea. It's sweet of you to mention it. Not many girls would. I say, you're not very happy in those chains, are you?"
Moira was not happy in her chains! They were beautiful and, in a measure, practical. But they were heavy so that she was constantly aware of them. The band round her middle was a punishment, it must have weighed several pounds. Helpless as they had made her, she longed for her handcuffs.
"I know where daddy keeps the extra keys, I snitched them."
Moira froze. Here was the very thinnest ice!
"Don't be scared. If I take them off now and for all night, no one will-know. I'll use the handcuffs to fix one of your ankles to the bed we'll share, then I won't have to worry about you." Another giggle of laughter. "It will leave you nicely free to use your tongue on me... you do want to, don't you?"
Moira wanted to. She was ashamed of the surge of desire. But there it was. The ring in her own sex began to burn as though with heat. Nicole was altogether too delicious. But the chains! After what Safdar had shown her how dared she run the risk! But was it a risk! It was Safdar's own daughter who was taking it. Moira could not imagine such whippings as the child might get would be very cruel. How glorious to be free fur just one night! It was bedtime, no one would know!
The chains fell away and were cautiously laid out for a quick return. Following them were the silly garments Moira was thoroughly tired of. How good it felt to be naked and to be free! She dance happily round the room and waved her arms. "Tell me when you want to chain my ankle, and I'll go and lay on the bed." She promised in a state of euphoria such as she had not known for a long time.
"If it wasn't that I'll do some sleeping, I wouldn't chain you at all." Nicole said. "I could control you easily by putting one finger through either your nose ring or the one through your lovely cunt. You wouldn't dare struggle, would you?"
It was true. Moira knew it was true. The rings robbed her of the power to fight, a child could subdue her easily. She would never dare to pull against any of the four rings within her flesh. Wearing them had changed her utterly, they were as demoralizing as chains. She lay upon the bed and stretched out one foot for the handcuffs. Her night would be far happier than her day.
Sleep and the sunlight of morning brought a fresh optimism. Her involvement for the evening filled her mind with diverse emotions, all exciting. She had to admit that, given the chance, she would not wish to withdraw. It would gayiety, and at the end of it she could be no more slave than she was now. She offered herself cheerfully for a giggling Nicole to place upon her the heavy silver chains from which the night had brought release. As snap followed snap it was like the closing of a door.
They saw nothing of Fazal Safdar until the morning was well advanced. He dropped in on them casually and expressed instant approval. "Ah, that is so much better! Clothes defile you. Nudity such as yours is eternal, it belongs to the ages. I am proud to possess such treasure."
Both girls tensed, stricken by the same awful thought. Instantly they tried to dissemble, but Fazal had caught the flicker of fear passing between them. His eyes roved the room and found what he sought. "A small price to pay to reveal such loveliness." He continued dryly. "One small feminine garment cut or torn away." He picked up the incriminating handful of gossamer pantaloons and examined them carefully while the two culprits cursed their forgetfulness and quailed at what was about to happen.
It pleased him to play with them. "I have always admired the sleight of hand by which the two rings become joined or separate at the Magician's will." He observed pleasantly. "I see you have mastered the trick." His eyes roved back and forth between them, his smile a serpent's smile.
It is terrible to know you dare not speak. Neither Nicole or the slave girl could find words with which to stem the rising tide of Safdar's wrath. They gazed at him, stricken.
"Perhaps you would show me how it is done?" He invited.
Their silence condemned them.
Fazal Safdar focused on his daughter with frightening percipience. He held out his hand. "I will take them." He said with deadly calm.
With a choked sob, the child ran to him and placed the fatal keys in his outstretched palm. She sank to her knees and bowed her head. To Moira, Nicole's total abnegation denied hope. The teen-ager had delivered herself to retribution.
Safdar pocketed the keys and turned to his slave. As though hypnotized, Moira did as Nicole had done. With a musical clink of chain she knelt at her master's feet, not daring to seek his face. She might look back in shame, but at that moment there was no other act that was remotely possible. She trembled and did not care that he might see.
"Two lovely penitents." Said Safdar thoughtfully. "What must I do with you?"
"Please have me whipped, lord." There could be no doubt Nicole had travelled this path before.
Moira was desolate that the laughing child should be whipped because of a kindness to herself, but she sensed that remonstrance would not be tolerated. She was shocked to find that at mention of the whip a great thankfulness had welled within her being. If she could pay for her transgression with no more than stripes, no matter how many or how bitter they might be, she would be grateful. She shrank in horror from memory of such punishments as she had witnessed the day before.
Fazal Safdar placed a fatherly hand upon his frightened daughter's head. "Go to Adah, child. Tell her your sin and ask her to deal with you. She is in foul mood today, so you need not fear a paucity of stripes."
When the white faced girl had fled towards her pain, Moira remained motionless in her chains, she was more frightened than she had ever been.
"Stand. I wish to see your eyes. Here, before this chair."
Moira obeyed, naked before her lord. She would have bowed her head in submission, but since he wished to read her mind she must perforce face him boldly.
"Why did you let her do it?"
"Because I was weak, lord. I longed to sleep without chains with a great longing. I... I have been chained and bound so much."
"When she freed you, why did you not escape? You might have managed it?"
She looked at him, puzzled. "But she trusted me! I couldn't."
His look was piercing. "You are speaking of honour?"
"I suppose so. Nicole had been kind to me."
"And have I not been kind?"
"You have been kind, but you have not trusted me." She lifted a chained hand and played with the links.
"Such a trust might grow, given time."
"It still can, lord. I have not betrayed you. Had I been false I would not wear these chains."
"You are a most excellent girl, your definitions have clarity. Can you now rationalize yourself out of punishment?"
Moira thought she detected the faintest of smiles. "I have no wish to, lord. I am guilty, punish me." She gazed at him with all the appeal she could muster. "The guilt was mine, I am the oldest. Please do not punish Nicole. It was I who was weak."
Safdar dismissed his daughter with a wave of the hand. "The little hoyden has not been whipped for at least two weeks, it will do her good. Adah will not kill her, she knows when to stop." He paused, considering. "The question is how I should punish you."
Her mind filled with the visions of yesterday. Moira stood awaiting sentence. She longed for the simplicity of Nicole's request. If only she, too, could humbly ask: "Please have me whipped, lord." what a relief his acquiescence would be! But how much more probable it seemed that he sentence her to pure torture. Perhaps, for Safdar, the whip was for little girls. But he had posed a question. "Punish me as you wish, lord." She asked simply.
"I cannot punish you today at all." He rejoined testily. "I will not have us denied the pleasure of this evening, but your pain need be no less tomorrow." He looked at her in male aggravation. "The trouble is you will be distrait in the knowledge of it, I do not want that, I want you sparkling and glorious."
Moira longed to laugh. How absurd they were, these men! Safdar was a little boy whose toy was in danger of being broken. She found herself wishing she could promise with sincerity to glow with happiness in the knowledge of torture to follow. "I am only human, lord. I will try to be as you wish."
He looked at her discerningly, and with a return of kindness. "Are you frightened that I will have you tortured?"
"Yes, lord."
He laughed, relieved. "Ah, yes. Then perhaps we can make you sparkle after all. I think you have seen your fault as much more heinous than I. I spite of your protests, it is Nicole who should have known better. Let us compromise... "He pondered. "Tomorrow you will receive thirty strokes of a whip, not a cane... "
Thirty strokes would once have appalled her, it was severe. Yet so great was her relief that, once again, she sank to her knees before he who owned her body and, contriving the limit of her chain, managed to seek his hand and kiss it in gratitude. The face she raised to him was shining. Moira wanted very much to go to the reception and to do her master justice.
* * *
Moira knew that without the firm hand of Fazal Safdar upon her arm she would have turned and fled, fled as well as any girl chained as she was chained could flee. There was a touch of splendour and consequence about the place and those who entered it that was daunting to a naked girl whose only covering was her chains and the almost insolent effect of the yashmak, to cover the lower part of her face yet leave her body bare... ! It was material for a vulgar story. But she was immensely grateful that the slip of silk covered the ring in her nose. Diplomatic eyebrows must surely raise at her nudity, her chains and her rings. But that a golden circlet should hand pendant from the nostrils of a woman purely white was a bit much for anyone, including herself. Immense circles had been newly affixed in her ears. They had surprisingly little weight, but combined with the rest must surely make her barbaric enough to shock even a jedrah consortium.
She could not doubt that Safdar was displaying her for some reason of his own. She would be a symbol of his wealth: that he was of the avant-garde. She might be a boast or an affront. Certainly the sight of her enslavement would anger most of the European men present, if not their wives! Whatever it was, it was evident her master was prepared to enjoy himself. She sensed that he wanted her, too, to be happy.
Moira knew that without Soniaive the nudity would have defeated her. But she had become so accustomed to nakedness that, for her, it was a natural state she had no wish to change. She could almost feel sympathy for the gowned and perspiring dowagers who were escorted by damp males equally warm. A tenderly striped, but happily giggling Nicole had worked her magic with hair and all the mystique that makes a female feminine. The slave girl felt strangely sure of herself, she knew she was very beautiful. She had made a firm resolve to do no shrinking. She would stand erect and proud, thrusting out her breasts that all might see her painted scarlet nipples and the jewels they bore.
"This evening it is I who am the slave." Safdar had said admiringly.
"And tomorrow it is I who will be whipped." She had taunted him.
In their own strange way they had found communion.
Moira was immensely grateful for the deep carpeting, without it her strides would have been a shaming rattle. But, as it was, she exhibited all the grace she had so painfully acquired. She glided to a set of silvery chimes as Safdar escorted her through the throng. He rested his hand gently on her fettered arm and introduced her to as many guests as he could intercept. She became adept at using her wrist chains to enable her to shake hands or to offer her hand to be kissed. She contrived it with a facility she knew astonished those she touched. Delightedly she hugged her amusement at the reactions she provoked. The women mostly assessed her with studied insolence while their consort was redfacedly striving for the impression he was not looking at her breasts.
"Can you handle this?" Safdar offered her a Martini and watched anxiously while Moira essayed the social motion of toying with it. She had to nonchalantly jettison the freedom of one hand in order to gain the tolerance of her chain for the other, and she had to bend when it came time to sip.
"It is the best I can do, lord."
"I want you perfect." Her master decreed. "We won't spoil the effect for the sake of a cocktail." He took the glass from her hand and, himself, lifted it to her lips. "Drink it all," he ordered.
Moira allowed her chained hands to fall. She obeyed his command, grimacing at the potency of the several swallows. "I will give you others." He promised. "If someone else wishes to lift a glass for you, let them. You'll find it helps. And now, just drift as it pleases you. But don't forget whose property you are."
She watched him mingle with the crowd. It was like falling overboard and watching the ship sail into the distance. Her nakedness became shrinkingly real, whoever she spoke to would be vividly aware of her breasts and her vulva and her navel. She chose a fair haired serious young attache from the English Consulate. At least there would be no language problems.
I've been kidnapped and sold as a slave," she told him brightly.
He gave her left breast his earnest attention, then gravely met her gaze. "Really!" His single word left the impression of an undesirable contact with a social inferior.
"Don't you mind?" Moira asked hopefully.
"Not at all. Your show, what! "Having a good time?"
She surveyed the masculine relict of Empire searchingly. "Wouldn't you like to rescue me? I mean, I'm English. You do look after nationals in trouble, don't you?"
"You do not appear to be distressed." He switched his attention to the ring in her sex. "Jolly good show, if you ask me."
"Tomorrow I'm going to be whipped." She eyed him keenly for reaction.
"Quite a lot of people enjoy it." He agreed without interest. "Never tried it myself. "How nice for you."
Moira longed to slap his class conscious face. He was insufferable. To choose between him and the man who had made her slave left Safdar an easy winner. She spit in his drink and clinked away.
"So, tomorrow he whips you!" The Frenchman shrugged. "No one can 'elp. It is the world most crazy. These men with oil... no one will zay boo to them. They take our money and our women and laugh. This Safdar, he is most smooth, and most clever. Tonight he flaunts you in our faces and none of us will 'elp." He lifted a filled glass to her lips. "Come, cherie, drink. It is your best escape."
Moira drank. Safdar had been right, she would need it to offset the emasculation of the Western male. When the glass was empty she asked quietly. "Won't you do anything to help me?"
Once more the Gallic shrug. "I have said, the world is mad. Ten or twenty years ago this could not have been." His voice became yearning, his eyes frankly roved up and down her nakedness. "If I had so much money I would buy you myself." He bowed and walked away.
It was no disappointment. Moira had guessed that had the reception offered an avenue of escape she would not have been there, but she was curious. She had nothing to lose. It was a game.
Mr. Pleffer was from Minneapolis and was fascinated by the ring in her vulva. He, too, worked in his country's consulate. "It's really very difficult." He explained. "Look at Kissinger: giving our shirt away. You can't expect the President to send an aircraft carrier to Jedrah on your account."
"But there must be something not so dramatic: a phone call to Scotland yard, couldn't you do that?"
Mr. Pleffer sighed. "It would not conform to policy. They wouldn't be grateful."
"But I would!"
Mr. Pleffer shifted his interest to Moira's breasts. She felt certain that if she could give him her body for half an hour he might think of something. "Look at me! In chains! And tomorrow I'm going to be whipped...!" Surely she could embarrass him, touch his heart if he had one.
It seemed probable that Mr. Pleffer had no heart, but he was an amiable man. "Look at it this way, maam," he pointed out patiently. "Back at the office I've got lists. In Mexico right now there are fifteen young women scattered through their jails on various charges running all the way from illegal parking to running drugs. Same thing in Turkey and a number of other places. They're mostly silly kids who are having a very rough time that's out of proportion to most of their malefactions, but d'you think we do anything about it, hell no! Peace and tolerance is our motto these days. Then there's cases like yours, there's a list of them too, all up and down this continent. Jedrah's only one of many, you're only one of many." He sighed and beamed at her nipples. "You can't imagine us sending in the marines, can you! Be honest, be realistic."
"You mean I'm expendable?"
"That's it! Exactly the word." He seemed relieved that Moira had found it. "But look a bit deeper. Most of you girls in places like this don't have all that bad a time. Some of 'em wouldn't go home if you gave 'em a ticket. I expect the first month or two is a bit rough, but they adjust. Some didn't have it that good in the places they came from."
Moira scrutinized his earnest public servant's features that offered her no hope. She thought, longingly, of Teddy Roosevelt and Queen Victoria. At least she could embarrass him. "Tomorrow I am going to be given thirty strokes with a whip on my naked skin." She made it sound as though it was Mr. Pleffer who would wield the lash.
Her companion blinked in the confusion of the unexpected and undesired, he groped. "Some local custom?" he inquired politely.
She longed to kick him, but said simply: "I displeased the man who has purchased me."
Mr. Pleffer obtained two more drinks. He poured one into Moira and the other into himself Moira reflected bitterly that today a Martini was the white man's only substitute for the gunboat. Mr. Pleffer coughed gently and made an official announcement. "It has been noticed, by others as well as myself, that your, er, lower area has received some... some... well, corporal attention. It does not appear to discommode you too noticeably. Are you sure you are not over emphasizing this feature of your... your stay here."
"Would you like your daughter stripped and whipped?"
"I do not have a daughter." Mr. Pleffer obviously felt his paternal omission a complete vindication. He melted gently away among the guests. Moira blushed, she had quite forgotten that her bottom bore the vivid streaks of Adah's cane. She felt a strong longing to leave.
There is always hope, that fickle jade who leads us on from pain to pain. Moira supposed Safdar must know full well what she was doing. He was probably sardonically enjoying her defeats. One more could do no harm. She selected a young woman of about her own age, escorted by a husband, but often on her own, who had sent feminine messages of sympathy when their eyes had met.
"Would you please help me?" Moira asked for openers.
"Of course, dear. The powder room's over this way."
"I don't want the powder room. I want you to phone Scotland Yard."
The girl's eyes roved over Moira's rings as though seeking some female secret spot from which one was missing. "Something been stolen?" she asked obtusely.
"I've been kidnapped."
The young eyes roved over the slave girl's nudity. "You mean this isn't fancy dress... or some local institution?"
"Haven't you noticed my bottom?"
The young woman snickered. "Well, yes, I suppose we've all noticed it. People get up to the darndest things these days. I've often spoken to Lance about it, he's my husband."
"You're just putting me off, aren't you? Easier than a straight no?"
Lance's wife looked hurt. "Well, I can't make a call like that without asking Lance, and he's terribly stuffy. Fact is its been explained to all of us that things here aren't like home. We have to expect situations like... well, like you."
"Lift my veil." Moira had to shock someone.
Curious fingers raised the silk, eager eyes widened in ecstasy. "It's beautiful! Oooo! It's really through your nose!"
"Yes, it's through my nose. Haven't you noticed the others?" Moira's voice was tinged with acid.
"But they're lovely! You aren't complaining, are you!"
Moira sighed in defeat. "Tomorrow I'm going to be whipped because of something I've done. It's a punishment. I will be given thirty strokes on my bare skin." Even to herself the awful statement began to sound trite.
The young married gasped, not in shock but in pure excitement. "Oh darling, could I watch... ? I mean, are guests allowed?"
It took a moment to sink in. The girl was genuine, she actually did want to see another girl whipped! Moira suppressed a desire to spit in the bright eyes. Suddenly she saw in them a reflection of Celie and of Gin'. "Perhaps you'd like to take my place?" she asked with heavy sarcasm.
"Oh, could I?" It was evident the mind behind the words was revolving rapidly. "Oh dear... ! I don't know about Lance, he's so square. He'd make such a stink about the marks. But to watch... ! Oh, could I... please? I want to so much."
Why not! The world was insane. This sweet young wife who Krafft and Ebbing would have adored was no more absurd than any other facet of slavery in the twentieth century. Vanquished in escape, Moira's pixie sought amusement. "Come along," she enthused. "I'll introduce you to my master."
Fazal Safdar looked down at them benignly: two small girls asking for candy. He was impervious to shock.
"This young, lady wants to see me whipped," Moira said breathlessly.
"You are a sadist, Miss... miss-"
"Oh, frightfully sorry! My name's Betty, Betty Rogers. Mrs., actually." She paused as though examining a new premise. "Never thought of it like that. I mean, sadism. Seems silly to put names on the way we feel... But I'd really love to. I'd be terribly grateful."
Safdar smiled at his slave girl. "You see, it is as we have discussed: the things within the mind." Turning to Betty he made a slight inclination of the head, his voice was amused. "All things are possible, my dear."
"Oh, thank you." Betty was like a child in the intensity of her happiness. "It's sweet of you both, you hardly know me."
"You are the wife of the young man who sends out the form letters at the British Consulate." Safdar supplied gravely. "But, in this matter of your pleasure, you do realize there will be a price?"
The silence could be felt. The slave enjoyed the mounting flush on Betty's cheeks as her personal interpretation of the word price seeped into the conscience of a possibly, faithful wife. Mounting the same degree of courage as the facing of a firing squad, Betty looked Safdar squarely in the eye and calmly announced. "I will pay it."
"It is possible we do not think of the same thing." There was laughter in the Jedrah voice.
Betty looked startled.
"I do not think of money, or dishonor," Safdar proclaimed piously. "But, as an earnest of your faith, I would ask you to accept exactly the same punishment." He smiled thoughtfully. "It can be arranged that you watch each other. It should be most interesting."
Two pairs of curious eyes watched the battle of the century take place within the young wife's mind. The outcome astounded both.
"Take me instead of her." The words were blurted out almost in shame. Two longing eyes sought Safdar, the Master. "She wants to go home. I don't! I could... well, just disappear. You'd have me safe. No one would know." The anxious eyes searched them in a deeply emotional appeal.
"I'm not being silly. I want it more than anything else on Earth, I've always wanted it, ever since I can remember."
Fazal considered. If he was surprised he did not show it. His question was to Moira. "How sincere is she?"
Soniaive enabled the slave to answer without dubiety. "She is sincere, lord."
Safdar nodded, he turned to the beseeching Betty. "I will not bargain, I will not part with this slave. I treasure her. But you may join her if you wish."
"I will join her, no conditions." Betty breathed the final word... "Lord."
Safdar's smile of acceptance of a girl's life held an infinity of understanding. "Sometime in the next few days you will disappear." He informed Betty gravely. "You yourself will not know when or how. Go about your affairs. Get outside the house as much as is seemly. Do not be shocked by the manner in which it may be done. It will be done." He smiled openly. "Are you happy?"
"I am happy, lord. It was a prayer of thanks.
"And now, my dear, we will say au revoir. I see the worthy Mr. Rogers searching for you.
Betty left them, walking in a dream. Moira envied her.
The slave girl stood before her lord. For a little while they were oblivious of the milling throng about them. "You know what I have been doing?" Moira asked.
"Of course. It is what I wished. Tell me, I am interested."
"I don't want to speak of it, I want only to vomit," Moira said savagely.
"The world wishes to vomit," Safdar agreed sagely. "They are a sad lot, are they not."
"They are not even men. Something... Ugh!" Moira stamped a fettered foot in frustration.
"Their day is nearly done." He agreed thoughtfully. "It is sad and perhaps not good, but it is so. It was one of your own who said, "He who will not fight must lose his freedom."
"Lord, I feel soiled. It rubbed off on me. I sought escape and they rejected me. I have broken your code."
"True, it was understood."
She faced him determinedly. "I can reject too, lord. And I can choose. You are worth a hundred of them. I need to be cleansed. Give me to your torture, when it is over I will be truly yours."
He laughed with pleasure. "My child, are you sure you are not under the influence of our charming young masochist? You are so very earnest."
"Betty is quite real, but no, the two of us are not the same." Moira was bitterly hurt and angry. "I said I was soiled, I am! Lord, please have me tortured. It will be an end to the past. I will stop looking back."
"The bastinado?"
"If you wish. It does not matter. I am sure there are many ways." At that moment Moira believed she did not care.
Safdar laughed at his slave's sudden hunger for mortification.
"In that case I will do the most cruel thing of all. I will hand you over to my daughter."
"To Nicole! Lord, does she not already own me?"
"Tomorrow she will own you in such ways as you have not dreamed." Said Fazal Safdar.
Everyone agreed it had been a most successful evening.
"I really am disgustingly cruel, darling." Nicole observed sagely to the naked girl beside her on the bed. "You shouldn't be so damn happy about it."
"Well, I am happy. I'm so glad it's you." Moira felt a strange rapture in being where and as she was. The bit of the handcuff on her ankle was like the handclasp of a friend. Fazal had given permission for the removal of her chains, she supposed it comparable to the condemned man's last meal. She wished he had also thought of the ring through the lips of her vulva, it was infuriatingly frustrating. But a slave girl is thankful for any privilege. To be without her chains was almost to be free. Nor would she wear them on the morrow. She would be bound...
"Loving you won't make my hurt you any less." Nicole said cheerfully. "It will probably make me hurt you twice as much. Does that mean I'm twisted?"
"You are quite perfect." Moira assured her. Playfully she bit the nymphet's closest nipple. "I should bite both of these off while I have the chance."
"Don't give me ideas, darling." The youngster whispered from her haze of pleasure. "I really might do it, y'know. Now the other one please.
Obediently the slave girl transferred her lips and tongue. "What are you going to do to me tomorrow besides whip me?" She asked with genuine interest.
"After I've brought you back to consciousness for the sixth time after your whipping... you will faint, y'know." The delectable Nicole giggled happily. "I'll leave you fastened for the longest time. I always think that's very bad, I know I don't like it. Then, when you think you're there forever I'll hang you up by your wrists and tie weights to your big toes, it stretches you beautifully."
"Sounds yummy. What else?"
"There's a really awful one I should do to you. It's not dramatic and there's no blood and no marks. You're fastened, standing, to the wall by a foot of chain to a collar round your neck, nothing else. You're really quite free. But a handcuff goes on one wrist and attached to it is a metal ball, it's round and smooth and hard to hold and it weighs fifty pounds. You're just left there holding it. There's not enough chain so you can put it down and it hurts too much to let it hang from hour wrist. I've watched girls with it. They have an awful time."
"We are lucky, aren't we." Moira said dreamingly. "All these lovely things... " She refused to think, refused to believe m the existence of the morrow, refused to analyse whether Nicole did or did not intend to perpetrate her atrocities. The child was too lovely to believe it possible. "Safdar might have been teasing... "And what kind of whip will you use on me?" She asked in the same vein.
"How about that new thing Adah used on you. If I laced into you with that across your back there'd be some lovely blood. For weeks you'd be dressed in stripes."
"All on my back? Thirty's an awful lot."
"I promise I won't put one on top of the other. I think there's room. If there isn't, I'll use your bottom."
Moira was going to ask more and more questions, but she fell asleep with her head resting on the sweet young breasts of the nymphet who would torture her. Nicole smiled with love and closed her eyes.
The waiting was always a strange mixture of emotions. Moira would have found it difficult to name them all. Fear was uppermost, but with it was the deliciousness of Nicole and the way in which the child had bound her. Ankles spread and tied to rings in the floor, hands strapped to the trapeze bar and pulled high, but not high enough to really stretch her. "I want to see you writhe." The youngster had confessed. "You can't strubble properly if you're up too tight."
There was such a communion between them! After Moira had been rendered helpless the younger girl had embraced her again and again in a frenzy of lustful possession, lips had clung endlessly to lips, and Moira had known the entrancing frustration of her loved one breaking free of a physical coupling and laughing because the bound girl could neither cling nor follow, but stood striving against her bonds in a real and urgent need to seize and devour the ecstatic teen-ager who held her in thrall.
There had inevitably come the moment when Nicole had picked up the whip. They had looked at each other without pretence. There was no raillery, no teasing. Moira was going to be whipped with an exquisite cruelty. Both girls accepted this. It was understood. You know I'm going to make you wait, don't you darling." Nicole had asked. "But you must know what you are waiting for, so I will give you one single terrible awful unbearable stroke. Then you-will be able to think about the other twenty-nine and know what they will be like." The whip had snickered through the air and cut squarely across the ivory of the waiting back. Moira had made inarticulate sounds and gone insane in a fury of motion within the cords that held her with such neat precision. Nicole had watched, glowing and radiant, until the last moan and the last spasm of revolt had died and Moira stood panting, her head against one raised arm. Then she had gone away, quietly. They had had no need of words.
Even after her panting had subsided, Moira did not move. She knew herself helpless, struggling was but an outlet for agony. It was worse, far worse, than she had dreamed. She knew she bore a scarlet wound across her back, she guessed, too, there would be blood. She refused to consider the remaining twenty-nine, just as she refused to foster the hope of reprieve or the thought that she might be teased and the single stroke be all. She did not know and refused to care. She thought only of the girl she had loved throughout the night. Sometimes she thought of Celie or of Gin'. But she knew, with certainty, she would never disobey Fazal Safdar again. Never... never... never!
Nicole was a small bomb, a tornado, a hurricane. She exploded into the room, threw a dress and shoes across a chair and tore frantically at the cords she had so recently knotted with such care. "Daddy wants you! Oh, hurry, hurry!" Her fingers flew, "How lucky I have not whipped you yet. Oh, darling, please hurry."
Moira was free. It felt strange that there were no handcuffs in sight. She looked at the dress Nicole held out. "It will be too small, but put it on." The youngster demanded. "The shoes too. You don't have to have panties and bra'."
Moira obeyed, feeling certain of disaster. "I don't know a thing!" The younger girl declaimed. "Just get you there quick, that's all." She produced her favourite giggle. "I say, darling, you do look beautifully indecent in my dress."
Moira cared little about the skimpiness of her covering, but she did care about the tightness of the shoes. She hoped this episode, whatever it was, would be of short duration. She found a bleak encouragement in her mistress's vehement assurance: "Just you wait 'till I get you back, darling! I won't waste any more time." Hand in hand the two girls ran out into the hallway.
There were three people in Safdar's office. "Let me introduce Inspector Parrot and Miss Steele. They are from London and bear quite, er, remarkable credentials!" Fazal was obviously uncertain of his ground. "Their intention is to take you away. In fact, Miss Robbins, they seem to want to arrest you."
Incredulously, Moira examined her visitors. The Inspector was pink and beefy, Miss Steel was her own name exemplified. Moira felt certain they would not like each other. "The charge is espionage, miss, and I must give you the usual caution." Said Inspector Parrot, he sounded as thought he was on her side. "I have here a warrant for your arrest."
Absurd, insane, impossible! But wasn't it all! "I think you've mistaken me for someone else." Moira said slowly. "She was measuring Fazal Safdar against half a lifetime in Brixton prison. She definitely preferred Fazal. But supposing she could be taken back to England and prove her innocence! The thought was breathtaking.
"Don't trouble to lie. We know who you are." Miss Steele was obviously finding proof of turpitude in the scantiness of Moira's attire. She eyed the captive's curves with both envy and outrage.
"I believe Miss Robbins is telling the truth." Safdar said firmly.
"Have you known the young lady long, sir?" Safdar was hostile. "Does that matter?"
"Perhaps not, sir." The Inspector was affable but heavily official. "But I should tell you that we are aware of the circumstances under which you made her acquaintance."
"And what do you propose to do about that?"
"Nothing, sir. These things are... understood."
"In that case I suggest you leave Miss Robbins and myself in peace. If you care to ask her, you will find she is happy here."
"I don't want to be taken away." Moira said firmly. "And this espionage thing is nonsense. You're either barking up the wrong tree or else there's something wrong about this whole thing. Me, a spy! It's rubbish."
"You would do well to keep quiet, young woman." Miss Steel got in her penny's worth.
"Miss Steele is a sergeant in the force." Inspector Parrot explained. "It was felt desirable that she attend the accused on the journey home."
"I would have supposed a longer sojourn in Jedrah beneficial to the sergeant." Fazal icily observed.
Moira wanted to giggle. The thought of Miss Steele hanging by her thumbs while her bony person was soundly whipped by Nicole was entrancing.
"Perhaps I should explain that we have rounded up the rest of the gang with which the accused was associated. Three men and a woman. Not only were they agents for a foreign power," but they did a bit of kidnapping on the side, a most unsavoury lot." The Inspector rolled out his periods with relish.
"That's how they got hold of me." Moira wondered if she should have kept quiet. "Don't be absurd! Under those circumstances you would hardly be visiting Jedrah." Sergeant Steele had obviously tried Moira and found her guilty.
Moira glimpsed the pitfall, the bits of a jig-saw by which she could be fitted into something in which she did not belong. Should Joel and Cherry vindictively weave her into their web of guilt her plight could easily become drastic. She looked at Safdar in mute appeal.
"And supposing I offer Miss Robbins sanctuary?" Fazal's voice was hard. "There is no extradition here. You have no standing." He sneered. "Or do you have a gunboat?"
Inspector Parrot sighed, fumbling in his jacket he produced two envelopes. "This one is from the United Nations Secretariat, sir." He stated heavily. "And this one contains the sum of money of which you were defrauded by the gang in question. We made a full recovery of all their extortions." He showed Safdar a steely eye. "I hope you notice, sir, I am trying to be diplomatic."
Fazal Safdar was not given to cheap heroics. Watching him, Moira wondered what he might know that she did not. The United Nations! She felt a net grow tighter and tighter. It was all improbable, but it was very frightening. To spend the rest of her youth in a dreary brick prison under the thumb of wardresses who would look like Miss Steele or worse... ! She shivered. Far, far better Nicole's whip and Safdar's chains that were used on her with love. The burning would across her back began to feel like Nicole's farewell kiss.
"Perhaps you'd sign this receipt, sir." The Inspector handed Fazal the slip and the pen.
Safdar finished his perusal of the contents of the two envelopes. Then with a shrug of resignation, affixed his signature. "You came heavily equipped." He said bitterly. "Someone must hate this young woman very much. You will do what you must, but what you do is wrong."
No one answered. Looking from one grim visage to another, Moira read her fate. That there would be no whip in this new servitude was small comfort for the loss of all else. True, there glimmered the faint possibility that she could prove innocence and find herself free in England, her heart leaped at the hope. But it was dim. She sensed something sinister and ominous. Safdar's reluctant capitulation meant that whatever he had read must indeed condemn her. Once more she was being sundered from a condition in which she had found love. Those who might wish to help her could not. Soniaive was vulnerable, she knew she would never betray Alastair or Celie. Ginevra would be helpless.
The silence had lengthened to where it must be broken. Sergeant Steel was fully equal to the task. "Can anyone remove that absurd thing from her nose?"
Moira blushed. Already she had become so accustomed to the rings that she had forgotten them. The earrings had been taken from her the night before. She managed not to wince while Fazal used a paper clip to release the snap. They were eye to eye, she saw his anger, and he beheld her anguish. Perhaps each of them cherished a small amusement at thought of the other rings invisible beneath Nicole's dress. They would provide the grim spinster with a shock at some later time. He slipped the golden ring in the pocket of his daughter's dress. "Keep it. It is yours."
"Fazal turned to the waiting Law. "It angers me that I must let you take her. It dishonors my House. I will obtain reports on what is done." He placed his hands on his slave girl's shoulders and bent and implanted a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Go with God, my child." Abruptly, he strode to the door and was gone.
Moira wept, she could not restrain her tears. Forever good-bye's, forever wrenched from what she knew! Patiently they waited out the storm. Inspector Parrot provided a tent sized handkerchief into which she sobbed and sniffed. When she gazed up at them from her sorrow, Sergeant Steele was ready.
"Hands behind your back, please."
Their captive could have laughed or screamed, she was close to hysteria. Sight of the handcuffs in the bony fingers was just too much . "You don't need to put those things on me!" She said vehemently.
"It is official practice, miss."
"You mean you want to take me half across the world with my wrists handcuffed behind my back! Don't be absurd!"
They waited out this storm as they had waited out the tears. She looked at the two of them and at the door, she was trapped. She remembered how often she had put her hands behind her back to be chained and been little concerned, sometimes she had been glad. But not now! Sergeant Steele was altogether too implacable.
"If you must handcuff me, at least allow it to be in front."
"Quite impractical, miss."
Furious with herself and with the whole situation, Moira turned her back and surrendered her hands. She cringed at the touch of the metal and the familiar sounds. It was to be expected that Miss Steele latched the bands a notch tighter than need be. The prisoner stood, chin high, while the light cape was placed over her shoulders and fastened. At least it would hide her shame from prying eyes. "If you behave yourself no one need know your condition." The sergeant sounded more as though referring to the dress than the chains. More probably her duties mostly had to do with pregnant delinquents.
The plane was an ordeal. They gave her a window seat, partly that she be well confined, partly that she find some comfort for her pinioned arms. She dissolved in shame and embarrassment when she was fed like an infant or a glass held to her lips. How could people fail to know what she was wearing on her wrists! But what did it matter! Nothing mattered now. She sat, disconsolate, looking at the clouds or making a quick scan of Miss Steele's week-old copy of The News of the World. It was the latter diversion that gave her food for bitter reflection for the rest of the time in the air. A brief headline and quarter column on page two told of the death and funeral of Herbert Harcourt.
The captive girl came close to tears again, thought of Ginevra was enough to bring them to her eyes. How cruel an irony that the woman she adored was now free at exactly the moment in which she herself was entering prison, a prison from which she might not emerge within her span of youth. True, their love had been irretrievably denied on the day she had been sold to Fazal Safdar, but in Jedrah England shrank to no more than a memory. In an English prison Ginevra would be vivid in her mind, she would be no more than an hour distant. Here would be a torture worse than Cherry's needle or Safdar's whip! To sit in a small hygienic cell and think of the radiance of Gin'! Sit there as the years withered her... it was too, too cruel!
It was late when the official car whisked her from plane to prison. Her handcuffs were removed, she was put in a cell, she was told to sleep, she would be dealt with in the morning. Everyone was tired and irritable. Moira slept.
Breakfast was tepid cocoa and a slice of bread with margarine. She was left alone for what seemed a long time. She surmised bitterly that there would be no rush to process her, they had her safe. When the taciturn wardress came, Moira was escorted, not to an office, but to a portal above which she discerned the word "Ablutions". She sighed in irritation, they probably suspected her of lice.
There was no help for it: when Moira surrendered Nicole's dress, her rings became glaringly visible, the gold through her vulva and the jewels on her nipples. From the look on her guard's face Moira supposed that the word whore would now be added to her list of crimes. The woman studied the bizarre ornaments, grim lipped. But when she extracted the golden nose ring from the pathetic small dress she tossed it at the now naked girl. "Here, may as well wear this too."
Moira caught it, surprised. Was she faced with some fresh humiliation, or was the wardress indulging her own sardonic humor! "I can put it on, but I can't take it off," she warned uncertainly.
"Put it on, girl. We'll take them all from you soon enough with proper snips."
Moira obeyed. No doubt she was about to be exhibited as a curiosity from a heathen land. Damn them! Let them look.
The woman chuckled, satisfied. The captive girl was brutally hosed down with water far colder than it need have been. She was made to lather herself, then hosed again. She supposed it routine. She was thankful the towel was large enough for its purpose. Dry, she awaited instruction.
"This way, give me the towel."
Moira surrendered her only covering and followed. "I am naked, y'know," she ventured.
"There's a hundred of you here naked every morning." The words were terse. "C'mon, step lively now."
Moira shrugged. It was a prison full of women. Who cared! Obediently she trotted down the corridor with a hard hand firmly gripping her arm. A door was opened, she was thrust inside. The door slammed shut at her back. She was almost blinded by the bright sun of a pleasant room. She blinked, stricken, her heart pounding wildly.
"Good morning, slave girl," said Ginevra.
They welded themselves together, time passed. The naked prisoner wept her tears of joy against the lovely breasts on which, later in the day, she would feast hungrily. They had no words, there were none for a moment such as they had then, to clutch and hold tightly is enough. After minutes or hours, the slave girl managed to sob: "I am a prisoner."
"Yes, you're a prisoner." Ginevra agreed. "Mine!"
The slave girl listened hungrily above the pounding of her heart.
"I am very rich," Gin' said softly. "So it was very easy. The police got the gang and all the money and found out about you. Getting you back was a bit sticky with the foreign office. It cost me some air fares, and I had to get one of Herbert's connections to fix up that United Nations letter. They also decided it was best to make you a criminal, something really deliciously bad that would discourage protests in Jedrah and make a nice smoke screen under which to bring you home." Ginevra bit her slave girl's ear. "I was a bit naughty then, darling. I just couldn't resist having you delivered to me like this. Inspector Parrot is an absolute dear. Sorry about Miss Steele, but we had to be a bit convincing. I gather they did a good job?"
"I was scared to death."
"Good! Hold out your hands."
"Not behind my back?" Moira was ecstatic.
"No, darling, purely symbolic. But I'll whip you soundly when I get you home." Ratchets clicked, Moira held up her steel clad wrists to admire. A familiar cape enveloped her, shoes were placed on willing feet. "Just in case of raised eyebrows." Ginevra told her as they went out to the car.
Comfortably settled in the front seat, the Mistress removed the shoes from her slave's feet. She replaced them with handcuffs snapped tight round the slender ankles. "Just to keep you in a proper state of mind," she said gaily.
"Darling... mistress. Always keep me chained... always...!"
"Of course, you delicious slave girl, I thought you knew: You've just been sentenced for life. You'll never, never be free again."
Ginevra headed the car towards the waiting Gate.
Ginevra laughed delightedly. "You mustn't be shy. I'm sure you have a reason for being here. Just tell me about it in your own way."
Betty Rogers viewed the laughing goddess in awe. "Well, yes. But you may not think it's a very good reason. I feel awfully silly."
"Actually I know why you're here. I have my channels too. I'm intrigued."
The nervous young woman sat back a bit more comfortably in her chair. "I can't believe you do, y'know. It's too preposterous."
Ginevra was enjoying herself. "We're not all that much different. You're frightened of me now, but I've been frightened myself often enough, so let me help. Your husband's name is Lance. You are suffering disappointment because you are not in the Harem of an Arab gentleman by the name of Fazal Safdar."
The awe deepened, it was now supplemented by a blush. "You're laughing... Besides, how did you know?"
"I could ask you by what devious processes you come to be sitting here with me now. Don't let's bother. You are here, you have a mission. I know it, but you must tell me." Ginevra laughed again. "I refuse to be too omnipotent."
Betty Rogers grappled with the almost insurmountable task of reconciling Fazal Safdar with an English drawing room at Tea time. She looked appealing at the wise and lovely eyes surveying her with amusement. "I had the strangest experience," she said hesitantly. "There was this girl... Oh, you'll never believe."
"Try me."
"It was in Kedrah, a diplomatic affair Lance had to attend. Our host had a slave girl... He flaunted her at us all. She was quite naked and in chains. Her... her flesh had been pierced. She wore rings ,... strange and lovely things. In her nose and her nipples and... and... "
"I know the other place," Ginevra twinkled.
"I felt so guilty. She wanted help to escape... and none of us could do anything. We'd been warned. You know: local customs sort of thing. But she was English, I'm sure she was.
There were marks on her skin where she'd been whipped."
"This girl: did she seem unhappy or distressed?"
"No, she didn't. In fact, when I watched her with her... her master there seemed some sort of rapport between them." Betty Rogers twisted awkwardly. "I suppose, really, that's why I'm here. You see," her eyes became anguished, "that girl was me. I mean I wanted to be her more than I wanted anything in the world... It's mad, isn't it! Can you understand?"
"Suppose we have Tea." Ginevra pressed a button. "Yes, I can understand. I'm not a bit shocked." A flicker of mischief crossed her face.
"Why didn't you ask Mr. Safdar to accept you on probation?"
"You are laughing, I know you are! But that's what I did. I know it's pure Ali Baba, but he said he'd arrange it. Then, in an absurd rush, Lance gets transferred back here and I'm put on a plane... "
"Before you were kidnapped."
"Am I wicked? I was furious. But what could I do!"
"And all your life you've wanted to be chained and made captive by a tall dark man?"
"I'm awful, but yes. It's the most permanent part of me. It's a sort of burning wish, or need. I thought when I married it would go away, but it didn't. It got worse."
"You find suburbia unsatisfying?"
"It's death! And poor Lance! He's so pathetic. I should never have married him... Once, for fun and as a test, I asked him to get some handcuffs and make me wear them when we were alone. Poor dear... ! He took it as a sign I was pregnant and odd... He fussed and fussed. I never tried again."
"This girl you speak of... the slave. Was she like this?"
The door opened. Betty Rogers clutched the arms of her chair, her eyes wide in disbelief at the entry of a chained and naked girl pushing the Tea trolley, an incredibly lovely creature whose nose and nipples and the other unmentionable place bore rings of costly metal, and who seemed as unconcerned with her task as any ordinary maid.
"But this is her! She's the girl!"
T rubbed Aladdin's lamp." Ginevra's voice bubbled over.
"Tea, Mistress, and sandwiches... "
Betty Rogers accepted both. The sudden appearance of a djinn and a pair of dancing girls could not have sent her into greater disarray. The slave girl kneeling before her and proffering the plate and the cup and saucer with graceful ease unhampered by her chains was from the chronicles of Scheherazade. The submissively lowered eyes denied recognition. "I don't understand... I just don't."
"We have been cruel. But it was just too good to pass up," Ginevra chuckled.
"You mean it's an act... a joke?"
"Goodness no, girl. You're looking at a slave girl, mine. Her name's Moira. She's the one you saw in Kedrah a month ago. But don't ask questions, just be grateful."
"You mean... she, she can't get away! She's a prisoner?"
"Could you get away chained like that!"
"Noooo! I suppose not. But... she's trying not to smile."
"What would you do in her place?"
The visitor flushed. "You mean she's... like me?"
"Not really. She is what I and others have made her. We're frightfully proud... No, you're a girl with a 'Thing'. A night in a dungeon or an hour with a whip might cure you."
The gasp and tremor was clear to see, Betty gulped. "What you said hit me like some sort of jolt of electricity. I feel so ashamed. I'm trembling. But it's with... with desire. I just can't help it. All my life whenever anyone said something like that or I read something or saw a picture I... I just dissolve. I hope you won't think I'm... "
"Of course we do, silly. Don't be stuffy in this house. Come on! Out with it! What do you want?"
One more tremendous gulp. "I want to be like her."
"Chained?"
"Yes. Like her in everything."
"Look at her skin. See the whip marks. I whip her constantly for fun. My fun. There's nothing she can do about it."
"I don't mind... alright, I'll say it, I want that too."
"You're a masochist."
"I don't know. I don't care. What do names matter!"
"What about your husband?"
"I'll just disappear. He won't mind... not really. Not after the first shock. I don't have much of a family of my own.
Easy really... "
Ginevra was mischievously amused. This rather proper damsel might hold possibilities. "Supposing you hate it, but I won't let you go?"
"That's my hard luck, then, isn't it!" Betty's vehemence was her first show of spirit. She had stopped being apologetic.
"Moira is enslaved for life. She knows she can never escape. You don't want that, do you?"
"Why the hell not!" Betty's breath was coming faster.
"The first time I whip you will break your spirit. You'll howl and want to go home."
Betty shrugged resignedly. "Alright, I'll take your word for it. But I wouldn't get to go home, would I!"
"I might loan or give or sell you to others?"
"Please stop these righteous warnings." Betty made a little move of disparagement. "I've told you about me. I'm incorrigible and anything that happens serves me right. But... do you want me?"
"Terribly. I'll make you lesbian as well as slave."
"I know. I'm not a silly kid."
"Speak to my slave girl. I think you should. Moira, you have permission to raise your eyes and to speak as you wish. You won't be punished."
Betty Rogers knew a sudden poignancy, a clutching at her heart as the glowing female eyes sought hers in innocence. The slave girl sat back upon her heels, her chained hands resting uncomplaining "in her lap. The newcomer's gaze beheld the metal bands about the slender wrists, and felt both envy and fear. The kneeling girl was helpless to fight or to run, she was captive. Beautifully and gloriously captive, but a prisoner subject to another's will. For her there would be no going home. "Do you try to escape?" she asked, "Or want to?"
"When I was first... taken." The alluring lips showed humor at their choice of the word. "I wanted to escape so cruelly it hurt. Escape was always in my mind night and day." Moira grinned confidingly and held up her hands, pulling them apart as far as the chain would allow, then making a play with the links to emphasize their dominion over her. "But when you have been chained as long as I have you stop thinking of escape as something real. It's just a pretty dream you don't waste much time on."
"But to be naked... always?"
"What else!" Moira laughed at the rapt concern being given her words. Once more .she motioned with her captive hands. "How else can a slave girl be! I cannot be punished and I cannot be tied with clothes on, nor would I be available for love. Slave girls must always be available, else they are not slaves."
"But do you hate it?"
"I will never wear clothes again unless I am compelled."
"You love all of it, I can tell." Betty was earnestly searching. "So why are you chained? For you they're just ornaments. I think you really did want to escape out there in Jedrah. But not here...?"
"You think I'm a fraud." The laughing eyes sparkled. "Perhaps I am. But I must be chained, honest I must. If I'm not, I start to get ideas, I'd argue, I'd bargain. If I was to be punished I'd make a fuss, and sometimes I'd think of escape. It would be awful! I wouldn't want it. This way, keeping me always chained in some way or other I don't have to live with decisions and temptations, I don't have any."
"When you are whipped, do you get wet and hot between your legs?"
"Gosh! You know it all." Moira's eyes sparkled at memories and in amusement at Betty's inadvertent admission. Yes, that's what happens. How did you know?"
"I don't really. But I get sopping if I read about it."
"You also get scared half to death and you howl. Don't kid yourself."
"And is it the same: I mean like that, if it's you who does the whipping?"
"I'm a slave, you'd better ask my Mistress."
Ginevra would not be taxed. "Go on, you little monkey, answer the question. You can."
"Yes, it's just the same... or worse," Moira admitted demurely.
Betty studied the kneeling slave girl intently. "It's so strange," she said musingly, "I mean, seeing you there in Jedrah that night and now here... like this. You seem to be so... so, in command of yourself. You don't cringe."
It was a new thought. Moira examined it. "I suppose a girl might take pride in being a good slave." She conceded cautiously. "I've got to admit Safdar's enjoyment in owning me and snowing me off the way he did really did something for my morale. Being nude among people ceased to bother me long ago. So, sure, I enjoyed that evening, even if you did all turn me down, and even though I knew I was to be whipped the next day. So far as right now goes, I'm where I belong. Ginevra's owned me since we first saw each other."
"You called her by name instead of Mistress. Isn't that disrespect? Couldn't you be punished?"
"Yes. Perhaps I will be." Moira looked thoughtfully at her interlocutor. "I think you should go back to Jedrah. Safdar's mixture of cruelty and affection would be right for you. He'd break you and make you love him for it. His daughter's just as potent. She loved whipping me. She'd adore whipping you. Can't you get back out there?"
"How?" Betty Rogers sounded bitter.
"Buy a ticket. You'd be there tomorrow," Ginevra interposed.
"I haven't any money. Lance doesn't get paid all that much."
"This Fazal Safdar: he intrigues me... " Ginevra allowed a thought to trail into silence.
The slave girl and her would be neophyte tensed in awareness of a new current. Both looked at an intently musing mistress. Moira with a quickening of her pulse, she had recognized signs... Betty in incredulous disbelief.
Ginevra's eyes glowed, she had become animated, there was mischief in the air. "I'm going to toss you in a dungeon right now." she told Betty softly. "How big a furor explodes when you don't go home?"
Betty's wriggle was only half embarrassment. "You'll think I'm potty, but I sort of looked after that." She eyed her companions as though hopeful of approbation. "See, I'm at the point where I don't care... Coming here was: well, I hoped it was burning a bridge, so I left a letter. If you kick me out now I'll go home and burn it. If you keep me, Lance will read the letter and won't worry about me any more. It's... it's terribly simple."
Ginevra's eyes danced at her still kneeling slave. "Go and get cord, darling."
When the sound of Moira's chains could no longer be heard, Ginevra poured more Tea. "Better drink this while you can, and eat another sandwich, we've talked too much. In a little while I'm going to be wickedly cruel to you. Can you envisage that in twenty minutes you'll be screaming in agony and imploring me to stop whatever it is I'm doing to you?"
Betty nibbled and sipped. "Frankly, no." She waved her anchovy sandwich at the room. "Everything, you. You're too nice. It won't register."
"I'm not going in for dramatics, girl, and talk of points of no return and last chances. I suppose nothing is forever even though it feels like it sometimes. But I will be absurdly sensible, darling, and tell you to get out of here quick! Go home to your Lance and get pregnant and raise a respectable family in Surbiton or Twickenham or wherever you live."
"No!" The word was a small explosion.
"When I am whipping your breasts, you'll remember this moment."
Ginevra noted the wince, the widening of the eyes. But her visitor said no word.
"I shall whip your cunt. Your back and bottom are routine. We may shave it first so that the marks show better."
"You're frightening me. But you intend to, I know. Sorry! Won't work."
Ginevra sighed. There was something almost offensive in such naivete. Betty's bright eyed assurance was an irritant that would dissolve under the first blows. The sound of Moira's chains spurred action. "Slip everything off your shoulders, Betty, no straps or tapes, nothing."
It was delightful to watch. The errant young wife was dedicated and determined. The thumping of her heart could almost be heard in the room, a pulse in her neck throbbed. With deft decisive motions she bared her shoulders. "Is that all?" she asked, surprised.
"Turn around, you absolutely ridiculous female, and cross your wrists behind your back. Put that wrist watch on the mantel."
Betty obeyed. She .was in a seventh heaven of wonder as she felt the cord and the lithe fingers take possession of her liberty. It seemed to her at that moment the strangest and most exciting sensation she had ever known. "Ever been tied before, darling?"
"No never, except as a kid playing games." The vibrant voice was husky. "Getting damp?"
"Don't tease... This is too beautiful to tease about. Ohhh! Thank you. Ooooo!" The new captive wriggled her shoulders in delight. "Oh sure! I'm not damp, I'm wet." She giggled nervously. "I know I'm awful."
"You're a very foolish girl."
There was that in Ginevra's voice which sent tremors up Betty's spine. Her wrists were now firmly joined, the last tugs were being made at the biting cords. She could feel the knots being made secure where her fingers could not reach. Her whole being glowed with fulfillment. The slender bands hurt in a degree she had not expected, tentative motions demonstrated an equally unexpected helplessness. She was suddenly shrinkingly aware of the disarray of her clothing and her loss of initiative. When her companions backed away, laughing at the flicker of unsuspected emotions across her face, she struggled in an earnest effort to free herself. For bare moments panic triggered a frenzy of tugging and twisting before, pink faced, she straightened up and looked at the smiling features. The words she uttered were almost apologetic and tinged with a laughable surprise. "I can't get loose, can I! It... it's over. I mean, as far as changing my mind goes... I've had it. Gosh, it's a damn funny feeling. I suppose you know my wrists hurt. Are they supposed to?"
Ginevra sank back luxuriously in her chair. "Strip her, darling," she ordered Moira crisply.
"But I'd have undressed if you'd wanted," Betty quavered.
"It's not the same. Struggle if you want."
The captive recognized a new atmosphere. Within herself she quivered in a new deliciousness of fear. Every moment now was charged with emotional and sensory perceptions beyond any previous experience. Her wedding night had left her unappeased and cold. But if one of these girls were to touch her skin she was sure their finger tips would leave a brand, so pantingly acute was her excitation. She only momentarily considered a struggle over her stripping. But it would be silly. She longed for Moira's chained hands to do their work. She was intrigued by the diversity of tasks this slave girl could perform while held in chains. She stood, unashamedly panting, knowing herself powerless to stem the tide of events she had set in motion. One by one her brief coverings were taken from her palpitating body. Limply she allowed her feet to be lifted for the peeling of her nylons and the final act of stepping out of the slip of stuff that had provided haven for her loins. She flushed, but was almost proud of its shaming wetness.
"She was right, Mistress." Moira laughed. "Sopping isn't the word... "
"Gag her with them. It'll teach her to seek pure thoughts." Ginevra's voice bubbled over with delight.
It happened too quickly for the bound girl to protest. Her half open mouth was stuffed wide with her own panties in a way that left no doubt in her mind as to the healthy flow of her sexual secretions. Their pungency filled her mouth and nose. She gulped and swallowed in a fascinated exploration of another unknown. She knew now how she tasted. Her next gurgling efforts were only in part dictated by the pressure of the nylon Moira used to bind the gag in place. She shook and twisted her head, but the gag was firm within her mouth, the nylon knotted safe behind her neck. Ruefully, but with shining eyes, she stood in her fresh nudity and gazed enquiringly at her captors.
"Lovely material." Ginevra breathed. "Look at those breasts, Alastair would love 'em, and what a mound! See how wide her crotch is at the junction of her thighs, wonderful for a whip! Gosh, she's wet! I can see it from here. What shall we do to her, darling? Something really cruel so she'll want to go home. She has to be taught a lesson."
Moira was not at a loss on that question. "The whip did it for me," she confessed. "I knew for sure I was going to die." She giggled cheerfully. "I don't remember being even the slightest bit wet."
"Take the gag out. She knows what it's like now. It's no fun if she can't plead or scream."
Swallowing the last of her own flavor, the bound girl did a thing quite involuntary and poignantly beautiful. She knelt beside Ginevra's chair and placing her head on the waiting lap gave way to tears, a great welling over of pent up emotions too great to contain. She was helpless to do more than that, her hands twisted in natural reflexes against their bindings, but they were lost to her only her sobs and her bowed shoulders bespoke her need. Gently and with love Ginevra's fingers lost themselves caressingly within the captive's hair. She had no need to speak. She smiled tenderly at Moira, each of them understood.
"I... I'm so terribly grateful... " Betty's voice was diluted by her tears.
The girls watched. They too had been slaves.
"Aren't I silly... I wonder if you know... how much this means... "
They knew! Betty could feel their female empathy. Her tears held nothing of heartbreak.
"I expect you're right... about, about me screaming... and all that. But I don't mind. Don't pay any attention. I'm... I'm so happy." The kneeling girl released a fresh flood of tears to attest her joy.
The Mistress smiled, and Moira remembered how different it had been with her. It seemed a long, long time ago. They waited quietly for the tears to end before they led their victim to the whip.
Ginevra toyed happily with the rings in the nipples of her slave, it was a beloved act when they shared their bed. Sometimes she lifted the heavier ring within the nose so that its weight was taken from Moira's upper lip.
"If you keep playing with me, darling, you'll have me as wet as our suburban wife," Moira told her mistress without complaint.
"You're as bad as she is. You know you are. I should have whipped you too." Ginevra tugged the ring enough to make her slave go tense.
"You whipped me yesterday."
"So! Are you getting impudent again!"
"Oh, darling, you do tease so, and these rings: I'm always scared to death. You know how to make me beg."
"Shall I make you beg now, you adorable creature! I'm ashamed of myself, I can't keep my hands off you. You're a menace to mistresses."
"I'll squeal!"
"Not half as loud as our most recent acquisition. Wasn't she gorgeous!"
"I'm still tingling," Moira admitted. "I suppose we were seeing twenty-four years of suburbia come to life: the expression on her face when you hit her the first time... "
"But she's sweet. She tried hard not to scream. I think she fell screaming isn't quite nice. I loved her apologies and those questions about whether it always hurt like this."
Moira giggled. "But, darling mistress, you shouldn't have whipped her poor wet cunt, not the first time...!"
"Look who's talking! You are impudent, darling. Go and fetch me t be special whip. You need bringing back to earth."
"You know perfectly well I can't. My ankle's chained to the bed," Moira complained comfortably.
"Well, the rest of you is free enough, especially your tongue. You won't let me little ankle stop you obeying me, will you."
"Yes." Moira felt fairly safe.
Ginevra sighed happily. "You needn't think I'm going to run your errands. Try and remember: you've got five coming next time. Really, I don't know what slave girls are coming to!"
"I'll make sure and remember, mistress," Moira promised with a private resolution to immediately forget. She didn't like having her sex punished, it had a quality of violation from which she shrank. She did not mind too much with Ginevra. But... ! "Wasn't it scrumptious the way the darling glistened with sweat! She was wet all over about half way through. I could hardly bear her scent, it was too, too, yummy. I say, (Jin', d'you think she's alright? Alone in the dungeon, I mean. She'll be hurting, and she's tied, and dungeons are terribly lonely, especially if a girl's naked for the first time in her life."
"You want to bring her in with us, sweetheart?"
"No."
"Well then?"
"I feel sort of sorry for her. I remember my first night. I cried buckets and saw ghosts everywhere. Do you think you should put me in with her? After we've loved some more...
"You are adorable and absurd! I refuse to cater to your masochism. If we went and peeped we'd find her fast asleep. You underrate the spiritual stamina of the middle classes and Miss Betty's really shocking eroticism." Ginevra managed a giggle of her own. "I left her hands tied behind on purpose, she can't reach a thing. I'm sure she's on fire, so she'll be frustrated half to death. There's nothing in that particular place for her even to rub on. Poor dear! I know I'm cruel, but she'll have lovely wet dreams. Leave her alone. She's got what she wanted."
"Why did you whip her so hard, Mistress, and hang her from her wrists? Were you trying to break her?"
"Yes. I didn't succeed, did I! There's more to little Mrs. Muffet than I supposed. I was terribly touched when she knelt and thanked me afterwards and wiped her wet cheeks on my hands. There's a sweetness about her... She's dead serious. That Lance fellah's missed a treasure. All he needed to do was buy some handcuffs and a whip. When you think of all the men... "
"I crinkle up when I think of the way she kept trying to look back at you and the whip and saying: "I didn't know... I didn't know! She was not complaining. She just wanted us to share her amazement at the pain."
"And when we took her to the dungeon and tied her hands again and she realized how she'd spend the night... Were you watching'.' She was horrified, but she kept mum. She even managed a smile before we locked her in. Could you or I do it? Even after all this time!"
"She's so beautifully put together. I don't think she realizes. I bet that clod of a husband never told her. And the way she responds! Whenever you or I touched her she gasped and froze. She affects me shockingly. If she was around long I'd melt."
"You just need to be whipped, that's all, or spend a day sitting on the horse. You're an incorrigible sexpot. Our little lady, for all her endearing charms, doesn't affect me as potently as you." Dreamily Ginevra reached down and tweaked a ring protruding from her slave's pubic hair. "Isn't it wonderful." She mused softly. "I've owned you over a month. I'll never, never set you free. Celie and Alastair are watering at the mouth."
The slave girl insinuated herself closer to the lovely nakedness beside which she lay, her fingertips traced themselves across a convenient nipple. "Are you going to give Betty any of the tortures? You threatened me with the horse. Are you pitting her on it? Or giving her thumbs a bad time, or any of the others?"
"Do you want me to?"
"No. I'm just curious."
"I'm curious too." Ginevra admitted slowly. "I'm sort of toying with a preposterous idea."
Give her to me." Moira suggested brightly. "A slave girl can have a slave, can't she!"
"I shall whip you in the morning." Ginevra said decisively. "You positively plead for it, you impertinent poppet. I can see it's going to take me years to make you behave. No, I will not give her to you."
"You will keep her though?"
"No. She distracts you. You're all mine, I won't share you with anyone, even another slave girl. I'm besotted with you, so tomorrow I'll hurt you terribly to get you back in a sensible frame of mind."
Moira kissed the nipple before she asked. "Will you let Betty watch me being punished?"
"You want me to, I can tell! Well, perhaps I will. It might do you both a bit of good. But I'm still wondering... "
"Alastair?"
"That's the logical answer, of course. Soniaive can always use a girl. But I'm not sure that's the answer for this one. Betty had a specific original idea. You told me about it. Remember?"
Moira lost immediate interest in Ginevra's nipple. She rose on one elbow. "You mean... but how...?"
"Fazal Safdar! It's your fault, darling, you piqued my lustful interest. Don't you think he's the answer?"
Moira saw it's logic. A man like Safdar would very much fulfill an erotic fantasy for any girl. Betty's infatuation that might in Jedrah had been unmistakable. She needed the man as well as his chain and his whip. Fazal Safdar had accepted... ! The diverse natures of the two had neatly dovetailed. Moira looked down at Ginevra's loveliness, "But how?"
"Let's take her. You and I."
Moira shuddered. In hungry trust and longing she threw herself upon her naked love. "No! No! He'll grab 'me and never let me go. He'll take me away from you! Oh Mistress...!"
Ginevra dealt with her frightened slave. Ginevra had ways to deal with everything. When Moira's tears had passed and she lay close beneath a protecting arm. She asked quietly: "How can he take you? You'll be with me, and I'll make damn sure neither of us can be touched. Poor darling Herbert left me a lot of money and a lot of power. We won't be a couple of trippers susceptible to kidnapping. And anyway, Safdar never did kidnap you, he made a purchase and paid cash."
"I know. In his way he's nice. I respected him. But Jedrah's a frightening place. I think anything can happen there. No one cares. And I'm sure Safdar's a powerful man and terribly rich. Oh darling...!"
Ginevra took her slave girl in her arms. "Sweetheart, you're trembling. You had a bad time all along, didn't you. It's a sort of nightmare But it's past. Now you're mine, mine, mine! I'll never let anyone take you."
"Can't you ship her in a crate or something? Or just buy her a ticket?"
Ginevra chuckled wickedly. "I want to go and watch. That's my price he'll have to pay: that I can see him break a slave girl to his will. And I want to watch Betty, to see how she reacts to her heart's desire. I want to have a look at Safdar himself-and that's your fault! You sounded half in love with the guy."
"In his way he was kind to me. But how can you arrange...?"
"Leave everything to me." Said Ginevra the mistress.
* * *
Moira put Jedrah out of her mind. She did not want to think of it. She secretly hoped her mistress would drop the notion or discover it impractical. She decided not to mention it to Betty Rogers. In any case, there was something else on her mind. She was to be whipped, and no matter how often it happened to her she was never entirely free of fear as her time drew close.
The only chains were on her ankles. She had work to do, so had been given the gift of her hands. She was to feed and groom the captive so that she might enjoy the privilege of watching Moira receive her whipping. Ginevra found the situation piquant. Moira wasn't so sure. Last night the idea had possessed an erotic attraction, but now it did not seem a good idea at all, she would be shamed. She unlocked the dungeon with curiosity and misgiving.
"If I could hug you, I would. Oh, Moira, I've been so scared. I can't get my hands free, it's awful. I thought you'd never come." Betty was indeed a different girl from the tailored young wife of the diplomatic reception.
Moira kissed the lips hungry for a human touch. "I'm your lady's maid." She said gaily. "You're in for a delightful morning."
The captive surveyed the bathroom delightedly. As a matter of course she turned her back and fluttered her bound hands.
"What are you doing that for?" Moira asked innocently.
"You want me to use the bath and... and the rest, don't you! So untie my hands."
"I'll bath you and help with what you call 'the rest'." Moira's voice bubbled laughter, "But your hands stay tied."
"My hands have been tied all night." Betty was striving for reason.
"So what, darling! They may not be untied for a week. Unless, of course, you can get them undone yourself. You might if you try long enough. Then I'll tie them again, tighter."
Betty Rogers digested the news, but she was too happy to be back among the living to quibble: dungeons have a most sobering effect on girls. "If you want to untie me, darling, I'll do everything while you watch and then I'll hold myself for you to tie again. I will, I promise."
"No go, sweetheart. You stay tied. But if you're a good girl there's a treat waiting."
Betty stepped into the steaming water. "I suppose you have to do what you're told." She accepted resignedly. "Is Ginevra very strict?"
"So strict that after breakfast she's going to whip me."
"Oh noooooh! You're kidding?"
"You got whipped yesterday, didn't you!"
"I suppose I asked for it. I say, darling, get into my armpits will you, I can't help much. Don't tell me she whips you like that. She loves you. It sticks out all over. If someone loved me like that I'd twist them round and round."
"You'll be able to see how much twisting I can do. I'm going to use the excuse of soaping to play with your breasts, they're lovely and firm. In a minute I'm going to soap your cunny until you moan."
"But yesterday your hands were chained, why not now?"
"Because I have to give you a bath and wipe your bottom."
Betty giggled. "Are you always so uninhibited? If you keep on doing what you're doing you'd better get in the bath with me."
"You don't seem a bit excited over watching me whipped. I thought you'd go all gooey. I scream and squirm gorgeously. You'll get a wet quim."
Betty squirmed and tugged at her bound hands. "Oh damn! I'll never get loose now, the water will shrink the cord... do you really mean it, darling, that I can watch?"
"Yes. Ginevra will get wet too. But I'm not sure I will. I'm as scared of the whip today as I was the first time."
"When was that? I mean... did you ask for it or did it... happen?"
"It happened. I thought I'd die. I still think I'll die. It only takes about three good swipes and I forget all about courage. I am not like you. Here, let me get at your quim, spread your legs. I want to cup it in my hand."
"You know a lot about girls, don't you." Betty looked up at her attendant innocently. "I do envy you. Oh sure, I know you're supposed to be a slave... I suppose you are. But you always seem to know where you're at. Even that night with Safdar. We treated you like a lot of bastards, but it didn't throw you. And now... you say you're going to be whipped, but you're looking after me as though you hadn't a care. Will I get like that... after a year or so? Darling, you're happy."
Moira had never thought about it in just that way. Her love and need for Ginevra had obliterated all sense. But what Betty said was true: she was happy. But what was more pertinent and vital she was also a slave! She thought and acted like a slave. All her concerns were of her slave condition, her mind did not move beyond it's borders. Her mistress was her life. In a little while she would be terribly whipped, but no thought of evasion or escape had crossed her mind. She was content. She could see herself as nothing but fortunate. To be free and lose Ginevra was unthinkable, she would fight it to the death! "If I untied you and told you to run, what would you do?" She asked her charge irrationally.
"The same as you." Betty said sardonically.
"Hello darlings." Ginevra greeted them. "Eat a lovely breakfast. I'm not sure, you'll either of you get any more today. I think I'll leave Moira tied after her whipping, and you, Betty, can put up with a bit of pure torture. Wouldn't you like to go home?"
"I can't. Lance will have read my letter."
"Oh, phooey on your letter! I'll release you if you plead."
"I want to see Moira whipped. I know you won't let me go. You're a tease. Keeping my hands tied like this doesn't feel like freedom. If you want to untie me I might believe in it."
"Let's see if I can scare you into pleading." Ginevra looked deep into her captive's eyes with pure affection. "I'm going to make you sit on the sharp edges of a plank. They'll dig into your cunt until you are sure it will never be any good again. It hurts like Hell. I know, I've sat that way myself."
"But after I've watched you whip Moira!"
"Means a lot to you, doesn't it? Why?", Betty accepted the latest mouthful offered on Moira's fork and chewed busily. "If you only knew all the books I've hunted up and read about girls being tied up and whipped." She said soberly, "You'd understand. It was thing I wanted most of life. I chased it everywhere. I've spent hours and days and months pouring through books in the Library and on bookstore shelves. It's really surprising how often it crops up. Maybe whipping us girls is a part of life, but I'd find it in the damndest places: really square authors, they'd find some fine moral excuse to get the heroine tied and stripped and flogged. Historical one's were good. The things they used to do to girls!"
"Isn't that the best, just reading about it?"
"No!"
"Even after yesterday and last night?"
"Whip me instead of poor darling Moira! Does that answer' your question."
"If I know you want to be whipped I won't whip you, it would be an indulgence. How's your quim? Wet?"
"Alright, make fun of me. But that's how I feel."
Later, when they were in the pain room Ginevra said brightly to her newest captive. "I want you to watch the way this darling girl yields herself to punishment."
"Didn't I!" Betty demanded. "I still will. I can't help it any more than Moira can."
Unconcerned and without hesitation, Moira placed her wrists within the straps at each end of the bar. She watched her mistress pull the buckles tight and knew herself lost. When her hands rose before her eyes and went on up and up until her heels left the floor she only smiled. She was going to match Betty's performance of the day before, it might kill her to try, but she would do it!
"Isn't she gorgeous!" Ginevra exulted.
Moira was gorgeous. She knew she was, and was proud. She stood only on her toes, her tummy was concave, her breasts incredibly convex, her bottom curved and round. When the whip struck she could kick, that was all. "Do you want to strap my feet, mistress?" She asked demurely.
"Kick darling, I love it. Besides, whey you kick I can get up and under."
"Moira looked back over her shoulder and grimaced. "Are you going to use that beastly riding crop thing?"
"It serves a dual purpose, darling, your bottom and your back. It marks you beautifully."
"Do I just stand and watch?" Betty asked plaintively.
"Feeling neglected? Don't worry, after an hour sitting on that plank you'll know I care." Ginevra told her with amusement.
"Oh, Gin', don't sit the poor kid on that. It's awful!" Moira pleaded.
"By the way, sweet, wasn't there a little matter you had to remind me about?" Ginevra asked her victim blandly.
Moira wished the item forgotten, but it wasn't! "Oh alright." She conceded irritably, "My poor inoffensive cunt has to get five of the best with the special whip." She sniffed indignantly, "And don't ask me to go and fetch it, I can't."
"Really uppity, eh!" Ginevra was delighted. "How many extra do you think you've earned?"
"Oh Gin', please! I'm sorry. I hate having my cunt whipped, you know I do! Please, just the five."
"No! Come on, name the number."
"Don't make me, I don't want any. Uh please...!"
"Why are you so cruel to her? You love her?" Betty asked with interest."
"Wasn't there a song once?" Ginevra asked, utterly absorbed. "You always hurt the one you love... "
"Yes, but it went on to say: "The one you shouldn't hurt at all... " I don't think I could whip Moira if I loved her as much as you do."
Ginevra examined the premise. "But you're different from the two of us." She tried to explain. "Moira hates being whipped. But so long as I do it she can bear it." She turned to the naked figure on tip toe. "Isn't that right, beloved?"
"Yes, oh yes!" Moira looked at her mistress with languishing eyes. "Please whip me. Please, please, please...!"
Betty Rogers watched, her eyes wide, her heart thumping as painfully as though her own nudity was under the lash. Ginevra swirled as though in a Vienna waltz, the beautifully fashioned instrument of pain snickered through the air to cut it's scarlet bar upon the waiting back.
Moira tied herself into a know of agony, but made no sound. She let the pain seep into every crevice of her being. Perhaps if she could accept it with gladness she could defeat the screams. Her foot again and again stamped upon the floor in recognition of something too awful to be borne, but that was all. Once more the air was sundered by the whirring evil to etch upon her bottom a brand to match the one upon her back.
"I suppose the mark on my back is the best one. darling." She commented languidly. "But I think I do prefer my bottom for the instrument you're using."
"The girl's a bloody marvel!" Betty breathed.
"How about this!" Ginevra cooed in a wave of euphoria as she sent the limber withe into the juncture of thigh and rump.
It was excruciating, it burrowed within, it passed through skin and into flesh and beyond, then flooded in a tide of agony. "Oh that was gorgeous, darling mistress!" Moira breathed ecstatically. "You're so clever. You know where it hurts me the most." She kicked and swirled as best she could in her impotence.
"You'll kill the poor girl, hitting her that hard." Betty remonstrated.
"Bend over." Ginevra's voice brooked no denial.
In a frightened realization of her own helplessness, Betty Rogers bent over. She felt naked and foolish, her bound hands stuck up in the air as surplus appendages. The slash of the crop cut her in two. She was certain life could never be the same again.
"Keep a check on your tongue, slave girl," Ginevra advised blithely.
Moira was still panting from the previous blow when the next found the full width of her shoulders. She consigned her body into its own private pit of hell and said in a pleasant conversational voice: "You're quite wonderful, darling. I don't think I've ever been hurt this much in that particular place before. I do hope it's a lovely mark."
"Oh, how can you!" Betty was weeping in vexation and tugging frantically at her bound hands. "The poor darling's so brave. Don't hit her any more."
"The poor darling's putting on a bit of a show because you're here," Ginevra assured her caustically. "I'll whip her until she screams, so it won't do her any good."
Moira looked up hopelessly at her strapped wrists. They were the key, they held her naked and vulnerable. They hurt like fury. She knew Ginevra: her punishment had just begun. The tears flowed, always the tears! She wondered miserably if the supply could ever dry up. She relapsed into an orgasm of agony as the crop wrapped itself around her waist. She heard her voice from afar saying pleasantly: "Now I have a lovely red belt to wear. Thank you, mistress."
"I don't care how much you whip me, you should let her go," said Betty.
Without haste, Ginevra whipped her new recruit mercilessly wherever and whenever her subject's writhings offered a target. Without concern for the outcome of her onslaught she returned to the nudity of the suspended girl and cut the bottom with another deeply bedded impact.
"Don't worry about the candid comment, sweetheart," she said acidly. "Scream, scream a lot."
"Thank you, mistress, you're terribly clever, the pain is awful. But I really don't want to scream. Do you mind... "
"If you insist on playing the little heroine I'll whip your cunt with this as well as the special whip. And what's more I'll whip your breasts. This nobility kick is just too much. Where on earth did you pick up such a silly idea. Betty doesn't mind if you scream." Ginevra looked at her pained slave girls with an uncertainty she refused to show. She had no wish to hurt her beloved more, yet a slave girl must never be allowed a victory. "I'm going to leave you two ninnies alone. Maybe you can talk each other into some sensible behavior."
"I'm afraid this is my fault," Betty said dolefully after the door had closed. "That thing hurts terribly. I say, are you really putting on an act? You must be!"
Moira wept. She wished she had not been so clever. Now she would have to teeter on tip-toe for a long time with nothing but the whip in prospect. She had boxed herself in with her theatricals aimed at her audience of one. But how confess! "I didn't know she'd get angry." She sobbed.
"I wish I could do something. I've never felt so helpless."
"Don't worry. It's my own fault. I'll be a meek little girl when Gin' comes back."
Betty Rogers hesitantly voiced a dawning realization. "But she doesn't have to come back. She could leave you like that a long time."
Moira grinned ruefully. "I'm a slave girl, remember. Slave girls have to put up with what happens to them. I could scream and carry on, but I'd still hang the way lam until our mistress decides otherwise. I can't get loose any more than you can." She eyed the concerned features of her fellow sufferer with compassion. "Why don't you call it quits and go home... That is if Ginevra will let you. She may not."
Betty Rogers expressed her frustration by a desperate fight against her bonds. "It's only cord," she said angrily. "Can't a girl ever wriggle out of it?"
"No."
"That final, eh. It is a bit frightening. I'm all mixed up. What's happening to you scares me more than the things that have been done to me. Ginevra loves you, I know she does... "
Moira managed to wipe a wet cheek against a taut arm. "This isn't really what you want, is it?" she asked shrewdly. "You don't want two girls living out their Thing. You wanted Fazal Safdar."
Betty Rogers flushed. "I'm that obvious! I must be transparent?"
"Not really. But remember, I was there. And I don't suppose I look as glamorous right now as I did that night."
"But you do!" Betty's face regained its look of awe. "You're beautiful. A strange wonderful beauty I don't understand. You're burning me up. When I watch the two of you I'm so damn envious it hurts I'm not sure I understand all I see. Right now I'm lost. I can understand why I have to be tied: I'd probably run home if I wasn't, but you... Why does your mistress keep you so close a prisoner? You're always chained?"
Moira made a wry grimace. How explain a miracle! The world she and Ginevra lived in was theirs alone. Poor Betty was outside looking in. Taking a little more of her weight on her hurting wrists she did her best. "We did try and tell you. I have to be chained. I just have to be! I'm human and so is Gin'. We make mistakes and have our off days. Mostly it's as though we were one girl, but sometimes our moods don't jibe. We can't undertake to feel precisely the same impulses always at the same moment or hour or day. You know the story of the bride who runs home to mother: the reason doesn't matter, but it happens. Well, if the silly girl was properly chained she couldn't do it. She'd just have to sit and get over her mad. Or the wife who's busy everywhere but home: If her husband kept her chained she'd have his supper on time and keep a nicer home. Sometimes I get silly flighty notions and angers in which I might flounce away... if I could! But I can't! That's the way it should be. Oh sure, often I get mad at the chains Gin' puts on me. But in the end I'm grateful they're there."
"I can't really imagine very many wives being kept in chains." Betty snickered. "It's a cute idea, but it's not going to happen. Look at me and Lance."
"That's why we're so terribly lucky. It's we who are in step with what a girl is, we know how a female ticks. Ginevra's terribly wise. She won't let me get away with anything. Tantrums and moods just get me whipped, so I don't indulge in 'em much." Moira managed a wry grin, "Except when I forget... like now! I'm being taught a lesson. When I get done with this little lot I'm about to receive I'll be a real little darling for the longest time."
"Will I ever be like you?" Betty Rogers asked wistfully.
"That's an easy one to answer. Ginevra will make you. Did you enjoy that whipping you got yesterday?"
Betty bashfully stubbed her toes and wriggled. "Not while it was happening."
"But now you're ready for the next one. Oh I know! We're absurd and illogical and wanton. Look at me now! I'd give anything to get free from this awful way I'm fixed, and to evade the whipping I'm going to get. But tomorrow it will be past and I'll get damp hair when I remember it." The girl with tied hands gazed admiringly at the stretched nudity standing on its toes. "You look lovely like that," she said reflectively. "It's funny: pain and punishment and being tied and chained make us more female, twice as erotic. I think seeing you this way would bring even Lance to life." She pursued a private train of thought, "How'd you feel if it was a man who owned you and punished you like this?"
Moira's mind darted to Alastair, and from his maleness and charm to those others: Joel, Justin and Safdar who had used her in her slavery. From all she had received pain and sometimes fear, but men were men, a girl deluded herself in professing unawareness of the power of masculinity. The phallus waited leering on the sidelines while she sought other joys, but it was always there. One false step or careless act and it leaped into penetration. A girl might fight a girl on equal terms, but she could never physically best a man. Compared to Betty's eager but naive need to know, Moira felt infinitely wise. Striving to set aside her pain from the punishment she was enduring she sought distinctions.
"I think the basic thing you and I have to remember is that we're slaves," she said slowly and with care. "Whether our owner is male or female, he or she is authority. If they keep us chained either one can do what they like with us, so in that way there's not all that much difference. I've been whipped and tortured by both and it hurt just the same and I screamed just as loud. But that's only the beginning... " Moira grinned at her audience of one. "Do you really want the full lecture?"
Betty Rogers was enraptured, her hands worked at their bindings in an excited need of motion. "Oh please! Go on. I feel so... so like a little girl who's wondering about the thing between her legs."
Moira sighed and tried to ease her wrists within the circlet of their straps. She was flattered and felt a welling sympathy for this bright eyed young female who had burned one bridge too many. "Once we know we're hopelessly and helplessly captive we come face to face with sex... good old sex!" She eyed her winsome listener wistfully: Betty did indeed have the air of an innocent child. "There again it does not matter which owns you, they'll make you service them. You think you'll die and you endure the most awful whippings and things before you come face to face with the fact you aren't going to die and you might as well get on with the job and put a stop to the agony... by that time you're probably bleeding. So you lay on your back and open your legs or you moisten your tongue and bury your nose in pubic hair and take another step into slavery." Moira's voice trailed away into memories.
"Go on! You're just getting to the good bit," Betty encouraged.
"If we forget all the fancy names," Moira continued pensively. "I think a girl, you or me for instance, can either love or hate her owner. But it's right there we run into strangeness. We ought to hate most of them because of the whippings and the chains and the abasements, but we don't. At least not in the way you'd suppose: this is where our femaleness pops up and puts a skid under all our pretensions. You've seen a dog take a beating from its owner and look up with adoration at the hand that holds the strap: we do it too! We'll try and hide it, even from ourselves. But our cunts get wet and we shiver deliciously before and after, and maybe when its happening. I can't explain it, but it happens regardless of the sex of the one who's enslaved us, and the next bit's purely silly, it's simply that a bond comes into being. It's as though the whip or whatever other awful thing they're doing to us weaves a thread by which we're joined in some sort of complicity, a secret sharing of a fire within our flesh. We look at each other with a knowledge that wasn't there before. Maybe it's only sexual... when the punishment's done they'll use us for their pleasure. Being desired, even that way, does something for a girl."
Betty's eyes were shining, she was drinking in each word with an eager hunger. "But my question, it's still there!"
"You poor darling! Are you sure you're not just man hungry?"
"I don't know. I told you, I'm all of a dither. So much has happened to you... all those marks on your skin. I want to listen."
"I'm not sure a girl in your spot should insist on absolutes, darling. Don't look at me and Gin'. If two girls really find female love they're terribly lucky. I don't care how cruel Ginevra is to me, I just don't! I belong to her, she'll never set me free. But, in a way, she belongs to me. She's my mistress, a sort of dual possessiveness. It's different from the man thing. When a man owns a girl she's his to do what he likes with, she's a bit of a doormat.
Moira made a brief and painful twist of revolt. "Oh damn this fix I'm in! It hurts like hell. I wish Gin' would come back."
"When she does she'll whip you!"
"I know, but I want to get it over and done with and get my poor feet back on the floor." Moira tossed her hair petulantly. "But I'm probably here for the day. So let's get back to the things between our legs. Talking helps me forget my wrists and my toes." She took a deep breath of self pity and continued: "I suppose the difference with a man is that his phallus, his dink, his prick, or whatever you want to call it gives him a natural advantage. Symbolically he beats us with the fool thing. It's a whip of flesh, or gristle or whatever the damn thing's made of! In a way a girl's scared of it in much the same fashion she's afraid of the whip. Sometimes it can give us pleasure, but it's consequences are an eternal threat, a punishment implicit in us being a woman. But for a slave girl it's specific. We are whipped and fucked, we are chained and fucked, we are tossed in the dungeon and fucked. If we are particularly charming and erotic we get fucked for that too. It puts a period on everything he does to us. Lovemaking between girls is gorgeous and goes on forever. But the male penetrates us as far as he can go, spills his seed, covers up the hole and blithely trots off for dinner, or if you're married he turns over and goes to sleep. Isn't that the way of it?"
"So there you have it," Moira said with equal dolor. "I can fall in love with a man, I've done so. But if I've got to be a stave girl I want to be owned by Ginevra, there's a sort of glory between us." She grinned in commiseration. "The hell of it is, it's not necessarily the same with you. Finding out costs a girl a lot of stripes and tears. I'm sure I'll indulge in both before today's finished."
"And so you should, darling." Ginevra's voice pealed laughter from the door. The Mistress walked forward and surveyed the two naked girls to whom her word was law. "You're quite delicious, Moira. I was going to forgive you and let you loose, but I can't. You're just too lovely, I simply must whip you some more and make you scream. I brought the Special one, see." She held up the cascade of silken thongs designed for cunt or breast.
Moira managed a wan smile. "Thank you, mistress."
Mischievously, Ginevra swirled upon a hapless Betty. "Spread your legs, slave girl. If you're going to watch you may as well know how it feels."
Hesitantly, Betty obeyed. Her eye was on the whip. She spread herself as widely as need be.
"Good! Bend a little forward. I'm going to cut up from behind."
The tied wrists rose as the feminine nudity did as it was told. Ginevra swung and achieved a perfect cut up under the inverted V of the thighs so that the lashes splayed across the wet sex and belly with a solid thunk.
Moira watched in amaze and trepidation as the recipient of the blow resumed her normal stance and said carelessly. "Thank you, Mistress. That was delightful."
Ginevra nodded thoughtfully, a small smile crossed her lips. "The disease is catching," she commented casually. "I must put a stop to it before it spreads further. You will please get buck into position. You may indicate a cure whenever you want me to stop."
Poor Betty! Face saving is always painful, it was for her. The stretched pubes took four more lashes before she screamed and tumbled to the floor writhing.
Ginevra gave the new girl scant attention, her concern was with Moira. "Open up, darling. Let's see if you've fought off the virus."
Both girls knew the difficulty of widely separating legs already teetering on tip-toe. But the Mistress was without mercy. She cheerfully watched Moira's efforts to obey and the slave girl's final acceptance of her weight upon her strapped wrists so that she might throw wide her legs to expose her sex as her mistress desired. The lovely body was tense with fear. Ginevra whipped the revealed secret in a total abandonment to joy. The swift shrewd cuts fell on atop the other so that the nakedness they struck was soon whirling and kicking in a frantic response that satisfied the mistress's need to assert authority. Each time a kick or contortion laid hare the sacred place the silken thongs found it in a lightening splat that soon evoked from Moira's lips the screams she had withheld in foolish pride. With them came the tears, but they were tears of relief and thankfulness that the cost of her imprudence would soon be paid. She paid her debt in the coin of agony. A wise and implacable Ginevra exacted them all to the last one.
Three girls! No great difference in age, yet Ginevra was a Goddess to her slaves. She stood in happiness, drinking in the beauty that she owned. It Hung from tortured wrists, its toes pathetically searching for a stable resting place, its breath imposing its own stress upon the heaving breasts, it glistened with the dew of pain. Yet Moira's eyes glowed, when they locked with those of the girl who had whipped her, she nodded silently in an understanding of their own and smiled in love. A bad girl had been punished... that was all!
Betty Rogers saw and dimly comprehended that she was greatly privileged. She gazed upon the scarlet striations on labia and belly of the punished slave and found herself trembling in an emotion she could not name.
"Thank you for whipping me, mistress." Moira's voice held only gratitude. It's utter female humility made a fitting epitaph to her travail.
Ginevra kissed her slave. "Will you still be grateful, if I leave you like that for the rest of the day?"
"Yes, Mistress."
Ginevra turned mocking eyes to Betty. "What! No pleading, no directives!"
".'No, Mistress." Betty's voice was solely abject. She feared the whip.
"I should leave the two of you alone again." The Mistress laughed with pleasure at the two sets of beautifully submissive features. "You manage to talk sense into yourselves. Betty, if your companion is to suffer all afternoon, don't you think you should too?"
Betty squirmed. "If you say so, mistress."
"That was not my question."
"Well, I suppose it would be only fair." Betty managed wretchedly.
"Can't you manage an honest answer? I can help, y'know."
The new slave girl swallowed her qualms. "Please, mistress, I wish to suffer in company with Moira this afternoon."
"I can't be bothered untying your wrists, darling. You won't mind if I raise them up behind so you stand on your toes?"
"No mistress," Betty lied nobly.
It was soon done. A surprised and apprehensive girl bent lower and lower as her bound hands rose higher and higher. The naked shoulders were wracked more and more cruelly as the arm sockets bore more and more of their owner's weight. Small gasping protests were bitten back between resolute lips as the heels left the floor and the upward pull continued. Betty turned a desperate and appealing face to the girl who was designing her punishment.
"Want to hang clear of the floor, darling?" Ginevra asked as though offering a boon.
"No! Oh no! Oh, mistress... please! I'm going to be injured, I know I am. I don't think I can bear it."
"You have to bear it, darling. What else can you do!"
"I'll be terribly well behaved."
"Of course, dear. No mischief this afternoon at all."
"Don't lift me any more... Oh, don't! Ohhhh!"
"There, darling. Just nice. You'll suffer something fierce.
But so will Moira. You'll be able to console each other... compare notes. Nothing like a bit of discomfort to bring two girls together."
"It's not discomfort, it's agony!"
"Complaining, darling?"
"Noooo! But... I'm going to cry. I can't bear... "
"Tears always help, sweet. Let 'em flow. You look delightful, if that's any consolation."
Ginevra kissed her tortured darling once again, patted the well curved out bottom of Betty Roger's, and left her slave girls to their joint solitude. She purposely made the door slam with a menacing finality.
Betty unashamedly wept.
Moira looked at her cruelly tied companion and knew herself the most fortunate of the two. She herself had been tied as was the discontented wife, She remembered its helpless suffering. No matter what a girl did she could not relieve the strain. In the end you just kept very still and prayed your owner would relent. Her own plight was bad enough, but not as had as Betty's. Now that she had been whipped and forgiven her morale might survive the wretchedness of the hours ahead. She was secretly disappointed that she must stand and hang thus. She had felt certain of release when her whipping was finished. But mistresses were unpredictable, Ginevra most of all. Ginevra was laughter and joy and wonder, a gorgeous moonbeam whose treatment of slave girls was dictated mostly by caprice.
"I'm not going to be able to stand this," Betty announced flatly.
Moira herself felt their mistress had lifted the small pathetic heels a long way from the floor. Betty was teetering on her toes almost as badly as she was, and with her arms raised up behind... !
"I can't stand it either," she said dejectedly, "but we're bloody well going to have to."
"But why!"
"Because we're slave girls, silly. You wanted to be a slave."
"I didn't want this."
"Yes you did. This rotten fix we're both in is as much a part of what we are as the whip is."
"But it's... it's so... so unjust."
"We don't have to do something to deserve punishment. I've told you! We're slaves. If Gin' wants to hang us up by our toes, she can. She doesn't have to justify. If she's amused, that's enough. There'll always be enough chains on us so we can't fight or make a fuss. You've seen what making a verbal fuss leads to." Moira tossed her head irritably. "I'll watch my tongue for at least three days."
"I can't stand here like this! I just can't!" Betty desperately sought motions to ease her plight, but found them not. She moaned in despair. "If we scream, does it do any good? I mean, will she come?"
"If she did she'd whip you for making a noise."
Betty screamed.
"Someone call?" Ginevra asked innocently from her silent opening of the door. She wore a kitten full of cream expression.
"You were listening all the time," Betty gasped accusingly.
"Actually, no. I've been making phone calls. Do I gather you are dissatisfied with your situation, darling?"
Betty was scared. "If I said 'Yes' would I be punished extra?"
"Try, dear, it's the best way to find out."
"Yes I'm dissatisfied! No girl could stand much of this."
"Has it occurred to you, sweetie, how nicely bent you are for a few good one's with a cane."
"Go ahead and kill me. I don't care. This is too awful."
"Perhaps just a dozen or so, dear. It's all part of your training."
Moira was watching her mistress with concern. She was tired and she hurt. But if Betty got a dozen with the cane she might very well get the same. She longed despondently for freedom. Her wrists were on fire, she looked up angrily at the tight circlets of leather that held her impotent. When Ginevra picked up the familiar shackles and locked them tightly on her ankles she came close to tears. They were more weight and more helplessness. When her mistress loosed the tractioning harness and unstrapped her hands the tears came in earnest. In a great flood of relief Moira sank to her knees and sobbed against the sleek legs of the girl she loved and who held her utterly in thrall. Her feet were chained, she was still slave. When Betty was similarly freed from the cord that raised her to her toes she, too, wept tears of gratitude. Her wrists remained crossed and tied behind her back, but she sank against the wall and vented her overtaxed emotions from brimming eyes.
"I'm a real bitch!" Ginevra admitted cheerfully. "But I couldn't resist. You should have seen your faces!" She laughed gaily. "You really believed you were fixed for a lovely afternoon on your toes. You might have got it too, but I've run into the most exciting thing... " She paused for effect, but neither of her slaves broke their pose or stemmed their tears.
"Was it that bad!" Ginevra demanded testily.
Betty managed some eloquent nodding, Moira clasped the beloved legs with an even more emphatic clutch, she had her hands, how good it was! Neither slave spoke.
"Those phone calls... " Ginevra spoke almost dreamily. They were really quite stupendous. You ought to be jumping up and down in delight."
Betty cocked a dubious eye. Moira's voice was muffled in her mistress's nylons. "I don't want to... Oh Gin'!"
"The adventure of our lives," declaimed Ginevra complacently. "Betty Rogers, you passionate suburban soubrette, I'm going to make you a present of your heart's desire."
There was a very pregnant silence. Moira's fingers worked desperately on the familiar scented flesh of the mistress she adored. Their touch conveyed between them a message more urgent than words. Betty stopped crying, sitting up she tried unsuccessfully to dry her eyes on a naked shoulder. With commendable resource she raised her knees and achieved her purpose on their less sympathetic surface. She was learning that, even with tied hands, a girl survives. In between these expedient motions she accorded her mistress a degree of attention not visibly optimistic.
"I'm a good mind to hang you both up again," Ginevra declared with mock irritation. "Such base ingratitude!"
"I'm awfully sorry," Betty managed tritely.
"Tell you what, darling," Ginevra said briskly. "I'll make you a sporting offer. I'll untie your hands and you are free to go. By now Lance will probably be quite glad to see you. Take the chance and run. Clothes and money: you can go home in great style. But... ! If you don't! If you stay, you are really going to be for the high jump. So far as freedom goes, you'll have had it."
Moira tensed but did not move. Betty's head reared like that of a startled horse. Her face was not irradiated with joy but, instead, portrayed only dismay. The decision thrust at her was unexpected and daunting. Had she still been hanging in the torture posture it would have been easier to cope.
The Mistress watched in amused compassion. The battle within was mirrored on the lovely face of the girl who sat and twisted in frustration at her hands bound behind her back. She smiled at the wide eyes raised' in appeal. "I can't tell. I don't know. It's a decision I'm not ready to make." Betty's assessment of herself was slow and deliberate. Her next words were angrily vehement. "Leave me tied." The anger was her own. "Please Mistress, don't set me free." She looked up with only a mild curiosity. "What are you going to do with me?"
"We are going on a journey," said Ginevra. Moira wept anew. This time in fear.
BETTY ROGERS
I'm sure I've sounded a bit futile and childish. But really, I'm not! At least I don't think I am. You've got to remember that, for me, the whole thing was pure story book. Half the time I didn't really believe it was happening, the other half I was so shocked with pain and astonishment I couldn't manage any sort of perspective at all: not like Moira can. I admire her tremendously. I envy her.
Ginevra's so terribly wise. Half the time she behaves like a schoolgirl, the rest of the time she's pure Goddess. Belonging to her is frightening: she knows too much about girls. About how to hurt us and make us cry... and about love. She adores Moira. She's wickedly cruel to her, but Moira seems to think this is part of being loved. I have so much to learn, it frightens me.
They both know so much about sex. I thought I did, but compared to them I'm just a kid. Never in my life have I been so aware of having two breasts and two nipples and that thing down in the hair between our legs. Alright, I'll use that word! My cunt. I've always tried to stay away from it. It's vulgar and cringingly explicit. I think Moira and Ginevra started out that way too. I sense their carefree use of the word is for emphasis, for making themselves and me come face to face with something that is. I had an uncle who had a favorite word he used every chance he got. I don't mean vulgarly, but to emphasize. His word was 'Indubitably'. When he came out with it he made it a sort of exclamation mark. So I suppose I might as well admit that indubitably I possess a cunt. I think it's a very nice one. Poor Lance was too much of a gentleman ever to get down there and have a look at it.
The decision hit me like a blow. I wasn't prepared. But I knew the more I thought of it the worse I'd be confused, so I did what you do when the water's very cold: take a deep breath and leap. When I said those humble words, 'Please leave me tied' it was like walking up the aisle at my wedding. Half way along I'd gladly have turned and fled. I suddenly knew what I was doing was crazy. But I took the plunge. I held tight to Daddy's arm and walked firmly away from my lovely fantasies about being raped by handsome Arabs and Mexican bandits, and went instead to a brick maisonette on Acacia Crescent and Lance's vitamin pills that never did him any good or me either.
Ginevra is utterly incredible, she loves playing with fire, she exudes sex like the scent of musk, she spices everything with her own particular piquancy. She adores situations in which Moira or me are faced with alternatives that scare the daylights out of us. You know: would we like to hang by our thumbs or our toes... ! That her two slave girls should sit naked in a Boeing 707 among a hundred other passengers didn't strike her as a bit out of the way. We wore capes, of course, and nylons and shoes, and our hands were very firmly tied behind our backs, but that was all. Moira still had her rings, except for the one in her nose. Even for Ginevra that was a bit much! She pointed out blandly that, as far as the other passengers could tell, we might be dressed in tweeds and woolens under those capes. We went first class, which helped. And I'm damn sure Ginevra let a stewardess in on the secret, they looked so jolly amused every time they eyed our capes. Ginevra has so much money and influence she can get away with anything. She had even considered chartering her own plane, but the notion of Moira and me sitting there like a couple of frightened nuns tickled her fancy so much she dropped the private aircraft idea in favor of our agonies.
She had savored the whole thing in advance with the two of us. We could see she was thrilled. Moira protested as much as she dared without being punished, but it did her no good. She had to content herself with a shrug of resignation and by slipping me wry and rueful looks whenever she thought Ginevra wasn't aware. I suppose you might call it a free discussion, but Moira's ankles were chained and her wrists were handcuffed in front. My hands were still tied behind my back, but I suppose you could say I'd asked for it. I may as well admit that, whilst the plane thing turned me into one huge cringe, the rest of it set a lovely fire burning inside. I was as thrilled as Ginevra herself.
The gorgeous creature instantly saw what I instantly saw. Once on the plane or in the airport I could change my mind. I had only to make a fuss and appeal to any official anywhere and I'd gain my freedom. Easy! Ginevra pointed this out and told me frankly she was curious as to what I would do. She was not a bit concerned, I expect she had the contingency well covered. It didn't seem to occur to anyone that Moira could do the same. But, of course, Moira was only treated the same as me in order to give our mistress a kick, she didn't need to be ankled or tied. She'd have trotted along obediently. But this was another of the times I realized how much it meant to each of them that she be always held in some sort of restraint. I don't think Moira would ever consider herself stark naked unless she was entirely free of bonds. A pair of handcuffs clothed her as adequately as a fur coat.
In the end it did take a small private plane to put us down on the sand outside the wall. At that moment I knew I had chanted, the others knew it too. Instead of making sheep's eyes at each other the way they usually do they both looked at me. After all, why not! What was being done with me isn't all that ordinary. My heart was thumping like billy-o. But I didn't want to run.
"You do my poor house honor," Fazal Safdar said in that flowery way that always annoyed Lance. His eyes flickered over Ginevra and me and settled intently on Moira. "You are exquisitely beautiful," he said as though he meant it. I felt jealous.
"They are naked and bound beneath the capes?" He knew!
"How else!" Ginevra was glowing.
"Permit me." Without permission he whisked away Moira's covering. She stood, proud and ringed. The nylons and the shoes making her erotically naked. For moments he drank in what he saw as might a man starved for beauty. "You have the other ring?" he asked Ginevra without changing focus.
Her answer was simply to find the shining adornment and to lock it gently where it belonged. Moira accepted it as a queen accepts a crown. As it was done, their eyes met. Again I felt a flare of jealousy at what I beheld. I just wasn't there!
"And this is our lovely surrogate, the adventurous and bored Mrs. Robers." Fazal Safdar turned to me, laughing.
I stuck my chin up. I'd face him as tall and proud as Moira. But I sensed that, for Fazal, I would never be as beautiful. I realized, and I wondered if Ginevra had realized, Safdar loved the slave girl he had owned. I understood now why Moira was afraid.
When he stripped me I didn't even blink. I wanted to flaunt a special sort of pride. But I was suddenly tremblingly aware of being merchandise. Quite probably I was on approval: Ginevra would mischievously delight in making some kind of bargain. Somehow I must separate myself gracefully even with bound hands, and said in a clear and, I hope, vibrant voice: "I am your's, lord. I am a gift."
I think it pleased everyone. I head Moira gasp. I bet Ginevra didn't think I had it in me. There came moments of silence while my master gently ran his fingers through my hair. A vivid sensory awareness made me tremble so that I feared it might be seen. When Fazal grasped my arm and lifted me to my feet I was quite sure his fingers left a brand upon my skin.--.
"What are you, child? Tell me." His voice was soft.
"I am a slave girl, lord."
His open hand struck my cheek with such force I stumbled and fell. My bound hands were lost, I hit the rug with a thump, my ear ringing, my cheek afire. There was little grace in the motions by which I managed to sit up and meet the fierce eyes burning down at me in some sort of sardonic amusement. Out of the corner of one eye I glimpsed open mouthed shock on the faces of the two girls.
Fazal lifted me again, he was frighteningly strong. "What are you, child?" He exactly repeated his question.
"I am your slave girl, lord." I hoped the word 'your' would do it.
"This time it was the other cheek, once more I sprawled. I wanted to cry, my dreams were dissolving. My tied wrists told me I was just a package. I had no defence. Or did I... !
On my feet again, his demand was inflexible: "What are you, child?"
"I am your slave, lord. I will obey you. I am your property. My body is for your delight, all of it is your, my breasts, my nipples, my cunt... I exist only as you desire."
The sibilance of his indrawn breath was more potent than the slap of his hand upon my cheek. I dared not look but kept my eyes discreetly lowered. Slave girls do not stare their masters down. I had longed for pride! Perhaps it came at other times in other ways... with a single finger my master tilted up my chin.
"Look at me, slave girl."
He had accepted me! I looked. I knew my eyes were shining. Here was a kind of pride I had never glimpsed. His own were pools of darkness in which I longed to sink forever. With utmost naturalness, the man to whom I had been given leant forward and brushed my lips with his. I flamed.
Fazal Safdar now gave his attention to Ginevra. "Thank you, madam." His voice was gravely courteous. "I find her charming."
"I think she's a lucky girl." Ginevra said honestly.
Moira said nothing, but her smile for me alone held a warmth by which I knew I was now more slave than I had been before.
Fazal clapped his hands.
A girl pushed open the door and wheeled in the trolley. She must have been waiting. She was young, still in early teens. But she was slave, her scanty attire told her status. She was quite lovely.
"An English Tea." Safdar announced. "I would not deprive you of so vital a sustenance." There was a sarcasm hidden in the last sentence. He turned to me. "For this occasion you will be an honoured guest. Please join us."
In the company of four others I was terribly alone: a slave given dispensation to mingle with her betters. I was with them, but no longer of them. Moira outranked me. There was also a new undercurrent. It was between Moira and the serving girl. I guessed they had shared a previous acquaintance. My cheeks burned. No one made any motion to untie my hands.
"Up and around darling." Ginevra said briskly to her love. She untied Moira's crossed wrists, took handcuffs from her bag, and locked her slave girl's hands together in front. "There, you can look after dear Betty." She instructed indulgently. "You didn't want your's set free, did you?" She inquired politely of her host.
Fazal made a small gesture of negation and shook his head. His attention was once more upon Moira. With a martyred air of heroism he took a sip of Tea. "Your Mistress whips you imaginatively, I see." He observed pleasantly.
"Yes, lord."
"Your Foreign Office gave you a comfortable journey back to England, I hope?" The good Inspector and that harridan of a policewoman will not again enjoy immunity in Jedrah." There was venom in the words. .
I partook of food and drink tendered by Moira's chained hands, and felt foolish. I munched while Fazal spoke gravely to my former mistress. "No doubt, madam, you have taken precautions? I am aware of your influential status."
"You wouldn't really enslave us, would you!" She bestowed a good natured smile on his intent features.
"I most certainly would, madam!"
"Well, don't." The laughter had gone from Ginevra's voice. "Today is Tuesday. The plane will pick us up early Saturday morning, our flight is booked Saturday afternoon. If we do not show, our whereabouts are known in several quarters. As you have said, they are influential. I do not believe you would wish to offend them."
Safdar nodded without offence. "I would expect no less of you, madam. Perhaps it is as well I am not tempted. In your way you are as beautiful as your slave who once was mine. I would be less than chivalrous if I failed to desire you. I suspect you would be splendid in chains and nakedness."
"I have known both. Thanks anyway."
He inclined his head. "I know of Soniaive. We can have few secrets from each other."
He mused for a moment, silent, then turned to the serving girl. "Nicole. Relieve our guest of her task. It is you who will attend the slave."
The young brown eyes sought mine knowingly as though we shared a secret. Nicole served me daintily but with insistence I enjoy all the table offered. I noticed whip marks on her skin, but they were of some punishment long past and fading. I felt humiliatingly de trop.
"You are, of course, my guests." Safdar continued affably. "From our conversation on the telephone I gather you wish to observe my training methods with Mrs. Rogers?"
For a moment I wondered who Mrs. Rogers might be. When realisation struck I became one large blush. Nothing ever seemed to be quite what I hoped or expected. Ungratefully I wished Ginevra and Moira would go back home and leave me with this dark eyed man. I had no wish for them to watch whatever he might do to me. By her own act, Ginevra had made me irretrievably his. How strange this entry into slavery! The serving girl offered my lips another tiny sandwich, perhaps they were specially made for girls with bound hands. It was exactly one mouthful.
"That's the point of our brief stay." Ginevra conceded.
"I shall be very cruel to the poor child."
His words sent the butterflies fluttering in my tummy: I as being spoken of like a domestic animal. I took a furtive look down and saw damp fronds of pubic hair. Nicole interpreted my glance, again she gave me that wise and secret smile. Perhaps she, too, was wet. Perhaps the thought of seeing a new slave girl whipped excited the child. I could believe she had seen such things.
"But is it not cruel of you to witness her humiliations?" Safdar enquired thoughtfully. "I would have supposed your wish would violate your code of what you call 'fair play'. Your request comes closer to being something of Jedrah than of your own land."
Ginevra was equal to the sneer. "You are forgetting Soniaive. She told him. "Should you visit England I could arrange for you to be a guest there. Soniaive has an appreciation of human emotions you might find refreshing." With quiet amusement she watched Safdar digest her thought. Then her eyes twinkled with mischief. "For so distinguished a guest we would extend ourselves It might give you pleasure to see me whipped?"
My gasp of incredulity was shared around the room. Fazal Safdar's imperturbability was well creased. "Madam, you are jesting. You are not one of the... "
"I was a slave girl in Soniaive when Herbert Harcourt married me." She said simply. "Until my husband's death I was whipped whenever I returned there for a visit. I am fond of those who own the place."
I watched my Master's face as he assimilated Ginevra's frankness. He was assessing it's truth. "You speak much of the whip, Madam, I suppose there are other diversions?" He asked dryly.
"I believe all of them are there." My former Mistress' agreed. "There is a diversity of membership and taste. "Could you believe that I have been bound naked and covered with treacle?"
"If you say so, Madam." His eyes were stripping her. "And Mrs. Rogers, she has dwelt at Soniaive?"
"No. She knows nothing beyond the whip and the cord. In many ways she is still virgin. Do not underrate my gift."
"You are arrogant. It would give me pleasure to see you humbled."
"Of course." Ginevra agreed, unabashed. "It is the contrast that gives piquancy. I was always a favourite. I am considered one of the most erotic subjects Soniaive has known."
"And the slave girl I purchased: she who sits here so quietly fearful of my authority. How was she rated?"
"Moira is much loved. I'm afraid I have loved her most of all. I have stolen her. I should return her to Soniaive, but I . will never let her go. She's mine." Ginevra smiled at him in candid admission. "Like you, I have much power. No one will contest it. I am greedy only for her. I could have kept this girl you so quaintly refer to as Mrs. Rogers, but I have not kept her. I have given her to you."
"Why?"
"In part because what I have heard of you intrigues me. We females are quite absurd where masculinity is concerned. In part, also, because you are her fantasy, her dream. You may be good for each other. And, in any case, it would seem you are owed something."
Something to be bartered and used! I was furious. But I was furious with jealousy. It was Ginevra this man now wished to rape, not me.
"It would seem to me my claim to Moira is as good as anyone's." Safdar said unequivocally. "If I lock her away from you now, what could you do?"
"Much! Believe me."
I watched their eyes lock. Their wills were equal. Moira looked at me and shook her head. She was desperately afraid.
"Of the three, it would give me the greatest happiness to whip you, Madam." Safdar conceded. "You may have been a slave, but you are not slave now. I would make you one."
She matched the intensity of his gaze. "It will not happen. But if it did I might not be as desolate as you suppose." She gave him a rueful grin. "That is a Complement, y'know."
I could tell that she puzzled him. He was probably looking for motives that were not there. There was something almost regal about Ginevra's present role. Safdar could easily fail to see the mischievous girl lurking beneath the surface. But I was tired of their fencing. I had had enough of being a neatly tied parcel awaiting disposal: to the garbage for all I knew! I wanted Fazal to look at me, to see me as I was, a girl with breasts and cunt and things not visible.
"I'm still here, y'know." I said desperately. "Isn't anyone interested?"
It was a small bomb that caused little havoc. Moira looked horrified, Ginevra smiled in sympathy, Fazal looked irritated. I had an immediate feeling I should have kept quiet.
Fazal Safdar reassessed the conversation. He waved ah impatient arm. "By the way, I owe an apology. Allow me to introduce my daughter. This is the Lady Nicole, the woman of my house."
So she wasn't a serving girl at all! That accounted for her perkiness, for the wisdom behind the young eyes, perhaps also for her beauty. Rich men mate only with the beautiful. I wondered if her mother had been a slave. She dropped us a delightful curtsey, her smile was an elfin wickedness.
"Take Mrs. Rogers and prepare her for the whip." Fazal instructed her off-handedly as though his mind was elsewhere, as indeed it was. "Don't give her serious pain until we arrive, but you may whip her lightly to fill in the time." To me he said soberly. "If you are sensible you will do whatever she directs."
I did not ask what would happen to me if I was not sensible. There was about this man an air that told me all too well. A slave girl would not easily walk out of Safdar's house, there would be lackeys...
I was again furious at what I had become, more furious than fearful. I am sure I looked angry and impudent and rebellious as I followed the twinkling eyed moppet from the . room. Moira looked distraught, no one else seemed to notice my departure.
"I think we'll keep the shoes and nylons." Nicole studied me thoughtfully as though I was a mannequin. "I like the effect, makes you look like a French tart who's misbehaved. Daddy likes it too."
"Don't tell me he noticed." I was really miffed.
The daughter of the House giggled. "You're angry, aren't you! Did you expect Daddy to fuck you in the first half hour!"
No inhibitions! Well why should the little so and so have any! I could imagine the things she'd seen. "I didn't think handsome Sheikhs wasted even thirty minutes." I retorted huffily.
Her laughter was real and unaffected. "Daddy isn't a Sheikh. He's just shockingly rich and powerful. And there's no use you being jealous. If you go on pouting like that I'll just whip it out of you. Daddy isn't going to pay much attention to you while Moira's around."
"What's so special about Moira?"
"If you'd ever whipped her or eaten her, you'd know. Those marks on you... they're all fresh. Are they your first?"
"Yes. And you needn't bother to whip me lightly to fill in the time." I was really feeling cheesed off.
"It's no bother, darling. Here, let, me get you settled. We can talk as I whip you."
I was still a neatly tied package, so I just looked down in curiosity as she chained one of my ankles to a ring in the floor. The metal band was wide and snug, the chain was very short. It meant I could not move from where I stood, there were only four links.
"I want to see how good a slave girl you really are." Nicole said with an implication I wasn't sure about.
When the small strong fingers began to pluck at the knots on my wrists I was pleasantly excited. I'd been tied like that so long it was an event to be released. I'd come to realise that it is by such trifles a slave girl gets her drama. A silly flutter of hope flitted across my mind, but when I tried to move my chained foot it jolly soon disappeared. Sure, I could move it! About two inches either way! Getting my hands untied wouldn't change a thing.
But it felt so good! When Nicole peeled away the last strand from my fettered wrists we both examined the red indentations in my skin, they were so distinct it was as though I was still clasped by some kind of shackle. The kid found them erotic, running her fingertips across the ridges, but all I felt was a vast relief. I rubbed and rubbed and flung my arms in every direction. I was free, free, free!
"Tying a girl's much the best," Nicole commented as though commenting on dishwashing detergents. "You can make it so it hurts her and keeps her knowing what she is. There's less freedom too. But handcuffs are so handy... I'm afraid I use 'em most of the time."
I stuck out my wrists, the act was involuntary. The word handcuffs had triggered it.
The kid laughed at me. "You're trained!" she exclaimed with pleasure. "That was sweet. No, never mind. I'm not going to put handcuffs on you. I'm going to be really cruel, I'm not going to put anything on you at all."
It took a moment to sink in. Then, suddenly, I was absurdly longing to be bound so I couldn't move. To just stand there and take it... !
Nicole watched my face and giggled. "It'll give-you a wonderful chance to show Daddy how good you are." Her elfin eyes were more wicked than ever.
"I can't possibly," I affirmed stoutly. "No girl could."
"Don't know 'till you try."
"To just stand and let yourself be whipped! Come off it!"
"I'll help, darling. Remember, I'm to whip you lightly. It will get you used to the idea of standing still."
"What happens when I can't?"
"You'll find out."
"It's an added cruelty. I suppose that's the idea?"
"Of course, but not entirely. You'll learn control and obedience. But apart from that there's another big advantage. I can tell you how I want you to stand-any position at all, and you'll have to do it. You may feel sure I'm going to whip your cunt or your breasts or your belly, but you'll have to behave and take it. If you were tightly tied you wouldn't be half so versatile."
"I'll end up howling on the floor."
"That's O.K. Whichever way you lay there'll be a lot of you available." She snickered at my woebegone face. "And, darling, I should tell you: there's a lovely way to discourage this crouching on the floor idea. When you do it we whip the soles of your feet, most girls stand right up again."
I could well believe! While I stood there like an idiot the cute little trick rummaged among a sizable collection of whips. Can you imagine... ! A naked girl with one ankle chained to the floor! Right then I knew I'd go home. I'd run all the way to Acacia Crescent and the vitamin pills and count myself a lucky girl! I would if I could... If, if, if! In a flood of awful realization at what I'd done with myself I looked down at the iron on my foot and the ring in the floor. Betty Rogers wasn't going anywhere! I could jolly well stop kidding myself about that. Even if Fazal didn't want me personally, he'd keep me as a scullery maid or a dishwasher. Or, more probably, he'd sell me for a tidy sum to some ancient geezer with a pot belly.
You get the picture! Sold myself into slavery so I could be romantically ravished by Fazal Safdar, and here I stood waiting to be lightly whipped by his moppet of a daughter while he enjoyed himself with a couple of girls, one of which wasn't even a slave. In other words, Ginevra with her clothes on was more enticing than me naked! And as for Moira, well... ! Talk about chagrin... !
And I loved that 'lightly whipped' bit! I was to be used as a toy, a pretty grown up doll, until such time as my Master and his guests deigned to show up and whip me so I screamed. Come to think of it, what was I being whipped for anyway! I hadn't done anything.
"Is there any rational reason why I have to be whipped?" I asked dear little Miss Safdar.
I'm damn sure the little minx always knew what I was thinking. Not hard to figure, I suppose. She grinned and shook her head. "No, not really. I enjoy it, that's reason enough. Daddy will whip you because you were cheeky back there. You were, y'know! And anyway, every new girl gets a good whipping at the start. It lets her know what to expect."
"More of the same!" I really felt bitter.
"Sure, but often there will be a good reason, one you can understand. You're being terribly cheeky and irritable right now, and it just won't be tolerated." She grinned impudently. "Don't you think I should start whipping you now, it'll take your mind off Daddy fucking Moira instead of fucking you."
I wanted to cry, or to scream, or to stamp my foot and throw things. Anything rather than stand there meekly and be 'lightly whipped'. There was something about that term that curled me up. But there was no use making an enemy of this damn kid who could do what she pleased with me. In any other situation I'd have thought her sweet, a real pixie. But I hadn't been brought all these thousands of miles to be humiliated by a character from Peter Pan. "How do you want me to behave while you're doing it?" I inquired politely.
"You're even more insulting when you're polite. To start I want you to clasp your hands at the back of your neck, hold your head up and stand still. Try it."
I tried it. I hoped I looked too nice to whip. I felt about three hundred percent naked. The shackle on my ankle seemed to weigh a hundred pounds.
At that point in my career as a slave girl I didn't have the background to judge the niceties of being whipped on my bare skin. It all hurt like blazes. Sure, some strokes were harder than others, but while they were hitting me I just wanted to die. Being whipped is awful! That 'lightly whipped' had sounded humiliatingly childish, but I needn't have worried. The first time Nicole wrapped the quite slender lash round my tummy I howled and hugged my wound.
"That's supposed to earn you a lot extra." The moppet informed me with serious concern about a poor performance.
Well, alright! I'll admit I wasn't dying. It had just hurt me more than the word 'light' had led me to hope. "I'm sorry. I'll try and do better." I promised humbly, and put my hands back behind my neck.
The next one was on my bottom. I absorbed it with just a flinch and a gasp.
"See! You can if you try," said little Miss helpful.
My 'light whipping' continued in a measured tempo that made my gasps and groans always a stroke or two behind. I had a feeling of losing ground against the pain. "Couldn't you space 'em out a bit more?" I pleaded with sickening humility. "I really am trying to stand still."
Nicole gave my request a bit of thought, about three seconds worth. "I suppose I could." She conceded grudgingly. "You are trying, I can tell. Let's stop for a moment and look at your marks."
Two girls making admiring exclamations over a new dress! That's what it was like. Even I was doing it, searching out the pink lines on my skin and tracing their tenderness with the tip of a finger. "That's about right," said my teenage torturer judicially. "They won't take too long to go away and won't interfere with anything Daddy wants to do to you."
How nice! My skin could be used twice in one afternoon, real conservation! But I didn't voice the sarcasm. Instead I asked pathetically. "Do you just keep on whipping me like this until the company joins us? I'm not sure how long I can I stand... "
"Let's find out, shall we!" said little Miss merciless brightly.
She whipped me more slowly. There were perceptible pauses between the blows. I worked hard at selling myself on the conviction I could do it. Just don't panic, that was the drill! Never allow the thought that the next cut would slice you in two. Lock my imagination away and think only of how wonderfully clever and courageous I was, and how much Nicole must be admiring me. The scorching impacts fell one by one until my nudity was like a blushing zebra.
I broke quite suddenly. One stroke I was doing fine, with the next came realization that this could go on and on and on. I was hurting all over. Nicole had whipped me wherever the fancy took her. Life didn't seem worth while if this was the way it was to be now. I didn't care, I'd lost conviction, my courage vanished. I sank down on my knees and, burying my face in my hands, blubbered in despair.
It would be poetically sweet to tell of how my young mistress caressed my bent head and murmured endearments. But I can't because she didn't! She did not even hesitate in the rhythm of her blows, and I became very conscious of the fact that I was displaying a fine expanse of once white back and shoulders for her attentions. The stripes curled and slapped as inexorably as if I'd been standing straight. I suppose that's a convenient thing about a naked girl: you can whip her anywhere.
I didn't look up. I was scared what I might see. I buried my mind in the nice safe darkness of my hands while my poor skin took slash after slash of Nicole's whip. For a little while she let me live in a world of my own in which I brokenheartedly remembered all those lovely cunt wetting fantasies through the years that had led me unerringly to where I now knelt on the stone floor and flinched and cringed and sobbed under the whip of a teen-age child. Serves me jolly well right! I can hear you saying it.
That bloody chunk of metal round my ankle! I was hating it more every stroke. It made me stay where I was and endure. There was nothing I could do to defeat it. Implacably it kept my foot its prisoner. My mind flashed through the possibilities of what I could do. Roll on the floor and scream, stand up and go round and round with my chained ankle a pivot, or should I try and grab the whip and pull it out of Nicole's hand. Supposing I succeeded, what then! My ankle would still be chained, she could get a worse whip and cut me to pieces. The whole dilemma was neatly solved for me by Nicole herself. With a far heavier blow than anything yet, she slashed the upturned soles of my feet.
I suppose there are those who write for a living who could describe it: some ringing phrase: dots and dashes and asterisks: a quintessence of everything that's ever been penned of anguish. I can't! In that alone you can glimpse what it was like. It simply curled me up in a ball of sickening nerve rending agony in which I screamed and moaned and ineffectually tried to tuck the soles of my feet into some sort of haven the way sea creatures take refuge in discarded shells. By Jedrah standards Nicole was kind. She could have gone on slashing away at whatever bit of me happened to be uppermost at the time. But she just stood there with her whip, waiting, and looking down at me with immense curiosity. I'm sure my performance deserved an audience.. I managed to get quick looks at her as I did my thing. Next to trying to cope with the impossible pain I was concerned to know if she was going to hit me again.
You see, with all my contortions and writhings I had become shockingly aware that the only way to shield the soles of my feet was to stand on them, there just was no other way! I could manage something for the one that was free, but the chained one stayed within an inch or two of its ring and practically begged to be whipped again. It was as though it stuck itself out there in sheer bravado. I was almost angry at the poor hurt thing. When Nicole put down her whip and exchanged it for a cane and then rapped my tethered foot with it my whole world stopped. I didn't do anything I should have done. In pure panic I tugged against my shackle and its chain so that actually I offered a perfect target which the dear child cut accurately with a swift and brutal blow.
Except in unconsciousness, our mind functions. Screaming and moaning, and quite certain I would never walk again, I was impelled by but one compulsion no matter its cost. I must stand upon my wounded feet so that they might not be struck again. In a flinching, sobbing welter of despair I rose on one foot and kept my balance by leaning against the chain by which my injured foot was held. I was scared to put it on the ground.
"There won't be any bones broken," Nicole said casually.
I didn't believe her. My foot was ruined. The pain shooting up my leg from it enveloped my whole being, everything was broken and shattered, including my lovely dreams. I had become just a silly naked girl who wanted to run back to her equally silly husband. That about tells you my frame of mind. But there was no running away for Betty Rogers. No way! The anklet told me I'd burned my last bridge.
"It's a good thing we did this before Daddy comes," Nicole said as though we'd helped each other darn a sock. "It should help you' no end."
There is no ultimate, no end to anything, there is always another river and another hill and another hurt. Standing there, sweating from fear and pain, both my feet on fire, my body covered with the pink kisses of Nicole's 'light whipping', I realized that what had been done to me was only a prelude, a filler in of time before my main performance. I am sure the child regarded it as helpfully educational. She had introduced me to some groundwork from which I should profit.
At the time I don't think I saw that moment for what it was: a milestone, a chapter, a moment of truth. A period placed upon a slave girl's sentence before she moves inevitably into sequences dictated by others than herself. When a girl becomes slave, either by capture or by the yielding of her own person, she believes the act complete. But it is only the beginning. The chains may hold her secure, the cords deny her freedom, the whip enforce obedience. But she enters her slave state with a mind inured and conditioned to choice and decision. In the first days of her captivity this errant mind will rove and continue its explorations of the possibilities of life, but it has lost its motive force. The slave girl's body is not free, it is owned. It takes the mind much longer to adjust itself to the reality of being subject, that no intensity of feeling or of wish can counter the solid fact of its subjugation to the will of someone else. This knowledge comes painfully and in poignant steps, as it came to me then. All reason dictated that I had been punished enough. But the reason was mine, the decision was not!
I must have looked sad and abject and scared. Nicole was touched, she kissed me, her hands had that electric something that can tell of compassion and of love. For the moment we were girl to girl. "I'm going to freshen you up a bit before the others arrive," she said softly.
I stood while she laved my sweaty skin with a damp cloth, then my hair and my face. Giggling, she even did a brush up on my pubic hair. I felt inordinately better but still scared.
"I won't whip you any more," she consoled. "You're beautifully marked. Daddy will be pleased enough. You can show him your foot if you want. If you insist on limping he'll want to know why."
"I'll never manage to stand up to be flogged the way he'll flog me," I wailed. "What's going to happen! Please tie me so I can't move, then-I can faint and that's the end of it."
Her cocked eyebrow held faint amusement. "I've been whipped, I know what it's like." She grinned in complicity. "I'm a bad girl sometimes, and in Jedrah bad girls get whipped just as hard as a slave girl does. I've learned a girl can always stand it: I don't mean she won't scream and be sure she's going to die, but she'll survive. We're a lot tougher than we think we are. I don't know what Daddy will do to you when he shows up... He may not do anything at all."
Hope! Wonderful fickle hope! A slave girl lives by it. But it is a negative hope: she may not be this, she may not be that. Once I had walked with unmarked skin and known not my blessedness. Now my hope was only that the weals I bore would not be added to. "Did not your father want me bound?" I asked tentatively.
"No. Your ankle hobble will please him as it pleases me." Nicole kissed me again. "It is sweet to watch your face as you await each stroke. I think I may always punish you so."
I belonged wholly to a child! She could do as she pleased with me: I would be humble before her, my Arabian Nights dissolved. I was cheated! Or had I simply cheated myself! Jealousy flared afresh at Nicole's musing.
"Poor Daddy! He would love to whip this proud Ginevra of yours."
"Your Daddy would love to whip any girl but me!"
Nicole clapped her hands gaily at my bitterness. "I thought you feared his whip! Now you want it." She ran her hands thoughtfully over my breasts so that I stiffened and gasped. "You poor silly girl, all you really want is his attention and his bed." She giggled at some memory. "If you flaunt this wish of yours he will probably chain you to a ring beside his bed so that you will sleep upon the rug... alone!" She twinkled at another thought. "If I was my father I would do that to you so you could watch me fuck that lovely ringed Moira all night long."
She was so damned cocksure. I wanted to shock the little vixen. "Have you ever been fucked?" I asked from my adult superiority.
Nicole still held the cane with which she had hit my foot. It cut with swift venom. I doubled over with the agony of the new weal over and round my hip. "You do not speak to me like that!" Her voice was passionate with fury. "I am the lady Nicole of the House of Safdar."
Gosh, that thing hurt! The shock of the blow set me on both my feet so that my yelp was half from the pain of my wounded sole. I moaned and twisted miserably, once more reduced to a nothing. But I kept an anxious eye on the cane, there was nothing to stop her flailing away some more. "I'm sorry." I quavered. I really meant it. I was sorry.
Nicole offered me the cane. "Kiss it and hand it back."
I accepted the beastly thing as though it was a viper. My nose was indeed going to be rubbed in the dirt., I kissed it as reverently as I could contrive, then hesitantly proffered it back. I felt certain I was in for a rain of blows. But they did not come. Both of us turned to the opening of the door and the entry of Fazal Safdar.
What I beheld left me with my mouth wide open.
"Now that the children have gone to play we may approach our more serious purposes," Fazal Safdar said indulgently as the door closed behind the indignant back of his newest slave girl.
"I'd rather like to watch your daughter's methods," Ginevra hinted firmly with amusement.
"We are most unkind to poor little Mrs. Robers, she feels rejected."
"Why do you keep calling her Mrs. Rogers?"
Safdar shrugged. "Perhaps because it is the way I see her. Beside the two of you she seems faintly domestic." His dark eyes sought Moira's rings. "I am robbed of a bird of Paradise and in exchange given a clucking young hen."
"Betty could be anything you choose to make her," Ginevra told him wisely. "But it will take your hand, not Nicole's. Please don't underrate my gift." She pouted at him prettily. "Honestly, I'm disappointed."
Safdar only smiled, his gaze returned to Moira. "Why do you speak so little, child? You know you own my heart."
Moira's fear lessened no whit, but the heat in her loins leaped into fire. "I am only a slave girl, lord. I know my place. My Mistress speaks for me." She dared not meet his eyes, but kept her own submissively lowered.
"Look at me, girl!"
Fearfully she obeyed. Instantly she was drowned in the black depths she had sought to evade. Neither of them needed words. In that moment they were alone. Ginevra had vanished.
"Go to our bedchamber, child."
Moira was riven. It was happening. Her fears had not been groundless. Her fists clenched white against her handcuffs.
All of her had become subject to the intense maleness of this man. In desolation she slid to her knees upon the rug and pitifully held out her chained hands to toward Ginevra. "Mistress... F "Hey, what goes!" Ginevra looked from one to the other of them in dismay. She glared fiercely at Fazal, but her words were for her slave. "Get up off the floor, you idiot! Sit down and behave."
"She will kneel as she is," Safdar said softly. "She is mine."
No one moved, but breathing had quickened in all three. "I've warned you," Ginevra said icily to Fazal. "Surely a man like you doesn't deal in theatricals, this is right out of an old movie."
Fazal Safdar gave her his most enigmatic smile. "You are absolutely right, no posturings. It is very simple... Think!"
They held their small tableau as though immobilized.
Moira knelt, head bowed. She was trembling. Safdar's maleness spread its aura upon them all, his smile was thin lipped. Ginevra was stricken with a vision she did not wish to see.
"A wise man accepts such gifts as Allah wills," Fazal said affably. Neither girl answered.
"You have a saying, I believe, that half a loaf is better than no bread." Safdar advanced thoughtfully. They waited, pigeons in a trap.
"If you have followed my suggestion and employed thought," Fazal continued equably. "You will have observed a lapse of time between this moment and Saturday morning when your charter plane arrives to take you from Jedrah."
"You rotten bastard!" Ginevra exclaimed furiously. "Where's your Arab hospitality!"
"You forget, madam. You invited yourself." He sneered. "Your motive was hardly the most commendable: to watch our little housewife tortured."
"Are we worth the trouble you're going to get into?"
"Chivalry demands an affirmative, madam." His eyes once more strayed to the kneeling slave girl, her rings and her handcuffed wrists. "But I could say 'yes' a thousand times and mean every one of them."
"For so short a time... " Ginevra was puzzled and probing. "You cannot possibly hold us forever."
Safdar shrugged, his smile was now hawk eyed. "Three days, madam. Perhaps, for you, I can make them seem eternal, I would be satisfied with that. Your prudent schedule shall be maintained. If you cannot walk to your plane on Saturday morning, we will carry you. Our bird of Paradise will then attend her mistress and minister to your wounds."
"Damn you, are you planning to break my legs! If I'm sent away in that condition I'll see to it your walls come tumbling down."
"No wall will fall, madam. We both know this."
Ginevra knew! Bitterly she cursed her own erotic caprice by which Safdar would profit. Three days... and nights! What would the bastard do to her! She was resentful of Moira's subservience to the man she so submissively addressed as 'lord'. But she recognized in herself the same compelling female instinct to respect and to fear the power of the Male. "I suppose you have an agenda?" she inquired icily.
"Only to humble you."
"Would you like me to grovel and kiss your feet now and get it over with? I am quite willing to do so. You're not going to get any proud protestations out of me. Don't forget: I was enslaved once before."
Safdar nodded, assessing her quality. "You have an obvious weapon." He conceded. "You will dive into your agonies with both feet and thus rob me of the job of breaking you."
"I have already been broken. It is not so long ago that I cannot revive my humilities to provide you with an erection. By the way, do I address you as master or lord, or both?"
"I can at least curb your insolence," Safdar mused pleasurably. "You will call me 'Master'. It is those I love who call me lord." Thoughtfully, he tugged at a bell rope.
The two men appeared in bare seconds. Ginevra suspected they had been awaiting the summons. They were mute and muscular. They stood at attention for a few moments, smiling at some knowledge of their own, then left as swiftly as they came.
"I speak from strength," Fazal Safdar said quietly.
"I'm disappointed, Master. I had hoped to be beaten into submission by your hand alone." Ginevra's incredible power of adjustment had slipped into gear. Moira's heart bled for her Mistress, she was adorable, she was on the verge of being cruelly used.
"Strip! Everything... naked!"
Ginevra laughed at him. "That's a hackneyed bit of dialogue. I'm damned if I'll be that obliging! You can bloody well make me."
Moira watched and trembled. It was too frighteningly easy. Fazal pulled Ginevra from the chair, slapped her to the floor before she could claw at him, put a foot on her back, and rent away the costly flimsy coverings from the lovely nakedness. It had taken little more than a minute to bare her mistress in shame.
But shame was no part of Ginevra. She lay naked under the brutal grinding thrust of the boot upon her back. Fazal was in no hurry to let her rise, nor did she struggle or beat her fists upon the rug. "You did that well," she conceded. "Better than I thought it could be done... Master."
"You wanted it done, you heated bitch," Fazal chuckled in masculine complacency. "I'm right, aren't I?"
"You are right, Master. I wanted you to beat and strip me."
Fazal could not conceal delight. He took away his booted foot, sat down and watched the nude Ginevra gather herself upon her knees so that she knelt as Moira knelt, save that she was not chained. "You are clever and you are shrewd." He acknowledged. "You are cutting losses and seizing any passing advantage. You would get an erotic stimulus if I now raped your cunt. But I deny you that delight. Your cunt will be whipped instead, but at my convenience. You would wish me to sodomize you: that pleasure too I withhold, there is a large wooden plug... " He laughed at the chagrin she could not hide.
"You do me honor, Master." All sarcasm was expunged from Ginevra's voice.
His small inclination of the head acknowledged her cleverness. "I see a line before us." He mused, eyeing her quizzically. "Below it I brutally beat you into defeats that accord me no victory. Above it your wit and that lovely flesh are pitfalls I must evade. My task is to humble and to hurt you in such ways your pride will not sustain."
"I am sure my Master is equal to his task. It is self imposed." Once more Ginevra's words were sterilized of emotion.
"Ask me to cane your cunt."
"Please cane my cunt, Master."
"You see!" Fazal chuckled. "You made a quick computation. Instant obedience saved you the blow that would have knocked you sideways. And perhaps I will not cane you after all. I may be only testing. I am truly going to enjoy besting you. For a beginning we will join Nicole and dear Mrs. Rogers. You will then politely implore my daughter to bestow upon your cunt the most severe attention of her slenderest cane."
For Ginevra it was a bitter moment. She watched her Master offer his hand to aid Moira to her feet. Grudgingly she stood, more conscious of her nudity than she had supposed, and inquired distastefully: "You wish me to follow like a puppy dog?"
"You prefer a leash?" His voice was sharp.
She shrugged and turned towards the door. What was the use! Moira was handcuffed, she alone could not best this man. Most probably he could handle the two of them. Moira was on her feet, in the act of helping her rise Safdar had examined the handcuffs on her wrists. Testingly, he slid them up and down, then positioned them as he chose and clicked them each a notch tighter. The slave made no protest. Once more the two clicks as the steel bands were compressed smaller still. This time the girl who wore them winced. "Enough to hurt, my dear." Safdar said softly. "I do not want you to forget."
At the door, Ginevra paused and spoke, her words were like the last forgotten lines of a play. "Master, you have made a contest, a sort of battle in which you will provoke me to fight. If I could I would surrender now. I know I can't win. I don't even want to seem to try." She turned and strode towards her punishment.
Five females and a man! Fazal Safdar dominated them utterly. The scene was his. His daughter deferentially stepped back to let him take the stage. She flexed the cane idly in her hands and eyed her parent with pert curiosity. Betty Rogers was smitten by belated modesty and fluttered her hands from pubis to breasts until aware of amusement in the faces of her audience. Defiantly she let her arms fall limp at her sides and stuck out her chest. The newcomers saw in sympathy the chained ankle that held her where she stood. Fazal nodded approvingly at the welter of pink streaks she could not hide. "You found my daughter a competent exponent of the whip, my dear?" He asked politely.
"Yes, Master." Betty dared say no more.
Fazal bestowed an enquiring gaze upon the naked woman he was determined to debase. He had no need of words. The captive knew her lines.
"Please, Lady Nicole, I ask you to cane my cunt. The blows must be severe. I will obey you." Ginevra's voice held a strange warmth. Moira wondered, intuitively, if her mistress would extract some erotic heat of her own from her enforced martyrdom.
Nicole's elfin eyes danced in delight. Her father's nod of approval was all she needed. "The narrow bench please, madam." She requested Ginevra with sarcastic deference.
No torturer's victim was ever better versed in submission to the inevitable than Ginevra. She acknowledged the nymphet's order with a shrug and a wry grin, and positioned herself on the unyielding wood. She allowed her arms to fall limply on each side, and did no more than quietly smile as Nicole strapped tight her wrists at the lowest extremity, she even helped as best she could as her legs were grasped and tugged lower so that her behind protruded without support over the end of the thing on which she lay. She drew up her knees and lay still while Nicole buckled on the leather anklets and their ring. When each of her legs was pulled tautly sideways and raised to support some of her weight she accepted the obscene exposure of her pubic hair and the ripe lips within without comment or blush. She smiled at the grief stricken Moira reassuringly, and carefully averted her eyes from Fazal Safdar. Ginevra had become a gloriously lovely sacrifice upon an altar of shame.
She was to be spared nothing! She might not meet his eyes, but he now possessed her utterly. With grave and reverent mein Safdar moved to where he could look down at Ginevra's shameful nakedness from within the frame of her spread thighs. Without hesitation his hand traced a path down the soft inside surface and came to rest upon her pubic mound. There was nothing tentative in his touch. It was deliberate and authorative, Safdar was testing a possession. His palm made a handful of her sex and squeezed it hard. Ginevra tried hard not to respond, but he repeated his pressure until she made an involuntary gasp. "Look at me, madam."
The abased eyes were the tribute he sought. She gave it him, she met his dark scrutiny without courage. He had reduced her. Ginevra, while on the bench, knew herself a cunt, a wide open cunt. All who looked would see only that: a cunt waiting for the kisses of the cane. She could moved only her head, but she did not change her gaze.
"You have a last request?"
She cringed at his sardonic satisfaction. Ginevra took a shrewd guess at what was required of her. "Please have Nicole cane my cunt, Master." She pleaded with an ardor she did not feel.
Again he accorded her the grave inclination of the head. It was a salute between warriors. Safdar stepped aside to yield precedence. Ginevra's cunt felt naked without his hand.
Ginevra was glad of her decision to scream. The moppet's blows with the cane were as skilled and forceful as those of a sadistic adult. She had considered trying to keep silence for the first few strokes: some sort of pride, she supposed ruefully. But as she screamed lustily under the first cuts she knew her courage could have prevailed over no more than the first two blows, they fell with such precise precision on so intimate a part of herself that the exquisite agony broke down all defense. Nakedly she delivered herself to the infliction and thought no more of pride or of the eyes that watched. Her cunt was the center of the world, and all the pain of the world was placed upon it with each successive cut.
Nicole was clever and experienced, she was also ambidextrous. She used the angles and planes and curves that were the natural contours of Ginevra's loins to her own advantage. She caned from no single stance, but moved slowly and alertly round her victim, slashing straight down between the spread thighs for a single stroke and for the one that followed a slanting cut from either side across the taut belly and the swollen lips. She could vary this by cutting the naked girl across the base of a thigh or the crease where thigh and belly met, but always some tip or portion of the cane would bed itself upon or within the soft lips designed for love.
Ginevra's screams were a cry of anger and despair as well as pain. Her plight was doubly bitter in the knowledge she should have heeded Moira's fear. Pride before a fall! Inwardly she conceded the justice of it. But she was drenched in pain, and anguished by an awful apprehension of whatever jeopardy awaited her beloved Moira and the absurd but innocent Betty Rogers. She felt certain her female flesh was bursting asunder beneath the blows. How could she know they would not be similarly tortured!
Ginevra screamed piteously in all the tempos and inflections of her desolation and despair. To those who watched as she had never seemed more glorious. Yet the inward reactions of each was widely diverse. The moppet who wielded the cane was consumed by a tingling lust for the woman creature whose nakedness she had bound and whose sex she whipped. For Nicole, Ginevra was different, something new, excitingly female.
Betty Rogers stood in frozen horror. No fantasy she had ever dreamed had encompassed what she now beheld. She felt certain it was for her benefit alone Fazal was demonstrating his contempt, contempt for what she was and had been, and for her sex. He was cruel, but for her his cruelty held none of the spine tingling eroticism of her imaginings. At the worst, or perhaps the best, she had seen herself delightfully bound in some revealing pose, some scrap of a torn garment still clinging to her nakedness, her figure enhanced and revealed by the nature of her bonds. The man would have mocked her lovingly as he whipped, and she would have treasured each stripe even as she screamed. It had been a beautifully aesthetic picture in which hers had been the stellar role. At the end he would have raped her, muttering endearments. She would have smiled in victory as his arms hungrily clasped her blood-stained back. But not too much blood...
Now this! The loveliest woman she had ever seen, stripped and bound obscenely on a bench to have the lips of her vulva beaten with a cane in the hands of a precocious child while others watched her shame. It was a shame Betty shared. She had never imagined the use of a woman's body in such a way, it shattered all her concepts of what might or should be done to her own. If Fazal, out of masculine pique, could do this to Ginevra he could do it to her. Without thinking, her hand explored her own bush and that which lay within. It was wet! She felt guilty and defeated. She tugged resentfully at her chained ankle. The soles of her feet still hurt bitterly.
Moira had never in all her slavery felt so nearly a nonperson. Her worst fears had been realized, but the agonies of what was taking were being inflicted on others. She suspected her own time would come. But Fazal's animosity against Ginevra had taken precedence over all else. She felt a welling sympathy for the one time wife standing forlorn and naked with her shackled foot the only evidence of the glory she had not found. It-would have been easy to laugh at Betty's frustrations and pique, but laughter had ceased to be appropriate to anything. Moira's wrists hurt. The tightly locked steel bands were like the grip of Fazal's own fingers, strong and unrelenting. Handcuffs had never bothered her in this way before. Often they had been tight, but never like this! A sense of the frailty of woman possessed her. In this room were four females, all subject to the will of a single man. The screaming girl fastened to the bench was being tortured, she herself and Betty were not allowed a single moment's unawareness of pain.
But it was by Ginevra that her heart was torn. As Nicole plied the cane in tireless concentration, Ginevra's cries knifed into her slave girl to the point where Moira sank to her knees before the omnipotent male and with her painfully linked hands sought his that she might kiss it in submission and plead. "No more, lord! Please don't beat her any more." To Fazal she was an exquisite child. Absently he stroked e silken hair and allowed her lips to linger on his hand. But intent smile was for the bench and the screaming el mess strapped to it. He had never felt a greater satisfaction in the whipping of a girl than now was his in the agonizing shaming of Ginevra's pride.
"Please, lord,, make Nicole stop. Has not my Lady been punished enough!"
"No, child, she has scarce begun to pay her debt."
"Please, lord! She is very sweet... "
"Would you take her place, girl?"
"Yes, lord, willingly. Please allow me... "
"You are the most lovely of them all," said Fazal Safdar. His fingers lingered in the slave girl's hair, but he gave no order.
The caning of Ginevra's cunt continued busily.
GINEVRA
The bastard! The dirty rotten son of a bitch! A man, ugh! The bitter epithets rolled over and over in my mind as I screamed and the intently smiling child beat me with her cane again and again over my totally revealed cunt. O.K.! What should I call it! There's lots of names, none half as good. My cunt was being cruelly caned, and that's the end of that!
I was eaten by guilt. All my own fault! You bloody fool! You overconfident idiot! I mixed up my self condemnation with my hate. It was a fine old mixture of emotions I was screaming about. Among them was an absurd satisfaction with being whipped where I was and the way I was. Serves you right, you blithering idiot female! I told myself righteously. But I can't fool myself about a thing like that: I just hoped my cunt wasn't getting wet enough to make a sodden splatting sound from the cane. Fazal was winning hands down. I didn't want him to win that one too.
The pain was pretty bad. Towards the end it began to merge, the agony continuous so that the individual blows lost their punctuation and became one long howling awfulness. I couldn't raise my head enough to look down, "that damn kid had tied me so tight I couldn't move, but I wanted to look at myself in the worst way. I was sure my sex was cut to ribbons. But a girl is always certain of things like that while it's being done to her. Afterwards you're amazed to find yourself still in one piece, you feel a bit cheated of the drama.
But I was pretty far gone, wrapped up in myself so that only I hurt and only me mattered. I just longed for the cane to go away and leave me in a vacuum. You know: just lovely nothing! But a girl never gets what she wants or expects, Fazal would make certain of that. Anyway when the cane did stop it took me awhile to realise it. I'd closed my eyes so I wouldn't see the beastly thing rise and fall as it bit at me, but the pain had so taken hold of everything round my pubic hair and had spread out into every crevice I owned that it was a little while before I opened an eye and, shamefacedly, looked around. It wasn't 'till then I knew I'd stopped screaming and was just making pathetic sort of moans.
Fazal came into focus first-he would! He gave me a small sort of bow along with his Sphinx-like smile. I'd have automatically responded to it but I couldn't, I was still strapped tight. It was the warrior salute again and made me proud: we females are too ridiculous for words, we shouldn't be running around loose! Through all that's happened to me I've always half regretted Alastair hadn't kept me safely chained in one of Soniaive's dungeons.
Poor darling Moira was on her knees clutching the bastard's robe and looking round at me with big hurt eyes so I knew what she'd been doing: pleading for her mistress! I wondered if it had done me any good. Betty Rogers stood there kicking at her hobble and looking as though she felt a lot more sorry for herself than she did for me. Well, why not! I hadn't done the poor kid much of a favour. All in all I was. feeling in just about the way Fazal Safdar wanted me to feel: a thrashed bitch. But thrashed in such a place... ! He now proceeded to cap my misery with a neat bit of finesse. With great tenderness he raised my slave girl to her feet, kissed her cheek and patted her bottom.
"Go to our bed, child." He ordered her in that lovely vibrant voice he kept for her special benefit.
I could have howled my head off. She was my slave girl, mine, mine! He had no right! Without a word, and carefully avoiding my eyes, Moira turned and walked proudly to the door. She did not look back! After pausing long enough to enjoy the expression on my face and slip me another of his salutes to the vanquished, my new Master turned and followed her from the room "Daddy likes Moira." Observed the darling daughter. "I bet he gives her a really good fucking. She's sweet. She tastes gorgeous."
Once more I wanted Jo scream in jealousy. Everybody seemed to enjoy my slave girl, my own precious possession. I resolved that if we ever got out of the jackpot we were in I'd have a serious talk with my beloved and then give the sweetheart a damn good whipping to get her safely back on the proper track. With everyone in love with her I could well see how a girl might go astray "Why doesn't he fuck me?" Said a voice from the wilderness.
Nicole churgled, even I had to smile. Betty Rogers never managed to say the right thing at the right time.
"Daddy's going to give you to the men-servants, darling." Nicole told her mischievously. "There's quite a lot of them. They'll fuck you one after the other, so I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time. Do you want me to tie you down nicely spread out for it, or do you want your hands and feet to give them a really nice job."
Betty sniffed. She wasn't quite sure about that one. I wasn't sure either. But it wasn't impossible. It would amuse Fazal to give the errant little wife more than she bargained for.
My reflections on that score were abruptly terminated by something so unexpected it sent me surging against my straps enough to make them creak. Two very wise young lips and a tongue that felt like a vigorous young python had taken possession of the thing she had been busily caning just a few minutes ago and was going to work on it with a fury that told me she'd been wanting to do it for a long time. Nicole was starved and was avidly appeasing her hunger.
You know about these things, don't you! Sure, she drove me crazy. I'd never felt anything like it. Maybe the whipping had heightened my sensitivity instead of destroying it as I supposed. My swollen wounded cunt was as eager for her as she for it, they positively lapped at each other. I strained at the straps and moaned and made all sorts of disgraceful sounds so that I expect I put on a more shameful performance than when I was being whipped. In between orgasms I caught glances at Betty Rogers face. It was utterly stricken. I guessed they'd never done things like that wherever it was she came from.
I was fastened perfectly. I wouldn't have changed a thing. I didn't ever want to be free.
I'd hated being controlled by a child. But Nicole was in a class by herself! I began to pick up erotic impulses from the kid. She was vividly sensuous and completely involved. She adored what she was doing. When she had satisfied herself with me she walked over to the thunderstruck girl with the hobbled foot.
"Lay down, darling, and stretch."
Betty looked as if she'd been told to cut off her right leg. "I couldn't possibly!" She exclaimed as though refusing an extra slice of cake at Tea.
Nicole picked up the cane. Betty lay down.
I couldn't see much of myself, but I could watch them. It was quite a performance. In it's way a world premiere. When Betty's moans reached crescendo proportions I was on fire again myself. Absurd notions of kidnapping this oversexed nymphet and taking her back to Soniaive flitted through my mind.
I'm afraid I smiled when Nicole got back on her feet. Betty lay there still moaning like a casualty on a battlefield, which I suppose, in a way, is exactly what she was! But the play was by no means over. We were only at the end of act two. Nicole got busy with her props.
"Up on your feet, darling."
Betty's expression clearly said she never expected to rise again, she did not move. The young mistress in charge of operations accurately sliced the unprotected sole of her captive's left foot with the cane. The reluctant lesbian recruit let out a peal of pure anguish and scrambled to her feet, standing on one and balancing herself with the toes of the one Nicole and hit. "I'm... I'm terribly sorry." She was suddenly a very humble little girl.
The child had picked up a cord I could see Betty recognized. "Cross your wrists behind your back, darling."
No word, no hesitation. The back was turned, the wrists were crossed and thrust out and back to show willing. Nicole took her time tying them, she knew what she was doing. After the last knot, she bent and unlocked the shackle. As Betty wriggled her freed foot I could tell she was wondering if she was better or worse off than before.
"Don't forget I have this, darling." Nicole flexed the cane back and forth. "It hurts on your bottom too. If you don't want to try it out you can go and lick your bottom too. If you don't want to try it out you can go and lick our poor darling's wounds the same way I was doing."
It was delicious! I may as well admit it. The expressions that flitted across Betty's face were out of this world. Nicole and I enjoyed them immensely. I'll tell you straight I needed the rest. I could be damn certain I was in for a rotten time, so while this interlude lasted I wanted to squeeze every ounce of relaxation out of it I could. I was damn grateful to the kid. I wondered if her father knew what she was up to. When Betty got close enough to be framed between my spread legs she got a really close look at the livid marks all over the place where she was expected to bury her face. Right there I could see she wanted to run. Nicole had seen it too and gave her a real swisher across her neat little rump. "Pay attention, darling and get to work." She advised sweetly.
It was a bad moment for my new ministering angel. She gasped and looked this way and that, but I suppose it was obvious that my cunt offered the least painful way of spending her next few minutes. She bent over and kissed it.
"Go on!" Nicole encouraged impatiently.
"What do I have to do?" Betty inquired fatuously.
"Give Ginevra an orgasm with your tongue, you silly ass." The moppet ordered sharply. "If you fail to make her come you get ten hard ones." The nymphet turned a forbidding eye down on me, "And if you fake it to save her skin, I'll know and you'll get ten too."
After the little python it was a damn poor show. I was beginning to wonder if I wouldn't do a convincing job of faking it. I tried to get in the mood and be responsive. If it had been Nicole or Moira I'd have erupted three times while Betty was still exploring and having trouble with hair in her mouth. I could see she was going to get her ten if I didn't come to the rescue.
"I know what you're thinking." The dear child tapped my left nipple with her cane, "Don't do it, or you'll be sorry." I hadn't thought of her whipping my breasts. Now that the possibility stared me in the face I became less responsive than ever. But Little Mistress had everything well in hand. She gave the working girl three lovely stingers across her bent bottom and said: "Get right inside, you idiot!" in a voice that told Betty all she needed to know. Then, with her usual unexpectedness, leant over me and used her lips on one of my nipples and her fingers on the other, some force flowed out of her into me so that I exploded again and again. When she was allowed to straighten up, Betty looked quite proud of herself. I wish Nicole would give her a couple more with the cane.
"Want to show her how it's done?" Nicole asked me pertly.
"I'd love to." I said with honesty. I felt I owed her something. "Let me loose and I'll do my very best."
"Why would I let you loose!"
Why indeed! She scrambled over me and helped. Tied the way I was I couldn't do anything like my best, but I didn't get whipped either. Betty stood there with her tied hands and gasped. When the kid slid back on the floor, Betty asked: "Why don't you untie Ginevra? She's had her punishment."
"Why should I!"
Neither of us could think of a reason we dared mention, so I stayed strapped to my bench. I was awfully tired of it. I couldn't move at all. But I may as well admit it was a damned sexy posture that kept the spot as warm as the whip had left it. I felt about ninety-eight percent you-know-what! Nicole shepherded little wifey back to her ring and once more snapped the shackle on the inoffensive ankle. She made for the door.
"Aren't you going to untie my hands now?" Betty asked pitifully. "Why should I!"
It was another of the unanswerables, so Betty stayed tied. She and I were alone, both helpless. I thought of fire and burglars... what a spot we'd be in!
"I'm terribly sorry... "
She makes the oddest exclamations. I presumed her sorrow was for me. "I was feeling a bit sorry for you." I told her. "Nothing's turned out the way you wanted, has it!"
She rattled her chain, embarrassed. "I've been a silly fool. All I want to do now is go home. I've learned a lesson and all that rot, can you help? I mean, when he lets you go, can I go too?"
"Dammit, girl, you've sold yourself into slavery. It's done! Fini! Sure, I'll try. But if I know Safdar he'll hold on to you: A bargain's a bargain sort of thing. I'll be damn thankful if Moira and I get out of this mess I've got us into."
"He's so cruel to you, why?"
"I was too female, female for his highness. Offended his maleness. So he'll beat it out of me. He's got plenty of time."
"But, don't you mind! You seem so... " Sure I mind! But I've been a slave before, remember. I've been hurt in a good many ways by a lot of people. I'll try and hold on to my courage now hoping there's a period to it."
"But there'll be no end for me." Betty wailed. "I'll be chained here forever." She started to cry. "It's beastly... my hands tied!"
"If his nibs took you to bed, you'd feel better." I wanted to shock.
"Of course I would! She shook her pinioned shoulders impatiently. "But he won't! He thinks I'm silly. It's Moira he wants... and maybe you when he's worked off his mad. I bet he'll do what that girl said: pass me off to the hired help."
"Well, at least you aren't getting whipped too badly."
"She beat the soles of my feet. It's awful!"
There was no consoling the poor girl, and in truth she hadn't much to be happy about. "Lay down and go to sleep." I suggested. "I'm going to try. I'm bushed." I didn't even see her arrange herself. I dropped off right away. It's a wise slave girl who gets herself a bit of sleep when she gets the chance. Being tied the way I was didn't matter.
Betty and I were a couple of pets. Nicole fed and watered us and took us to the bathroom, suitably restrained of course. It was like being a canary or a hamster or a pony. There was never a chance to fight or run. The little biddy knew what she was doing, and she carried the cane. We got out shins rapped if she caught a hint of revolt. It hurt, everything hurt. It must have been late when she announced bedtime Betty was told to lay down where she was, and to stop complaining about her hands being tied. Then little Miss Consequence got a bit of cord and told me to do the turn round and cross your wrists bit. When she was through with that little job I was tied as tight and as helplessly as I've ever been. I knew I wouldn't struggle against her cord. I'd only hurt myself. It was when she grasped my hair and propelled me to the door I got the bad feeling. I'd have sooner slept of the floor and listened to Betty's moans.
I should have guessed! So damn obvious! I might have thought of it myself. Safdar's room was lush. Money, money! So was his bed with it's black satin sheets that showed off Moira's total nakedness to perfection. She was laying there with one ankle chained somewhere to the frame, not much of anything she could do-by way of escape, that is! When she met my eyes she flushed and looked miserable. But I was glad she looked. I didn't want her shamed and evasive. We both knew each other's thoughts so we didn't need to say a word. I told her I loved her with my eyes..
There were no awkward pauses. Nicole got handcuffs and used them to cuff one of my ankles to a ring in the floor. It became evident Madam Ginevra was going to spend her night on the floor beside her Master's bed. I wouldn't have minded so much if Moira hadn't been in it. That was the turning of the knife in my wound. Fazal missed no tricks. But that wasn't all. Oh hell... !
By the time the Master of the house showed up, Nicole had rummaged around and produced something I didn't instantly recognize. It turned out to be a black soft leather helmet specially .designed for bad girls like me, built in gag and everything! When the poppet got ready to slip the blasted thing over my head, Fazal gave me another of his courteous little bows and wished me pleasant dreams, and that was the last thing I saw or heard for a long long time.
That rotten contraption was a work of art, but I wished it was on someone else, not me. Putting it on me was a major project. I was prodded to my knees for the little lady's convenience and the soft silky stuff enveloped me in blackness. There was very soft padding over my eyes and a lot more of the same into and over my ears. There were adequate holes for my nostrils, but there was a lot of fiddling with the gag. It wasn't too wicked, I suppose they wanted whoever wore the thing to be able to sleep, but it was as much as I wanted in my mouth, and when Nicole began to lace me up the back the constriction on my lips made it damned effective. I tried to speak, but could only make singing noises and grunts. They were too demeaning to bother with. I couldn't see a thing. I was really in deep darkness, and I couldn't hear ordinary sounds. In fact there wasn't anything taking place I could hear at all. By the time it was all laced tight I was imprisoned in a tiny black world that was frightening, I suddenly understood claustrophobia. I had it! I shook my head again and again. It was all I could do, and it did no good, I expect they laughed at me. I was not laughing. I don't think I've ever felt a sadder or more helpless little girl. I was suddenly horrified by the awful hazards of getting myself down on the rug. My ankle was locked to it's ring, my hands were firmly tied behind my back, and I'd forgotten where I faced. I was sure I'd make an idiot of myself even doing a simple thing like that.
But Ginevra wasn't ready for her bed-oh no, not yet! Since I was, to all intents and purposes, a helpless bundle, Nicole directed her requirements by prods or guiding hands that, I admit, were as gentle as she could make them. Responding to these pummelings and pushings I found myself standing and then bent well forward and down. Little sweetheart kicked my feet further and further apart to the point where I began to get a glimmering of what was going to be done to me. When the belt was buckled round my waist and cinched so damn tight it hurt I got another clue.
I was suddenly grateful for the helmet. It was awful, but it prevented them seeing my horror and my blush, particularly my blush. What Nicole was doing now with her swift and competent little fingers was something I did not want at all. It was a well chosen and ingenious way of rubbing my nose a little deeper in the dirt. Before the audience I knew was watching it shamed me utterly. Fazal had chosen well. He knew his Ginevra!
I suppose it was vaseline, it felt like it anointing my anus. Then came the Thing, the awful beastly Thing! I couldn't see it, but the feel of it pressed against my port of entry told me clearly it would be quite impossible to insert so huge an object inside my rectum. But I had reckoned without Nicole. That damn girl must have done just about everything in her fifteen years, she was as practiced as a whore house madam. She twisted and pushed and went from side to side and up and down until the head had actually spread my sphincter muscle enough to get inside. After that it was easy. She took her time, but with a lot of gentle coaxing the immense phallus had penetrated me completely, I felt as though an amorous elephant had lost his direction.
The hands now guided me erect. I brought my legs very cautiously closer and closer together. I wasn't a bit sure what was going to happen in that direction. But, as always, a girl adapts and absorbs, the thing inside me stayed put, it was a horrible and disgusting sensation. If men want to shove it up there they can find another girl than me. Of course, no man would be this size... !
Now that I was standing I could feel the other strap dangling down my tummy. Nicole grabbed and guided it with one hand while she opened my labia down there and drew the leather inside on its way between my legs, through a ring in the plug up my thingummy and to a buckle at the back. When she pulled and pulled I discovered more beastliness, my poor cunt was penetrated again brutally and bindingly and the plug went up another inch and was solidly anchored, a padlock clicked and Ginevra was ready for bed. The lucky girl! So much attention.
It was a rout, utter and complete defeat. Ginevra was debased, soiled, shamed, degraded and hurt. I could imagine the absorbed gaze, the flickerings of amusement... and poor darling Moira! She would not want to see me thus any more than I wished it myself. Fazal was winning every round, and we'd only just started. It was the first day. I have never been more grateful in my life than I was then for the young hands that guided me to the floor. With that huge thing inside me I was scared to move, I imagined awful injuries. I could have stood there helplessly all night... But Nicole was kind: or perhaps just practical. If you are torturing a girl for three days you do not kill her on the first night! I lay on my side in my dark silence, my mouth full of gag. I even had to be careful of my ankle, the handcuff hurt if I didn't lay just right. I wondered if every move I made was watched.
Oh sure, I slept! I don't know how much or long. I knew nothing. I was as close to being dead as one can simulate. After I'd wriggled through a lot of painful postures I did find one that held a bit of promise, but then I started to think about what was happening up on the bed. My helmet claustrophobia was cured by my thankfulness I could not watch or be forced to hear the ravishment of my beloved. I did actually surprise myself by sleeping.
Fazal Safdar's was a well ordered house. In the morning at a time I could not tell, Nicole released me from my bedside shame. I was competently fed and watered and etc, etc, but my hands were not untied, and when the day's operations were about to resume the plug was put back inside me and the strap locked tight.
"Why?" I asked the child.
She shrugged and grinned. "You know why. It shames and hurts. I'd hate it inside me. My father knows that with it inside you there will be no forgetting you are a punished bitch. Come, he tells me I lead you to an old friend."
The now familiar room was like a stage. The props and characters were already in place. I was the only thing missing. The first thing to grab my attention was my darling, her wrists were strapped to the bar which had been drawn up only enough to make her taut, she was not on her toes, it could mean mercy or that she would have to stand there a long, long time. Either way she was ready to be whipped.
Betty Rogers had been taken from her spot. She now stood against one wall, a single pathetic wrist handcuffed to a ring, she looked lost and neglected. I wondered if she realized she was a damn sight more comfortable than Moira and me. She was getting off pretty damn easy. Fazal lounged negligently in a chair and smiled a greeting. "You need not be whipped today, madam," he told me pleasantly.
I looked at my naked Moira, he answered the query of my gaze. "Your darling need not be whipped either, madam, should you so choose."
I knew it had to be bad, but I hadn't guessed it yet. There are worse things for a girl than being whipped, though admittedly that's bad enough.
Walking wasn't much fun with that vast prong pushed into me. As Nicole guided my steps I wondered if everyone was thinking of the beastly phallus by which I was impaled. The harness upon my loins proclaimed it'd presence within my body, it also separated the lips of my cunt for everyone to have a look at. Fazal feasted his eyes and let me see him doing it. He had me where he wanted.
It appeared I was to inherit Betty's ring. It was nicely centrally located in the floor to serve the star attraction. It now stuck up through a rent in a square of sacking which, with several others, provided a marked area, a sort of stage, but rough jute betokens nothing of quality or comfort. I sensed some more rubbing in the dirt as imminent. The ubiquitous handcuff made its appearance, my right ankle was cuffed and fastened to the ring. When I looked at Betty I had the feeling she felt cheated again, I'd stolen her place!
"The old things are always best," said Fazal piously.
I looked around and couldn't see any.
"I did a good deal of research and made inquiries," he explained kindly.
All the moves were his. I tried not to look impertinent.
"I have gathered this place, this Soniaive, employs a great versatility."
I tried to look as though I knew what he was talking about.
"Your late husband seems to have been a most discerning man: a touch of the original."
I wondered if he saw me tense. But I looked down at the bright metal round my ankle. I was still puzzled.
"At some trouble and expense I have obtained his favorite brand."
I flipped over inside. The penny had dropped. Even from his grave poor darling Herbert had condemned me. As though bearing a kingly crown of sparkling Jewels, Nicole, trying hard not to giggle, placed upon the sacking at my feet a truly immense tin of Lyle's Golden Syrup.
"It will hold nostalgic memories for you," said Fazal Safdar.
The absolute bastard! I had no time to wonder how he'd found out. The damn stuff was there and I was helpless. All I had to learn was how he proposed to go about it. Nicole untied my wrists and took away the cord. I stood almost free, held only by one ankle.
"I have thought of a delightful refinement," said my host.
I looked round desperately as though seeking a friend. I was scared and sickened and wanted to cry. Of all the beastly things he might have done to me... !
"I believe it was your late husband's practice to have you firmly secured so that a third party might anoint your person with this admirable product and that then another participant would lick you clean. Is this correct?"
"Yes."
"You do not wish to elaborate or inform me further?"
"No. You have learned all there is to tell."
"I did gather you abhorred this above all things?"
"Yes. I hate it. Please don't do it to me. I'll beg on my knees."
"But, madam, there is no need. No one here is going to do this thing to you. You are going to do it yourself. With your own lovely hands you are going to liberally smear every inch of your loveliness, including the soles of your feet and between your toes, and also your most beautiful hair. That latter is, I believe, a new and interesting innovation. I will require of you a liberal application so that every strand is well sweetened."
His pause was effective. I curled up in horror at what confronted me. It was impossible, no girl could do such a thing to herself. I had a mental picture of what I would look like.
"I don't think I can. I don't think any girl could. Oh, please...!"
The son of a bitch was really playing it for all it was worth. He was going to make me crawl. Unexpectedly he made a motion to his daughter. With a brief nod of understanding, Nicole found what she sought, thrust the gag inside Moira's mouth and buckled the strap at the back of her neck, to do it she had to lift the nose ring and then let it fall back upon the gag. My darling shook her head testingly, looked at me and shrugged. She was helpless.
"To forestall nobility," Fazal explained helpfully. "Your adored would deafen us with pleas and assurances on your behalf. It is a feminine weakness. Are you quite sure you find your task impossible?"
"Yes. I can't do it. Punish me some other way."
Again the nod. This time the child produced a vicious looking whip I had not seen before. She draped the lash a couple of times round Moira's neck and allowed the stock to hang between her breasts.
"This particular whip has a quality of its own," Fazal assured me gravely. "Your darling knows something of it. I notice she still bears a neat white line. It draws blood with each stroke. If you do not do what you have been told she will be whipped twenty-nine times with it."
Moira thinks I'm wonderful. Betty treats me with some respect. I can handle a lot of things, I'm not a shrinking violet. Here and there I've been terribly, terribly punished. But this lousy son of the Desert had me beat. I was trapped, foxed, boxed in, reduced to an obedience I'd be shamed by all my life. So I disgraced myself completely. I couldn't go to where he sat, my chained ankle saw to that. But I slid to my knees and wept moaningly into my hands in such a desolation of distress I didn't care who saw me or what they thought. Fazal had wanted me humbled, well he had his wish. I'd have kissed his boots if I could have crawled to him, but I couldn't, so I just pleaded. "Please, Master, punish your slave another way than this."
"Come, madam, you disappoint us all."
"I can't... I can't!"
I had one eye cocked through a space in my fingers. In sickening defeat I saw Nicole reach up to Moira's neck for the whip. I stood up instantly, wooden and sullen and without hope. "Very well, Master, I will do as you order."
The inclination of his head in acceptance was a relief. For a moment I'd been scared I'd quibbled too long and that my darling's skin was about to be cut as a lesson in obedience. It would have torn me to pieces to have stood there with my handcuffed ankle and watched. Anyway, now I'd committed myself to the ultimate outrage I might as well save what points I could. "Could someone open the tin for me?" I ask brightly.
The child is a jewel, she has everything, does everything. She even takes away the lid, presumably I am expected to use the entire contents. I look down in to the considerable depth and shudder. There is a great deal of treacle in that can. Now I must take it out and put it on me, put a couple of gallons of sticky syrup on Ginevra and on her hair, especially on her hair. My hair is very beautiful, I love it. Why must Fazal be so cruel! Surely he could enjoy or torture me in better ways than this! Supposing he shaved me bald. He could! He would do it if it occurred to him or if I let him know how much my hair means to me. I am appalled at the possibility.
I am not a child. I am a woman of decision. I know I must do this thing, so I will indulge in no tentative finger dipping or prolongation of my travail. It is like the mud. If you must be smeared, don't be squeamish! Get it over with. The dark trade gazes up at me mockingly from its own depths. I must put both my hands far into it and bring them out streaming so that I may plaster my nakedness as my Master has told me to. I take a deep, deep breath...
Is it worse than I expected! I think it is. I start with my breasts, that should please Fazal, to see them soiled and shapeless under this viscous horror. I have cupped my hands and filled them with the slime and dowse my breasts so liberally it flows down over my tummy so that I must grab for the runaway rivulets and lave them upwards on my skin. The double handful covers quite a lot of my front. I look deliberately at the man who has made me do this. In for a penny, in for a pound! I have nothing to lose. Smiling at his I put a special blob on each of my nipples. It will not stay, but for a moment creates an erotic image. Fazal has an erection, I can tell. I wonder which of us he will spend it in. It can hardly be me... !
I don't think the worst is over, but I have broken the mental block. I take a handful at a time now, lathering myself with it, as I would with a cake of soap. The familiar gestures of the bath assert themselves. Around my neck, over my shoulders and up and down each arm. Looking at my Master for approval I push liberal palmfuls into my armpits, raising my arm so that he may see I do not cheat. Very soon the front and sides of my torso are treacled, I spread handfuls over the back of my shoulders so it will trickle down my back. I am not sure how I will deal with my back, I'll worry about it later. I suppose, for Fazal, the piece de resistance has to be my cunt The whole thing has become so bloody awful I cease to care about any part of it. I'm stuck with it so I'll show the bastard what a girl can do. I hate to admit it, we girls are crazy, but pride had entered the ring, I was developing a technique. Out of each handful of syrup I lift from the can very little falls upon the jute.
I spread my legs, facing my Master brazenly. No one can doubt I do this for him alone. I move the treacle can midway between my legs and dip my hand... My bush accepts the goo and becomes plastered to my wealed skin, livid with yesterdays caning. I open wider and use both hands to thrust upward under my crotch a heavy load that squelches sideways so that I can finish my loins with it and start down my thighs. I am still harnessed, the straps and buckles will have to suffer with the rest of me. If it was not for the thin strap which has purposely been cinched into my cunt, I would fill my cunt with syrup. Such a gesture would surely thrill a man! But I do the best I can. I aim carefully and carefully load a dollop over both cunt and strap. It is the best that I can do.
What a lot of me there is! It is not swift work, the stuff is too vascid, it must be pushed and laid. It attaches itself to me in a beastly fashion, my skin can carry a surprising depth of it before it starts to run. I am going to be everything Fazal hopes for: degraded and horrendous! While I am bent to do my legs I lift my feet and give my soles a liberal smear and push the damn stuff up between my toes for My Master's approval. I will not be faulted in my work.
The worst is now. My hair, my lovely hair! I am close to tears. But it is best to plaster it now, the surplus can run down my back, hopefully one way. or another I can get my back covered to his satisfaction. I can well imagine punishments hovering over me or Moira if I fail. I load my cupped palm and hastily get it to the top of my head. It is one of the strangest sensations I have ever known as it permeates its way down upon my scalp. In a great urgency to be done the beastly task I ladle dollop after dollop upon my hair and rub it in as it streaks its way down. My hair is soon one heavy plait of syrup. I feel here and there for spots I may have missed, but none are to be found. My crowning glory is a sodden mass of stickiness. I wonder what I look like.
Now just my back. I want to ask for help, but if it was permitted it would be forthcoming. There is no offer. I realize I will be most amusing to watch as I contrive the impossible. I bend a little forward and lift the can and tilt it over my shoulders, bending this way and that, gauging the flow of the stuff by the sensations on my skin. I catch the overflow and use it on my bottom and well within the crease where lies the evil I have almost forgotten in this fresh misery. But my plug is still there and never lets me entirely forget the fact. The can is empty and I am done. I turn for approval to my master. He nods. I have done well. Fearfully I turn and show my back, looking over my shoulder for his sign. But Fazal is satisfied. Why not! My punishment with this vile stuff is just beginning. He nods again and leaves. Moira is released and hastens after her lord, her face scarlet, her eyes shamed. But she smiles at me as she goes. She is handcuffed, that is all, she has become one of the household.
Nicole retrieves the empty can. She studies my syrupy nudity in genuine amazement, then wraps can and lid in old newspaper. "You can stand or sit or do whatever you can, darling," she tells me as she goes away. I am alone with Betty.
I try and look at myself and feel myself, neither is easy. The hated job is done, so I try and relax. I cannot. How can a girl in my condition relax when all she wants to do is weep. I try not to, I do not want tears. Fancy trying to dry them with hands like mine! I do not want them to join the treacle on my cheeks.
Do I stand or sit! If I knew I was to be like this for an hour I would stand it out. I want to sit, but everything will stick. The sacking will adhere to me and roll with me. I could use a piece of it to cleanse myself of some of the worst deposits, but I am sure such an act would be punishable, and I do not want to be punished! Not any more, not now. My morale is very low.
"You really look a sight!" says Betty helpfully. "Thanks a million."
"I say, Ginevra, d'you think he'll leave you like that until Saturday?" She is a fund of good cheer.
She is fascinated and cannot take her eyes from me. "He's done it again, hasn't he!" she says morosely. "Did you see the way Moira dashed after him. I bet he's screwing her right now." She meditated a moment, "Ginevra, what's wrong... with me, I mean! Is there something I ought to be doing?"
"If you could turn yourself into Moira it might help." I tell her disgustedly. I, too, have been thinking of the manner in which she trotted after her lord and my Master. If I ever get the little minx back home I'll punish her in ways she won't easily forget But, also, I was becoming puzzled about Betty.
If I was a man I'd have fucked her with the greatest of pleasure. She was a lovesome piece, even if she was a bit silly. Most men like girls to be a bit silly, it does something for them. "I think he's making the most of Moira while he's got her." I consoled, "Don't worry. Remember, he didn't reject you as a gift."
She rattled her handcuff irritably. "I suppose the two of us will stand here like this alone all day. This thing on my wrist: I could scream."
She hadn't meant to, but she'd started me worrying. That is exactly what I'd do if I was Fazal, leave me chained like this on my bits of sacking and covered in treacle. It screamed aloud as the thing to do. What greater misery! Fancy sleeping like this! Wherever I moved I'd stick, waking up to horror. And my hair... my lovely hair! I could sit here tugging at my chain, the most miserable and filthy girl in the whole world. I lifted one foot, the sacking came with it. The plug in my rectum throbbed and made demands I could not meet. My cunt burned where the strap bit into it. I was altogether a sorry mess.
I was left like that for the whole day and then for the night. I was not fed, but was given water and told to lick myself for nourishment. I actually did. Before dark the harness and the plug were taken from me, I was given a pail. It had the crowning beneficence of a lid! I was left to lay in stickiness on my sacking for the night, my ankle still chained. Betty was taken away., I asked Nicole where, but she only smiled. Nicole had done everything through the day. But I was in some sort of Coventry, she would not speak. Just did what she must and hurried away. It was very lonely in the dark. I wanted Moira terribly, but dared not think of her. I knew damn well what she'd be doing! I cried a lot and let the tears run where they wished. I even slept.
The morning was very definitely a new day, but it was well advanced by the time Nicole appeared. She was talking again, and curious. She carried a coil of rope, one end was a noose which she handed me. "Put it round your neck and pull it tight."
I obeyed. It was tight. Now I was a dog on a leash. I would not dare to try and loose it, she could jerk my head off. She unlocked my handcuff and placed ancient sandals where I could push my feet into them. "So you won't stick to the floor, darling. Come along."
I followed. I was hungry and abject and stickier than the day before. I did not even think of resistance.
It was in a courtyard. My master sat regally with my own slave girl reclining on a rug at his feet. Her wrists were handcuffed, nothing more. I envied her, and cringed at what I must look like. They were positioned to one side of a cage. It was about four feet high by ten square, inside were a pair of the biggest dogs I have ever seen.
"Hands behind your back.'" Nicole did not bind me. I suppose I was too sticky. She used the handcuffs, tight so they hurt. She lifted a sliding door. "Inside. Quick now!"
The handcuffs had been cruel, I could not crawl. I had to fumble forward on my knees. There was no floor, just sand. I picked it up liberally as a fly paper catches flies.
"You will not be lonely." Said Fazal Safdar.
What was there for Moira to say! Our eyes met in desolation. I hear behind me the snap of the padlock on the door.
Fazal was right. I would not be lonely. Huge nozzles sniffed and hot tongues licked avidly. I sat back on my heels, longing for my hands. I had a fearful premonition, the dogs were not fierce but they were powerful. I was quite certain they were both male.
They say nothing is all bad. I sat and endured the tongues. They were remarkable. They lapped at me with a zest that gave me hope. They were huge, they might well enjoy the syrupy horror that was me. I tried not to respond when they cleansed my breasts and nipples, but their hot tongues and their hot breaths were hard to ignore. I saw Fazal smiling... he knew! The son of a bitch! He knew damn well! I wondered if he could rub my nose much further in. Surely this had to be as low as I could get!
It wasn't long before I began to help. Imagine it! A naked girl offering her body to a couple of hounds! But I hated to waste their industry. I wanted them to get all they could of me before their taste for treacle waned. Again I cursed the handcuffs. Why had they done that to me! I suppose for fear I'd beat the wet snouts away with my hands. Goodness, I'd welcome six dogs if they'd get me clean! I raised my arms and moved my legs to accommodate their searching snoots. I thought of Pluto and Mickey Mouse. I spread my legs and leaned forward with my forehead on the sand, they accepted this new challenge with avidity. Maybe they hadn't been fed for a week!
I wept over my hair. They took it in their mouths and chewed. Not to chew it off, but to extract the ultimate nectar. They were damn clever. Towards the end I bent, I stretched, I spread. Whenever they ran out of sticky skin I found them some more. Little by little it was getting so I could actually move without making a glucking sound. I even lay on my back and raised up so as to offer them my cunt. It needed their attention badly. They gave it without stint. I looked levelly at Fazal's fascinated gaze while I dared my clit to spasm. Damn sensation! I wanted to be clean, clean, clean! I wanted it more than anything in the world. In the end I just lay there, rolling a bit this way or that as their tongues dictated, mostly resting uncomfortably on my handcuffed arms. I am sure the three who watched were getting a tremendous charge out of my performance, even darling Moira. The kid's human like the rest of us.
The worst bit was my armpits. Figure it for yourself. My wrists were handcuffed behind my back, so the best way I could figure was to bend forward low and open my arms as much as those damn steel circlets would let me. The dogs were marvellous, they got right in there. I sure was glad I shaved. They got that bit as clean as the rest.
So there I sat, caged with a pair of dogs as big as ponies. Fazal smiled his thin lipped smile. My darling tried to look only at me and not the snouts that now were getting curious about my other possibilities.
"You will be released and bathed after you yield." Fazal informed me equably. "I suggest you expedite your ravishment."
The dirty bastard! He made it sound like filling in a form. But he was going to sit there and watch while I was fucked my a couple of dogs. And it was evident I'd better make up my mind about it pretty damn soon. With the treacle gone it became evident I was exuding other pungencies they found attractive. There was one or the other of their wet snouts snigging at my cunt steadily, one of them clumsily straddled me.
O.K. I'm wanton. I have no shame! But I wanted freedom and a bath more than I wanted virtue. I lay on my handcuffed hands, raised my butt in the air and offered my cunt on a first come first served basis. They were very gentlemanly about me, no fight. One sort of slipped between my legs, I suspect by accident, and from then on he didn't need all that much help.
I don't suppose you've been fucked by a dog! It's a lengthy process. They seem to go to sleep here and there. I found I had to thrust my loins at them to get them going again. They dribble quite a lot. Most of it falls on a girl's breasts. The end gets a bit dramatic and there's a lot of action, but on the score of entertainment I'd rate it about on a par with a Frenching from Betty Rogers.
Number one having retired to some roving sniffing, no doubt hoping to find another place on me somewhere, number two took over and proceeded to show me what number one could do he could do better. He also went to sleep. I never knew before that dogs could snore. I shove my cunt at him in indignation and he finished off the job in grand style. I lost no time in crossing my legs and turning over. If they could get into my rear they were welcome! I looked at Fazal, it was easy to see Moira had another piece of work pending.
The bath was wonderful! Even if I did know my favourite slave was being fucked by my worst enemy, it still felt damn good. J was still handcuffed, what else could I expect! But Nicole was as good a bath attendant as she was everything else.
"I think you were wonderful." She told me. "I wouldn't want to be fucked by two dogs. Daddy keeps them 'specially for bad girls."
"Why doesn't your daddy fuck poor Betty Rogers?" I asked irrelevantly.
"He is saving her. In the meantime he has pity. Do you wish to see?"
Two girls! Any kind of normalcy or communion was welcome. I wanted to get back into the world. "Yes please." I said ardently, "But first my hair. Whip me if you like but make me beautiful."
"I do not whip you, darling." She laughed., "And I will make you most beautiful to behold. Perhaps my father will fuck you. But before then we go and look at your silly Betty. I too, am curious.
Betty was downstairs. I guess that means the same all over the world. She lay on a cot, her arms and legs well spread and well tied. There were at least two pillows under her bottom. Her cunt was her most prominent feature. "You shouldn't look at me like this." She said primly.
"Why not?" I demanded. "You looked at me!"
"How many men have fucked you?" Nicole inquired casually.
"Seven. They all promised to come back."
"You feel better now?"
"I'd no idea! They're tremendously gifted. Is there another pillow?"
We found another pillow and raised her up. Her cunt was screamingly evident. It seemed a pity to disturb a good thing. I don't think she'd have wanted to be untied if we'd offered. We didn't offer. We went back upstairs to where the rich folks live. Fazal and Moira were sipping coffee. My sweetheart looked as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She read in my eyes that she was going to get the whipping of her life when we got home, but she didn't care. Fazal was evidently all I had judged him to be.
"You are more beautiful than a houri from Paradise." He greeted me.
My slave girl served coffee all round. I could feel her trembling.
Perhaps you have paid your debt." Said Fazal Safdar.
"My Mistress is the most beautiful woman in the world." Moira said as though anxious to get in her two cents worth. I resolved it should do her no good.
We sipped coffee happily. I had three cups. I couldn't believe it was over. I needn't have worried, it wasn't!
When the sipping came to an end, Moira gracefully positioned herself to the centre of the room in front of Fazal. She was entirely naked save for her faithful handcuffs. She wore them with pride.
"There are many debts." Mused our Master. "When one is paid another remains." It sounded like the Koran again.
"Yes, lord." It was Moira's voice. I perked.
"I seem to recall something, perhaps you will refresh my memory."
"I disobeyed you, lord. It is long ago."
"Time withers not the truth, dear child."
"No, lord. My punishment was interrupted."
"Ah, yes. Those absurd police creatures with their documents."
"You sentenced me to thirty strokes with the awful whip. I received but one, lord." Moira's voice did not even quaver. I loved her.
"There remains twenty-nine." Fazal's voice held all the sorrow of the world.
"Yes, lord. I must be whipped twenty-nine times."
Dammit, they might have been planning lunch! I couldn't bear the thought. My darling, darling, darling... ! "Whip me instead." I said as a matter of course.
Safdar sighed. "Nobility robs justice." He declaimed. . "Tomorrow after lunch."
I cannot bear it. My beloved is too luscious. Her skin must not be cut. But my hands are tightly bound at my back, my feet are chained. I can only stand. I have been told to keep quiet.
Her hands are strapped to the bar. This time only her toes are on the floor. She looks at me with love. I still possess her. Nothing has changed. But I am bound and so is she. Poor darling Moira, she will be whipped and we both know she will be whipped. There is naught we can do about it. The justice of Fazal is implacable, it has waited long. The ugly thing is coiled around her neck, but on my beloved the effect is not ugly at all. It is beauty, an exotic snake seeking the warmth of her flesh. Soon she will nourish it with her blood. She smiles at me in a dreamy communion as though drugged. Moira is drugged, drugged in a euphoric paradise of loves. So many loves! Mine, Fazal's, the glowing child... and Soniaive. Soon she will scream, but her cries will be her own affirmation of her love for us. I am sure she could have evaded this awful punishment, Fazal adores her. But I think she sought it, I am sure she did. To this darling slave girl it is a tryst, once broken, long ago.
The child is there, vivid. How easily I could hunger for her! And her father, he sits in majesty. I wonder why he does not himself wield the whip. Some nicety of feeling, some Arab protocol! More probably the indulgence of his daughter for whom the holding of a whip is ecstasy. Fazal nods to me and indicates where I must stand.
A slave girl tied as Moira is tied acquires a lovely eloquence of motion with head and neck. They are all she has! Now, as the lash is uncoiled from her flesh, she lifts her chin and slowly turns from side to side within the columns of her pinioned arms. There is a quiet smile upon her lips which is given fleetingly to each of us before she bows her head and lowers her eyes as her signal that she is ready. She is appealingly lovely beyond anything I have seen or known. I wonder if her heart thuds as does mine! I do not think so: Moira is at peace.
The wound that leaps across her back is as beautiful as I had hoped. Oh yes! I had hoped, why deny! A white line on impact, coloring gently into carmine, and then the blood! The small red tears...
It is too much! Only by weeping can I express the deep welling of emotion that consumes me. Here is the final beauty, the quintessence... we in this room in the desert are privileged beyond all other mortals. What we behold is a living fantasy conjured from outside the gateways of our world. A second line joins the first. My darling's blood is deep deep red. She presses her cheek against the taut strained smoothness of her arm.
It is not until five wounds have cut her back, and the tiny droplets from the first have crept across the whiteness to join their fellows in the stripes below, that I realise that Moira has not screamed. Her breath is loud and punctuated by the blows, but that is all. Were it not that she changes the posture of her head we might suppose her asleep or lost to consciousness. But she is not. Her slenderness is taut, her toes strain to take her weight, her fingers move in protest against the straps. When her punishment is half done I can no longer bear the agony of the blood this whip extracts. I do not care about punishment, I go and kneel beside my Master and implore him with my eyes. I want it to stop. I want to take my darling's place and share her pain. Fazal smiles down at me and shakes his head. But I remain kneeling against his chair. Bound, I can do nothing. The fingers of his hand rove lovingly within my hair. The scarlet streaks imprint themselves across the waiting flesh. Even when the twenty-ninth stroke mingles her blood with her sweat of pain, my beloved has not deigned to scream.
When she is freed, Fazal picks her up and carries her away. I watch and note her arm curled tight about his neck, she still smiles. I have beheld a miracle. I remain kneeling. What else is there! It is long before he returns. His smile is far too wise for me, he knows!
"You are lusting, child?"
He has not called me, madam. To this man all females are bright eyed panting girls. I am shamed. "Yes, lord. But I will scream."
I cannot believe myself. I am magic and ineffably happy as I am strapped to the bar as Moira was. In a misty haze of disbelief I watch Nicole leave me alone with the man I now call lord. On her way to the door she has handed her father the whip. I smile at him with an emotion I do not understand. His eyes are dark wells of tenderness. Together we have become an entity. The whip bites the air with masculine intensity and cuts my flesh. I think of the scarlet pearls I cannot see.
I scream joyously.
When he carries me away, I curl my arm where Moira's was. His room is warm and waiting and we are alone. His bed is virgin, the satin sheets now white. When I am placed upon them I thrust and wriggle with my back to prolong his pain, the pain that is his gift to me, and to leave upon their smooth parchment the signature of my blood. I throw wide my legs and hold open my arms. The world beyond the walls has disappeared.
* * *
You can have your sweet sorrow of partings! For me I grieve or am glad. In this early morning there is only grief. Our plane has slithered to it's stop beyond the wall. We stand outside the gate upon the sand. Fazal, Moira the slave girl, and myself. I have watched our lord tightly tie the slave girl's hands behind her back and hide her nakedness beneath her cloak. He returns her to me as she came. But she is changed, and I am changed.
"Marry me." His eyes shrivel my soul.
I sob and kneel and kiss his hand, then run weeping to the plane. My slave runs close behind. We know that if we linger we are lost.
With the engine's roar and the first motion of the wheels we look back. Fazal Safdar stands upon the sand beside his gate.
