Sarobah : Château Chaînerie (mmf/f)

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Sarobah : Château Chaînerie (mmf/f)

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by sarobah » Fri Aug 08, 2014 3:40 pm

Book One: Homage

Part One

“She felt the way you do at night, deep in a dream you have dreamt before and is beginning again; certain that the dream exists, and certain that it will end; wanting it to end because you’re afraid you will not be able to bear it, and wanting it to go on so you will know how it ends.”
— Pauline Réage, Histoire d’O

A black limousine (not unlike one of those hackney cabs you see on the streets of London) waited outside the building, its engine humming languidly. A light breeze and a sprinkle of rain tickled on her face; but otherwise, the night was quiet and still. The avenue was deserted, the houses enshrouded in the early evening gloom. The pallid amber light cast by the roadside lamps was subdued and contorted into weird shapes by the cheerless drizzle.

A tall, heavy-set man in a grey suit and a broad-brimmed hat greeted Jane with an open umbrella to shelter her as they walked briskly to the car.

“Get in,” he commanded. There was impatience in his voice.

She obeyed, and he climbed in after her, shedding his hat and coat and stowing them along with the umbrella under the seat. Daniel was already in the vehicle, and Jane found herself seated in the middle, braced between the two men. She started to brush the droplets of rainwater from her skirt, taking care to keep them off the trousers on each side of her. She grasped the hem where it had ridden up her thigh, to draw it towards her knees, but the man put his hand on hers and pressed it down. She recoiled at his touch, and he must surely have felt her flinch, but he said nothing.

On the bench facing them was a woman who acknowledged the two men with a quick glance and a terse nod and then looked squarely at Jane. The compartment was only half-lit, but even in the semi-darkness Lydia was stunning, a petite, gorgeous brunette, with eyes that glistened like blue sapphires and cherry-red lips which curled ever so slightly in a subtle smile. Her cheeks were lightly rouged, but her hair was cut short in a severe, almost masculine style. She was wearing a champagne-coloured overcoat, with the sides parted to reveal a simple black dress. Her hands were folded in her lap, and on the left middle finger was a signet ring, chunkier than what most women would wear, with some kind of three-cornered motif; it was hard to make out in the dim lighting. Encircling her throat was a close-fitting leather collar, the clasp at the front being a miniature padlock. Curiously, the woman’s coat and dress had been bunched up behind her, so she was not sitting on them.

As Jane reached down for the buckle, the big man commanded “No seat-belt.” She had always been very safety-conscious and opened her mouth to protest, but she thought better of it and clamped her jaws.

The glass partition separating them from the driver was glazed, so she could not see who was behind the wheel but was able discern a form that looked fuzzily feminine. Lydia spoke briefly through a small open panel. And as they slowly pulled away from the kerb, Daniel gently stroked Jane’s arm. She thought he was about to say something, maybe even kiss her cheek, but he just turned away again, staring out the window into the deepening gloom.

“Give him your purse,” Lydia said, nodding towards Daniel. She spoke with a very slight accent (perhaps French, maybe something more exotic), but there was authority, and a certain coldness, in her voice.

Daniel took her purse but immediately passed it across her lap to the big man, who rummaged through it, for no good reason Jane could ascertain. Then he tossed it rudely to the floor. The contents spilled around her feet.

“You won’t be needing it,” he said blandly.

She dared not reply.

Lydia frowned but did not otherwise react. “Take off your jewellery,” she instructed after they had driven a while.

Jane removed her watch and earrings and pendant, and dropped them into Daniel’s hand. He did not hand them over (and she was thankful for that), but put them instead in his coat pocket.

“Now your shoes.”

She kicked them off.

“And your stockings.”

“I’m wearing pantyhose,” she said.

The woman did not respond.

Jane paused, pensively, but only for a few seconds. She had known this was coming, what she was getting into; and when she’d had the opportunity to do so she did not refuse. She had always been like that, of course, never backing away from a challenge. With a soft sigh she raised herself slightly off the seat, pushing with her shoulders and the backs of her knees against it. She reached under her skirt and drew the nylon down her thighs. When it was scrunched at her knees, Lydia raised her hand.

“Leave it there,” she said.

They were, by now, heading out into the country, along a narrowing, winding road. Trees loomed out of the dark across their path, menacing silhouettes against the diffuse orange glow seeping into the sullen sky from the receding lights of the city.

“Don’t sit on your skirt. Pull it up behind you.”

Puzzled, she looked across at the other woman, at her coat and dress and how they were pushed behind her. And so, silently, Jane lifted her body from the seat once more and drew back the skirt from under her bottom. The upholstery was cool and slick and sticky, and queerly sensual, against her naked skin. She felt a delicious tingle when the leather peeled away as the car rounded a bend. It clung again as she sank back into the seat when the road straightened.

She sighed and shivered as the big man raised his hand and lowered it to rest briefly on her right knee. Then fleshy fingers crept slowly up under her hemline and along her bare thigh. This made her shudder, and he pulled away, but only to reach for the collar of her blouse. He fondled it for a moment, then moved his hand downwards. He opened the blouse, taking his time to pop each button; and when he’d finished, he pulled the two sides apart. He traced his fingers upwards over her belly and her chest, pausing to play with the straps of her brassiere. His hand slid over her breasts, squeezing them through the bra’s delicate tulle, and seized the gore between the cups.

She marvelled at her own shameless audacity, allowing this man to do what he was doing. She wondered if it was too late now to change her mind, and pondered the consequences of backing out, as well as the cost of going on. At this thought she must have cringed, because the man was all of a sudden angry.

“Sit still,” he growled. That startled and frightened her. Daniel made no effort at all to comfort her, but Lydia laid a soothing, reassuring hand briefly on her trembling knee.

The man tugged brusquely on the front of her bra to strip it off, and she was jolted forward. It did not break free, and the straps burned into her shoulders as he jerked on it several times.

“Please...” she said finally. He relented, but his hand remained where it was. She leaned forward and reached behind her back, under her blouse. She unfastened the clasp. The man pulled again, and this time the straps broke and her brassiere came away. He let it fall to the floor.

They drove on for a long time, in silence. Her breasts, naked and free, quivered and swayed to the motion of the car. The inside edges of her parted blouse caressed her nipples; the leather tickled her backside and thighs. Each time the road curved, the three bodies on the seat leaned with it, and the touch of the trousers on both sides on her knees thrilled her in a way that it would not have if she was not feeling so exposed. It was a weird, pleasantly erotic sensation, as she sat there, between the two men, watched by the other woman, feeling open and wanton and defiant.

The rain was coming down hard by the time they turned off the highway. It was difficult to tell exactly how far they travelled after that, because the car sped up and slowed down as it slewed and skidded along the twisting, rutted dirt road. The excitement was building inside her, along with the dread, and it seemed like half an eternity had passed before, after a sharp turn, there was a crunching of pebbles under the tyres, a scraping of low-slung tree branches across the roof, and the rasping of iron gates swinging on rusted hinges. Abruptly, the engine cut out and they rolled to a halt.

No one moved or spoke, except the driver, who exited the car and came round to Daniel’s side to open the door. Their chauffeuse was a woman about Jane’s age, tall and athletic. In the shimmer of a driveway lamppost, Jane saw that she was, like Lydia almost unbearably beautiful. Her hair was cropped like Lydia’s. She waited stoically, standing at attention uncovered in the rain, her tiny, diaphanous white dress clinging soddenly to the luxurious contours of her body. Her throat was girded by a broad leather collar, and similar bands were affixed to her wrists and ankles.

At last the big man beside Jane spoke. “Lean forward. More.”

She bent her body until her chin was almost between her knees.

“Put your hands behind you.”

She crossed her arms over the small of her back. The man was gruff in his words and his actions. He looped a cord about and between her wrists, drawing the ends tightly and cinching the knot with a vicious tug. She barely stifled a yelp.

She didn’t understand why it was necessary that she be restrained in this way, since she had no intention of disobeying any instruction; but she did not resist. (She had never been bound before… except once, when she and Daniel were playing some childhood game. He had tied her up; but on that occasion, at least, she got to do the same to him.) Her instinct was to test her bonds by flexing and twisting her arms, but the effort produced only chafing.

It was Daniel who blindfolded her, with a red satin sash, brushing his fingers tenderly across her cheeks as he placed the cloth over her eyes, and tying it in place firmly but gently. Funnily enough, being rendered sightless did not disturb her as much as the first feel of the rope around her wrists. There was something oddly comforting about being in the dark. It calmed her to not know what was happening and what was about to happen. She felt like she was having one of those weird dreams, when the things going on around you don’t make any sense but it doesn’t bother you, because things are not supposed to make sense.

As she was being thus bound, Jane was still leaning forward. The two men’s movements as they prepared her caused her nipples, already aroused by what she was feeling (and by the chill of the air from the open door), to brush and rub against her thighs. She could not hold in a soft moan.

She tried to sit up, but a hand on the back her neck brusquely held her down.

“Stay as you are,” the big man commanded.

“Nearly done,” Lydia whispered.

One of the men (she thought it was Daniel) wrapped a belt around her arms just above the elbows. When he drew it tight and buckled it, the stress on her chest as her shoulders were wrenched backwards by the tension of the strap forced a gush of gasps and groans from her lungs. Then he grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled upwards to make her sit straight once more; but he did so as not to hurt her.

Behind her blindfold, she had no clue what the others were doing, but she heard shuffling noises, and then the part of the seat to her right heaved and settled, as the big man climbed out of the car. She started to move as well, but Daniel’s hand was on her shoulder holding her back. She felt something pressing lightly against her lips. It was smooth but pliable, with a velvet quality, and she did not realize straightaway what it was. But after some prodding she opened her jaws and Daniel pushed the ball in. It fit snugly behind her teeth, filling her mouth and depressing her tongue, but well clear of her throat, so she had no fear of choking. It had a slightly pungent, rubbery taste, peculiar but not repellent.

Daniel secured her gag with a rigid leather strap, the edges of which dug painfully into her cheekbones as he buckled it in place; but once it was fastened it was not so bad. Even without the attempt, she knew she could no longer speak, nor indeed make any sound other than a gurgled, gargled mumble.

She did not have much time to savour this latest brand-new sensation.

“Get out,” the big man ordered.

Both men helped her, half-dragged her, from the car. It wasn’t easy, with her arms pinioned. The pantyhose bunched at her knees fell to her ankles as she stood upright. Neither of her escorts made any attempt to free her feet, or to assist her to do so, as she shuffled along the gravel driveway. She managed to kick away the nylon only just before losing her footing.

Daniel had taken a firm grip on her strapped elbows and steered her onto a cobbled path. The stones were jagged under her bare feet, and greasy from the rain. Several times she slipped; and although he stopped her from falling, he did nothing to warn her when they reached a set of steps. Sightless, she stumbled at the bottom one. Her shins knocked painfully against its sharp edge. She rasped a feeble remonstration through her gag.

They halted on the porch. “We will leave you here,” the big man said. “When the door opens, do what you’re told. If you hesitate or refuse, they will take you anyway. If you don’t comply immediately, they will make you. If you disobey, you will be punished. Do you understand?”

She slowly bowed her head.

It was Lydia who continued. She sounded unfazed by her colleague’s harsh words. “Never forget, you are here of your own free will. No one has forced you. Do you agree?”

This time she replied with a vigorous nod.

“You’re doing well.” Daniel spoke in a low, soothing voice. “Remember, we are in this together.”

Jane was grateful at that moment for the blindfold and bulbous gag. They concealed her laugh.

“We will be along later,” Daniel said.

“Don’t worry about your purse and shoes,” Lydia told her. “You won’t need them.”

No one knocked or rang a doorbell. So she waited. At least she was out of the rain. The men’s footsteps retreated, but in what direction she could not tell. She did not know what had become of Lydia or the chauffeuse. She did not hear the car start up and move off. Yet she knew she was alone, cold and wet and fearful. Her bound arms ached, her wrists felt numb and swollen. The ball-gag did not quite seal her mouth, and dribble oozed from the corners and down her chin. She shivered as the breeze gusted onto the porch, over her bare arms and legs, under her skirt to tickle her uncovered loins, and through her open blouse. Her wounds, though mild (there was no blood trickling down her shins) had begun to throb.

It was some time before the door creaked open. Warm dry air wafted over her. She could faintly discern a bright light as a dull orange-grey radiance beyond her blindfold. Pairs of hands took hold of her arms and guided her over the threshold. No words were spoken, but the fingers were slender, soothing and feminine. A luxurious thick-pile carpet was squishy and friendly between her toes, even if water still dripped down her legs and formed a saturated patch beneath her feet. Her attendants (there were three of them) did not seem to mind as they undressed her. The skirt came off without any trouble, but with her arms still bound behind her, the blouse could only be cut away. Jane sighed on hearing the scissor blades shear through it. But the woman who did the cutting fondled the material as she did so, and the back of her hand kept brushing against Jane’s breasts. They lingered long enough for Jane to be aware that the touch was not unintended.

Now she was naked, but for her blindfold and gag, the cord and the strap.

The women began drying her hair and body with a fluffy, heated towel. They dabbed her chest, patted her back and shoulders, buffed her belly, padded her most intimate parts. The way her arms were pinned behind her back pushed out her front, straining her bosom to a piquant stiffness, and the sensual strokes of the warm fleece drew from her a blissful whimper. One of the attendants tended to her shins, gently daubing the abrasions with a cloth and tenderly applying some sort of ointment. Another sprinkled perfumed water, which had a subtle floral fragrance, over her body, and applied rouge to her lips, nipples and labia. They were fastidious and unhurried. They said not a word.

When they were done, each of the females in turn ran her hands slowly down Jane’s torso, front and back, caressing each curve and exploring both of her lower crevices. She felt an unexpected thrill, something different from what she had experienced so far. As all three at once began to tease and squeeze her quivering body, as her insides tightened and she began to convulse in the exquisite agony of an onrushing orgasm, she suddenly remembered where she was, what she was and why she was here. And yet it seemed not quite real, as if she were in a play, and all the actors but herself had read the script. Or maybe it was a dream, and these other people were nothing more than her imaginary creations. Or perhaps it was part of a joke she had not yet got.

She could not see these women, knew nothing about them. She was stark naked and completely helpless in their lustful clutches. But they belonged to her.

The new mistress of the Château Chaînerie sucked in a few hurried, panting breaths before the next wave of pleasure shuddered through her.

Sarobah
Australia


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Post by Soraka »

Part Two

“You’re lucky, Jeanne had repeated; they will be much harder on you. What had she meant by that? Then she ceased to be conscious of anything but the collar, the bracelets and the chain. Her body began to drift, to vanish in the wake. She was going to understand.”
— Pauline Réage, Histoire d’O

It must have been close to midday when she awoke. There was just one small window, but she could guess the approximate hour from the angle of the sun’s rays.

Apart from that there was not much illumination, and it took a while for her sleep-blurred eyes to adjust. The room was more the size of a cell than a bedchamber, sparsely but elegantly furnished. The bed was a large four-poster with slender carved columns of red oak but no canopy. In the corner of the room were a velvet-covered sofa and an “ottoman” style tuffet or footstool. The floor was of wooden boards polished to a high sheen; beside the bed was a lush carpet of rich magenta speckled with gold filaments and decorated with a circular pattern of three interlocking spirals, also of gold thread, that reminded Jane of the design on Lydia’s ring. There was no door, just a crimson curtain draped across the opening. The walls were painted a glossy black, and more crimson hangings bedecked the entrance to a compact cubicle containing a hand basin and toilet. There were no light fixtures except for a bracket lamp glowing feebly next to the bed.

The mattress on which Jane lay naked was queen-sized and sumptuous. The silk sheets and quilt had not been folded down. Above the headboard was fixed to the wall a steel circle about the width of a hand, and next to it was embedded a metal hook. They were far enough from the floor that Jane could reach them only if she stretched on tiptoes; but she was not very tall, and the average man could do so without effort. A slim silver chain was fastened to the hoop and descended to her collar. She probed the neckband with her fingers. It was snug enough to girdle her throat and stay in place halfway up and not slip around. Fashioned in several thin layers of leather, it was lined on the inside with fur or felt so the edges did not abrade the skin. She could discern by touch an inscription embossed on the outside, flanking the small loop on the front and the lock on the back. As there was no mirror, she had no way of determining what the words might be.

Still in that foggy twilight of half-asleep and half-awake, she took a few moments to gain her proper senses. She had been dreaming (for real this time) of that long ago day, a balmy, breezy afternoon in the late summer, when her cousin had tied her up and she had freed herself and turned the tables on him. They wrestled in the grass when he got loose, and she got leaves in her hair and got dirt on her dress and got into trouble because it was her party frock. She resented that Daniel was not punished. Boys could get away so much more than girls. She tried to raise her arms to offer him a defiant bras d’honneur, but they would not move… She woke, and drowsily took a few more seconds to realize why she could not lift her hands. Clamped upon each wrist was a bracelet made of gold (heavy enough to be the pure metal), crafted in the form of three finely braided ropes. On each was a tiny clasp, and the means by which they were snapped together made it impossible for the wearer to unlink them. They were also clipped onto the ring on Jane’s collar, so that her hands were joined just below her chin, in “prayer” position.

Across the room, on top of the dresser, lay the key to her shackles. It was well out of her reach. The chain which anchored her to the ring on the wall was long enough for her to move about and get to the toilet stall, but it had been looped over the hook in such a way that the slack which remained would permit her to cross only halfway to the key. She tugged half-heartedly at it, and fiddled with the lock on her collar. Neither yielded; but what bothered her most of all was being deprived of the full use of her hands. It was frustrating to have the rest of her body thus made inaccessible to her, as if a reminder that it no longer belonged to her; and she worried how she would cope if she needed to use the toilet.

Soon after she had awoken, Jane was brought a meal. It could have been breakfast or lunch, it didn’t really matter. It was skimpy, just a piece of dry toast, a peeled banana and a slice of pink melon. She was not hungry anyway. The cup of tea, however, was a blessing. She normally drank coffee in the morning; but flavoured and scented with something sweetly aromatic that she could not identify, on Jane’s parched lips this was empyrean nectar.

Her server was the chauffeuse from last night, still wearing her choker and wrist and ankle cuffs, but otherwise nude. Jane could not help but stare. Exposed by daylight, the young woman was even lovelier than she had looked in the evening rain. Her lean curves, satin-smooth skin and sleek long legs, her short strawberry-blonde hair and sparkling hazel eyes conveyed a vibrant athleticism and a fresh-faced innocence. Jane thought back to the lively, laughing girls she used to watch on the university hockey field and the running track, their lustrous tanned limbs dancing in a sensual ballet of energy and grace, their breasts bobbing and jogging and swaying to the rhythm of their moves. She had wondered then about the feelings stirring inside her, never really understanding… or if understanding, never really accepting.

While she ate and sipped, sitting on the edge of her bed, her hands still shackled at her throat, the two of them did not speak. The fact is, Jane felt embarrassed, naked and chained as she was, even if the girl standing silently before her was also stripped bare. As she put the empty cup back on the tray, she looked closely at the girl’s collar. Imprinted on it were the words “Rachel, property of the Château Chaînerie”.

She was about to say something when there was a noise outside the doorway, and the curtain parted. Rachel immediately stood back from the bed, rigidly at attention but with her arms behind her back, not folded but with fingertips touching elbows. She pulled her shoulders backwards, to push out her splendid chest. She kept her eyes downcast in humble submission to their visitors.

Daniel and another man came into the room. Her cousin was wearing the clothes he had arrived in last night, but they looked freshly laundered and pressed. His companion was clad (rather absurdly Jane thought) in brown breeches and black boots and a ruffled white shirt (the sort of thing you imagine being worn by poets and pirates). He looked to be no more than twenty, was short and stocky with the teenager’s chubbiness not yet entirely burnt off. He had lank, flaxen hair and greenish grey eyes, and a thin-lipped mouth that drooped at the corners. Lodged in his right boot, Jane noted with alarm, was what appeared to be a riding crop.

“Time to rise,” Daniel said.

“What o’clock is it? Have I really slept all morning?”

“It’s not a lot before noon. So yes, you did.”

The other young man grinned benignly. “You needed it. You weren’t allowed much sleep, were you? You’re still...” He did not finish the sentence.

She shook her head in agreement, and to disperse the remaining fog. She waited for one of them to speak again. An uneasy silence followed. She stole a peek at Rachel, grasped what was wrong, got up from the bed, stood ramrod-straight and bowed her head. She did it so quickly, so mechanically (once she knew what was expected of her) that she did not think about the shame of her nudity until it was too late to worry.

Daniel nodded appreciatively. Jane blushed, surprisingly proud of her unquestioning compliance. But she flushed a bright red when he added “Good girl.”

Beside her, Rachel giggled.

“There’s a problem, female?” the other man demanded.

“No, Master,” she replied through gritted teeth.

Jane glanced about cautiously, at each of her visitors, though she dared not raise her head. She frowned. There was something about Daniel’s companion and the girl that drew her attention. Rachel was at least a couple of years older and half a head taller. He was somewhat flabby, his clothes ill-fitting and dishevelled; whereas her body, sans attire, was trim and taut. But there was enough similarity between them that with a shock (and just a little revulsion), Jane realized that the two might be brother and sister.

Daniel went over to the dresser and picked up the key. He gestured to Rachel, who took it and unlocked the chain from Jane’s collar, releasing her hands as well. But the girl immediately took hold of her arms and pushed then behind her back. She nudged Jane forward until she was just in front of Daniel but turned away, so he could clip together the bands on her wrists. Then he blindfolded her, with the same red sash he had used the previous night. After that, he attached a tether to her collar; and by this he led her out of the room.

“Hurry up,” she was told. “The games begin in half an hour.”

Behind them, Rachel was most likely taking the tray to the kitchen.

The floor tiles in the hallway were numbingly cold under Jane’s bare feet, and she almost stumbled as they entered the stairwell. “Mind your step,” her guide advised, far less helpful than he no doubt intended to be. As they came out into the vestibule, she could hear hushed voices and muted laughter, male and female. Unable to see, she had no way of knowing if she was the focus of attention; but from somewhere off to her right came a muffled squeal and elsewhere a moan, both definitely feminine, both partially smothered by passage through a gag.

They entered another corridor, a short one that led into what seemed to be an interior courtyard, since it was an open, sunny space with neither breeze nor the sounds of trees and birds and insects, and the men’s footsteps echoed. She was steered to a pole or pillar on one side of the enclosure, and made to stand with her back to it, the column nestled between her shoulder blades. She ran her fingers along its surface — her hands were still cuffed behind her. It felt smooth but slightly granular, like half-polished marble. The cable which had served as her leash was secured to a hook or peg above her head so that she could not move away from her position, nor bend her knees or body without pulling on the collar and choking.

Before leaving her there, one of the men — she hoped it wasn’t Daniel — drew his hand up the inside of her thigh and briefly penetrated her. She gasped, but that was all. Could she have imagined, just twenty-four hours ago, responding thus… hardly responding at all? She heard them depart and then she waited. It was impossible to judge the passage of time because she was placed in the shade of an awning, so she could not keep track of the sun’s movement.

She was not by herself the entire afternoon, however. Every so often one or two men would come into the courtyard. This was always during a lull in the chorus of noises and voices she could hear emanating from some distance beyond the walls. There were feminine squeals and screams, and shouts and laughter both male and female. Her piqued curiosity was tempered by the dread certainty that she would soon be a player in those games. Her visitors came mainly to gawk at her, and make a few crude comments about her body; sometimes they would fondle her breasts and probe between her legs. Once they brought with them several of the slavegirls, who took turns to pleasure her with their lips and tongues. But most of the time she was alone, attended only by her thoughts and feelings, questioning why she was there, wondering where it would all end and what she would become.

She knew when it was getting near sunset because she sensed, behind her blindfold, the sky begin to darken. An early evening breeze swirled across the flagstones and, starting at her toes, the cold air crept up her naked body like an oozing, muculent shroud. Then two of the women came for her, and took her to a bathroom on the second floor — one guiding her on the leash, the other tapping her lightly on the hip when they reached the stairs and on the shoulder to warn her of corners to be turned. Her cuffs and blindfold were removed and she showered alone. Then Rachel accompanied her back to her room — her cell — which was on the level above the bathroom. Another girl, Siobhán (each girl’s name was inscribed on her collar), was waiting for them, and she informed Jane that they had been ordered to prepare her for dinner. Before they started, her bracelets were locked behind her back, and she sat on the edge of the bed as they applied perfume, lipstick and eye shadow, rouged her cheeks and the tip of each breast and the lips below her belly. Siobhán lovingly stroked Jane’s hair before tying it up. (It was impossible to ignore that all the women Jane had been able to see so far in the Château had short-cropped hairstyles, whether sporty like Rachel’s or boyish like Lydia’s or pixie-cut like this girl’s. She had no idea, then, why this might be so, whether it was a rule or a custom, a practical measure for some reason, or just a fashion.)

Once she had been made ready, she was blindfolded once more and taken downstairs. When the red sash was removed, she found herself in a dining room that was not very spacious but opulently adorned and furnished, with marble flooring, polished wood-panel walls, a baroquely carved ceiling and ornate crystal chandelier. On the wall at the far end there hung a large portrait, of a stern-faced, middle-aged man and a sweet-faced, younger woman. Wearing an old-fashioned three-piece suit and a flowing black cape, the man stood with one hand clutching his vest and the other resting upon the head of the woman, who was nude and kneeling by his side. She looked uncannily like Jane.

Most of the room was taken up by a heavy oak table, at which were seated a dozen males, looking to be aged between twenty and thirty years, in no way distinguished in appearance except for their posh tuxedos. At the head was Daniel and sitting to his right was Lydia, the only woman at the table, without clothing. The chair at the other end was vacant, and to this Jane was led by her two attendants, one of whom freed her hands from their golden shackles. Lydia alone rose and stood until Jane was in her place. The leather under her naked bottom felt clammily cold and slippery, and she did not experience the sensual congeniality of the limousine’s upholstery. The edges of the seat pressed into the raw skin of her thighs, and the intricately chiselled slats which formed the hind part of the chair left their imprint in her bare back. But she was famished, having eaten nothing in more than a day apart from that scanty noontime repast.

In deciding how to behave in the presence of the males, Jane took her prompts from Lydia, who did not appear to be following the imperative of keeping her gaze lowered or averted to avoid the insolence of eye contact. She talked freely when spoken to but did not initiate conversation. She addressed the men sometimes as “Master” and at other times as “Sir” and there seemed (from Jane’s perspective) to be no logical pattern or reason for which of the titles she used. She nibbled at the food on her plate, took but a few sips of her wine. She never acknowledged the presence of the half-dozen slavegirls who served the meal and drinks.

To Jane’s right sat Sir Matthew, the young man who had come with Sir Daniel to fetch her at noon. He tried to engage her in conversation more than once, but she resisted being drawn in, for fear that her words or simply her presumption in speaking to a male as if she were his equal might get her into trouble. He good-humouredly shrugged off the rebuff and turned his attention to one of the waitresses, the graceful, raven-haired Elizabeth. He pushed his chair back and put her across his knee, and the woman’s forehead rested on Jane’s thigh under the table, as she began to gasp and moan. The other diners glanced at them with only mild curiosity, while without being instructed the diminutive blonde Sarah stepped forward from her waiting station against the wall to take up Elizabeth’s serving duties.

After the dessert had been finished, the dishes cleared away and the coffee brought out, one of the men rose from his place with glass in hand. The other Masters, and Lydia, joined him in standing, facing Daniel who remained sitting. Cued by a subtle shake of Lydia’s head, Jane stayed seated as well. The half dozen slavegirls in the room lay on their bellies around the table, their arms behind their backs, their legs apart.

The speaker made some remarks before offering a toast. Jane, staring at the prostrate women on the floor, didn’t really listen and hoped she would not be called on to respond. All she heard were his final words.

“So let us drink to the lord and mistress of the Château Chaînerie.”
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Part Three

“All of life is a journey, and we follow our separate paths. What lies along the road, whether we will find what we have been seeking, nobody really knows until the destination is reached.”
— Anonymous

Daniel opened his eyes, yawned and sat up. The places beside him were empty. He struggled to recall what he had done with the gorgeous Lydia and the lovely Justine. Then he saw the chain fixed to the post at the foot of the bed. He quietly moved to that end of the mattress and peered over the edge. The two women were curled up on the rug, asleep, their naked bodies embraced, arms and legs intertwined. The connector between their collars had just two or three links, so they were coupled face to face… lip to lip… breast to breast… belly to belly... It was a vision so sublime, so alluring, so overwhelming that he had to hold his breath, lest he roar out his joy and waken them.

Lydia stirred, her nose twitched as she felt Justine’s gentle breathing on her face; she smiled and sighed, but her eyes did not open. Daniel studied the slumbering forms. In the morning light, Lydia’s skin glowed honey-gold with a hint of caramel, Justine’s a rich, sun-kissed mahogany. Across the thighs, backs, buttocks and hips of each woman was a criss-cross of faint pink markings and swellings, the slowly fading memoir of yesterday’s games and last night’s entertainment.

He lay back down again and saw himself, sprawled in purple silk pyjamas on black satin sheets, reflected in the overhead mirror. He laughed (but not too loud). Apart from that cliché, he might have been in the royal suite of some palatial hotel. Never had he seen such opulence in a bedroom. But for all the lavish accoutrements, nothing surpassed the sumptuous splendour of his two sleeping beauties. It seemed a pity to disturb them, but he was not yet done with those succulent, obliging bodies.

It had been a strange few days since Lydia had summoned him and Jane to that extraordinary meeting.

The cousins had known each other all his life; Jane was a year older. He’d always had a crush on her, and since they were actually second cousins that was not out of bounds, although he always considered her out of his league. She was pretty and popular, very smart and from what he’d seen utterly fearless. Because neither of them had siblings and lived close by, they played together as children, and as teenagers were still friends; but in recent years their families had grown apart. Her Grandpa Joe had been an eccentric character, and something happened which caused a rift between him and his brother, Daniel’s grandfather. No one spoke openly about the scandal, but there were rumours of an affair between Joe and his sister-in-law. When they all gathered at the funeral, nothing was said of the falling out, and some healing took place.

The last to leave the gravesite had been a petite, dark-haired woman in a short black dress whom nobody seemed to know… or at least everyone pretended to not know. When they assembled again for the reading of the will, Lydia the executrix proved to be some sort of high-powered agent or manager, with a top-floor office at the top end of town. She was stunning, with luminous blue eyes and a penetrating gaze, a sexy charisma and an intimidating self-assurance which reminded him of a sleek, predatory cat. She announced herself as Joe’s business associate, but she was vague. After that, she called them in one at a time for a private conference. Daniel did not know what the others were told, but Jane, who preceded him, came out of Lydia’s office looking unsettled, her face flushed. She murmured something he did not catch and averted her eyes as she brushed past him.

The full details of the bequest were unclear, except that he found himself titleholder, along with his cousin, of an estate in the countryside, a mansion which Lydia referred to simply as “the Château.” Since it was Jane who was Joe’s direct descendant, Daniel was gratified that he had been allotted a half-share; but that made him less keen to sate his curiosity about the exact nature of the old man’s legacy.

A week later he was called back. He was ushered in by one of the secretaries, a thin, pale, stiff-backed fellow in razor-pleated grey trousers, starched blue shirt and a magenta-and-gold striped tie. The other was a tall, strikingly attractive young woman in a long-sleeved cream-coloured blouse and knee-length beige skirt. Her coppery-red hair was cut short similar to Lydia’s. They were introduced as Steven and Gabrielle. Jane was already there. She and Lydia were deep in conversation, and his cousin’s expression was one he had seen before, when she was struggling with some momentous decision. Lydia whispered something as Daniel took his seat, and Jane smiled and shook her head. She may have blushed, because she pointedly turned towards the big window so her face was suffused with the orange glow of the late afternoon sun.

This part of the conference did not take long. They were given paperwork to take away for signing and witnessing. Jane then left, while Lydia asked Daniel to accompany her and Steven to an adjoining room. Half a dozen armchairs were arranged in a circle, three occupied by men in neat, expensive business suits. Serving them coffee, on her knees, was Gabrielle, and she had changed out of her prim and proper skirt and blouse into a barely-there white negligée. The front and rear were open almost all the way down, and there was no hint of tan lines on her back or across her superb cleavage. Her magnificent legs were sheathed in sheer silk stockings held up by a lace-and-ribbon garter belt. Around her slender throat was a thin black metal choker.

Lydia waited until both Daniel and Steven had taken their seats. Then, as she lowered herself onto the chair, in a single, smooth movement she put her hands under her dress and drew her panties down to her knees and then swept her hemline backwards so that, as her bottom touched the upholstery, it was bare flesh against the leather. Neither her secretaries nor her guests reacted at all to this curious gesture. Without so much as a pause for effect, she began speaking.

With what followed, Daniel came to understand the true nature of the Château. He found out about the masters and their slaves, was told stories about Grandpa Joe’s business that he had not known (but suspected), had revealed to him secrets which left him troubled and intrigued and titillated, was enlightened about matters he’d believed existed only in make-believe, and discovered (to his relief) that Jane had been no more aware of these things than he.

There were hints during the conversation of a mysterious co-proprietor, but despite it never being said outright, Daniel was sure that everyone present sensed what he had learnt during the earlier session, that the silent partner was Lydia. After an hour, he was still ignorant about so much, but Lydia was insistent that the best teacher was experience, and anyway it was a provision of old Joe’s will that if they wished to receive their inheritance, he and Jane must familiarize themselves with the ways of the Château at first hand. Then she showed him out, accompanying him down to the lobby, leaving the delightful Gabrielle to entertain the guests.

He met with Lydia a couple more times in the following days. The next time he saw Jane was outside her apartment building on that rainy evening. She seemed no different. But as soon as she had entered the car and put herself in the hands of the two men, one a complete stranger and the other the cousin she had known all her life, he knew she had changed. He could not imagine what Lydia had told her, in what way she had prepared her, how she explained the different paths that Daniel and Jane would take.

Lydia had warned them that their destination was a place where dreams were made real and fantasies fulfilled. But they were very special, very specific fantasies and dreams. And Daniel had the feeling that the story of the Château Chaînerie was, as yet, only half told.
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Part Four

“Nothing had been such a comfort to her as the silence, unless it were the chains. The chains and the silence, which ought to have bound her deep within herself, which should have smothered and strangled her, had not. On the contrary, they had been her deliverance, liberating her from herself.”
— Pauline Réage, Histoire d’O

In the darkness, still wide awake, Jane lay on the bed, chained to the wall, listening to the sounds drifting up from downstairs, of more games being played by the Masters with their slaves. She was on top of the silk sheets and satin quilt but not cold; the thermostat had been set to a moderate warmth. Then she must have fallen asleep, because she was startled when the lamp came on, and through bleary eyes she saw two men standing beside her bed. One was Sir Matthew, the other an even younger man, tall and stringy, with unkempt brown hair.

“Get up,” she was ordered. When she was standing, with her gaze fixed on the floor at the feet of her visitors, Sir Matthew unclipped her bracelets and made a gesture with his hands so she knew to put hers behind her back.

“Face the bed,” the second Master commanded, and then he took hold of her wrists and shackled them. After he had done so, he ran his fingers through the furrow of her backside, and between her thighs to enter her at the front. She squirmed.

“Remain still!” he barked.

“Please kneel,” Sir Matthew said in a gentler voice. “Move closer to the bed and bend over it.” He adjusted the chain that linked her collar to the hoop on the wall so that it was taut. She heard a soft swishing noise, and when she realized it was that of belts being withdrawn from the loops on the men’s trousers, she braced herself against the mattress. There was a whooshing sound and a terrible burning pain on her buttocks. She screamed.

“Move your hands away,” she was told, and she pushed her wrists up her back as far as the golden cuffs would allow them. She screamed again, as the second strike seared her flesh. And again. Both men took turns thrashing her, maybe two dozen times altogether; and even after they had stopped she continued to shriek, and as her wails subsided into moans, tears streamed down her cheeks and into her mouth. But when she thought her ordeal was over, the men made her stand up again and turn to face them. Sir Matthew pushed on her shoulders and she retreated until her back was against the wall. Their eyes briefly met, and his look was one of apology… but not regret.

He freed her hands from the ring on her collar and drew her arms over her head to hitch the bracelets on the hook above the bed. This forced her onto her toes and stretched her body. Then the two men whipped her breasts and belly. She cringed and quivered but never tried to evade the lashes, and was proud that she withstood the pain and had not begged for mercy. On the other hand, she expected to feel mortification and shame at her abject submission, for allowing herself to be so abused; yet she did not.

(The previous night, when they had come to her room, the Masters had only toyed with her, before leaving her standing against the wall, her neck chain shortened to keep her that way; and she had been forced to maintain that position almost till sunrise. It was a torment, being alone in the dark and the silence, fighting the fatigue, fending off the enervating boredom with all kinds of imaginings. Eventually the aching of her leg muscles gave way to numbness, and she descended into a sort of waking dream in which she heard voices and saw things that weren’t there. When one of the girls — she was too exhausted to recognize which — came just before dawn and loosened the chain to allow her to lie on the bed, she went to sleep impressed by her own powers of endurance. But then there had not been the whips.)

She was also surprised that the men had not held back. The younger Master seemed unsure of himself at first, and Sir Matthew had showed him how to apply the belt to her backside in such a way that it was the broad, flat side which made contact with her flesh and not the thin edge. “It marks her less,” he explained, but his concern was not to spare his victim but rather to prolong her flogging and thus her agony. She had wondered if she would be treated any differently from the other females in the house, if her special status had conferred on her some degree of immunity from the worst of the maltreatment which the rest of the women (albeit willingly) suffered. Knowing now the answer, she considered more intently what lay in store for her when the new day arrived.

The two men left her, still sobbing. They had freed her hands and extended her chain, for which she was grateful as she hobbled into the bathroom. Thereafter she went to sleep lying on her stomach, which was the slightly less inflamed side. The silk and satin were cool and soothing.

Just before sunrise she was woken by Rachel, who replaced her golden bracelets with leather ones. The sky outside the tiny window was grey, with just the faintest rosy blush of the coming dawn. Jane was taken downstairs. It was the first time she had gone all the way through the house without a blindfold. The kitchen was on the ground floor at the back, and several women were already at work preparing breakfast. None turned to watch her come in, let alone greet her. No one spoke except for the supervisor, Justine, a statuesque, dark-skinned girl. Like all of the females, she was exquisitely, intimidatingly beautiful. Although she considered herself attractive, next to these creatures Jane felt plain. They were working naked over the stove, and yet aprons hung from pegs on the wall. Jane wondered if the women were permitted to protect themselves when dealing with hot pots and pans but out of pride chose not to. But she did not ask. Apart from Justine giving terse, curt orders, nobody uttered a word.

Jane and two others, Suzanne and Isabella, were assigned to serve the breakfast to the Masters. Before they began, each had her ankles linked by a chain which Suzanne took from a hook on the wall. The connector was just long enough that Jane could shuffle across the floor without fear of stumbling (unless she was careless). As she picked up the first tray, containing bread-rolls, croissants and other assorted pastries, Isabella showed her how to hold it correctly, at belly button level so her breasts and lower parts remained visible and available for inspection. So it amused her when the diners seemed more interested in what was on the tray rather than under or above it. Only her cousin paid any attention to Jane’s body. She was charmed, in a way, that Sir Daniel could still be distracted by her nudity, until she realized that he was staring at the pink welts and purple bruises which covered her bare flesh. Their eyes made contact again, for just an instant before Jane lowered her gaze to the floor, where it belonged… though more in embarrassment than in accordance with the rules. And yet the shame had a sweet savour.

The same dozen men were seated as last night, but not Lydia. As the men ate, those women not serving, including Lydia, stood silently at one end of the room facing the wall, hands behind their backs but with their cuffs not linked. Two girls were playing music on violins and they were very good. Every now and then a couple of the standing women were commanded to dance to entertain the Masters as they dined, but then they returned to their places against the wall. Jane was glad she was not one of them, being kept busy, because the meal lasted more than an hour.

All the females in the house appeared to be present. She had counted twenty altogether, which she knew was about half the total number who spent time there. From what Lydia had implied, but not said outright, three or four times that number were attached in some way to the Chaînerie but were never summoned to the Château. It was more difficult to estimate how many Masters there were, except that they were many fewer than the slaves. The men were also, Jane noted, younger. Only one appeared to be aged even thirty, whereas that seemed to be the average for the females. Jane, at 25, was one of the youngest women in the house; Sir Daniel, at 24, was one of the oldest males.

A sharp whack on her still raw backside wrenched her out of her distracting thoughts. She was now pouring juice with one hand and coffee with the other, and when she returned to the galley for refills, the women who had cooked were busy washing plates, pot and pans. It was only when the Masters retired to their quarters for their ablutions that the women had their meal… Jane would not call it breakfast. They consumed the men’s leftovers. Nevertheless, none went hungry since a lot of food had been prepared. The kitchen staff ate first, then the other women. And even though there were no Masters present, again nobody spoke. There were meaningful looks and insightful expressions, but the rule of silence was not once broken.

For the remainder of the morning, all of the women went about their household duties, again directed by Justine, who on a regular basis wielded a cane on the backsides on one of her charges, apparently at random, pour encourager les autres. Neither Jane nor Lydia were exempt. Their chores, though tedious, were not onerous, because there were so many pairs of hands. But they worked in chains, to remind them (as if their nudity, the cane and the rule of silence were not enough) of what they were and especially of what they were not. If one of the Masters happened to pass by, they would all stop and stand at attention, eyes downcast; but if two came by, they knelt; and if more than two, they prostrated themselves on the hard, cold tiles. Now and then, one or more of the girls would be called away and would return, sometime later, flushed and sweaty, trembling and dreamy-eyed.

Jane was assigned to clean the Masters’ bedrooms. Each was three or four times the size of her own. (Yet even her minuscule cell was luxurious compared to the quarters of other women, who slept on mats packed together.) And when it was time to put away her broom and mop, it was Sir Daniel who came for her. He locked her bracelets behind her back and took her to her own room. He tethered her collar to the ring on the wall, shortening the chain so she was forced to stand erect beside the bed; and he freed her hands, but only to secure them overhead to the hook.

Without a word, he then went away. After that, she was visited by each of the Masters in turn. There were no more chores for Jane that morning.

Rachel brought her lunch, and was obliged to hand-feed her, with difficulty since Jane was now spreadeagled on the bed with her wrists and ankles connected to the four posts, and Rachel did not have permission to use the key. Sir Mark, her fourth visitor, had been the one who put her in this position, with her legs opened … as if any of the Masters required or demanded an invitation to enter. She was surprised that what she had been through — for several of the Masters had not been satisfied with ravishing her body but ravaged it with the whip as well — left her so untroubled, so serene and (this amazed her) almost sad that her ordeal was over for now. Then came Lydia, who did have permission to free her from her shackles. As Jane washed her face and cleaned the other parts of her as best she could in the hand basin, Lydia asked:

“Are you happy?”

“Yes,” Jane replied. It was an odd question, and she expected a follow-up, but none came. But she didn’t care, because she was not yet ready to express her feelings about all that had happened so far… because she had not quite decided for herself exactly what these were. In any case, Lydia said “Come” and Jane followed her downstairs.

It was early afternoon, and everyone in the house had gathered on the lawn for the sport to begin. Each day the women of the Château played a different game, or if it suited their Masters any number of games. Some of the Masters had been busy during at least part of the morning, because a large wooden apparatus had been erected. It consisted of a rotary base with eight horizontal poles projecting as spokes from the axis, like one of those grinding wheels in an ancient flour mill. Sixteen girls were assigned places, two on each of the arms of the device, and hitched into place. There were “eye” bolts screwed into the wood to which their bracelets were attached with short chains. The eight women on the outer part of the arm were linked by a rope that ran from the collar of one, down between her legs and cleaving her labia, to the collar of the girl behind her, and so on to complete the loop. The eight inner girls were connected the same way.

Once they were so placed, music began to play, and according to the tempo the gears in the machine changed to make the revolutions more or less difficult. This altered the rate at which the women marched in their never-ending circuit. The mechanism was so designed that each of the arms rotated independently, and the result was that if one pair moved too quickly for those behind to keep pace, the rope between their thighs was dragged deep into their crevices; but if they slowed down the tug on their collars signalled that they were doing the same to those directly in front. They could not bunch up to relieve the tension without someone in the circle suffering terribly, and the result was that as they trudged round and round, they had to keep in a steady rhythm, with their partners side-by-side and front and behind, which was made more demanding by the fact that they were blindfolded, and also gagged, so their only communication could be grunts and groans. The gags were of the whiffle-ball kind which made it easier to breathe but caused, in a very short time, uncontrollable drooling. For some reason she did not fully comprehend, Jane found this particular humiliation to be deeply and intensely arousing. Life in the Château had that effect.

To allow them the full enjoyment of the rope’s movement between their thighs and prevent it abrading the tender flesh, the women had been given small loincloths to wear. It was the first time that Jane had covered her most private part (or for that matter, any of her apart from the eyes) since she entered the house. Yet this was not for compassion; it meant that the game could go on for at least two hours. With just a minute of rest and a sip of water every half-hour, the women were so exhausted by the end that, once released from their harnesses, all collapsed beside the wheel. And it was perhaps the most degrading aspect of the infernal machine that it had no purpose, it did nothing but turn under their efforts. But Jane had found her ordeal as exhilarating as anything she had faced so far; and she was proud that neither she nor any of the other slaves had faltered.

Given no time to recover, they progressed to the next game.

By the end Jane was sore and exhausted, humiliated and elated. She had laughed herself silly, shrieked till she was hoarse, screamed in agony and ecstasy, begged for mercy and cried out for more of the torment. No part of her, inside or out, accessible to the players was left unscathed. She was astonished at what her body could withstand and how her mind coped. She was happy when it was over, and saddened that there was no more, ashamed at what she had endured, proud that she had endured.

Around her, the other women were reacting the same way; but blindfolded most of the time, she found out nothing about them apart from what they had in common, that which made them playthings. And every now and then, as she sweated and shuddered and whimpered and groaned, she sensed Sir Daniel or one of the other men cringing, imagining themselves to be the ones naked and writhing chained upon the rack, thrashing about lashed to the frame, squirming under the grill, struggling with the weights, bracing against the onslaught of outlandish appliances and bizarre contraptions, dangling, doubled up, stretched out, prostrate, cowering, crying, crawling, stumbling, shuffling, hopping and jerking, gulping for breath, yelling defiance, choking back the sobs and gasps of pleasure. That also gave her a feeling of pride.

The last event of the day had been the pony show. Each girl was equipped with bridle, bit-gag, and blinkers, harness, plume and tail, shackles and hobble. They raced each other round the gardens, pulling sulkies driven by the Masters. They pranced and paced, piaffed and pirouetted, cantered and trotted for the dressage. When evening fell and the games ended, Jane accompanied the rest of the ponies to the communal shower, and revelled in the voluptuous stream of steam that washed away the sweat and the grime and the froth and all the other stains from her marvellous ordeal. Away from the watchful eyes of the Masters (and Justine, who was not present), there was some smiling and whispering. Some of the girls sudsed and scrubbed each other, and Jane was intrigued, and inspirited, by their affectionate tenderness. Such intimacy, she had believed, was reserved for those in the house whose body parts entitled them to rule.

After that they prepared dinner.

The women were not allowed time to rest or relax; and as usual there was no speaking. Of course, the rule of silence did get broken now and then, but rarely for no good reason; and when one of the girls stopped for a brief respite, it was so she could renew her best effort. But as Jane well knew, all were here of their own free will. They accepted and indeed welcomed the impositions and obligations and compulsions, and anything else that the Masters ordained. There were punishments for disobedience, but Jane had so far had seen nothing but compliance, abject and absolute. And what she discovered, often to her amazement, sometimes to her dismay, increasingly to her joy, was that there could be pleasure and even pride in such total submission. Her experience had begun as a personal challenge, a test of her limits, a trial of endurance, a quest in search of herself. She had been promised that it would be an adventure the like of which she would never have imagined, a journey few people dared to take and fewer completed. She had not been disappointed.

In the evening, after the Masters had eaten their dinner and the slavegirls their scraps, everyone assembled in the courtyard. All of the women except Jane were blindfolded; she was permitted to see that with which the others were already familiar. In the middle of the enclosure a scaffold had been erected. From the horizontal beam were suspended three pairs of manacles. Jane shivered, and it was not just the bite of the cold air on her naked flesh.

In a low voice, Lydia explained why they were there. Two of the girls, Isabella and Natalie, had broken some rule. So that the third set of shackles should not remain idle, little Sarah, though not guilty of any offence, had been selected — apparently at random — to share the punishment. They mounted the platform trembling but with defiant looks, and their restraints were adjusted so each was forced to stretch onto her tiptoes. After their whipping, they were left, their naked bodies exposed to the night air, their leg muscles strained and cramping. (Jane could hear their whimpering from well inside the house until late in the evening.)

When those three had been suspended on the scaffold, Justine and Sabrina were ordered to come forward. Each wore a frilly pink garter around her left breast. Jane had surmised that this was an award for pleasing the Masters in some special way because she had witnessed Justine being conferred with hers shortly after breakfast. The tall dark girl appeared to be the most trusted by the men to keep all the females in line. Sabrina, on the other hand, Jane knew only by sight. Elegant and dignified, intense and alert, she was the oldest person in the house, aged in her late thirties or well-preserved forties. Her manner and poise suggested, to Jane, a university professor (and perhaps she was… or had been). She seemed the most unlikely prospect for enslavement. But there was so much that Jane had yet to learn and understand, especially in regards to the women of the Château.

As she went to the drawing room to await the Masters, and the other females were sent upstairs, Jane shuddered at the shrill cries and ecstatic moans echoing down the passage leading from the courtyard. Justine and Sabrina were receiving their reward. The men were also not yet finished with the three girls on the scaffold. Occasionally there was a particularly loud scream; and squeaky-voiced Sarah’s high-pitched shriek was unmistakable.
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Part Five

“You are here to serve your masters. During the day, in connection with the maintenance of the household, you will perform whatever chores are assigned to you… But at the first word or gesture, you will stop whatever you are doing and avail yourself for what is really your one and only duty.”
— Pauline Réage, Histoire d’O

She was kneeling with her back to the fire. Though blindfolded, over the crackling of the flames dancing amongst the logs she could hear masculine breathing, and the tinkling of ice in glasses being filled. No one had said anything at all since the men had come into the room. They were served whisky and brandy by one of the slaves. Jane recognized Caitlyn’s sensuous voice purring “Yes, Master.”

It was Sir Daniel’s voice which broke the silence. From the way he delivered the speech, she could tell he was reading, slowly and clearly so that she could understand and remember, emphasizing certain words and phrases as if they were highlighted in the text. His tone was bland, impassive, as if he were reading something he had not seen beforehand and didn’t fully understand, and was somewhat surprised by its content.

“You are here of your own free will,” he began. “No one has forced you to come nor forced you to stay.” It was what Lydia had said on that first night. “Anything which happens here is what you have freely entered into, by your own informed consent. Do you agree? Don’t speak. Just nod… or shake your head.”

She slowly nodded.

He continued.

“While you are here, regardless of what you are on the outside, you are the property of the Masters. For as long as you remain in this house, you will serve and obey us without question or hesitation. You will give immediately to any man whatever he demands of you. Every man who enters this house enjoys this right, and it is not your place to decide if he is worthy or deserving of your devotion. You will treat every man as your superior, as he will treat you, rightfully, as his chattel, to be used for his pleasure. Again, nod if you agree.

“When you are not rendering such service, during the day you will be put to work, carrying out all chores that are assigned to you. You will not be idle. Just as your body is no longer yours, neither is your time. For this purpose, you will take your directions from whichever slave has been appointed to give them. Otherwise, there are no differences among the females in the house. You are all equal, subject to the same rules and obligations. If any is treated better or worse, that is not your concern. And at night, when not entertaining the Masters or performing other duties, you will retire to your quarters, which you will share with the other women, but you will be available to the Masters, at any hour.

“You will be naked at all times. It is to honour the prestige and dignity of the Masters, and all men, that no woman is permitted to wear clothing within these walls. You must remember that your body does not belong to you, for by coming here you have given up any claim to freedom, privacy and self-determination, or the right to deny any man his privileges. Your nudity will be a reminder of this, as well as the fact that, being property, you have no possessions, nothing which is yours. All that you are, all that you have, kneels here now, and belongs to us, your Masters. As a further reminder, in the presence of a man you will never cross your legs or press your knees together or cover any part of your body with your hands. You will keep your head bowed and your eyes lowered. You must never look any man in the face. You will speak only when spoken to; or, if you need to address a Master, you will do so with reverence and humility. You will not engage in frivolous or trivial conversation with your fellow slaves.

“You will be tied up and chained, blindfolded and gagged, whenever we decide. There will be games and certain rituals. And you can expect to be whipped or otherwise tortured — not frequently, but at any time of the day or night — as punishment for any infractions of the rules you may have committed, or indeed whenever it pleases a Master. This shall be as much for your enlightenment as for your discipline or for our amusement. As it is with your nudity, your suffering will be a reminder of your purpose in being here, and not necessarily on account of anything you may have done or not done. Here you are defined not by your actions, but by what you are and what you are not.

“There are other symbols and formalities that will serve to impress upon you this fact. Your hair will be cut, so that you keep in mind that personal vanity is not yours to enjoy; your pubic hair also will be removed, as a token that your body is open and accessible. When you leave here, if you choose to remain property, you will wear a collar and the ring, which bears the insignia of our institution, to remind you of your status and to identify you to the Masters and your fellow slaves outside the house. You may elect, as many of the women have, to wear the mark of the Chaînerie on your body, as a brand or a tattoo. That will not be forced on you; but you shall always be ready and prepared to serve, in any capacity. And at any time, once you have resumed your life on the outside, you can be recalled to this place for further instruction or for punishment.

“The other demands which will be made of you, and rules you must obey, will be explained when the time is right.”

Sir Daniel stopped. What he had read so far was, Jane surmised, the standard script for all the women who entered the Château. The next paragraph was for her alone.

“What you are, what is yours when you outside this house, has no bearing, once you pass through its gates, on what you are and what you are not. That you and I, as the joint inheritors of your grandfather’s legacy, have taken different paths, is because of that fact.” He paused again. “At midnight you will join the other females, and for the remainder of your time here will be treated no differently. But tonight…”

He ordered her to stand up and face in the direction of the fireplace, away from the Masters. Her arms, which had been folded behind her back, were now roughly seized and the bracelets locked together. The violence with which she was shackled caused her to lose her balance, and when the man who had done so released his hold, she toppled forward until she was kneeling once more. Someone grabbed a fistful of her hair and pushed until her forehead was pressed onto the floor, while another man forced her knees apart. She felt the velvety corduroy of his breeches brush against her buttocks; his large hands cupped her breasts, fingernails digging into their flesh; and she braced her body for the thrust.

All of the Masters in turn gave her the gift which her submission had earned. She could not tell how many there were because she lost count of the number of times and ways her body was used. None of the three openings available to the Masters was denied their attention. Once again she felt the shame in being so wanton as to permit herself to be treated this way, and indignation at what was done to her by these men whose entitlement was no more than to be what she was not. And yet she was proud of herself that she could still have these feelings.

Halfway through, to relieve some of her discomfort (or so the Masters claimed), Caitlyn, who must have been waiting outside the room, was summoned. She lowered herself onto her hands and knees to serve as a sort of footstool, over which Jane was bent on her stomach, and then later turned over to lie across the girl on her back (with her arms still pinned behind her, making it much less comfortable than was promised). And just when she thought they had finished, a surge of panic swept through her as the braided leather strands of a many-tailed whip slithered over her breasts and belly. But one of the men said “No, let her rest now.” It was, she noted, not Sir Daniel who had spared her. She lay on the softest rug, on her left side, her blindfold removed but her hands still locked behind her back, staring at the fire. Behind her, she could hear moans from the other girl, for the Masters were not yet done with their pleasure.

A little while later, she went upstairs with Caitlyn (who was still trembling from her service in the parlour), not to her private room but to the dormitory where all the slaves slept when not sharing the bed of a Master. Two dozen mattresses were laid out on the bare wooden floor, side by side and wall to wall. Twelve women were already there; the others must have been performing chores in other parts of the Château, or perhaps waiting in the Master’s bedrooms. None were lying or seated or moving about; all were standing in a single file in front of the line of mattresses, facing away from the doorway, naked of course, legs spread, hands clasped behind their heads, completely still and in absolute silence. Jane had no idea how long they had been like this, not daring to move or to speak, perhaps for hours; nor did she know whether this was a common thing. But when Cailyn took her place at one end of the row, Jane did as well.

Only when the light suddenly dimmed did all the women sink down onto their common bed, still without a word spoken. There was barely enough space for the fourteen bodies; but the dormitory was not as warm as Jane’s room had been, and so they snuggled. In the red half-light, she saw that Caitlyn was cuddling closer to Juliette, who was a few years older than the other women (but very beautiful). They caressed each other’s breasts with more affection than the Masters ever showed, and Juliette massaged the tender flesh between Caitlyn’s thighs that had been ravaged in the parlour. Then there was a giggle from somewhere else along the line, and Jane realized that these two were not the only lovers in the Château who had in common that which was the property of men.
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Part Six

“How lonely is the man who has not yet found his slave; how forlorn is the slave who has not yet found her Master.”
— John Norman, Rogue of Gor

It was raining as Daniel stepped out of the limousine, just as it had been that night, almost a year ago, when they had first passed through the gates of the Château Chaînerie. He strode briskly into the lobby, deserted but for a bored-looking receptionist, and took the lift to the top floor. He was greeted by the ever lovely Gabrielle, who offered him coffee or something stronger (both of which he declined) and accompanied him to the lounge.

Jane and Lydia were already there. They were both naked, their clothing folded neatly on one of the armchairs. As soon as he had sat, Lydia knelt before him, and with his nodded permission she opened the zip of his trousers and bent forward between his legs to perform her duty. Neither was Jane deprived of the honour of providing her service, for Steven, the other secretary, had followed Daniel into the room.

Once they had paid their tribute, the women took their seats. Daniel shifted uncomfortably in his. He felt tiny beads of perspiration leaking from his brow. These meetings rarely went well for him. Lydia and Jane never raised their eyes to connect with his, but downcast they glistened with a familiar steely resolve. He didn’t need to see them to know that.

“If I may begin…” Lydia began. “The first item is a review of the memberships and apprenticeships.”

Daniel sucked in a nervous breath. He hated this part. “Again? Is it necessary?”

Jane, her impatience ill-concealed, passed across to him a single piece of paper. Below the magenta-and-gold letterhead — the familiar triskelion — was printed a short list of names. Next to some were small green ticks, against others large red crosses.

Neither woman spoke, nor lifted her head, as Daniel scanned the list, stroked his chin and nodded his assent. He knew that there was no point in discussion, let alone argument. His silent partners would remain that way, reverently and insistently mute. Yet these reviews were becoming a serious issue. Since he and Jane had first gone to the Château, as the number of masters dwindled the demands of the slavegirls had become insatiable.


The End of Book One.
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Château Chaînerie

Book Five: Journey

1. The Wooden Pony Club

“The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.”
— Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

My journey began when my boyfriend took me one night to a fancy restaurant for my birthday. We feasted gloriously on chilled avocado soup, chargrilled salmon with asparagus, lamb l’arabique casserole and chocolate feuillantine. Just before the dessert arrived, Matthew took from his coat pocket a black satin scarf and folded it lengthways.

“What’s that for?” I said.

He gave me a quizzical look, then a grin, and pressed his fingers against my lips. This was not the first time Matthew had blindfolded me. He loved how it made me so helpless and dependent on him. I liked it too.

He tied the scarf around my head, being very gentle, brushing the hair away from my eyes with tender strokes before tightening the knot. I heard the bowls being placed on the table and the tinkle of a silver spoon against delicate china. I sniffed the sweet fragrance... and after the first delicious mouthful my whole body tingled. Being sightless not only stimulates your other physical senses. The intimacy you feel as you are cut off from your surroundings, deprived of your self-reliance, and you put your trust in your partner to feed you, has a wonderfully erotic effect. Matthew felt it too. I shivered as he ran his fingertips around my throat and along my shoulders, drawing the straps of my dress down my arms. Ignoring the waitress as she cleared away the dishes, he started kissing and caressing my neck and décolletage.

As we left the restaurant, I was still wearing my blindfold, having no idea if we were being watched by the other diners. I didn’t really care. Matthew held onto my waist as he guided me out onto the street. There he offered me his jacket, but I declined. The evening chill tickled my bare arms and legs in a pleasant way. Then, with my sight restored, we walked to our favourite pub, three blocks away. Inside we came across Richard. He was drinking with a couple of his friends but left them to join us.

Richard and I had known each other since we were children, as neighbours, classmates and flatmates. He was a couple of years younger and I did not particularly enjoy his company. I found him to be rather dissolute and indolent, generally undisciplined and more supercilious than he had any right to be. But his sister and I had been good friends at school and then at university, and when he arrived on campus he moved into our apartment. At first he was so fish-out-of-water disoriented, so babe-in-the-woods lost that my attitude towards him softened into sympathy; but the self-indulgence and arrogance rapidly reasserted themselves. Then, once I had begun my postgrad studies, we each went our separate ways. Nevertheless, I still encountered Richard on the odd occasion… such as this.

When he proposed that we move to a new venue, I felt inclined to decline; but my head was foggy from two glasses of dinner wine… it may have been three. So I put aside my usual “what’s he up to?” reservations.

“What about your friends?” I asked, and Richard simply shrugged, not even looking back at them.

Matthew agreed to relocate, also reluctantly. He didn’t like Richard and was no doubt also asking himself “What’s the deal?”

But we did go along… and so, with that fortuitous encounter in a bar on my birthday, the scene was set for my voyage of self-discovery.

Richard steered us to a rather seedy-looking nightclub about fifteen minutes’ walk away. I regretted wearing heels because of the uneven pavement, and refusing the offer of my boyfriend’s coat. On the other hand, the cool breeze did partially clear my head; but as a result I was starting to have second thoughts… especially when I saw the notice by the entrance announcing that females were admitted free of charge. This, in my experience, is rarely a good sign. Nevertheless, it intrigued me that Richard flashed an ID card for the doorman, and all three of us were ushered inside without paying.

To my relief, the interior was not as dingy or sordid as the façade suggested. It appeared to be a typical establishment for its kind — crowded and noisy. Most of the patrons were male, but there were quite a few other women, including an all-girl group who were the most boisterous in the place. The waitresses and female bar attendants were scantily clad, but in expensive lingerie — satin-and-lace bra and panties, garter belt, stockings and high heels. The music was provided by a contemporary jazz band that was really good. I was not surprised that the main entertainment was “exotic dance”, but it was tasteful enough.

We found a table and ordered drinks. Since I was still feeling fuzzy, I had lemonade. The waitress called Richard by name; and sometime later the manager came to talk to us. Richard introduced us, announcing her as “our hostess” Desirée. She was a tall, slim, striking brunette, with dark, sparkling eyes and a wry, slightly crooked smile. She wore the same sexy outfit as the other female staff, and Richard was behaving in a very familiar manner as she stood beside him, patting and fondling her backside and playing with the suspenders on her garter belt. She kept pushing his hand away but appeared otherwise unperturbed.

Desirée stayed to chat for a couple of minutes. She seemed interested in my circumstances and I guessed (correctly as it turned out) that she was appraising me for a job offer. But shortly before midnight, Richard suddenly declared that it was time to leave. Aware of his nocturnal habits, I found this rather odd; but since it was a weeknight I was happy to go. Matthew concurred, keen to be out of the place despite the lingerie-adorned décor, and anticipating a reward for the patience he’d shown thus far. He was not disappointed... but that’s another story.

I had almost forgotten that evening’s events when, a couple of weeks later, Richard turned up at my apartment with coffee and a proposition. At the time, I was looking for something to supplement my meagre income as a tutor. I had worked through a series of dreary part-time jobs, and waitressing was not the most horrible; so I was receptive when he told me there was a position open at the nightclub.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because I work there, dummy,” he replied.

So that very afternoon we went back to the Wooden Pony Club. The name was discreetly displayed on a small sign above the doorway.

In the harsh light of day, the exterior looked even more disreputable than it did in the dark, and in striking contrast to the congenial interior. I had the distinct impression that this was deliberate — a false front. The air of mystery aroused my curiosity, and it was something of a letdown to be welcomed by a weather-beaten, middle-aged man in scruffy overalls wielding a mop. He conducted us to an upstairs office where Desirée was just hanging up on a phone call. She was now attired in a business suit and her hair was tied in a bun, but even in a tailored jacket and a man’s tie she maintained the sensual deportment of a showgirl. When she stood up and came round from behind her desk to greet us, her skirt, short and pleated, was still falling into place, giving us a peek of bare thighs between the tops of silk stockings and a garter belt like the one she was wearing when we first met.

As she started outlining the terms of employment, it only now occurred to me what had been bothering me the most. Richard worked there as a waiter and bar attendant. Given his age, he must have one of the most junior members of the staff; and this woman was his boss. This put his interaction with Desirée’s derrière that night in the club in a much different and more interesting light. But I did not dwell on it, since the opportunity was too good to refuse. The pay was generous, the hours were flexible and the dress code was... well, I’d worn less when serving drinks in a poolside bistro not so long ago.

At only one stage of the interview did I have any misgivings. Desirée asked Richard to wait outside, and after he’d left she told me to stand up, take off my blouse and drop my jeans. I complied, feeling ill at ease and self-conscious as she leaned back in her chair and inspected me, telling me to stretch out, touch my toes and perform slow pirouettes. She said I was very pretty and I thanked her for the compliment, and she said “Just stating a fact, sweetie.”

As Richard came back into the office, I was still buttoning my shirt, and he gave us both an inquisitive look before nodding and grinning.

I started the following week. That uncomfortable moment in Desirée’s office had me a little concerned, but I put it out of my mind. The club was only a short drive or bus ride from our apartment and the university, so the easy commute was a bonus. Desirée introduced me to my co-workers and presented me with my uniform. It consisted of a pink chartreuse camisole and panties, trimmed with black lace, a black ribbon choker with a tiny embroidered white rose, a frilly garter belt with four suspenders, pure silk stockings which alone must have cost a small fortune, and stiletto-heeled pumps. One of the girls had to help me with my garter belt (not part of my usual ensemble), and the shoes were not designed for long periods of waiting on tables. However, the costume was sexy and feminine, and when I got started it was fun to be the centre of attention as the new waitress.

Richard was tending bar that night, and there were a couple of other males on duty. They were elegantly dressed in grey slacks and waistcoats, white shirts and red ties. I envied them in one respect. The temperature of the room was turned down rather low, so if I didn’t keep moving the goosebumps began to appear. Not only goosebumps… I was not permitted to wear a bra under my very sheer camisole, so the chill had a visual effect that was, at least, pleasing for the customers. Our boss, to her credit, led from the front in her skimpies.

During my two-week probation, my wages and duties were the same as the others’. Since everyone but the boss and the maintenance man worked part-time, there were a lot of us. All of my fellow employees were university students, and because the girls had to be over twenty-one years of age, we were nearly all postgraduates; which meant we were probably the most highly educated bunch of waitresses in the city.

The work was typical waitressing, despite the hedonist tone of the place. There must have been some unwritten decree governing the behaviour of the customers, as it appeared that a strict no-touching policy applied to the new girls (who were distinguished from the veterans by wearing the camisole instead of a brassiere). I was not groped once all night, unless it was so subtle that I was too busy to notice. On the other hand, all the other women including Desirée received the hands-on treatment. And by my second week I was fair game, although it was nothing to complain about, just an occasional hand on my backside or the inside of my thigh. The penalty for gross misconduct by patrons was immediate ejection from the club, but I only heard of this rule and never saw it needing to be imposed.

The most novel thing I encountered was the procedure for giving and receiving tips. Money left on the table and bar or dropped onto the trays was pooled for equal distribution amongst all the staff; but any gratuity that was slipped inside our knickers or the tops of our suspenders or into our cleavage was ours to keep. So I quickly got used to the unofficial guideline that you didn’t react too quickly when you felt a guy’s fingers inside your pants. Occasionally someone would go too far and try to insert his currency into the slot, but you could deal with this by means of a cautionary flick to the ear. The male servers did not seem to mind that they were denied this large share of the tips. On the whole, the mood among both staff and customers was upbeat and the ambience of the club an easy-going sensuality.

It didn’t take me long to get used to working in lingerie. The biggest challenge was posed by the high heels, and by the end of each shift I was near to exhaustion. But on the whole it turned out to be a very pleasant working environment. Although we hardly ever socialized, because we had different rosters, everyone got on well together. Desirée was a first-rate manager, very skilled at walking the line between the rights and welfare of her staff and the needs and demands of the clientele. I was happy there, and grateful to Richard for getting me the job. It paid well, especially with the tips, which netted me more in a week than I had earned in a month at that poolside joint.

After my third week, there was a little ceremony in which all the staff gathered around as I swapped my camisole for a bra. I blushed as I flashed my bare boobs for a few seconds. Everyone laughed, but in a good-natured way.

Matthew had turned up on the first couple of nights to give me encouragement, and of course to check out my uniform; but we never stopped in when I was off-roster. I normally worked Tuesday to Thursday; but at the end of my probationary period Desirée asked me to come in that Friday evening, put in a few hours and then stay to enjoy on-the-house drinks and take in the entertainment. Matthew arrived just as my shift was ending, around eleven o’clock. Richard was still working, and he kept my boyfriend supplied with the free drinks. I remained sober, eager to know the reason for the special invitation.

At exactly midnight, the character of the club changed, so quickly that it took me by surprise. The lighting turned a lurid red. The band started playing throbbing, discordant notes. The waitresses shed their bras to serve topless. That in particular startled me, but Desirée had gone even further. The music rose to a crescendo as a circle of harsh white light tracked across the room before settling on the small stage. She emerged from the shadows to mount the platform. She was completely nude, apart from a black garter belt and fishnet stockings, high-heeled boots and, encircling her slender throat, a studded leather collar.

I was so stunned that I didn’t hear what she announced before she disappeared. An expectant buzz filled the room as onto the stage stepped three figures, two men wearing robes and masks (one black, the other red) and a young blonde woman wrapped in a white cape and blindfolded with a purple sash. The men were holding her arms to guide her up onto the platform.

The man in black seized the girl by her shoulders, spun her around and stripped off her cloak. She was naked underneath. He pulled her arms behind her back, clamping steel bracelets on her wrists and linking them with a piece of cord. He was not gentle. She gasped and gulped and her body jerked and twisted as the man took his time securing her hands and pinioning her arms. He turned her around a full three-sixty degrees so that we could see that her elbows almost touched. It looked excruciating and she was grimacing. The way she was bound drew her shoulders back, pushing out her chest. Her breasts were not large, but this enforced posture enhanced them. They glistened with a thin film of perspiration. Her nipples were hard and erect. Her eyes appeared to bulge through their purple veil as the man pried her jaws open as wide as they could go, and shoved a large blue ball-gag into her mouth. He braced it with a leather strap, tugging so forcefully that her head was wrenched backwards. He fastened a metal collar around her neck.

My initial shock at this exhibition quickly gave way to curiosity and excitement. Matthew put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me tightly as we watched.

The man in red had, in the meantime, wheeled onto the stage a triangular wooden structure. Sitting on stubby legs, it was like a vaulting horse, one of those things gymnasts leap over, except that the top was not flat but peaked; so in profile from the front it was shaped roughly like an A. There were leather straps attached at strategic places along the sides. Red robe’s associate guided the young woman to one end. Then, with a hand on her back between her shoulder blades, he pushed her forward until she was bending over the apparatus. Her feet still touched the floor, until each man seized an ankle, raised it and secured it with one of the straps. In doing so they heaved her roughly up onto the frame and she was left sprawled on top of it. She was made to sit up straight, straddling the wedge-shaped top. She immediately began to wriggle about, but only for a short time, until she appreciated that this only made things worse. Her struggles quickly subsided.

Even partly concealed by her blindfold, I could see the girl’s face contorted in pain and humiliation. Her protests, though muffled by her gag, could be heard clear across the room. Then to add to her distress, black mask drew her shackled wrists upwards, toward her shoulders, twisting her already strapped arms into an awkward, stressful position, to attach her bracelets to her collar. That way she couldn’t use her hands to raise her body off the beam. The two men then stood back to allow us spectators to admire their handiwork.

Breathless and somewhat traumatized, Matthew and I just looked at each other, neither saying a word. I scanned the audience for reactions. Everyone soon went back to drinking and chatting, mainly ignoring the wretched girl, as the band began to play again and one of the waitresses mounted the stage, took off what little she wore and began gyrating to the music. Somewhat to my astonishment, she was a very accomplished dancer, transitioning to a jazz ballet with skilful moves.

I turned to Richard, who had come to join us at the table. “The show’s not over yet,” he said. Then he saw the look on my face and grinned. “Take a closer look.” He gestured towards what he called the wooden pony. Its pointy peak was not sharp, which could have caused serious injury to the rider, but somewhat rounded, more an upside-down U than an inverted V; and it was lacquered and polished so there was no danger of slivers, splinters or blisters. Nevertheless, with the girl’s weight pressing down on her bare, most tender parts, it could not have been comfortable.

About half an hour after the first, the second act commenced. The show was indeed just getting started. Next to the wooden pony, two contraptions had been set up. One was a pillory, that medieval contrivance into which a victim’s head and hands are locked. The other was a sybian. I had seen pictures and heard stories, but this was my first concrete evidence that such a device actually existed. It consisted of a seat or saddle mounted on a thick pole so that when a woman was sitting astride it, her feet dangled just off the floor. Protruding from the top of the seat was a phallic-shaped rod some ten centimetres long.

The masked men brought out a pair of naked females. They were already gagged and blindfolded, but I recognized them as off-duty waitresses who a few minutes earlier had been seated at a nearby table. Marilyn’s husband was still sitting there, with Beth’s boyfriend.

While Marilyn was locked in the pillory, Beth rode the sybian. Red robe tied the latter’s hands behind her back while the man in black put his fingers into her groin and began massaging her there, until she was squirming and snorting through her gag. Once her body had been thus prepared, she was hoisted onto the saddle, using loops attached near the base of the upright as stirrups. She was positioned above the rod and lowered onto it until it penetrated her completely. It had been lubricated, and her vagina had been opened up for the insertion by black robe’s stimulation; but the girl was not very big, so the shaft pushed deeply into her. Her ankles were strapped to the base of the upright, not so much to prevent her from dismounting but to save her from toppling. This also forced her to lean forward slightly, which brought her clitoris into contact with a raised, dimpled panel on the seat. When the motor was switched on, she almost immediately began to twitch. Soon she was breathing deeply and heavily, her breasts rising and falling to the rhythm of the rod vibrating and rotating inside her.

Unlike the girl on the wooden pony (who was tilting her head as if trying to work out, from behind her blindfold, what else was happening on the stage), for neither Beth nor Marilyn was this to be a static tableau. From a bench beside the stage, the two men retrieved whips. They were evil-looking things, each with a bundle of braided leather tails. Black robe stroked Marilyn’s bare bottom with his, and she flinched and shook her head. Suddenly both men began flogging her. It was a relentless, brutal assault, from above on her back, buttocks and thighs, and from beneath on her breasts and belly and crotch. Each blow began with an inimitably sinister whish! and terminated with a sickening, slapping, splattering sound as the multiple straps seared the unprotected flesh. After a dozen or so lashes, I stopped counting, as pink ridges began to swell up on the woman’s body. Through her gag she howled and screamed. Tears darkened the fabric of her blindfold. Bubbles of saliva frothed out from the edges of her gag.

I cringed at the relish with which the two men went about their grisly, grotesque business. Their victim had stopped shrieking but started yelling something through her gag, and I thought at first her muffled screeches were curses or pleas for mercy; but then I realized that she was mocking and taunting her tormentors.

“Is that all you’ve got?” she gurgled.

“Cool it, girl,” I thought.

But she appeared to be laughing as the men increased the force and tempo of the lashes, until each in turn had to take a breather because he had worked himself into near exhaustion flailing the woman’s naked body. Halfway through the battering, her blindfold was removed so she could see the gallery taking delight in her suffering, and we could witness the anguish in her expression. Then her knees began to buckle, and she was in danger of strangling as her throat jammed against the lower board of the stocks. The men solved the problem by lowering the device until she was able to kneel. This reduced the surface area of her skin accessible to the whips, but did not alter the intensity of her scourging. By now, all of her from neck to knees was swollen and scored with dozens of flay marks. But as they began to coalesce into a single bright red bloom, leaving no room for new impressions, the men were obliged to stop. They thereupon switched their attention to Beth and began thrashing her. The shaft lodged inside her was an additional torment, because as her torso twisted and jerked, it became a tool of torture. She pushed down with her legs on the straps which anchored them to the pole, in order to lift her weight and ease the pressure, but this was exhausting and hard to maintain, and when she dropped the jolt and thrust of the rod upwards into her sent a spasm through her from shaking head to curling toes. Some in the audience clapped and yelled their approval; but I’m sure every woman in the room gasped and shuddered in sympathy.

It was hard to watch, but I couldn’t turn away. I was embarrassed and repelled and fascinated by this horrid spectacle of young nude women writhing in agony for the amusement of the spectators. Their chastisement lasted no more than ten minutes, though it must have seemed an eternity to these martyrs to the crowd’s lustful proclivities.

When Marilyn was freed from the pillory, she walked shakily to the edge of the platform. Beth was then lifted off her seat and released from her bonds. When her feet touched the floor she staggered. One of the men put out a hand to assist her but she brushed it aside. Instead Marilyn helped her off the stage. Both women’s cheeks were streaked with tears and sweat, their faces ashen grey in gruesome contrast to the crimson welts and purple bruises that covered their ravaged flesh. But they acknowledged the applause with broad smiles and arms raised in triumph. During the intermission they reappeared at their table, still naked but neither, except for the marks, appearing any the worse for her ordeal. In fact, Marilyn glanced across towards us, grinned and winked.

There was more dancing, and just before the third act commenced the girl on the wooden pony ended her ride. She was able to walk off by herself, albeit with a slight wobble.

Three girls were bought up onto the stage this time. One was chosen apparently at random from the audience by the man in red. She stared aghast at the guy sitting with her (husband, fiancé or boyfriend), who just nodded. She stepped onto the stage and was ordered to disrobe. The band started playing and I expected it to be something cheesy like The Stripper but instead it was the slightly less dreadful You Can leave Your Hat On. The girl looked embarrassed as the music embraced her, but she dutifully shed her clothing. After being gagged and blindfolded, she was hauled up onto the wooden pony.

Unlike her predecessor on the apparatus, she was whipped. Her hands had been shackled not behind her back but over her head, which exposed more skin for flogging. However, her punishment was somewhat lighter than that meted out to Marilyn and Beth, presumably because she was a first-timer. And her companions on stage appeared to be “virgins” as well.

This pair was obviously a lesbian couple. They had been cuddling in a corner of the room and seemed genuinely shocked when they were called to the stage. But they went up willingly and undressed each other. It would have been interesting if one had been assigned the role of tormentor, but a second sybian had been brought on stage and they were seated facing each other. The redhead made a loud whistling noise as the shaft went into her; the brunette hardly reacted. Their hands had been bound behind their backs, and a yoke was placed around their necks and tightened to bring them in close to each other. They were connected by a dual gag, two balls fused so that when these went into their mouths the women were locked in a kiss.

They were whipped as well, and then all three victims were tormented with something that looked like a cattle prod. No parts of their bodies were spared, not even the soles of their feet. Before this began, to demonstrate that the electrodes really carried a current, a male volunteer was zapped on the backside, through his trousers, and he jumped. He pointed to his lady friend at the table, and after a brief remonstration she bent over; but the man in black pulled her skirt up and her knickers down and poked her unprotected flesh. She shrieked and everyone laughed, but I trembled at seeing the three helpless women hearing the yell and the scream from behind their blindfolds and knowing that something awful was coming.

When their adversity ended, they limped and hobbled over to where their clothes had been thrown in a heap; but the man in red stamped his foot on the pile and waved them away. All three laughed and returned to their tables, the redhead and brunette to resume their snuggling happily in the nude. The other girl fell into her man’s arms and gazed into his eyes and said, “I love you.” As he wiped a tear from her cheek, he replied “You showed me,” and she nodded and smiled.

Those two scenes gave me some insight into the true nature of the Wooden Pony Club. My suspicions would be confirmed when my turn came… though not this night.

Matthew and I stayed for another hour. There were further exhibitions, each more extreme. The last that we witnessed particularly disturbed me. After riding the pony, a frail-looking girl with silky black hair and glossy olive skin was given a rousing ovation. The man in black whispered something to her and she nodded, slowly and fearfully, but with a look of determination in her puffy red eyes. Even as she did so, with startling violence he threw her to the floor. With her hands pinned behind her head, she could not break her fall and landed heavily on her back. As she lay motionless, the two men began flogging her without pity, aiming their harshest blows at the tender flesh between her thighs. Though she tried to brace herself against the onslaught, she began quivering and then writhing violently… but she never closed her legs or tried to turn over to protect herself. Her thrashing about gradually died away and to my relief the beating ended before blood was shed.

The girl lay still for a minute or so before red robe nudged her with his foot. She flipped onto her belly and began to crawl towards the edge of the stage, wriggling like a worm without the use of her arms. The men tormented her with their cattle prods until she had slithered over the edge of the platform. There a man from the audience came to her aid, removing her gag and freeing her wrists and dabbing her wounds with a cloth. She was whimpering, and she winced when he hugged her limp, lacerated body; but she flung her arms around his neck and they kissed. She stood up unsteadily and managed a curtsy before he lifted her and carried her off, past the backstage curtain and out of sight. The crowd roared its delight.

I was mesmerized by each of these performances, horrified but enthralled at the bizarrely ritualistic pageant of degradation and torture. But as well as being mentally drained I was tired, and since I had to be up early in the morning, I told Matthew that it was time to go. His expression betrayed some displeasure, but he nodded and handed me my dress (since I was still in my lingerie). I put it on right there, getting some perplexed looks from nearby customers. (“This is what unsettles you people?” I thought.)

Meanwhile, Richard had joined us and must have signalled to Desirée, because she came to our table, still nude. Through the wisps of her pubic hair I saw the golden glint of small rings which pierced her labia and appeared to be joined by a tiny lock. She must have noticed me staring because she smiled. She said a few words to both Richard and Matthew that I didn’t hear, and then gave some directions to one of the waiters, who took a card out of his pocket and handed it my boyfriend. She shook hands with Matthew, but when she held out her hand to Richard he ignored it, grabbed hold of her left breast and shook that. I sucked in a breath and held it in trepidation, but she just laughed and told him to behave.

Just as I was fascinated by the toughness and fortitude of the female “performers”, I was captivated by this strong, confident woman, stark naked and yet in total control, so completely at ease in the presence of her fully clothed male staff and clients and with the liberties they took.

As we walked to the car I shivered, but not just from the bite of the crisp, early morning air. The melodramas we had witnessed, and the disgust and embarrassment I felt to see fellow females being brutally tortured and sexually humiliated for entertainment was troubling; but what really made me feel uneasy was that I also found it so tantalizing and titillating… and even more so when Matthew and I got home. He made love to me with such vigour that it hurt. I didn’t get to sleep until almost dawn.

***
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***

“If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on… it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Case Of Identity

So this was a BDSM club. At least, that’s what it became after midnight. I had heard about such places and seen similar stuff on the internet. In some ways it was exactly as I pictured one would be, in other ways profoundly different. So far as I could tell, none of the “players” was a professional, except insofar as several worked at the place. From the surprised reactions of some, I got the impression that they were first-timers; but even the experienced women appeared to be amateurs; and their responses betrayed the rather unnerving fact that they had not been fully prepared for the severity of their ordeal.

The other clue was that it was unlikely that a professional performer would have taken such punishment which would put her out of business for at least a few days. Nevertheless, the injuries inflicted by the whips were mostly superficial. The multiple tails reduced the impact and left no permanent scarring, even if it didn’t mitigate the immediate pain. And as for the wooden pony, Richard had already pointed out that it was less gruelling than it first appeared. All the same, combined with the cat-o’-nine-tails and electrified baton, it was not an easy ride. With some revulsion I had observed yellowish stains running down the sides.

Although the waitresses served topless and danced nude after twelve every night, the théâtre de dégradation was scheduled only for Friday and Saturday. Sometimes there was a theme, and once males were the featured performers. Unlike the women, who were always naked, the men wore loincloths or leather pants, which as well as affording somewhat more dignity reduced the impact of the whip and cattle prod and the imprint of the wooden pony. For the males there was no genital torture or anal penetration, whereas for the girls it was open season on all orifices. These disparities worried me. Having been a waitress in several establishments, I could understand why only one sex wore the skimpy uniforms, and I could even accept (if not quite understand) the sado-masochism of the shows; but I was concerned by the apparent misogyny. For this, however, Richard offered an explanation… of sorts. The male performances were not as popular. As a result, revenue from tips in particular was substantially reduced. I was not quite sure what to make of that, what it said about the types of people who frequented the club, or even if I believed it.

But for me things went back to normal, for the next three weeks. I worked my regular shifts in the evening and attended my classes during the day. Nevertheless, in my lingerie I felt very exposed and more vulnerable than I had before that Friday night. No one else appeared to notice my discomfort, although Desirée seemed more solicitous towards me than usual. And at the end of one Thursday shift, she asked if I’d be willing to come in the next evening and work past midnight.

She saw my expression and smiled. “Just to wait on tables, honey.”

With that waiver I readily agreed. The pay was the same but I expected the tips to be bigger (and they were). Of course, I would be serving topless. And when I informed Matthew, he was disappointed. Desirée did not want boyfriends hanging around when we were on duty, which was a reasonable demand. (Marilyn had been off the clock when she was with her husband that night.) His presence had only been tolerated the first couple of times, while I was still settling in.

I managed to get some sleep during the afternoon, and then I went to work. Gratified to not have Matthew’s presence distracting me, I was thrown a little off balance to find Richard on duty.

I started at eight, and at the stroke of midnight off came my bra. This bothered me less than I thought it would, except when Richard paused in his duties to enjoy a good long stare at my bare chest. I felt a bit queasy having him ogle my boobs, because I had always felt, in a way, like a big sister to him. But I was certain he was doing it just to discomfort me, so I tried to ignore him. Yet more disconcerting (albeit useful) was the handy hint he offered for increasing my tips… the old trick of using an ice cube to stimulate the nipples. Now I felt really squeamish. His response, however, was disquietingly rational. “Would it be better advice coming from someone else? Shall I get one of the girls?”

“Damn your good sense,” I said without speaking.

Meanwhile the BDSM show started on schedule, and continued until four in the morning, with a performance about every half hour. Befitting the name of the club, the most popular prop was the wooden pony, but the sybian and the pillory also featured… with those extra appliances, the whip and the cattle prod. In between sessions, as usual, one of the waitresses danced. When my turn came, Desirée patted me gently on the shoulder and told me my panties and stockings would have to come off. She was sensitive but firm, and I understood her point. If we all shared in the tips, we should all be prepared to do our bit. And we did very well on the gratuities, including the men. The guys did not take an equal share in all the duties, of course, but they also did not get money shoved inside their undies.

I am by no means a graceful or even competent danseuse, and the boss’s reassurance that “They won’t be judging your moves, sweetie,” was of small comfort, because some of the girls were very good. I was allowed to dance barefoot, while they whirled and twirled elevated high above the floor on stilettos. But the audience whistled and clapped when I performed, and not in irony or derision. They appreciated a “gal who gives it a go”, as Richard had put it. And as I flung my body au naturel inelegantly around the stage, I looked about fretfully to see if he was watching. I never saw him. I was told later that he was in the cloakroom “bonking” one of the other waitresses… but someone may have been pulling my leg. For though I am hardly neutral on the subject, I have never thought of Richard as particularly attractive to the opposite sex. He’s short and not especially handsome, and at that time still carried some of the pudginess of adolescence. He was also the youngest member of the staff. Some of the girls called him Little Dick… not always behind his back.

However, the Wooden Pony Club was a funny place. Outnumbering the males by nearly four to one, the girls’ attitude towards them was surprisingly free and easy... almost devil-may-care. I guess that when you’re working almost naked alongside guys who are fully clothed, there will inevitably be a sexual tension that would only have been heightened by the nude dancing and the Friday and Saturday shows. I still recalled, vividly, the way Richard had fondled his boss on that first night, and her lack of any adverse reaction.

I saw another facet of this rather unique environment when the place was closed one night for a staff get-together. About a hundred people turned up, including partners. Naturally my boyfriend came along. It was promoted as a ladies’ lingerie night, and almost all the women, including the consorts, dressed down accordingly. Since we were already accustomed to being in our undies, the female staff were rostered to provide the service and entertainment. That the males were exempted was something I no longer thought to question… until half a dozen sybians were brought out onto the stage.

They were the familiar models but sat directly on the floor instead of being perched on a pole. When Desirée announced that every woman in the room was invited to “enjoy the ride”, some shook their heads vigorously, but to my surprise most shrugged their shoulders and nodded their heads, and a few looked eager. It was less of a surprise that all of the decliners were partners rather than staff. So it was as I suspected. Working in this place really did seduce you into doing things that would have once have been beyond your most fervid imaginings.

That was an apt explanation of how the Wooden Pony Club messed with your mind. You began to wonder if what you had always considered normal was merely a false perception brought about by your isolation from a reality to which you were completely oblivious. You began to wonder if perhaps we all played through our fantasies, including the “dark” ones, out of sight of each other and thus unaware that there actually was no such thing as “normal”. But upon reflection, I think that was the most appealing and appalling, most seductive and most insidious thing about the Wooden Pony Club. Like the topless waitressing and nude dancing, we were drawn in by both peer pressure and a safety-in-numbers mentality which, of course, reinforced itself. “If all those other girls can do it, why can’t I?” was the unconscious refrain. And the circle could have been disrupted if just one or two of us demurred; but that was when Desirée, with her relentless enthusiasm and glamorous charisma, acted as a sort of anti-circuit-breaker. She kept the current flowing.

Nonetheless, my first second thoughts came soon afterwards, when Desirée casually advised that anyone who had not done so for a while should use the toilet. This created an awkward fifteen minutes. Then, as the first five brave volunteers stepped up, a couple blanched when their hands were tied behind their backs.

“You can still push yourself up off the seat if you need to,” Desirée reassured them, as her own hands were being bound; but she did not explain why the ropes were necessary, except to say “It makes the experience more intense.” Then they were blindfolded as well.

Desirée alone had stripped naked for what she called the “joystick” (that got a laugh), while another, a waitress named Judy, took off her knickers. They were the only ones to embrace the full experience, which included the phallic prosthesis. Their ride lasted fifteen minutes, and all six women appeared crestfallen when it was over. Where there had been nervous giggles there were now grins and smirks of self-satisfaction, as they made way for the next half-dozen; and their smug condescension towards those of us anxiously awaiting our turn was a wonder to behold. They were acting like Lady Godiva at the end of her ride… but from the rosy-red faces I could see that most of it was bravado.

In the end, all but three or four women took a turn. Some needed encouragement and there was much blushing and balking; but no one who came forward changed her mind. In the second group, all took off their panties (including the three who declined the joystick) after seeing the effect of the clitoral stimulator pad (the dimpled panel). I procrastinated until the sixth group. I guess I was hoping that interest by then would be fading and I would have just a small audience. But it was not to be. The enthusiasm never waned. Indeed the mood became more exuberant, with the crowd trying to inspire those who had hung back. (Fortunately, nobody tried to shame any of us into taking part.) And by straggling I had set myself a trap in another way, because by then every girl was taking the full ride… with plug in place.

While Desirée and an assistant cleaned the sybians and lubricated the moving parts, I took off my bra and knickers. Unlike some of the women, I didn’t see the point of leaving my boobs covered if my bottom half was exposed. I handed them to Matthew, who was intrigued and aroused to see me nude surrounded by all these people. He had not yet witnessed any of my dancing performances. I could hear his heavy breathing and felt his trembling hands as he secured the blindfold about my head and bound my wrists behind my back. He guided me the few paces to my allotted machine and tapped my right thigh so I could straddle it and, in a kneeling position and with his assistance, lower my body until I felt the tip of the shaft nudging against the lips of my vagina. In a moment of bravado I had chosen the “jumbo” insert, and of course (like most of my predecessors) joked that this was the size I was used to. Matthew beamed with false pride. But as it slid inside my body I had more second thoughts… too late. I felt it pushing against my cervix, which was not unbearable but, as any woman will attest, not very comfortable either. And this was before it started moving.

Each rider’s partner was given the honour of operating the control box. Before I was blindfolded, I saw that my neighbour had a girlfriend who had just taken the ride herself and was still flushed. I wondered if her fingers on the dials were as jittery as the rest of her. Instructed by Desirée, Matthew waited until I had seated myself just right, and when he turned the knobs, he slowly increased the rotation and the vibration, which were controlled separately. It was important that my body be in surface contact so the stimulator pad could have its effect, but raised ever so slightly so that the insert could rotate freely inside me and do its work properly. It took a couple of minutes to get my position just right, but that was time well spent.

It was an extraordinary sensation, not as much like “genuine” sex as I had imagined it would be. The urge to pee was stronger than I have felt with a real penis inside me; but with my bladder empty the pleasure of letting go and giving in to the waves of delicious arousal was sublime. While it was frustrating to have my hands bound, it does, as Desirée had explained, make you more sensitive. And being blindfolded makes you less inhibited, as if shutting your eyes shuts out the world. So by the time my ride was over, I didn’t give a damn about my audience. I only regretted that I had to concede my place to the next girl in line.

Quite a few opted for a second and even a third turn, although I was content with my single experience. But there was to be one final surprise that night. Located near the kitchen were a number of backrooms, including a reception lounge with large sofas. Now and then a couple would retire there and emerge some time later with that tell-tale sweaty glow. While this was going on, every so often one of the men would take Desirée to her office. Because she’d had multiple rides on the sybian, she was still naked and her hands remained bound behind her back. In addition, someone had tied a rope harness about her neck, and on this tether she was led upstairs. She would be brought back down flushed and panting, each time looking more haggard, her hair dank and dishevelled, skin clammy, legs wobbly… but always with that slightly askew, inscrutable smile, and the steady, steely radiance in her eyes undimmed.

Richard was among those who enjoyed Desirée’s delights that night. I was fascinated and troubled, and somewhat shaken by this. Was it one of the perks of his job… or was there some other meaning which I had not yet untangled from the wonderful web of weirdness that entwined the Wooden Pony Club?

***
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Post by Soraka »

***

“Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.”
— Joseph Addison, The Spectator

I had been working at the club for just over four months, including a dozen or so after-midnight shifts, and it was arguably the best job I’d ever had. I began to enjoy prancing around the tables in my lingerie and every so often topless. I even learned a few moves for my nude dancing sessions. I was inspired to begin aerobic exercises to shed some weight (although Desirée told me I was “just fine”) and tone my muscles. I even took the advice of one of the girls to shave my pubic hair. “Your fans will love it, and that increases the tips,” she explained. (Fans… I actually had fans.)

At the same time, I found my relationship with Matthew to be inexplicably cooling. Looking for someone to blame, I chose myself. Between my postgraduate research, my teaching duties and my hours working at the club, there was not a lot of time left over for focusing the attention on him that he felt he deserved.

So when I told Desirée that I was thinking about cutting back on my roster, she said “Why not work just the midnight shift? Less hours, bigger take.”

It made sense; but I could tell from her tone of voice that there was more.

“Some of the girls,” she continued, “do especially well with the tips. They build up quite a personal following.”

I thought about Marilyn and Beth, and a couple of the others. It took a few seconds to get the message. I must have frowned.

“No pressure,” she said. “Give it some thought, and take as much time as you need.” Then she added, “It’s not just about the money. I think you will find it…” She paused. “…enlightening.”

In fact, it did not take me long to make up my mind. Yet even now I do not really know what enticed me to make the choice when I did. I was intrigued by what I had seen on those late nights; and a voice somewhere deep within me was telling me that, as with the ride on the sybian, I should be more than a mere spectator.

About a third of the players were virgins, as we called them, while the regulars tended to be very regular, as in every weekend, a few on both Friday and Saturday night. And as someone who had always been almost masochistically willing to test her own limits, I admired and envied them. This was the ultimate trial of courage and endurance… and of something else, something I could not quite put my finger on. So I was curious to know what it was like, to experience for myself what these girls put themselves through, or consented to have done to them, and to understand what motivated them and excited me. Perhaps the happy-go-lucky fearlessness of my youth (when I was an unreconstructed tomboy) was reasserting itself. Maybe it was because I had spent so much of my life absorbed in my family, my studies, my boyfriend, that I felt it was time to do something daring and dramatic, to put the focus on myself, to break the chains that had bound me to an existence I had found increasingly to be… well, less than fulfilling.

For days before my show, I was distracted, fidgety and bitchy. My friends and colleagues started to avoid me. Only Matthew and Richard knew the reason. Both were supportive of my decision, but it did not escape my notice that it was Richard who was gallant enough to tell me, several times, “You don’t have to do this.” Perhaps it was just that he was feeling more responsible, since it was he had brought me to the club, had introduced me to Desirée and helped get me the job which led to this. But Matthew seemed too helpful, too accommodating, more excited than sympathetic or apprehensive. That bothered me.

I worked the tables for a couple of hours that evening. Mine was to be the second performance. Too jumpy to be out front watching the first, I stayed in the kitchen, while Matthew sat in the audience. When the opening act ended and the young woman came shuffling off-stage, I almost lost my nerve. Desirée tried to soothe me with a few comforting words. She promised me that I could terminate the event at any time with a safe signal, and gave me a loose-fitting ring to wear on my right index finger. I worried about what the crowd’s response would be to my stopping the show (since I had never seen it happen), and she was characteristically blunt.

“Screw them. If they don’t like it, they can volunteer to take your place.”

That was reassuring… in its own way.

Then the woman’s countenance changed. She glared at me so hard I almost toppled backwards. “Take off your uniform,” she snarled.

It was just the tonic I needed. I stripped and placed my lingerie and shoes in a box under the counter. And what happened next gave me even more confidence… after the initial shock. Richard had come to join us, which disconcerted me; but he got to the rear of Desirée, seized her wrists and tied them behind her back with nylon cord. Again her face changed, this time to a blissful, wistful expression. The transformation was as marvellous as it was sudden. Her bare chest began to heave as she started softly panting, and the pink buds on her breasts began to rise and stiffen. She bent forward at the waist and lifted one leg as the tickle between her thighs began to swell within her. Richard was still holding her arms, and it was extraordinary to see this statuesque, gorgeous woman, normally so tough and self-possessed, naked and bound and wilting with arousal in the clutches of this young man, her employee, almost a head shorter and thoroughly unspectacular in every other way.

Meanwhile the two showmen had come for us. The one in black, portly and grizzled, was (as I had come to know) George, whose daytime job was the club janitor. His comrade in red was Jerome, thirty-something, muscular but prematurely balding, in the daylight hours the club’s accountant. George tied my hands behind my back, much more strenuously than I was prepared for, and I groaned. Desirée was about to say something but I whispered “It’s okay.”

George, who looked so menacing in his sinister mask and cape, had a thin, reedy voice with a slight lisp.

“Sorry, sweetie. It has to be tight. It makes your boobs stick out. The punters love it.”

Desirée was blindfolded, I was not. We were led out onto the stage. With the lights on us, it was difficult to see into the audience, but there was plenty of clapping and cheering. Dazzled, I almost tripped while stepping up onto the platform. And yet my tension had, for some reason, melted away. I was trembling, but with excitement, as I beheld the wooden pony awaiting me.

But Desirée took the attention first. She was to endure what was called the electric bar dance. The torture device was devilishly simple, just a horizontal bar attached to legs like a carpenter’s trestle and set above the floor at crotch height. At one end of the bar were wires leading to a battery. The woman was made to straddle the apparatus and stand on tiptoes to keep her tender lower parts off the bar. The first time she lost height and was zapped she yelped, then she squealed, and after half a dozen she just whimpered. Although I had no idea of the strength of the charge, I could hear the faint crackles, and as Desirée became more fatigued raising herself on her toes they became more frequent. The crowd laughed and clapped. After about ten minutes she was given a momentary respite, but only so Jerome could insert an inflatable gag into her mouth. He pumped it until her cheeks bulged to cartoonlike proportions. The onlookers cheered.

Then it was my turn to entertain. I was lifted up onto the pony and mounted in the middle, with my ankles strapped to the sides. So I couldn’t use my hands to raise myself off it, a rope harness was tied about my neck and shoulders, and my wrists were hitched to the yoke in the middle of my back. The weight of my body pushed the ridge into my groin. It hurt more than I anticipated but less than I feared, more a dull ache than a sharp pain. The worst moment was when George pushed me backwards until all the pressure was on my tailbone. That was distressing enough, but then he put his hand between my thighs and used his fingers to spread my labia. When I was brought back to an upright position, I thought it was going to be excruciating; but with the tender flesh not pinched between my body and the wood, the sting was actually reduced.

Immediately after that, he shoved a gag into my mouth. It was a penis-gag, consisting of a vaguely phallic-shaped silicone protuberance held in place by a leather strap. It was a horrid, bulbous, foul-tasting thing that filled my mouth, compressing my tongue, the tip just clear of my throat so I wouldn’t choke.

Meanwhile Desirée was struggling to hold herself above the bar. From the spasms in her feet and calves, I could tell she was suffering cramps, from standing so long on her toes; and as a result she was bobbing up and down, on and off the bar to the tune of the crackles. It would have been comical if it didn’t look so dreadful. Then her predicament worsened. While still fighting the intensifying pain in her legs, she received a whipping, on her belly and breasts. It did not look very heavy, at first, but it didn’t need to be. Each lash made her totter, and there would be another series of sizzles as the little sparks leapt from the metal to her thighs and pubes. Her face, or that part not covered by the blindfold, was flushed bright crimson. Her head shook wildly, and a foam of saliva that had been spuming out from the sides of her gag and dribbling down her chin now sprayed in all directions. But she kept the rest of her body as rigid as she could to minimize contact with the electric current. That took a lot of strength and self-discipline; but it make very little difference.

Desirée’s grim predicament took my mind off my own troubles for only a short while. Around five minutes into my ride, I discovered that however light or heavy you are, with all of your weight pressing down on one spot the force is going to build relentlessly. Although my legs were strapped to the sides of the pony, I had just enough flexibility to be able to shift the pressure back onto my perineum (in front of the tailbone). The flesh directly in contact with the beam was numbed, but the throbbing soreness in the pubic bone grew quickly to searing pain. When I tried to relax, I leaned forward slightly, transferring the compression directly into my womb and squeezing my clitoris. Whichever way I swayed, the rush of returning blood was like a dagger stabbing into my groin, caused me to scream through my gag.

I could get only fleeting relief by pressing my knees against the wooden side panels and pushing upwards with my ankles in their fastenings. Because of the angle at which they were fixed, this caused me to pitch slightly to the front and as soon as fatigue caused me to ease the tension the top edge of the wood gouged into my vagina. If I tried to rotate my hips to displace the pressure, this only increased the grinding. Any squirming or wriggling did the same. It was a harrowing dilemma, made all the more degrading because my audience was following my movements, thoroughly engrossed. But my torment got worse when I started to get a twinge in my left leg. Not really expecting any assistance, I whispered to Jerome, who massaged out the kink before it became a full-blown cramp. Of course, he wasn’t being merciful; my ordeal was thus prolonged.

Some women I had seen would hump the pony, actually riding it, so to speak, until they were moaning in both ecstasy and agony. I decided to forego that dubious pleasure. But to my horror and shame, I felt a warm trickle down my thighs. Other fluids were coming out of me as well. Perspiration was pouring down my cheeks, along with a few tears, and mixing with the saliva oozing from the corners of my mouth past the edges of my gag, and twin rivulets trickled over my chin and onto my breasts.

If I had tried to estimate how long I spent astride the wooden pony, I would probably guessed two hours. In fact it was no longer than twenty minutes. As I was lifted off my perch by tender hands, I received my applause and sank to my knees, knowing full well that my tribulation was not yet over.

Desirée was released as well, even more gaunt and ghastly than I’m sure I looked. Her gorgeous body was lathered and her hair plastered with sweat, and she was shaking, almost convulsing. Our hands remained bound behind us as we were made to stand back to back, and held together with leather belts wrapped tightly around our arms and legs. The fact that I was not yet blindfolded made the anticipation worse, because George was fondling a whip and a cane, while Jerome was fiddling with metal clips and wooden pegs. These went onto our nipples. Desirée received the metal ones and flinched and gasped and groaned as they were applied. I got off lightly with the less robust pegs, but they still hurt like hell. Despite my state, I was actually embarrassed that Jerome did not need to massage my nipples to make them erect and so easier to clamp. They were already stiff and distended.

Once George had blindfolded me, I knew what was coming. Nevertheless, the sting of the first swish of the cane across my breasts came as a nasty shock. The strokes moved lower, down my belly, over my bruised and battered pubes, all the way along my thighs to my knees before reversing direction. Each whack was like a red-hot claw pinching my flesh. And as I was being thrashed, Desirée was being flogged with the whip. Recoiling from the beating, we leaned back against each other and behind our backs our fingers interlocked.

When Jerome started on me with the whip, it did not bite into my skin like the cane. But by now the dignity in the face of adversity I had tried to maintain had withered away. My resolve to resist the urge to twist and squirm, to cry out and beg for mercy through my gag, quickly dissolved. Of course, my cries went unheeded because I did not use my safe signal, but they served to amuse the audience and to motivate my torturers. Every time I pleaded, the next blow came down harder than its precursors.

And as much I was desperately hoping it would be over, I never considered ending it by pushing the ring off my finger. It might seem strange to use the word “pride” in the circumstances, since I had been so thoroughly degraded, but the fact is that I was too proud to throw in the towel so close to the finish. I wanted to see how far I could go. I wanted to prove something to myself… even if I did not fully understand what that something was. The acclaim of the spectators meant nothing to me. Taking the stage at the Wooden Pony Club was about testing my limits, facing my fears, not entertaining or impressing the crowd.

But as a novice I was spared at least part of the final degradation. The pillory had been brought onto the stage, but fitted into the bottom section was a set of stocks, for arms and feet. Desirée was put into the top half, while I was locked in a kneeling position below her, facing away from the frame so my haunches were resting on top of the board. I received a few more strokes of the cane on my exposed backside, but then I was ignored as George stood astride my hunched body. Pressing against Desirée’s rump (as she was slightly bent forward), he unzipped his trousers and pushed forward. Her gasps and sighs rose through her gag to a climax of loud grunts and guttural moans as he pumped, at first slowly but increasing the cadence and vigour of his lungings until the pillory until which we were locked rattled and creaked. The audience remained, for once, completely silent, in rapt attention.

Jerome took George’s place, whipping my hind quarters a few times before turning his attention to the body stooped above me.

When the show was over, I resolved to leave the podium unassisted. Desirée looked in far worse condition; but she smiled at the staff backstage before we headed to the showers. As I checked myself in the mirror, I was somewhat heartened that none of the punishments inflicted on my poor body appeared to have broken the skin. For this I had to admire our tormentors. George and Jerome knew their craft. They were skilled at inflicting maximum pain with a minimum of lasting, physical damage.

I also watched Desirée as she scrubbed off the sweat and saliva. She was as calm and composed as she always was, once the trembling had abated under the stream of hot water. Peering through the fog, I noticed a slightly raised, pink scar on her left buttock, about five centimetres in diameter. It was not one of her fresh markings, but still raw and so recently made by a branding iron. The design was a triangular figure of three spiral arms radiating from a central vortex. On the other cheek there were tattooed words. I read “Desirée, property…” but the rest was obscured by the steam.

When I rejoined Matthew at our table, the people around me nodded their appreciation and those closest to us said encouraging words.

Matthew stayed silent until I laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing really,” I replied. Every part of me was still sore, but especially the tender parts between my legs. “I just hope you’re not expecting sex tonight.”

***
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***

“Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.”
— Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 1759

I rode the wooden pony perhaps a dozen times in the next year. I actually lost count. I also rode the sybian and danced over the electric bar and took my place in both the pillory and the stocks. I felt the lash of the whip, the stroke of the cane, the sting of the paddle, the shock of the cattle prod. There were other tortures and torments, some quite imaginative and even amusing.

Not long after my initiation, the shows became more diverse, creative and flamboyant. For my second ride, two weeks following the first, I was poised high above the beam with my knees pressed together, so that as I tired and began to slip downwards, the angled panels which formed the sides of the pony forced my thighs apart, until, after several exhausting, excruciating minutes, my muscles gave way and I slumped and shrieked. The audience cheered.

Another time, my arms were stretched out horizontally behind me, strappado-fashion, and trussed to a cable hanging from the ceiling. That not only put agonizing stress on my shoulders but forced me to bend my torso forward, which then pushed the peak of the horse deep into my crevice. To make matters worse, this was part of an endurance contest. Another girl (a new waitress whose name I never got to learn) was seated the same way but nose-to-nose with me. She was beautiful, but her fine features, turned bright crimson, were distorted in pain and dripping with perspiration. She was puffing heavily through her gag, and a mist of saliva and sweat sprayed over my face. A large clock was set up where we could both see it, and the slow, steady ticking away of the seconds and minutes only served to amplify our misery. Finally, the competition was declared a draw. We had borne our suffering for one hour; and despite my huge relief, I found myself just a little peeved that my test of stamina had been halted prematurely.

Ever since then, I have wondered how long I might have lasted; but it was one of the rules of the club that we never went that far. We did, however, have a sybian-riding tournament, and it is only counterintuitive to those who have not experienced it that the remorseless pleasure of the sybian was more difficult to bear than the unrelenting pain of the wooden pony.

To this day I am not sure what inspired or impelled me to accept these trials. Some of the girls were masochists, and a couple called themselves pain and humiliation junkies, a term I never understood or approved of, even if it did make some sense. One could get hooked on the adrenaline and endorphins. Other girls were in dominant-submissive relationships and performed to please the master, or mistress, or to prove their devotion. A couple endured for no other reason than the extra tips it brought them from titillated customers. But none of those motivations was mine. While I enjoyed serving topless and dancing naked — I was flattered by the attention as well as gratified by the gratuities — pain and degradation did nothing to turn me on.

But since as far back as I can remember, I’ve had a penchant for extreme adventures. As a teenage tomboy with a taste for the rough-and-tumble, I was a sucker for a dare and would accept just about any that was put to me. I relished taking on the neighbourhood boys and beating them at their own games. I did some wild and crazy things. And I guess that the challenges I faced in the Wooden Pony Club were the definitive test of my limits, the ultimate defiance of my fears and frailties. Was I so much different from the marathon runner or triathlete who pushes her body and spirit to the edge of endurance and then (as so often is the case) beyond?

But there came the day when I left the club, never to return. I had started on a critical phase of my postgraduate studies, which would involve both research and a permanent teaching position. When I informed Desirée that I would have to quit, she was gracious about it, even granting me a very generous severance payment. I promised to go back, but I never did.

Sometime later, I asked Richard how his job was going.

Instead of answering, he blandly replied: “Desirée is gone.”

He explained. Not so long after my leaving, she had also resigned… and disappeared. No one knew where she had gone or when she’d be back, or even if she would ever return. Someone recalled her mentioning a mysterious apartment, someone else a house in the country, but that was all. And since her departure, the Wooden Pony Club had been turned into a more conventional striptease venue. The tackiness of its façade was beginning to seep into the interior. Staff turnover increased dramatically. Richard still worked there, but he was not as keen as he had once been. I heard him on the phone a couple of times trying to weasel his way out of a Friday night shift. Then he quit as well.

As for Matthew, by this time we had broken up. He had a new girlfriend and I have to admit that they were a perfect match. She changed him for the better. We remained on good terms but rarely saw each other. In any case, my life was about to take another interesting turn.
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“Though I am slave,” she said, “yet for the first time in my life, I am free.”
— John Norman, Nomads of Gor

It was around the time when Desirée departed the Wooden Pony Club that Richard moved in with me. Taking him in undoubtedly went against my better judgement; but I was by now renting a house on the edge of the campus, so with Matthew out of my life there was room enough. Also, I felt responsible for Richard after he quit his job. I had always thought of him, and treated him, as a little brother (an obnoxious but endearing little brother). At the same time, I was blaming myself for the break-up with Matthew — and part of the guilt was due to the feeling that, engrossed in my research and distracted by my tutoring and waitressing duties, I had been neglecting him, pushing him away.

I think I overcompensated by pandering to Richard’s bad habits. He seemed to have reverted to his old ways. He was acting moodily and had become more self-absorbed. He showed no obvious ambition, never looking beyond the next party or pub session; he was neglecting his studies and barely passing his subjects, doing just enough to ward off expulsion; and since he no longer held down a steady paying job, he was always short of cash, as a result of which I took care of our living expenses. I also attended to just about all of the housekeeping chores. Whenever I asked him to at least clean up his own mess, he would dismiss my eminently reasonable request with something contemptuous like “That’s woman’s work.” Considering that I was paying the bills, I found his attitude more than a little ironic. However, I was falling back into my old ways as well, putting off the inevitable showdown.

So I guess I was a soft touch. But my big-sisterly instincts were pulling me in two opposite directions — indulging his whims and vagaries, or laying down the law. And yet, just as I began working on my “start pulling your own weight” speech, I noticed a slight change for the better. All of a sudden, Richard seemed more focused, had begun finally to show some maturity. He even contributed a small share of the rent money.

That was my excuse for avoiding confrontation, and it’s the way things might have remained if Richard had been a little more discreet about his private affairs. Of course, that may have been a convenient façade. He was going out every night; and purely by accident (or so it appeared at the time), I discovered that he was meeting somewhere with Matthew. Despite my curiosity, I tried not to be distracted from my own business; but eventually, too intrigued to leave well enough alone, one evening I considered following Richard to his rendezvous, like some seedy, skulking private eye. I resisted the urge. Instead, a few nights later as he was about to leave again, I challenged him. He was walking out after dinner, leaving his dirty plates on the table for me to clear away.

“Don’t worry about the mess,” I said.

“Thanks, I won’t,” he answered.

“So, are you meeting Matthew?”

He turned and gave me a quizzical look, less “How do you know?” than “Why do you care?”

I made it clear, by my expression alone, that I would harass him until I got an answer, so he simply shrugged his shoulders.

“We’re going to the club. Wanna come?”

“The Wooden Pony?”

He laughed. “It’s a place on campus.”

“What’s it called?”

“You won’t have heard of it.”

“Then it’s a secret club…”

He didn’t reply.

“Really?” Now I just had to find out. “Let me get my bag.”

“Okay.” He held up his hand and then pointed at my legs. “No jeans,” he said.

“You’re wearing jeans.”

He just stared at me.

“Right,” I said. I went to my bedroom, took off my jeans and put on a skirt. Half-expecting him to have left without me, I returned to find him standing impatiently in the doorway.

The house was located near the university, so it was a short walk to the shopping precinct in the middle of the campus. There are rooms that the students’ union hires out at a low fee to various clubs and associations. But the place Richard took me to was in the basement of a building in a side street. It reminded me immediately of the Wooden Pony, being dingy on the outside, brighter on the inside. But the similarities stopped there, even discounting the disconcerting “Leave your weapons at the door” banner which spanned the entrance.

It was more like a pub than a nightclub, with a bar, half a dozen tables and a dance floor which was simply a cleared section in the middle of the room. Oddly, this was covered in fleecy mats and pelts which would have made dancing difficult, if not treacherous. There was an alcove at one end that served as a kitchen. The toilet doors were marked his and hers with stencilled silhouettes, of what appeared to be a fur-covered barbarian warrior and a naked woman.

Behind the bar were two attendants, male and female. He was clad in a buckskin vest over a rough-twill long-sleeved shirt, with leather trousers and sheepskin boots… looking like he’d stepped out of a cheap Viking movie set. She was wearing, in addition to a broad leather collar and steel bracelets, a barely-there chainmail bikini — made of small metal rings linked in a mesh pattern. I had seen these before; in fact I once owned one (which I had made for a “renaissance faire”, because that’s what women wore back in ye olden days); but mine was lined on the inside with fabric. This one was simply metal against skin, revealing just about everything that even the flimsiest bikini is supposed to hide. It must have been rough on the nipples, as well as irritating, chafing around the edges and, down below, plucking a few pubic hairs. Indeed, I noted that the girl’s movements were all very measured… but even then she occasionally winced. Why, I asked myself, would she choose to wear it like that? I was not really thinking straight.

A waitress was wandering between the tables, also in collar and cuffs and wearing a microscopic bikini, although this one was of soft, gentle-on-the-tender-parts suede.

There were half a dozen young men standing or sitting at the bar, and maybe a dozen others at the tables, some playing cards and others a dice game. Most were in costume, the same sort of faux barbarian garb worn by the bartender (and with no obvious intimation of whimsy or irony). They were quaffing from tankards or, in a couple of cases, horns. None looked up or in any way acknowledged our presence. But their companions did.

I counted seven females besides the two staff servers, three at the bar and four at the tables. All were kneeling, sitting or squatting on the floor, in various states of undress. Two were completely naked. All were wearing leather collars with tethers. One of the nude girls, crouching at the feet of her master who was sitting on a barstool, was cleaning his boots. He kept tugging at the rope attached to her throat, so her head was bobbing up and down while she was trying to work. The women all looked up as we entered, but quickly averted their eyes if Richard turned his head in their direction.

The barman set down an earthenware jug of something or other, frowned and pointed to a sign on the end of the counter: “All pets must be leashed.”

I was about to say “Not a chance… let’s go,” when Richard said “Freewoman.”

“Don’t get many in here on weeknights,” the barkeep growled.

“What shall it be, Sir?” the girl asked, her metallic bikini shimmering and softly rustling.

Richard ordered a beer and a wine. “She’s paying,” he said, not even looking my way.

The girl said “Thank you, mistress,” as she took my credit card. I smiled. Even mediæval taverns accept the plastic these days.

Snubbing me completely now, Richard took his drink and moved along the counter to take the stool beside the guy with the freshly polished boots. They shook hands and had a few words. The slavegirl looked up, but only to the men’s chest height, and said “Good evening, Sir Richard.”

He did not answer but patted the top of her head. Her master tapped her shoulder and the girl began buffing Richard’s shoes with a rag and brush. I noticed she had beside her a little box with a fine collection of cleaning items.

Not really knowing what to do now, I stood at the bar sipping my wine. It did not surprise me when two guys got up from a nearby table to stand on each side of me, in very close.

“Very nice,” one of them said.

The other looked past me, towards Richard. “Any chance this one’s for sale?”

I had an answer ready, but Richard pre-empted it… which was probably a good thing.

“No, sorry… not tonight, anyway.”

The pair looked disappointed. They were quite young, about Richard’s age.

The one who had spoken first gave me a long hard stare.

“I know you,” he said.

The second guy nodded. “Yeah, the Wooden Pony. Nice performance. Welcome to Gor.”

The first one shook his head. “That isn’t what I meant. But yes… good show. Have we met?”

I replied that I doubted it, but there was definitely something familiar about him.

He looked hard, thought for a moment, and then his face brightened.

“Got it!” he exclaimed, loud enough that everyone in the room turned to see what was happening. “You’re… you teach my statistics class.”

That figures, I said to myself. Of all the beer joints in all the towns in all the world…

***
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***

“Goreans, in their simplistic fashion, often contend, categorically, that man is naturally free and woman is naturally slave. But even for them the issues are far more complex than these simple formulations would suggest. For example, there is no higher person, nor one more respected, than the Gorean free woman.”
— John Norman, Hunters of Gor

We stayed for less than an hour. While I was there, none of the women spoke to me, or were permitted to speak; but they listened intently, and I could see that one of them at least (the second nude girl) really wanted to join the conversation, from her place at her master’s feet. The industrious little slave with the shoe-cleaning box took the opportunity to spruce up the footwear of all the men who had gathered around me. Her blissful smile as she worked made me think “It’s nice to have a hobby.”

It was somewhat to my embarrassment that I found myself the focus of attention. My original two courtiers, Paul and Stuart, were soon joined by several others. I refused a couple of offers of drinks, while continuing to pay for Richard’s. They were interested to learn that I had read several of John Norman’s Gor novels, and impressed that I knew the infamous author’s name was the nom de plume of a philosophy professor. And they did not seem offended by the fact that I found the books to be rather amateurishly written and plotted, the pseudoscience preposterous and the Nietzschean ideology distasteful. Paul, for example, confessed that he was more interested in Gorean culture than the “literature.” (He actually used air quotes when he said the word.)

“So, you’re thinking of joining us?” Stuart said.

I vacillated.

“Freewoman or slave?” someone asked.

I looked around, and down, at the girls on the floor.

“Shouldn’t you ask her man that?” said another.

To my surprise, that earned a few snorts of derision. Indeed, my perception was that the guys liked having a freewoman to talk to. The slavegirls were mere chattels, not worthy of attention except for the service they provided … but that didn’t seem right either. I felt sure that I was not seeing the whole picture.

When I left, my curiosity about Richard’s nocturnal affairs at least partly sated, without any prompting he joined me, so I wouldn’t have to walk home alone in the dark. It was atypically chivalrous of him. And that was the last I thought I would see or hear of the Social Club of Gor.

But the following week, I taught the class which included Paul. Afterwards he asked me what I thought of the club and if I intended to go there again.

“Interesting. Doubtful.”

He paused, and his face bore that morose look people have they are about to ask a question of which they already know the disappointing answer. But he swallowed his words before they came out.

“Well then, it’s a definite maybe,” he said instead, and smiled.

But of course I returned. It was Friday evening and I hadn’t heard from Matthew. I had long since written him off as a prospect, so I was not particularly disheartened. Richard had come in late for dinner, which I had started preparing as soon as I arrived home from a hard day’s work. However, he was apologetic, and as reparation he wanted to take me out.

Knowing exactly where he had in mind, I was dubious; but I decided (somewhat against my better judgement) that this was a way of reconnecting with him.

“You’re not going to sell me, are you?”

He laughed and shook his head. “They couldn’t afford you.”

If that was the finest compliment I was going to get, I would take it graciously.

Unlike the first time, he was in costume, although he resembled more a wayward hippie than a barbarian warrior. The best I could come up with was a floral peasant-blouse and a ruffled, knee-length skirt and boots. Richard advised me that “to fit in” I should pull the top off my shoulders and undo the lace-up front down to my midriff. He took a couple of steps backward to study my cleavage and nod his approval.

“It’s come to this,” I sighed, “taking sartorial advice from you, of all people.”

The pair of us looked like flower children dropping in from the ’sixties. And as we crossed the campus to get to our destination, it said something about Friday night university culture that neither of us looked at all conspicuous. When we reached the club, there was no doorman because none was needed. Richard had his own key.

The place was crowded… maybe fifty people in all. This time there were as many women as men, and the atmosphere was much more casual. The clientele were in a range of ages, from barely legal (to drink in a bar, that is) to late thirties or early forties. Although a few of the females were naked, there was very little kneeling and squatting. Some of the slavegirls were no more déshabillé than myself; but their collars and leashes set them apart from half a dozen whom I took to be the fabled freewomen. Not all of the females were beauty queens or supermodels, but neither was every male fit to hunt sleen in the mountains of Sardar.

Whenever a slave spoke to a newcomer or stranger for the first time, she opened with the words “La kajira”, which means “I am a slavegirl.” (It bothered me, just a little, that I knew that.) Since she was already identifiable by her collar, it was more an affirmation than an introduction, of what she was, of what she was not, of how she was to be spoken to and treated. For protocol, I quickly learned, was very important here.

Conversation rarely crossed gender lines. The slaves mingled freely with each other, but rarely with the freewomen. Every so often one would be summoned by her master to perform some service, to dance for his friends, to fetch him ale if he was gambling at table, to display her breasts (if she wasn’t showing them already) or her latest tattoo. There would be some poking and groping, and the comments could be pretty crude. The girl’s reaction would be a quiet, eyes-rolling sigh of resignation followed by a plastic smile. But I could tell they loved the attention. That was something I learned while working at the Wooden Pony Club, even during my rides on the eponymous beast. The slavegirls were the main attraction of the tavern, in fact its raison d’être. Without them, it would have been just another hangout for dorky role-playing fantasists. And everybody knew that. So the real power structure in the Social Club of Gor was the inverse of the nominal pecking order, and I was fascinated by this paradox.

But as a result, the freewomen occupied an equivocal status. They looked down on the kajirae. In turn, they were looked down on by the males, being of less value, and thus worthy of less consideration, than slavegirls. Constrained by hauteur as much as by the club’s code of conduct, they didn’t seem to have much fun. They were not allowed to gamble and could drink only in moderation. Unlike a warrior, for whom overindulgence with the beer mug or the wine cup was a source of manly pride and a cause for jest, freewomen who allowed themselves to become inebriated risked their own liberty. But they obviously prized their place in the hierarchy, even if it appeared to me as the consolation of the disfranchised. For to put it bluntly, your status in the tavern was defined by what you had or did not have between your legs. It was as simple as that. Male slaves (whom I soon discovered did exist) were still men and thus potential warriors. A freewoman, on the other hand, was first and foremost a prospect for enslavement.

That might have been reasonable on the untamed world of Gor, where men earned their pre-eminence as fighters, hunters and protectors. Of course, in the mundane reality of the tavern in the middle of the campus, there were no heroes or desperadoes, no brawny tarnsmen or intrepid tharlarion riders. Everyone was playing a role, and the freewomen took pride in theirs. They couldn’t be warriors and they wouldn’t be slaves. It gave them a sense of solidarity, of sisterhood.

There was a particular young lady, tall, dark-haired and extremely beautiful, who stood at one end of the bar in a gorgeous full-length green gown with splendid décolletage, haughtily holding court over a clique of feminine acolytes. At the time I was talking to Paul and Stuart.

“Such a shame,” Paul said, nodding in the direction of Princess Pea-Green.

“She needs to be on the block,” Stuart replied.

“The block?” I inquired.

“Auction block.” The barman leaned across the counter. “It can be arranged.” He winked.

Looking about, I felt sure it could be. Yet freewomen, I had been assured, could own slaves as well, even a male kajirus.

“There’s no discrimination here,” I was told. But if so, I replied, where were they?

The explanation, for what it was worth, was that male slaves were neither collared nor compelled to wear distinguishing clothes (let alone forced to be naked). Only females were obliged to display the distinctive tokens of their status as property. And the reason for that had to do with the Gorean mythos, that all males were former or potential warriors. So I looked about. There was likely to be a kajirus or two in the room, but I had no way of knowing. It was certainly not etiquette to ask, and none ever publicly acknowledged his mistress. Unlike the slavegirls who rarely interacted with the freewomen, the bondsmen mixed openly with the freemen. Yet there were some subtle clues. For instance, slaves, regardless of sex, did not pay for their drinks or food… at least not in theory. So a freewoman with her own kajirus paid his bar bill. This was always done discreetly, for in Gorean culture a man’s honour stood above everything. However, I now and then spotted a male wearing a silk scarf or wristband. It took me a while to grasp the significance; but I should have recalled immediately, from my readings of the Gor books, that silk was worn by slaves.

There was at least one gay couple. The kajirus showed deference to his master but spoke on equal terms with the other men. On the other hand, three or four of the freewomen owned girls. These kajirae were invariably naked and tended to be more obsequious and obeisant than their male-owned counterparts. They were, in general, treated more harshly by their mistress and more leniently by the men.

Beside personal observation, my main sources of information were the slaves themselves. No one seemed to mind that I did not treat them with the customary disdain, nor did anyone question my curiosity. Once it had been ascertained that I was not some infiltrating agitator, everyone was open and candid. I think they liked having a freewoman who deigned to speak with them and an outsider to whom they could explain their philosophy and lifestyle. I also discovered, after talking to the freewomen and the males as well, that the female members, regardless of status, took the whole thing much more seriously than the men… which made sense. After all, in many ways they had a much more personal stake in the Gorean fantasy.

Naturally I was asked the same questions as the other night. “Are you going to join us? Free or slave?” I did not answer; but the truth is that I really enjoyed myself that night.

Around ten o’clock, the kajirae danced naked, individually or in pairs. They were very good, obviously having lots of practice; the choreography was intricate and exquisite. A few of the girls were clearly shy about removing their clothing, but they did not hesitate. The waitresses and the barmaid (the same from the other night) took their turns; and the latter seemed happy to be out of her metal bikini. The freewomen clapped along with the men, and a couple of them danced as well, though with their dresses on.

We stayed until midnight, when Richard abruptly decided it was time to go. I actually protested. But on the way home he told me that my visitor’s rights had run out. If I wanted to go back, I would have to join the Gorean society for real. I just laughed.

And that might have been the end of it.

So why I went back to the tavern is a question to which I am only now discovering the answer. It was the same feeling that impelled me to ride the wooden pony… not exactly of emptiness, but a sense that there was a void in my life that needed to be filled. For the last five years I had been focused on things and people outside myself, and when I looked back on my own experiences, it was like seeing them through the eyes of a stranger. But it was worse than that. My existence was mundane. There was no excitement… no adventure... no thrills… no stories. It seemed that nothing ever glowed. At least sometimes things in your life should glow.

This was, at least in part, why I had ridden the wooden pony that first night. In that half-hour of pain and humiliation, I felt more, experienced more, lived more intensely than I had in the previous half-decade. It was a good feeling… it was why I had gone back so many times… and now I missed it.

Yet I still knew very little about the Social Club of Gor. Richard was reluctant to share, and given its nature I could not really blame him. So one afternoon I went with him back to the subterranean lair of the Goreans. In the daytime it was innocuous, almost banal. It was closed for business, with just one person holding the fort. I recognized the custodian as, of all people, the shoe-cleaning girl I encountered on my first night. Unlike then, she was fully dressed, in jeans and sweater and sneakers. She was sitting at one of the tables reading an economics textbook. She looked up, smiled and called Richard by name… no salutation, no grovelling, no downcast gaze.

When we told her that I wanted to sign up, I was again asked the question, freewoman or slave.

“Freewoman, I guess.”

“Are you sure?” She looked at Richard.

“Don’t look at me,” he said.

I gave it some thought. “Yes, definitely.”

She wandered over to the bar and brought back a sheaf of papers for signing.

“Slaves are free,” the girl informed me.

“What? Oh, right. It’s still my decision.”

She grinned and I paid the membership levy.

“Welcome.” She handed me my certificate and receipt.

It was like buying a pair of shoes… only with less fuss. I was now a freewoman of Gor.

***
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***

“The Goreans have a saying. There are only two kinds of women, slaves and slaves.”
— John Norman, Kajira of Gor

It had been two weeks since my last visit. I had been busy with other things, but had managed to find a costume suitable for my new character — a sumptuous magenta and indigo dress with gold and silver threadwork trim. The bodice was lace-up and open way down past my belly button, and sat very low on my boobs, which would probably have been too wanton for a freewoman on the “real” Gor… but here in the provinces the proprieties were not so strictly observed. For example, although the rule was that we be veiled, this was hardly ever enforced — only on the rare ceremonial occasion.

The place was again crowded, and everything appeared the same. It took me a while to spot one interesting difference. In a corner of the room half a dozen slavegirls were kneeling, backs to the wall, knees wide apart, hands clasped behind their bowed heads, leashes tied loosely to a railing. One of them was the imperious freewoman in the green gown... except, of course, the gown was no more.

I joined a group of my sisters, Princess Pea-Green’s former devotees, who greeted me with hugs and complimented me on my outfit. I did not ask directly but soon got a clue to the fate of their former doyenne. For there were three classes of freewoman — consort, concubine and companion, or in lay language, wife, girlfriend/fiancé and friend/relative. So I was a companion, and in the Gorean tradition that represented a perilously unstable position. All women, regardless of status, had to have a male guardian, and a companion could be enslaved on his order or with his consent. If she entered the tavern without an escort, she could be enslaved. If she broke any of the laws of the club, she could be enslaved. If she fell behind in her membership dues, she could be enslaved. If she said the wrong thing, dressed too much like a male, looked at a man the wrong way, pouted, flirted, strutted or… Heck, it was a wonder that there were any freewomen at all.

I never found out what the Princess’s offence had been, except that given her high-and-mighty manner, this was an enslavement waiting to happen.

The auction began at ten o’clock, and I had no idea how long the girls had been forced to wait in their corner, since I had come in at around eight. They were not naked, each wearing a loose-fitting tunic called a camisk. It was simply a rectangular piece of cloth draped over the body, belted at the waist with a cord and extending to about mid-thigh. Worn without underwear, it was complemented by the standard adornments, a leather collar and metal bracelets. Of, course, as soon as they were ordered to stand up for the sale to begin, the camisk came off so that the merchandise could be properly inspected. Their hands were locked behind their backs and they were brought forward one by one, led around the room naked on their leashes. The auctioneer warned the crowd that groping was strictly prohibited.

Alycia (the fallen Princess) appeared dazed, but she brightened up considerably once the bidding for the possession of her charms began. In fact, she was the first of the slaves to be offered for sale. I guess our shoe-cleaning kajira could have explained the economic theory behind putting your best commodity on the block first, but it seemed odd to me. She was bought, as most of the girls were, by a consortium, in this case four young men; and I was shocked when they took her to a back room located next to the kitchen. But three of them emerged a minute or two later, laughing, and my darkening thoughts about the tavern were quickly dispelled. Her new owner was her boyfriend. The money raised went into the club’s coffers and the girl’s most recent membership fees were refunded… to the master, of course, who spent it buying drinks all round. That won him the acclaim of his fellow warriors while his new slave, who had paid for it, knelt humbly at his feet awaiting his commands. She glanced up and smiled.

So the slave sales were, not surprisingly, an elaborate charade. In the fictional, fairytale, fantasy world of the tavern it was easy to forget or ignore reality… but it could never go away. No one was going to forcibly enslave anyone. No one was going to keep a girl in thrall against her will. A kajira, even if enchained of her own free choice, had the right to cast off her yoke and rejoin the society of freewomen. Naturally, if she had been acquired for a price she was required to make recompense to her dispossessed owner; and a freewoman facing the prospect of wearing the slavegirl’s collar could avoid her fate by payment of a ransom — in coin or in services to the club. Indeed, there were two or three for whom enslavement itself was the thrill, and they had been through the process more than once.

Afterwards came the dancing. I resisted calls to be included in the entertainment. My skills, honed somewhat in the Wooden Pony Club, had not improved to the extent that I wanted to be compared to those shimmering, shimmying belles. Alycia, a talented danseuse who loved to show off her moves, was no less sublime curling and swirling in the nude.

Again, to my surprise, Richard was willing to cut short his evening to accompany me home around midnight. I still had no idea how long he had been associated with the Goreans, or why he seemed so willing to bring me into the fold, and my questions on the way to the house were starting to irritate him. Perhaps it was the three glasses of wine, perhaps it the bracing chill of the late night air, but I was insistent, and he started to get angry.

I laughed, thinking “Now you know what it’s like to deal with the obstreperous!”

“What’s so funny?” he demanded.

I shut my mouth, recalling the fate of Princess Alycia.

He must have guessed what was going through my mind.

“Yes,” he said. “You should be careful. You should watch out.”

I took heed of his advice. But as it transpired, I was looking in the wrong direction.

***
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***

“The Gorean Master commands sensuality in his female slaves. You cannot even move like that now. Yet muscles can be trained. You will be taught to move as a woman, not a puppet of wood. You will be taught to be sensual. You will learn your womanhood.”
— John Norman, Renegades of Gor

As I took off my dress, folded it and placed it beside the other bundles on the bench, I glanced about the room. The floor was clear of furniture except at one end, where two dozen or so chairs were positioned flanking the doorway. The wooden boards were covered with twenty small canvas mats set out in three rows. Next to where we put our clothing was a table piled high with coils of ropes, silk and satin scarves and a large collection of gags of all different shapes, sizes and degrees of difficulty.

Our audience consisted of people I had come to know from the tavern, some closely, others not so much. They included half a dozen females, whose expressions were the usual freewomen’s combination of vapid curiosity, visible contempt and veiled envy. The men, on the other hand, adopted a carefully contrived “seen it all before” demeanour, while never taking their eyes off the proceedings. Among the latter were my housemate, my former boyfriend and my new owner.

At the tinkle of a bell, we took our positions on the mats. Since even slavegirls have their hierarchy, I was assigned to the back row; but the lines were arranged in such a way, both staggered and slightly curved, that our audience had an unimpeded view of all three ranks. At the same signal, our instructress took her place on the mat placed out in front, between us and the spectators. Unlike us, she was not naked, but her silver-coloured leotard was of such form-fitting, sheer lycra that she might as well have been. She was small and slim but sturdy, with short, shaggy chestnut brown hair and large, dark eyes. Her voice was high-pitched but powerful. Her tone was harsh, in the manner that a freewoman addresses a kajira… but also the way an aerobics coach might teach her class.

There were no introductions or other formalities; we went straight into the loosening-up exercises. They started off slowly but quickly built to a crescendo. My heart pumped, my chest heaved, the sweat ran down my face, my torso, my limbs. The little woman was unrelenting.

“Lift those legs! Get those knees up! Fling those arms out! Suck in that belly! Squeeze those butt cheeks! Push that chest out! Bounce those boobs!”

Despite the pain and perspiration, it was all I could do to not giggle.

After a minute to catch our collective breath, the instructress barked “Obeisance!” and we immediately dropped to our knees. I bent forward until my forehead touched the mat, my wrists crossed behind my back, my belly against my thighs, my backside above my heels (not resting on them) so that my weight was balanced on my knees. In this posture we each showed reverence to our masters, as we’d been trained.

“Homage!”

To achieve this pose in a single, fluid movement, I raised my body until I was kneeling with my hands on the floor behind my feet, and then I leaned backwards, with my bottom still holding just off my heels, propping myself on my arms. This arched my torso and thrust my breasts forward. At the same time, I spread my knees to open my thighs for the viewing pleasure of the spectators. They politely applauded.

“Prone!”

I lowered myself rearward, continuing to arch my torso until the tips of my breasts were the highest part of me, pointing to the ceiling. I held that position as I counted to thirty. Then I sank slowly backwards onto the mat, bringing my arms around in a smooth sweep to support my body until my hands were alongside my legs, thumbs against calves. This left me lying on my back staring roofwards, my legs bent up and my feet tucked into the sides of my buttocks but with thighs apart, and with my weight on my shoulders and knees. My bones creaked. My muscles burned. My sinews would have screamed, had they voices.

“Endurance!”

“Damn!” I said to myself. “What the hell am I doing here?”

***

“The Goreans claim that in each woman there is a free companion, proud and beautiful, worthy and noble, and in each, too, a slave girl.”
— John Norman, Hunters of Gor

Habits, once ingrained, are hard to break. I had fallen into the routine of going to the tavern. It was open four nights a week, and I became one of the regulars. In a short time I saw half the freewomen enslaved. I also saw half a dozen new female members, all but one of whom signed up as kajirae. And it quickly became clear that, with all the restrictions on her rights and activities, the life of a freewoman in Gorean society was actually rather dull. While the men got to play with their soft toys, those females who owned a girl (or a man, indeed) were not permitted to flaunt their possessions. Freewomen were supposed to be above such posturing and prancing. Treated with courtesy by the men, in return they were expected to act with dignity, decorum and discretion. Any display of arrogance, any suggestion of self-importance, presumption of equality with the men or pretension to male prerogatives risked immediate enslavement, as the haughty Alycia had learnt.

And, of course, in this respect the Goreans adhered to a strict double standard. There was no rule that a man could not dally with a freewoman while owning a slave, or share his slave with other masters. Nevertheless, this rarely happened. In their code of honour, I was told, property rights and the virtue of freewomen were inviolable; and it amused me that this noble masquerade was maintained. It was part of the fantasy. In reality, of course, whenever a stout warrior left the safety and sanctity of the tavern, he risked confrontation with an adversary more dreadful than any of his fellows. The night air had the magical property of transforming humble slavegirls and respectful freewomen into implacably vengeful wives and girlfriends. And it happened that every so often the band of brothers would raise a toast to a departed comrade, one who would never again imbibe the sensual delights of Gor.

Still, I did once get to witness a facet of the club’s hidden side. Some of the freewomen invited me to a Saturday soirée in Charlotte’s home. She was a founder of the club and one of the most frequent habitués of the tavern. That evening, the six of us drank wine, listened to music and discussed literature. It might have been a bourgeois suburban ladies’ book club. The works we talked about were the Gor novels, and the erudition of my companions startled me. We analyzed and debated various aspects of the culture, the lifestyle and the mythology, as if we were conversing on Shakespeare. We discoursed on the nature of slavery, and in particular pleasure slaves.

Our service and entertainment was supplied by Charlotte’s husband. I had seen James many times at the tavern, and he had not stood out in any way, except for the discreet silk scarf. But tonight he was collared and clad in a delectably brief chamois breechclout. He was tall and handsome, muscular and deeply tanned, with sandy hair and a square jaw. He addressed his wife as “Mistress” and the rest of us as “Lady”. But he was not servile or sycophantic like a slavegirl. He spoke with a strong voice and he looked us each straight in the eye. For in Gorean culture, even among the enslaved, pride had different meanings in the masculine and the feminine.

Indeed, once the music stopped the brawny barbarian tradition of Gor asserted itself. James knelt at the feet of his mistress and removed his loincloth. She put down her drink to unbutton her blouse. As the rest of us looked on in bemused silence, a breathtakingly prodigious pillar of manhood arose before our eyes. I gasped in wonder and admiration. James dragged his mistress down onto the floor, tore off her clothes, including her underwear, and had his savage way with her, right there on the rug in front of us. And as she lay panting and softly moaning, he seized my ankles and hauled me off the sofa. He stripped me and then each of the other women, more smoothly than he had with Charlotte, but just as firmly. None of us put up any sort of struggle.

After that it got really interesting. I discovered two things that night. The first was that some men have incredible stamina. The second was that I am more prey to my passions than I’d ever had reason to believe. James was neither forceful nor insistent. I surrendered to him without resistance or remorse or regret. He ravished us in the reverse order in which we had been pulled down and undressed, so I was the very last. In the meantime I was kept busy, because as he was thrusting into one of us, the rest shared the bonne bouche, feasting on her lips and breasts, her fingers and toes. By the time my turn came, we were all quivering and sweating and puffing. James was not particularly gentle, but he certainly knew his way around the female body. Yet the strangest thing was what aroused me most, what made me feel all goosebumpy — something entirely unexpected. Sharing a man with five other women made me feel intimately connected to them, more so than to James even while he and I were conjoined. I felt that I was a part of something outside of myself and yet rooted deep within me...

Indefatigable, immediately that he had extracted himself from the last of his ladies, James cast off his condom and tied his loincloth back in place, and then retrieved a carton from behind the sofa. He took out several coils of rope and dumped them on the floor. As I reached for my clothing, Charlotte grabbed my arm and pulled it away. “Not yet,” she whispered; and without a word, she and her pleasure slave organized us all to lie on our bellies with our hands behind our backs. It was a big room, with enough space between the furniture for us to form a line, side by side. I found myself at one end, and Charlotte became part of it at the other. James started at her end.

I heard a loud slap, a yelp that was not Charlotte’s, and a voice that was James’s growling “Stay down! Keep still! Lie straight!” So not daring to lift my chin off the carpet, I could only tilt my head and catch glimpses from the corner of my eye of what was happening. James was moving slowly along the row, accompanied by a chorus of grunts and groans as he squatted between the bodies, working his way towards me. It was slow work, so I lay motionless for a long time. And it was an odd sensation, in a way shameful, given that the six of us had surrendered so abjectly to one man, and in particular one who was by predilection and his own admission our subservient. But this is when I began to appreciate that the “power dynamic” in relationships is rarely simple.

I had heard of the terms “service top” and “topping from the bottom”. Although the relationship between Charlotte and James was not exactly that, I recalled something I had read in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex —

“To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object. Man wants woman to be object; she makes herself object, and at that moment she is exercising a free activity… Even when she is willing, or provocative, it is the male who takes the female. She is taken. He penetrates her. Her body becomes, therefore, a resistance to be broken through. A woman may thus envisage her erotic life as a form of slavery, since it seems humiliating to lie beneath the man, to be penetrated by him. But in fact man, like woman, is flesh and therefore passive, the plaything of his hormones and of the species, the restless prey of his desires. And she is a consenting, voluntary gift, an activity. They live out in their different ways the strange ambiguity of existence made body.”

I had studied those words long ago, they had stayed with me, but only now did I begin to understand their full meaning. The roles of dominance and submission played by this woman and her man were not undercut or overturned by the fact that she was bound and helpless in his power. On the contrary, they were reinforced. Her pleasure was the focus of his attention, in whatever form she chose; her body was no more a gift to him, or a prize to be seized, than his taking her (and us) was tribute paid to his mistress. And this caused me to rethink the shows in the Wooden Pony Club, in particular my participation. Had the sole purpose of my ordeal been to entertain the crowd and in doing so to fill the void in my own existence? In that case, was I nothing more than a docile accomplice in my own suffering, an object for the crowd’s amusement? Or was the audience, in a way, my personal pleasure slave, pliable and passive in the shadows beyond the stage lights, subject to and dependent upon the games I played, feeding on the spectacle while sating my own yearnings and cravings?

These thoughts, jumbled and ill-formed, were rudely interrupted as my wrists were roughly seized and bound, and my ankles were bound, and my wrists and ankles were bound together. I had never been hog-tied before that night. It was a weird experience, to be so thoroughly trussed, immobile, impotent and disabled, naked, perspiring and panting. All six of us struggled and wriggled and giggled as James played with us for maybe an hour, perhaps two.

Eventually, he untied our feet and herded us to the bathroom. He took us one at a time into the shower to wash away the sweat and other detritus from our exquisite ordeal, while the rest of us knelt on the cold, hard, wet tiles, hands still bound behind our backs, crudely blindfolded and gagged with towels and washcloths. He took Charlotte in last of all, and they were there a long time. The walls of the cubicle shuddered, and so did I at the ravenous ferocity of the clash of bodies behind the frosted glass. Their shower stall pas de deux was a fitting coda to our soapy operatics.

On the way home, three of us shared a cab. The other two were talking loudly about the night’s excitement and about Gor in general. I nudged Maryanne and gestured at the driver, who could catch every word.

She laughed. “Heard it all before, haven’t you Harry?”

Harry winked at us via the rear view mirror.

About half-way to the first drop-off, however, Nikki went silent. We all noticed and the conversation petered out.

“My turn next week,” she finally said.

“For what?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.

“To join the other team.”

“Liking the girls now?” Harry said with a toothy grin.

“Always have,” she replied, reaching forward to flick the back of his neck with a fingernail.

“One less freewoman,” Maryanne mourned. “We are a vanishing breed.”

“More than you think.”

She turned to stare at me, wide-eyed in the semi-dark.

“Not you too!”

***
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***

“We must strive to be perfection all ways, for anyone. That is part of what is to be a slave. In reconciling myself to bondage I had, also, to reconcile myself to this condition, it is a part of bondage. It is something which the slave must accept. Without it there can be no true slavery… Somehow, interestingly, this acceptance, too, seemed liberating to me. It made my bondage much more real to me. Too, interestingly, in its way, it also made it seem much more precious to me.”
— John Norman, Dancer of Gor

Our diminutive, leotard-clad tutoress ordered us to sort ourselves into pairs, which we did by the simple expedient of turning towards the nearest girl. There was one left over who became the demonstration model. As she began passing out coils of rope to each couple, the drill-mistress explained (to our audience) that the purpose of a slave’s bondage is the three R’s — restraint, recreation and reinforcement. Which meant, of course, that the ropes and chains rendered her helpless for the enjoyment of her owner; they provided visual pleasure, stimulation and inspiration; and they reminded us, the slaves, of our submission and servitude. She also called our training the PHD program — for patience, humility and discipline. She seemed to like acronyms, because she used some others whose meaning I don’t recall. In any case, I doubt that she was saying much that was new to any of us.

“Let me illustrate with the gag,” she continued, and summoned five of us to step forward. Exactly which point she was illustrating I had no idea, but my heart sank a little when I was one of those summoned. We were told to kneel, our arms folded behind our backs. Each of us received a different type of gag. Mine was the dental variety, an apparatus consisting of hinged and ratcheted, rubber-coated metal bars to hold the mouth open wide. I had only worn one once before, to have a wisdom tooth pulled. This was worse.

“It doesn’t stop her making noises, but it doesn’t stop other things either,” The little woman said about mine. She laughed at her own innuendo. I squirmed.

After that, the tie-up session was almost an anticlimax… Well, it would have been if I had been permitted to remove my gag. It was not long before my gaping jaws hurt like hell, my entire face ached, I dribbled and drooled. Since I was the tying half of our duo, as I bent and leant over her to apply the ropes, my partner’s body was soon lathered with my saliva.

Unlike our slave positions, which we had carefully rehearsed, this was our first bondage lesson, and most of the knots and loops and ligatures were new to me. The audience was told that bondage should be challenging, strenuous, possibly awkward and uncomfortable, but never ugly or too painful. When done right, the experience could be prolonged indefinitely. I did not like the sound of that. But the woman went on… “You slave’s happiness counts as well. Her pleasure will enhance yours. Yours will increase hers.”

We started off with a straightforward box-tie. It is one of the more comfortable, less stressful positions. My partner, Lorraine, folded her arms behind her back and I bound them at her wrists and elbows, and just below her shoulders. For additional immobility, I looped the cord several times around her torso, above and below and between her breasts. Lorraine was sweating and breathing heavily, and her nipples were hard. We were all keyed up, but I felt her skin tingle at my touch, and it quickly occurred to me that the girl was owned by one of the freewomen, and what that meant. Despite my humiliation, performing naked and open-mouth-gagged, I was flattered that she was so turned on by my attention.

She was first tied in a kneeling position, knees spread as far apart as they would go, to display her sex. Then I took hold of her arms and lowered her until she was lying on her stomach on the mat. I freed her hands, only to retie them with wrists together, and hitched them to her ankles by bending her legs at the knees to bring her heels up to her backside. She gasped as I shortened the ropes to raise her shoulders off the floor; and she whimpered as I tightened the bonds on her elbows and upper arms. This pushed out her chest, and on our leader’s instructions I turned my partner onto her side so the audience could see the aesthetically pleasing effect this had. When I rolled her back onto her belly, the sudden pressure on her stretched and strained breasts drew a pitiful moan from her lungs.

Lorraine sighed as I released her from the hog-tie and helped her onto her knees. But her sense of relief was fleeting. She groaned mournfully.

“The strappado is a popular classic,” our teacher was saying. “But never, ever, suspend your slave off the ground in one,” she warned. “You don’t want to dislocate her shoulders,” she added (somewhat superfluously). “Watch out for constricted circulation, pinched flesh and rope burns.”

At first my girl was allowed to sit back on her haunches, already exhausted from the strenuous ties to which she had been subjected. But simply by lifting my arm which held the rope attached to her wrists, she was made to raise herself and part her legs. I passed the crotch-rope between her thighs and tugged as hard as I could. She shrieked, as did the other girls in the room. Absorbed in Lorraine’s sweet suffering, I had almost forgotten their existence.

Our leader stroked the head of the girl kneeling beside her and then induced her to stand up, still bent forward at the waist, by pulling upwards on her arms.

“By adjusting the elevation you can regulate the angle of her body and thus her comfort and pain levels. You can also change the position and orientation of her mouth. In this pose, all of her openings are available to you.”

Although she coyly avoided explicit language, the bluntness of the woman’s remarks shocked me, more than it should have, given the circumstances. I guess I was feeling vulnerable… not a little ashamed… and more than a little aroused.

After the strappado, I assumed the role of a stool. I got down on my hands and knees and Lorraine, with her hands still bound behind her, bent over me, her stomach across the small of my back so our bodies were at right angles.

“A stool or footrest is good for both punishment and play. Of course, if you have two slaves, as you can see you don’t really need a stool.”

Finally, I freed Lorraine’s hands, but only to tie them again behind her head. Our audience was informed that this is not just to display the breasts but to present a clear front and back for whipping. I did not like the way so many of the spectators nodded in agreement… including my three boys.

“This position is often called the bunny ears,” they were told. Some took a few seconds to get the reference.

There were other positions and poses. When the session came to an end, for the first (and last) time during my membership of the Social Club of Gor, warriors, freewomen and slavegirls mingled freely, chatting and joking. It only occurred to me later than we were not on Gorean territory. It might have been a “normal” social gathering, except that we kajirae were still naked… and yoked. Each of us had been fitted with a metal collar, attached to which was a pole, on the ends of which were fastened leather bracelets. Our arms were thus held out sideways, bent at the elbows as if raised in surrender (apt symbolism). Eating snacks and drinking wine were impossible, even if I had wanted to do either. It took me a while to recover from the effects of my gag. My jaws were sore, my lips puckered, the insides of my mouth parched from salivation. I couldn’t talk properly for a while, either.

It felt weird, to be circulating and mingling like this, not just helpless but fully exposed, unable to conceal my nakedness with my hands. Some of the slaves appeared completely at ease; others were as nervous and as awkward as I. Even so, after a while, with a bit of effort, you can adjust to almost anything. Stuart ignored me most of the time. Richard and Matthew stayed close by, making the most of my nude and yoked condition with both their eyes and their hands. But I didn’t mind. The bondage lessons and this after-session get-together galvanized feelings that were still largely latent within me. For the first time, I felt that I really was a slave, and not simply playing a role. I liked it.

***

“Woman is the natural love prey of man. She is natural quarry. She is complete only when caught, only when brought to the joy of her capture and conquest.”
— John Norman, Hunters of Gor

In the tomboy phase of my girlhood, I was an accomplished leg wrestler. For the uninitiated, in this form of wrestling the competitors lie flat on their backs next to each other, but with their heads and feet pointing in opposite directions, their hips even with the other’s shoulder. They each raise the inside leg simultaneously to a vertical position to lock at the knee, and attempt to flip their opponent. It takes skill as well as strength, brains as well as brawn, to be a champion.

Having quickly run through the short list of challengers from my own sex, I took on the neighbourhood boys. I was virtually unbeatable. Indeed, the only time I lost fairly was the first time I wrestled in a dress. As I lifted my leg and flashed my knickers, the sudden burst of applause from the spectators distracted me just enough to put off my timing. But diversions were part of the game, and any tactic to unbalance or confuse one’s adversary was allowed. However, after a while, dismayed at being constantly outclassed by a mere girl, the boys resorted to outright cheating. I could not blame them — I really was that good. So I retired with honour unimpaired. In any case, my days of snips and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails were just about over.

The memory of those glory days came back to me as I stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by the denizens of Gor.

It had been a week since I had made known my decision to renounce my status as a freewoman and join the company of kajirae. In authentic Gorean tradition, the choice should not have been mine to make, unless I was one of those disreputable types who comported themselves as slavegirls and thus forfeited the right to be anything else. But a respectable freewoman could become booty through kidnap or conquest. On the other hand, since the tavern was located not on the planet of Gor but in the basement of a building on a campus backstreet, forcible enslavement would have been unprecedented. So unless the capture was pre-arranged (a not unheard-of occurrence), the victim could regain her liberty through payment of a ransom, usually settled in tankards of ale.

There were, of course, the myriad rules that a freewoman could violate and end up claimed as property. One of these was that she must have a guardian. And given that Richard was the member who brought me into the Social Club of Gor, and had the requisite maleness, he automatically filled that role. It said so on the papers we signed. But no true barbarian is bound by a few fancy words on a scrap of parchment. On his say-so, and for a suitable recompense, I was fair game for any who might bid to collar me.

Richard said my price would buy him a week’s supply of lager.

“Only a week?” I was offended.

“I can drink a lot,” he lamely replied. “So who’s the lucky new owner?”

(He knew by now that Matthew was out of the picture. It had been a long time coming, but the break-up had been formalized when my old boyfriend found his new girlfriend. We remained still on good terms. But Erica scorned the ways of Gor, so his days there were numbered.)

I kept my silence and made arrangements. Even then, I was not yet sure that the road I was about to take would lead where I really wanted to go. There were divergent paths before me, and while my head beckoned me in one direction, my heart pulled in the other. So I decided that my destiny should be decided in the best barbarian tradition — a trial by combat.

There was a big crowd in the tavern, more so than the usual Friday night assemblage. Word had passed around. Two of the kajirae, Molly and Devashni, prepared me. Molly, petite and pretty, was the shoeshine girl and (I had since learned) the Social Club’s very first slave. Devashni was a stunningly beautiful girl from India with a student visa and a freshly acquired taste for the ways of the tavern. Both were naked except for their leather chokers and cuffs. They removed my dress and underwear and gave me a crimson camisk to wear. Quintessentially Gorean, it both concealed and exposed. A collar was placed about my neck, but without a tether, for that would be fixed by my new owner. They drew my arms behind my back and locked my wrists together with steel bracelets. As I was brought out to face the multitude, I kept my head up, because though I now wore the raiment of a slavegirl, I was yet free. But when I looked about the room, the other freewomen (including Charlotte and Maryanne) averted their eyes. I was no longer part of their domain.

Richard joined me in the centre of the room and announced that I was now without guardian and thus for sale. But this was to be no auction. Only those already enslaved, those not worthy to be contended for, or those (like Alycia) who scorned the old ways, were sold on the open market. I would have to be won. More precisely, the man who won me would have the right of purchase. Those who wished to challenge paid a fee and drew lots. But of course the competition was contrived. Although some forsake subterfuge as ignoble, stealth, cunning and deception are a part of the armoury for most warriors of Gor. For a female, who is not constrained by the manly code of honour, they are her most lethal weapons. Nevertheless, it could still go wrong. I could end up belonging to the wrong master. That would turn out not just embarrassing; buying my freedom would be expensive.

The first contender stepped forward. He was tall and wiry, and he beamed confidence. He took his place on the mat, arms at his side. When I took my position, with my hands pinned behind me I lay with my body arched. Far from this being my handicap, when our legs went up my opponent mistimed the hook. Knowing that the thigh muscles are less effective when working at an angle, I used the slight advantage to pull his leg out of vertical alignment with his hip. With a loud groan he flipped, landing sprawled across my legs. The audience cheered. Devashni came forward to draw the hem of my tunic back down to cover my pantiless private parts. The victory came so easily that I felt the tension drain out of me. But I could not rest for long on my laurels.

The second candidate, burlier than the first, was wary of tricks and overcompensated. This time I engaged my gluteal muscles in a quick burst of raw power, tossing him even quicker. He looked no less surprised. My years of playing in the dirt and being scolded by my mother were paying off. But after the third flustered contender had been dispatched, fatigue was setting in. So number four succumbed to a feint. I pushed hard for half a second and then released the pressure, unbalancing my foe. Reapplying the force, I pitched him in a complete rollover. He protested angrily and the congregation jeered.

By now, the most eminent warriors of Gor had been defeated, but my strength was waning. I was allowed a short break. Devashni adjusted my camisk once more, while Molly dabbed my lips with a wet cloth. The master of ceremonies, barman Tony, seized my shoulders and spun me around in a complete circle to show the crowd that my hands were still pinioned behind my back. I don’t know why that was necessary; but as he did so he lifted my hemline off my backside and forced me to bend forward. I think it was to remind me that, though I had defeated four stout heroes, my fate was already decided, its realization merely delayed.

Yet the fifth challenger was reluctant to step forward, and for a moment I thought my plan had reached fruition. But urged on by his companions, he looked down at me, puffing and sweating on the mat. He performed some ostentatious squats and lunges to warm up, and then lay down beside me. He was a most formidable opponent, and I engaged my last reserves of energy to overcome him. As I lay on my back, exhausted, he reflexively put out his hand to shake. I rolled onto my belly to offer mine; he laughed and slapped my bare derrière instead.

Naturally I was proud of my triumphs, but at this point such vanity could be my undoing. The next contestant had good reason to not hesitate in coming up to the mat, but I was determined that he would not win me without a fight… though win me he must. I knew that I could not survive another round. And as he leapt high to celebrate his conquest, I scrambled to my knees, every muscle and sinew afire, my head now bowed in servitude. Master Stuart, after acknowledging the plaudits of the crowd, reached down to my waist to untie the cord. He ripped the red camisk off my body. He placed his hand under my chin to lift my head; I kept my eyes downcast as he attached the tether to my collar. With my arms still shackled, I was led by my leash on the lap of honour around the tavern as the new owner showed off his prize and basked in the praise and panegyrics. My vanquished opponents were gracious in their salutes. Since (unlike me) they paid no price for defeat, except in terms of pride and purse, I guess they could afford to be.

Richard collected the fees, half of which went to the tavern and most of the rest to buying rounds of drinks for my thirsty audience. I couldn’t help thinking how handy that money would have been added to the housekeeping fund.

I was taken to the back room. It was my first visit. The only furnishings were a washbasin and a bed and a full-length mirror. Stuart released my hands but blindfolded me before he undressed. Afterwards, I lay with my head on his chest, he under the sheets and me on top of them. He stroked my hair and caressed my breasts. I was still aching from the combat, and my Master, exhilarated and energized by his choreographed victory, had not been gentle. I reached under the sheet to pay further tribute, but he pushed my hand away.

“Well,” I said, sitting up. “If you have finished ravishing me, I must go.”

“Already?’

“You can drink on with your barbarian buddies. Some of us have to work in the morning.”

“What is this thing called work?”

“Where are my clothes?”

***
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***

“In denying it we deny our nature. In betraying it we betray no one but ourselves. The master will never be happy until he is a master. The slave will never be happy until she is a slave. It is what we are.”
— John Norman, Explorers of Gor

I still enjoyed my twice weekly visits to the tavern... in fact, more than ever. They were not an escape from the stresses of my everyday life, but at least a retreat.

Naturally things had changed since my conversion from freewoman to slavegirl. But I found a not so unexpected freedom in my new role. It was no paradox that the loss of independence was liberating. I felt more of a sense of individuality and greater self-reliance in obeying the straightforward, uncomplicated commands of my masters, as arduous and demeaning as they might sometimes be, than in following the elaborate and largely meaningless protocols of the freewomen. And since I was by temperament not at all submissive, at least in no conventional way, I took on the challenge of suppressing my natural inclinations not as a surrender but rather an exploration.

But the truth of the matter is that what I enjoyed most of all was the attention. For all the pretence, the posturing and the playacting that went on about us, the slaves were the why and wherefore of the club. We were its focus, its raison d’être. And that was a weird but wonderful feeling, to be so important, to have so much power, while kneeling at a master’s feet or dancing for his pleasure or grovelling for his amusement… to be so humble and so yet strong.

It was, of course, Stuart who now took me to the tavern. My last lecture for the week ended at three o’clock on Friday. Afterwards I waited with Paul in my office. He did not resent that I had chosen his friend to be my owner, as we were both aware of the ethical problems in having such a relationship with one of my students. In any case, it was sufficient for him to see his teacher, a legendarily hard taskmaster in the classroom, stripped and humbled. As well, Stuart was generous in sharing his property. And as much as I might have been ashamed to admit it then, this in turn gave me a thrill. Perhaps I was making up for lost time, for the sacrifices and missed opportunities, the unlived adventures and unfulfilled dreams of the past few years, when I had already given up my freedom, to take charge of a household and take care of my surrogate little brother.

We always went straight to the club. It was usually crowded by the time we got there, and Stuart was greeted with grunts and growls of acknowledgement by his fellow warriors as he crossed the threshold. Arriving slavegirls such as I were sent immediately and without fanfare to the back room to change out of our day clothes. It was deemed uncouth to make us undress in the bar area, even those who were to spend the rest of the evening naked. Normally I was permitted to wear my camisk… until, obviously, the dancing started.

We were rostered for kitchen duty, and sometimes to fill in for one of the waitresses. Most of my time, however, was spent sitting or kneeling at my master’s feet, on my leash. If he was at one of the tables playing cards or dice, I fetched him drinks and snacks when the waitress was busy. We slaves were allowed to have drinks, and it was a matter of honour that if one of the men bought us one he expected nothing in return but thanks. It was a nice boost to his ego, especially for those like Paul and Richard who did not possess female property of their own, to have us show our gratitude with a grovel. And I did not mind the obeisance. If nothing else, the occasional belly crawl and fawning bootlick helped pass the time.

But it was never boring. My teaching, my research and my household duties had left me little time for relaxation and no energy for recreation; so it was nice to be able, if not to relax, then to be released from responsibility and accountability. Sometimes the routine was broken by special shows and presentations. The club had its own bondage master, who demonstrated his techniques on us. On Saturday afternoon there were more bondage sessions, dance lessons and general slave training, led by the little, leotard-clad woman. Attendance at these was not compulsory, but we all wanted to be better kajirae and I rarely missed one.

While I belonged to my master, in the tavern I was required to provide service to any man. Technically that included any male slaves, although the obligation was not reciprocal. (We also served the freewomen, but the males took precedence.) Rather than remain idle, whenever I was in the tavern without Stuart I was expected to make myself available and useful — to approach the men (humbly, naturally) to request if my service was required. “Don’t wait for orders,” the slavegirls were told, but we also had to be careful to no be too pushy or intrusive. Of course, service meant fetching food or drinks, and the occasional dance, nothing more.

I always wore my collar and leash; sometimes I wore my camisk, sometimes I was naked, depending on my master’s whim. Occasionally, one of the men ordered me to strip, but that required a nod from Stuart.

There were elaborate protocols. I addressed all males as “Master” unless in the presence of Stuart, when it became “Sir.” Freewomen were addressed as “Mistress.” I kept my eyes lowered and there was even a rule for that — for a man, my gaze must be directed at his feet, because to stare any higher (like at crotch level) was “wanton.” Yet for a freewoman, string at the floor was seen as disrespectful… I acknowledged her feminine dignity by focusing my attention on her bosom… it was all very complicated.

If I was at the tavern without Stuart, I needed the permission of a master to leave. I was never denied it, but this was nevertheless a reminder that I could not come and go, or do anything, of my own free will. But naturally, our actual tarriance in the tavern was rarely as rigidly curtailed or controlled as this.

As a slave, it was not my privilege to decide who should be worthy of service or reverence. Not all of the men were the sort whom I would have had much, or anything, to do with outside the tavern walls. Some could be gruff, rude, vulgar. Some derived pleasure from making and seeing me cower and crawl. Some were exemplars of the warrior ethos while others were anything but. Some were long-established members of the club; others were first-time visitors. Some were slaves themselves. But I revelled in the fact that I served them all, that my slavery was unqualified and my service unconditional.

And if I had become enthralled by the contrived, recherché culture of the tavern, I should say in my defence that most of us never lost touch with reality. Only a couple of the weekend warriors ever got carried away with the make-believe, and they were rapidly pulled into line by their comrades. Anyway, we could never forget where the world of Gor ended. On the other side of the front door was a campus with forty thousand students coming and going and leading relatively normal lives. Out there most of the masters were undistinguished, even nondescript. Many of the slaves, on the other hand, were the converse of that — strong, smart, successful — and it quickly occurred to me that (like myself) both the masters and the slaves went to the tavern to shed the baggage of their everyday existence.

Yet there were occasions when the non-fantasy intruded.

Uninitiated guests were rare in the tavern, and none gained entry unannounced or uninvited. And given the nature of the club, a certain degree of secrecy was understandable; but everyone insisted that it was to keep out undesirables — voyeurs and wannabes according to some, mentally defective riffraff in the words of others. Furthermore, since prospective warriors outnumbered potential slavegirls by around ten to one, the Social Club of Gor could afford to be selective in its admissions to the brotherhood. It was a condition of any man obtaining full membership that he brought in a girl, either as a slave or a freewoman. So it had not surprised me (nor did it particularly offend me) that I had been Richard’s ticket of entry.

Now and then, inevitably, a new face in the tavern was one I recognized, and who recognized me. The first looks, especially from the females, were of pity, contempt and curiosity, on seeing me half-naked (and sometimes completely nude) squatting on the floor on my leash. But there was excitement and arousal in those expressions, and I knew from experience that most of the women who stayed would soon be joining me at the end of their own tethers.

But one night there was a visitor who was different from the others. She was small, very attractive, expensively and elegantly attired in a leather jacket and leather skirt, silk blouse and silk stockings. Her hair, cropped in a severe, razor-cut style, was a caramel-streaked chestnut brown; her eyes glistened like blue gemstones. She looked more out of place than anyone I had seen in the tavern, and yet she made herself at home as if she’d been there forever. But the oddest thing about her was who accompanied her. It was Richard.

As she was introduced, unlike the other freewomen she paid close attention to the slavegirls. For a fleeting moment when I looked up as she spoke to Stuart, our eyes connected, and hers now glittered like cold, hard steel. I quickly lowered my gaze, but my impertinence had not gone unnoticed. She asked Stuart to make me stand up. She did not speak to me.

“May I?” she said. My owner frowned, but nodded. She stroked my hair, brushed it back from my brow, and passed her fingertips over my lips. She ran her nails lightly down my throat and between my breasts, and then with both hands she parted the front of my tunic to uncover my chest. I winced when she squeezed the flesh and pinched the nipples, and I glanced up to glimpse the faintest trace of a smile.

“Turn around,” Stuart ordered. As I obeyed, everyone else in the room had become interested. The woman lifted the hem of my dress to fondle my rear end. Then she took hold of my arms and drew them gently behind my back. I felt leather cuffs being sealed about my wrists and locked together. She nudged me on one shoulder and I turned to face them again.

“Pull your shoulders back.” These were the first words she had spoken directly to me. I did so, feeling my chest tighten and, with my eyes downcast, watching my breasts push outwards.

“She needs to do that,” the woman said, “until it becomes automatic. Girls need to be taught. Our instincts have been suppressed by too much freedom.” (That was odd, how she segued from the third to the first person.)

She said something else I did not hear, and then untied the cord which held my camisk at my waist. The garment slumped to my hips, but remained held up by my manacled hands resting against my backside. I moved my arms just a little and the dress fell to my ankles.

“Nice,” the woman said. “Is she always shaven?”

I blushed.

No one answered, unless it was with a look. But she seemed to have already lost interest in me.

“Go to the corner,” Stuart commanded.

I stepped out of my fallen camisk and went to join the half-dozen other slavegirls. Then I took a peek back towards the bar, thinking: How did nondescript Richard come to know this strange, sexy, sophisticated woman? What was their association? It was just in time to see something as peculiar as anything so far. The woman went to sit on one of the bar stools; but as she did so, she discreetly unzipped her skirt on the side, and pulled back the flap so that when she lowered herself, the skirt was pulled back, away from her bottom. And I could see that there was only bare skin between the tops of her stockings on her thighs and the garter belt on her hips. From the way her mouth pursed in pleasure, I could tell that it was more than just the physical touch of her naked flesh against the seat which aroused her; it was the symbolism of the act which evoked such sensual, shivery delight. Some of the males noticed her gesture, including Richard, but I don’t think any of them saw her smile.

The woman held court at the bar until after the dancing, when it had seemed that her eyes were on me alone. Almost as soon as we were finished, she abruptly departed, alone.

As he watched her leave, Stuart call me back to where he sat at the bar with Richard, and fingered my leash, frowning as if deep in thought. Then he raised his glass in salute and presented the end of my tether to Richard.

“She’s yours,” he said.

That’s when I discovered that I had a new Master.

***
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***

“Gorean men, on the whole, do not free slaves. The freeing of a girl is almost unheard of. This makes sense. They are not free women. They are belongings, valuables, slaves, treasures. Who discards precious possessions, who surrenders treasures? If the slave girl were worth less perhaps she would be freed more.”
— John Norman, Explorers of Gor

In the culture of the tavern, the natural condition of men is to be free. Therefore a male slave remained in bondage only as long as his owner willed. A single phrase or a simple act sufficed to liberate a kajirus. Charlotte, for instance, had to be very careful with James, walking a thin line, between treating him with just enough respect to maintain his masculine dignity without compromising her rights as mistress. On the other hand, an enslaved female had, according to Gorean belief and custom, entered into her natural state and remained so. If her owner chose, for some reason, to release her from servitude, she passed into the possession of another. In the real-world realm, of course, she could revert to the status of a freewoman (and the occasional one did). But she continued to wear her collar, as a reminder to herself as well as to others that for a time she had been what she was born to be, and as a notice to her free sisters that their own present condition was not immutable.

There was a couple, who had joined the club before my arrival — Julia and Damien. They were in a “switch” relationship, taking it in turns to be the dominant and submissive partner. When they first joined she took the “top” position; but upon exchanging places she found herself consigned permanently to slave status. They stayed for more than a year after that, so she didn’t seem to mind the asymmetric nature of the “power dynamic” in the Gor tavern. And I was now beginning to understand why. It was in submission, not domination, that she revealed her true strength, not just through her willingness to surrender but in the fact that by doing so she took control and held the initiative in defining their roles. So Julia found herself able to explore the two sides of her nature not sequentially, as before, but simultaneously. That intrigued and excited me.

On the night that I changed hands, Stuart escorted me home, as he always did. Richard had left not long after the woman in leather and silk, while we could not leave until after midnight because I was rostered for waitressing duties. During our walk across the campus, Stuart explained that he was transferring to an interstate university.

“I will miss the tavern… and you specially,” he lamented.

Even when he owned me, his property rights terminated, naturally, at the threshold of the tavern. Upon reaching my house, I sometimes I invited him inside… in both senses of the word. But our bond was not really intimate. Perhaps because I was older and in many ways more mondaine than Stuart, I never saw what we had as going anything beyond casual.

At the front gate he kissed me.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure being your master,” he said.

“And a pleasure being your slave,” I replied.

I never asked how much Richard had paid for me. But at this time I was giving him a weekly allowance, so it seemed that I had financed my own purchase. I was thinking this as I went into the house. In the living room I found him with the mysterious woman. He was reclined on the sofa. She was kneeling on the carpet, nude but for her stockings and garter belt. His trouser belt was wrapped about her throat. She spun around, towards me, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.

“Kate,” he announced, “this is Lydia.”

“What… the… hell?” I spluttered.

Lydia just blinked and turned back to Richard. She sank down to rest on her heels but leaned forward, and her naked torso began to slowly undulate, her breasts rubbing softly and methodically against his trousers.

“You do this here?” I said, in as calm a voice as I could manage. “In my living room?”

Richard grinned.

“Your living room?” he repeated. “We’ll need to talk about that.”

Lydia drew back from where Richard sat, just far enough that she could bend to kiss his boots. I saw branded into the flesh of her left buttock the same three-armed spiral motif I had seen on Desirée’s — called a triskelion, I had since learned. Then she rose, put on her shoes and gathered the rest of her clothing, and walked towards the door.

“I will leave you both to discuss the arrangements,” she said without looking back, still naked as she closed the door behind her. It was cold outside, but she did not hesitate before stepping into the frosty air. I heard the roar of a sports car engine and the beams of its headlights swept across the room. She could not have had time to get dressed before driving away.

“Arrangements?” I stood over Richard, but he slid sideways out of the chair and began heading for his bedroom.

“In the morning…”

“Now,” I demanded, but he was gone. And instead of chasing after him, I conceded. Perhaps that was a mistake; but I was tired; and anyway, everything which ensued thereafter followed directly from his defiance and my compliance.

By the morning I had once more given in to my aversion to confrontation. At breakfast we talked about trivialities. Nevertheless, that brief exchange puzzled me throughout the day. That evening, I called out from the kitchen, “What would you like for dinner?”

“Who are you talking to?” he replied, coming to the doorway.

“You, Richard. Who else?”

He frowned.

“Sir Richard.”

“What?”

“You must call me Sir Richard.”

I laughed, but his expression did not change.

“You belong to me now.”
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3. The Sisterhood of Chains

“We would all be transformed if we had the courage to be what we are.”
— Marguerite Yourcenar, Alexis

Lydia’s apartment was located on the top storey of an old mansion which had been converted into shops on the ground floor and studios above. It was spacious, with balconies that overlooked the city heart on one side and the river on the other. It was elegantly furnished but not too extravagantly, in a somewhat masculine style. There was an ornate fireplace in the living room, along with plush leather armchairs and an ample liquor cabinet. The polished wood floor was scattered with rich broadloom rugs, into the purple silk of each was woven in gold thread the now familiar triskelion. There was a drawing room with an enormous, velvet-sheathed chaise longue, and a study with crowded bookshelves. There were three bedrooms but just the one bathroom. The kitchen was compact but well-appointed and well-provisioned.

Lydia was, insofar as I could tell, not married. There was a ring on her finger which looked too chunky to be a wedding band. (Not to my surprise, it bore on its face the three-armed monogram). I never saw her with any man whom she treated differently from all others. Yet she did not live alone. When I first arrived, we were met by one of her three boarders. Lucinda was a petite, pretty, olive-skinned girl with large, dark eyes. Her hair was cut short like Lydia’s, and appeared to be naturally jet-black but bleached and tinted a coppery red. When she greeted us, she was naked. Her pubic area was smooth and I could see that the labia had been pierced with small golden rings, like those I had seen in Desirée’s.

The place was accessed by an elevator which, with the insertion of a keypad code, bypassed the intervening floors and opened directly into the residence. As soon as we entered and the doors had shut behind us, Lydia ordered me to stop and take off my clothes. She also stripped, and we gave each garment we discarded to Lucy, who lovingly folded them in two neat piles and carried them after us.

“Here you will not wear clothing,” Lydia said. “Your body must be completely free at all times.”

“Free” was an odd word to use. Did she mean it as in freedom or as in… free admission?

“You will not wear anything, not even your collar, nor make-up nor jewellery.” (The ring on her finger and those in Lucy’s vulva presumably did not count.) “You will not have any possessions. All you have is what you are.”

Awaiting us in the living room were the other two of my fellow trainees. Rebecca was tall and athletic, with richly tanned skin and shoulder-length, honey-blonde hair. She looked to be a couple or more years older than me, perhaps in her late twenties. Sir Jason was slim and good-looking, about Richard’s age, or maybe even younger, of pale complexion with ginger hair and a sprinkling of freckles. Dressed in spick-and-span slacks, a crisp white shirt and carpet slippers, he was the only one in the apartment who wasn’t naked. As she introduced us, Lydia ordered me to kneel. She did as well.

Sir Jason smiled indulgently and permitted us to rise, before going off to the study. Lucy and Rebecca excused themselves and headed for the kitchen. Lydia showed me around the apartment, pointing out her bedroom and the Master’s. I would be sharing with the other two girls. In our quarters there was only one bed, albeit queen-sized.

“Your sleeping arrangements,” I was informed, “will, of course, vary from night to night.”

When we were back in the living room, Lydia took hold of my shoulders to make sure I gave her my full attention. “You know why you’re here?”

“Yes, mistress.”

She frowned. “You don’t call me that anymore.” She paused, looking sterner. “So, do you wish to stay?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I wish to stay.”

Her expression brightened. “Good girl. From now on, while you are here and he is here, you belong to Sir Jason. You will honour and obey him at all times.”

I nodded. “You as well?” I asked.

“I am no longer your mistress,” she replied. “He is your Master.”

“I meant, do you obey him as well?”

She shook her head slowly and gave me a poignant, almost pitying look. “Naturally.”

It took me a second to read her expression and blush at my own naiveté. The fading marks on her knees from the floorboards and the faint pink welts on various parts of her nude body had answered my question before it was asked.

Evening was now upon us, so I had just enough time to freshen up before Lucy and Rebecca served dinner. The table was big enough to accommodate at least a dozen people, and we took our seats at one end. Lydia and Lucy held back until Sir Jason was in his place, and I followed their lead. Rebecca never sat down at all, but waited on the rest of us, and in particular the Master. We all spoke freely (mostly conventional dinner talk), but four of us kept our eyes downcast.

As I discovered in due course, these mealtime discussions served a useful purpose. So long as we, the females, observed the proper etiquette, table talk gave us, and especially Lydia, a chance to address issues of importance with the head of the household without having to worry about the more restrictive master-slave protocols. And our owner, it turned out, was rather shy. Since I kept my gaze lowered the whole time, I did not see his face, but his voice had a timid timbre, as well as the suggestion of a stammer. I learned that he and Lucy were attending university, she (like me) in postgraduate studies while he was an undergrad. Rebecca was a lawyer of some kind, “on sabbatical” as she put it.

“I’ve seen you on campus,” Sir Jason declared, as Rebecca cleared away the dessert dishes. He did look familiar, and I desperately hoped he was not another of my students. He laughed. “Well, in a way on campus… the Gor tavern.”

Lydia was amused by my stricken look and subsequent sigh of relief. She was perceptive, and altogether a very impressive lady. Of everyone, she said the least, listened the most, missed nothing.

When dinner was finished, I was sent to the kitchen to help with the washing up. As Rebecca and I returned to the living room, Lucy and Lydia were squatting on the living room floor, both wearing blindfolds, their hands tied behind their backs. Our formidable hostess, now sweating and trembling, looked tiny, meek and fragile. They were joined to each other by a rope harness secured about their necks. It was Rebecca who bound and blindfolded me and yoked me to the others. We thereafter waited in silence, as the fourth member was added to our little trussed ensemble. We were linked close enough that I could sniff the lemony scent of the detergent residue on Rebecca in front of me and the strawberry fragrance of Lucy’s shampoo to my rear.

Sir Jason led us, by our shared tether, to one of the suites below the apartment. We went via the stairs instead of the elevator, and without the use of our eyes we had to tread cautiously and huddle even closer so as to not lose our balance on the steps or trip over each other’s feet. I felt the tickle of Lucy’s breath on the back of my neck. Her breasts snuggled between my upper arms, their touch soft and warm and soothing against my bare skin. My own naked boobs pressed into Rebecca’s back, and she was pinching her shoulder blades to gently squeeze them. As we shuffled slowly down the corridor that led from the stairwell, I felt her bound hands nudging into my crotch; her fingers began working their sensual magic, and I did the same for Lucy. I felt her twitch, and to the rear of our queue I heard Lydia’s deep sighs.

When our sight was restored, I found that we were in a studio of some kind. There were bright lights in the ceiling and also on free-standing lamps; but heavy crimson drapes on the windows had the effect of making the space gloomy even when fully illuminated. A number of black-lacquered screens were positioned seemingly at random, and in their shiny surfaces I could see reflections of the four of us, still bound and leashed together. There were three ottoman-style footstools covered in a burgundy-coloured fleece, and a bed with plush scarlet satin sheets. This furniture was arranged on one side of the room on a large square of carpet, like a photographer’s set-piece.

In the middle of the room stood a structure which, even after my experiences in the Wooden Pony Club, thoroughly unnerved me. Constructed of metal pipes and bars, it consisted of dual parts, on the left two vertical poles separated by more than the span of my outstretched arms, and on the right a triple pillory made of hinged segments with grooves in the upright posts to adjust the height. Welded at various places onto the frame were hooks from which were hanging various implements of torment and torture — whips, chains, iron shackles, bridles and halters, chastity belts with double bodily “inserts” and so on… including something that looked horribly like a branding iron.

The Master untied our hands and ordered Lucy and Rebecca to kneel directly behind the scaffold while Lydia lowered the stocks so their heads and hands could be clamped in place. She then dropped it even further until the two were forced to bend forward, their chins just off the floor and their rumps raised high. She placed herself in the third pillory, and Sir Jason locked her in it.

“Come here, please,” he said to me (his mild impediment suddenly gone without a trace) and had me crouch behind Lydia. On his command, I pushed both of my hands between her thighs. She gasped and gulped, panted and puffed, her skin quivered and her backside cheeks twitched as I caressed her until my fingers became numbed in the warm, moist folds. I did the same to Lucy and Rebecca, while the Master hushed all three with ball-gags. By the time I had done my duty, they were slumped on their haunches, whimpering quietly; but Sir Jason rudely interrupted their rapture by hauling on a rope which elevated the pillory until they were raised onto their tiptoes and moans of ecstasy became groans of despair.

He now ordered me to stand between the two poles, with my arms and legs extended in a starlike stance. Straps connected to the four corners of the frame were secured to my wrists and ankles, and tightened until I was lifted onto my toes and it felt as if my limbs would be detached from their sockets. But the straps on my wrists ran across my palms so I could grip them for support; and it was curiously invigorating to have my muscles and tendons stretched. It was also intoxicating, in a way I could hardly have imagined not so long ago, to be rendered so helpless and exposed.

This being my first night under Lydia’s tutelage, I thought I might be spared the more rigorous parts of the curriculum. But Sir Jason took full advantage of my immobilized, spread-eagled condition, penetrating me front and back. With my body tensed and stiffened by my hoisting on the frame, the passage had to be forced somewhat, but the effect was to make more sensitive the points of entry. His thrusts and my squirms amplified the strain from my bonds. My legs were cramping, my arms ached, and every breath seared my lungs. But the young man knew how to wrest shrieks of delight from my lips and make my sweat run in streams.

When he had finished, he gagged me and returned to the others. First he whipped them unmercifully, until they howled through their gags. He then uncoupled each in turn from the pillory, bound her and toyed with her for perhaps half an hour before putting her back in her place and beginning on the next. The humiliation was cruel and the torments ingenious, leaving his playthings writhing in pain and sobbing in shame, their bodies twisting and contorted in feverish rhapsodies of perfervid pleasure.

From what I understood, Sir Jason had signed up as Lydia’s apprentice just a week before. A keen, clever lad can learn a lot in seven days, under expert guidance.

By the time he released me, the experience of hanging on the scaffold had gone from exhilarating to excruciating. I almost wept for joy, but my elation did not last. He bound me in a hog-tie so severe that my torso was bent backwards at what felt like ninety degrees. After being stressed for so long on the frame, my arms and especially my shoulders burned as if beneath a red-hot grille; but the tiles were ice-cold under my bare flesh. As I endured, he went back to the other three women, and took them from the pillory to the bedroom set where he hog-tied them as well, in a row on the mattress.

It was two hours or more since the games had begun, but Sir Jason was nowhere near finished with us. He untied me except for my hands behind my back, and blindfolded me, took me to the set and had me bend over one of the stools. There was a minute of suspenseful silence, and then I heard the bedframe squeak and groan and each of the women moan in turn. By the time he returned to me, however, even his commendable stamina had failed him, so he used a vibrating phallus to massage my already throbbing parts. And after that, I don’t remember much until we were in the apartment once more, and it was after midnight. I do have a blurry image of the four of us crawling on our bellies to and from the elevator and into the living room, our Master hurrying us along with copious use of the whip. He then retired to his bedroom, and I think he had a generous purpose in mind, leaving the four of us to recover.

Lucy, Rebecca and I remained in the living room, still somewhat dazed, while Lydia went to the kitchen to prepare warm milk. She had recovered almost immediately from our ordeal.

“Do not sit on the sofa or chairs,” she told me.

While we waited, Lucy showed me how to kneel on the rug, resting on my heels but with my thighs apart. When not in use, or bound, my arms should be at my side or behind my back either folded or with wrists crossed.

“How do I know which to do?” I asked.

Rebecca smiled. “You will know when you’ve done it wrong.”

Lydia brought in four steaming mugs on a tray. She carried on as if she had not been absent.

“Yes, we’re sweaty and the leather costs a lot to clean. But that’s not the reason we sit on the floor. Except with the Master’s permission, we do not use the furniture.”

“It would be disrespectful,” Lucy added.

“We are not worthy,” Rebecca whispered, lowering her eyes as she said it.

I saw Lydia subtly shake her head as the others spoke. I guess we all had different reasons for being here. But it amused me to hear our hostess talk of her home and its furnishings and her possessions as if they belonged to the young man. Yet they did, of course, along with the four of us, for the duration of his stay in the apartment.

“For the same reason we do not cover our bodies,” Lydia continued, “even if the Master is not here, even when you’re alone. Your condition doesn’t change in the absence of your owner. In fact, it is more imperative when there is no man present that you keep this in mind. Our nudity is one of the ways we express the two aspects of our womanhood… what we are and what we are not. Each is equally important in how you define yourself, and regardless of your circumstances, whomever you are with, whatever else changes, these are the constants in your life.”

“Only a man…” Rebecca hesitated. “Only the Master has the honour of wearing clothes.”

“It is his privilege to see us naked, to see all of what belongs to him,” Lucy added.

“And to enjoy it.”

“So being naked, seeing each other naked, even when the Master is away, is our reminder of that.”

Lydia looked straight into my eyes. “But it takes a while before this becomes second nature. So we have certain other (pardon my French) aides-mémoires.” She smiled. “You have experienced some of these tonight. There are others. They can come at any time.”

“You must always be ready and willing to serve…” Rebecca continued.

“…and prepared to suffer,” Lucy followed on.

“As with our nudity,” Lydia went on, “you must understand that the pain and degradation you endure are not just for the Master’s pleasure, although that is what we serve. They are, as well, for your instruction.”

She paused, to let this sink in. My brain was a swirl of thoughts and feelings — of fear and doubt, of hope and excitement and, of all things, pride — in myself because I had endured and passed my first test, in my fellow slaves for their strength and fortitude, in my Master who had shown himself worthy of our submission and servitude. Every part of me still hurt. Some parts, however, tingled deliciously… not just from Sir Jason’s attentions, but in anticipation and apprehension of what lay ahead.

“When you leave here, by the time you embark on the next stage of your journey, you will find yourself more thoroughly enslaved and yet feel yourself more profoundly liberated than you could ever have believed possible.”

These were strange words. They sounded recited, like a memorized mantra, and I was not sure what to make of them. But as I studied Lydia’s flushed face and naked red-streaked body, what I could comprehend did at least begin to explain this beautiful, sophisticated, tough-minded woman’s oddly harmonious blend of dominance and subservience, her boundless energy, amazing strength and docile humility. It was what had brought me to her apartment. Just as it had been with that other extraordinarily strong and sensual woman, Desirée, in exploring the mystery of Lydia I glimpsed the prospect (and ran the risk) of discovering some important things about myself.

She slapped her thighs. “Anyway, it’s late and we’re exhausted. We shall take this up again tomorrow.” She turned to Rebecca. “Go the Master’s bedroom.”

The tall, blonde girl dutifully bowed her head and lifted herself slowly to her feet. Her body was still feeling the ravages of the evening’s entertainment.

Lucy and I went to our room, and there was to be one last surprise in this day of revelation. As we lay together in the half-light of the softly glowing dresser lamp, my bedmate leaned across and began kissing my bosom and fondling me between my legs. I feebly tried to push her away, but she held my arms down, pressing my wrists into the pillow as she lay fully on top of me. Once I had composed myself, I gave in and allowed her to caress me, and I caressed her. We fell asleep with our bodies united and our limbs intertwined. When I awoke to the newly dawning day, I found Rebecca asleep beside us.

***

“Where else might my path lead me? Foolish it is, this path; it goes in loops, perhaps it goes in circles. Let it go where it will, I will take it.”
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

For twenty days I hardly ever left the apartment other than to be taken down to the games room. On just the one occasion did we go outside. The night before Lucy’s departure, Sir Jason took us to a restaurant. I wore a simple front-buttoned dress with nothing underneath except a garter belt to hold up my stockings. It was an odd feeling to be out in public dressed like that, with the top open down to my navel to present a tantalizing hint of my exposure and the bottom flaps fluttering in the evening breeze to give a teasing preview.

The maîtresse d’hotel obviously knew Lydia well, because she greeted her by name and directed us to a table in an alcove that was out of sight of all the other customers. Lucy, Rebecca and I were reminded to lift the backs of our dresses so our flesh touched the seat. And Lydia, who must have done this too many times to count, still puckered her lips in delight at the thrill of the cool, slick upholstery against her bare bottom. The maîtresse nodded and smiled as we did so. After that, she waited on us personally, always addressed herself to Sir Jason, and at the end looked on impassively as Lydia passed her credit card across the table and he handed it over.

During the meal Lucy was blindfolded and her hands were bound behind her back, and we took it in turns to feed her. We made sure that enough food was smeared on her face and down her breasts, and enough wine dribbled down as well, to make her giggle and wriggle.

Mostly, during the day, Rebecca and I were alone in the apartment. There were household chores to be done, and we cooked the dinner. Our duties were on the whole light, not much more than dull distractions from the many idle hours we had to fill. There was neither a television nor a radio, nor a computer except in Lydia’s private office which we were forbidden to enter. The door was not locked, so far as I could tell, but we never knowingly broke the rules. That included not wearing anything on our bodies; so we were afraid to take advantage of the two balconies because neither was completely screened from public view. For most of the time, our recreation was to be found in the library. We chatted, naturally, but only about general things and never about how or why we had come to be in this place, for that also was strictly prohibited. Just about all I knew of Rebecca was that she was twenty-eight years of age and had (like me) put her relationships and her career on hold. She revealed nothing else, and neither did I.

Cut off almost completely from the rest of the world, we lived in a sort of cocoon, knowing virtually nothing of anything happening beyond the sanctum that we could not see or hear from the windows. The daily ennui was a constant reminder of our raison d’être. Our sole aim was to be of service to our Master, and to keep this foremost in our minds our existence in his absence should be a sort of limbo, without purpose or direction. We were not permitted to drink alcohol (except for that special occasion at the restaurant) or to pleasure ourselves in any other way. We were expected to do regular exercise (although Rebecca hardly needed it, being a natural athlete and had, I deduced, been a star sportswoman of some kind). Lydia explained that as female property we had an obligation to keep our bodies in first-class condition for our owner’s use. While idleness numbed our senses, the workouts honed our receptors. As a result, even the mildest of stimulations left us simmering, and by the evening our bodies were primed, and my insides seethed, for the next visit to the downstairs room.

Sir Jason and Lucy came home together in the late afternoon. Lucy never worked at home, so I don’t know how she managed to mesh her studies into her slavery. She wore the same kind of outfit each day, a red skirt and white blouse with fishnet stockings and suspender belt, and a black leather choker. Upon entering the apartment she immediately stripped and came to the kitchen to help out. Sir Jason availed himself of the privilege of his sex to relax in the living room or the study or on the balcony. I brought him his slippers and the newspaper and a beer or whisky; and as I knelt before him to honour his presence he patted me on the head and said “Good girl” and slapped me hard on the behind as I got to my feet to go back to my chores. But if he felt in the mood, he called one of us from the kitchen to provide some pre-dinner entertainment.

When Lydia arrived, everyone gathered in the vestibule. It was the only time when Sir Jason showed any sort of deference to our mentor. She undressed and prostrated herself before him, thus restoring la différence. After the meal, every night, we were taken down to the third-floor studio. Sometimes Lydia assumed control and showed our young Master how to compress the maximum agony into our torment and extract the utmost ecstasy. Most times he took full command and his four playthings were driven to paroxysms of pleasure and pain, the like of which I had once believed existed only as clichés in trashy airport-stand paperbacks. The worst part was the flogging. He made use of the whip, the cane, the strap and the riding crop, according to his whim. We were not beaten every night, but this was not to spare us inordinate suffering but rather to allow the streaks and welts to subside so as to make us ready for the next batch. The effect was to augment, not alleviate, the agony. The same principle was applied to our torture with the cattle prod and the electric wand. Low current and high voltage maximized the shock and prolonged the session, for up to several hours with no real danger of serious harm.

It was odd to hear Lydia instructing our Master on how we, including herself, were to be maltreated in a way that would increase and extend our delectable distress. On my second night, when he was laying the strokes on thick and fast, she made a signal that she wanted her gag removed. I thought the woman was about to beg for mercy; but through gritted teeth she explained that he should slow down and allow his victim some respite, so that both could regain composure, but that as soon as she recovered he should begin again, and in that way he could stretch out her suffering without fear that she might break down under the strain and her ordeal need to be prematurely terminated.

So these nightly games had a formulaic, methodical quality, almost like it was part of some expiatory ritual. But expiation for what? I recalled those words which had become almost a catchphrase. Were we atoning for what we were or for that which we were not? But the strangest thing was that I did not question whether I needed atonement for anything. For the fact was that the more rigorous the games were, the more they left me feeling fulfilled and… (even now it’s difficult to find the right words)… actualized. It was as if my very existence had become inverted. The apartment and the studio became my universe and the world outside had shrunk into nothingness. I lived in a sort of unreality, not so much a fantasy as a vivid dream. Sometimes it felt like a nightmare, the kind that you desperately want to be over but at the same time you don’t want to end because you need so much to see how it plays out.

Lucy departed at the end of my second week. Two men came for her in the night. One of them was Richard, and I knew the other from the Gor tavern. Four of us welcomed our visitors in the prone position, and they and Sir Jason then went to the drawing room, taking Lydia and Rebecca with them. The three men emerged sometime later, joking and smoothing out fresh wrinkles in their trousers. All this time, Lucy and I had remained prostrate on the living room carpet, not daring to move. Master Richard ordered me to kneel and then he crouched down and tenderly stroked my hair and cupped a hand under my chin to raise my head, but I kept my eyes downcast. When he stood up again, I bent forward and kissed his boots, and he complimented Sir Jason on what a good slavegirl I had turned out to be.

Sir Jason then commanded Lucy to stand. He bound her hands behind her back, put a ball-gag into her mouth and fixed about her neck a stout metal collar to which he attached an equally heavy chain. Master Richard and his comrade then took her away. (She and I met again, soon enough, in the Château Chaînerie.)

I went to the drawing room and found Lydia and Rebecca hog-tied, one on the rug, one on the lounge. Sir Jason came and ordered me to kneel with my hands clasped on the crown of my head. He wrapped a length of cord around my chest, above and below and crossed between my breasts, and ran it down between my legs and up my back, making sure it fit snugly within my cleft in front and my crevice to the rear, binding it in a loop about my neck. The noose was tied in such a way that when he pulled it as tight as he could, entrenching it in my body between my thighs, I was not strangled but nevertheless forced to arch my body backwards. He then tied my wrists to the harness behind my back. In this manner I was obliged to waddle to the elevator and down to the games room. The other two women had been bound and leashed face-to-face, their bodies pressed together, so they had to crab-walk all the way.

Because of all the time we had spent awaiting the arrival of Lucy’s new custodians, it was already late, around midnight. So the session was short, but Sir Jason made it count. The pillory had been refitted. In place of the cross-boards for the head and hands were frames to hold our wrists and ankles. We were locked in a kneeling position facing away from the scaffold with our haunches resting on top of the board and our arms between our legs to spread our thighs and open up our front and rear cavities. Once the Master had availed himself of our exposed womanhood, he set to work with the whip, the cane and the cattle prod until tears stained our blindfolds and our screams could no longer be stifled by our gags.

That night I shared Sir Jason’s bed. Since my body was his to do with as he willed, he never bothered with foreplay. He was not gentle, but more clumsy than callous. And that set me wondering — when and how and with whom he’d first had experience with a woman … indeed whether he might have been a virgin before entering the apartment. As strange as that might be, it seemed to fit.

The following day he was gone. His departure was so quick that it took me completely unawares. He left for his classes that morning and never returned. I don’t even know who removed his personal belongings, or how. I never saw him at the Château, although he may have been there when I was not. But I encountered him a year later, while I was walking through the university grounds not far from the Gor tavern. He was with a pretty, dark-skinned woman aged about thirty, who had on a little yellow sundress despite the chill of late autumn. She was wearing the familiar leather collar and ring. It was Justine, from the Chaînerie. Our eyes met in recognition and she smiled, but she did not speak.

Sir Jason and I talked for a couple of minutes, reminisced about our period together in the apartment. He asked about Lucy and told me he had spoken to Lydia recently; but he did not mention Rebecca. Having seen that I was still wearing my own collar and ring, he then said he expected me to be at his residence at six o’clock sharp. He did take the trouble to ask “Do you have some other engagement?” and I told him I did not (uncertain what his response would have been if my answer had been otherwise). To this day I have no idea if our meeting was pure happenstance. Since this was during my first recess from the Château, and just my second day back at the university since I’d quit my position before moving into Lydia’s apartment, that would have been a strange coincidence. On the other hand, if he had arranged this rendezvous, then I felt I should be flattered.

Sir Jason was living in an on-campus student housing complex. It was Friday night and the place was busy with people coming and going. There was a party in progress in a couple of adjoining flats which spilled out onto the veranda. No one paid any attention to me, except for Justine who was waiting on the footpath. She was still wearing her tiny dress, swinging her arms and stomping her feet to keep warm. She asked me to take off my coat, and when I did the piercing bite of the cold air on my bare arms made me wonder how long she had been standing there shivering. She held out a black satin scarf and I tied it over my eyes. Then she steered me up two flights of stairs. I heard voices and footsteps around me, but nobody did or said anything to indicate curiosity over a young woman being led blindfolded to one of the third floor units.

Sir Jason let us in, but to my surprise, as my sight was restored he was putting on his coat. The flat was typical student accommodation, with a small living room cheaply furnished and an even smaller bathroom, a kitchenette and two bedrooms. On the sofa were sitting two young men and in the single armchair an elfin-sized, red-haired, pixie-faced girl who unlike her fully clothed companions was in her underwear, an incongruous combination of expensive lace brassiere and cotton novelty knickers (embroidered with cupcakes and birthday candles and “Happy 21st” in multicoloured letters). Sir Jason introduced only the girl, as Lauren, and said “Enjoy your presents” before kissing her on the cheek and leaving.

The three sat there watching us in silence, clearly nervous and not knowing how to proceed. So Justine and I, in unison, took off our clothes and knelt on the linoleum floor. It was Lauren who moved first. She reached down beside her chair and held up a coil of nylon rope. She got up and ordered me to lie on my belly. She talked in a childish, high-pitched voice and was a full head shorter than me. The resemblance to Sir Jason was strong enough that she was most likely his sister… which made his birthday gift to her even more intriguing. But I never found out for sure.

The girl certainly knew the ropes, as she deftly trussed me in a frog-tie and then a shrimp-tie and then other, more exotic positions. There was a lot of rope and she used it all to weave intricate webs about my limbs and torso. She was gentle but never spoke to me except to give commands; and it felt weird to be totally compliant and under the control of this diminutive, squeaky-voiced female.

In the meantime, her companions were amusing themselves with Justine, and they were actually saying things like “Make her sweat” and “Make her squeal.” So after a while an irritated Lauren said “Listen boys, why don’t you take her to the bedroom?” and they did.

But the really odd thing about that evening was that I was not able to work out exactly what the girl’s interest was, besides in simply tying me up, down and sideways. She was lovingly attentive in applying the breast harness and the crotch rope but, at the time, took no other advantage of my nude and helpless condition. After maybe two hours she left me in a more conventional hog-tie and went to the bedroom where her friends were playing with Justine. She came back a long time later, naked but with her undies in her hand. She tossed them casually onto the sofa and resumed where she had left off with me.

This time she was more interested in my body than the ropes embracing it. She kissed and caressed me. She straddled my face and pressed her groin to my mouth; and as I pleasured her I smelt sweat and semen. After that, she untied me so we could embrace and intertwine. But she seemed edgy and impatient, rather than passionate. And when she’d had enough of kisses and caresses, she bound me again. Getting more excited, she also became more creative and cruel. She stung me with rubber bands and seared me with dripping candle wax — all over me, my nipples, my pubes, my backside, down to the soles of my feet.

My tiny tormentor was oddly methodical as she went about making me squirm and moan. She seemed curious about what it was like to be on the receiving end, to be a slave. She stared into my eyes, and a searching, thirsting expression was etched into her brow. She stroked my limbs, pressing her nails into my skin, twiddled my nipples and explored with her fingers between my thighs to gauge my reactions and test my responses. When she gagged me (as I sat tied in a lotus position), she fondled my lips and cheeks and explored inside my mouth, as if trying to experience vicariously the sensations I was feeling. But she asked no questions, and I volunteered nothing.

When Sir Jason came in at midnight, the game ceased so abruptly that Lauren whined “It’s still so early” and he scolded her like a parent would a five-year-old. I put my on clothes in silence and massaged the parts of my body where the ropes and the girl’s sadistic ministrations had left their marks. Lauren walked with me to my car, leaving Justine with the three males. We did not speak until I offered to drive her the short distance back to the apartment building.

She haughtily declined. In her face and her voice I recognized the same bemused contempt and wistful envy that the freewomen in the Gor tavern showed towards the servile kajirae. But as my car pulled away from the curb, she smiled and waved good-bye. She hugged her little body against the bitter cold, looking distracted… unsettled… lost.

I have not seen her since that night (nor Sir Jason), and sometimes I wonder what path she has followed.

***
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Soraka
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***

“Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles.
Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”
— Voltaire, Candide

Our new Master arrived on the morning after the day Sir Jason left. Sir Brandon was even younger, and from the outset less indulgent towards our needs and wants, much more strict and demanding. He may have been too challenging an assignment even for Lydia, because I learned (sometime later) that he left shortly after my own departure. But while he was in the apartment, Lydia never compromised. She bore the burden of her slavery in quiet acceptance and fortitude no less than I or Rebecca.

In contrast to his predecessor, Sir Brandon was home most of the time, going out only at irregular intervals. As a result, Rebecca and I had none of the free time we’d previously enjoyed. When he was not amusing himself with us (he had daunting reserves of energy, and expected even more of us), he kept us tied up in the living room or chained to the bed. He did, however, release us whenever he went out. That was one of the house rules. But then we were told to kneel facing the wall in a corner of the room, remaining mute and immobile until his return. Once he was gone for several hours, yet we obeyed. He did not question our compliance, nor did he any need to do so. I could no more have disobeyed him in his absence than I could have defied him to his face.

During his first few days he made us wear chastity belts. Since he had sole access to Rebecca’s and my bodies, these were not to keep us celibate but rather for humiliation and as a demonstration of his will. They were made of leather and lightweight metal. The waistband consisted of a thin strap which sat above the hips and drooped in the front and rear and was attached with a miniature padlock to the “shield” which covered the crotch. We each retained our own key for emergency egress, but honesty and honour kept us locked in. The shield was shaped to fit the contours of our loins, and ended just above the tailbone. When we needed to use the toilet, we asked permission for the belt to be removed. There was a small slot for urination (not wide enough to take a finger and therefore too narrow to serve any other purpose). It was not a very efficient means of channelling the flow; so if we had to pee we sought the Master’s consent for its temporary removal. Sometimes this was granted, sometimes not.

Affixed to the inside front was a plug that was inserted into the vagina. (I noticed some small scratches where the shaft coupled to the shield, which indicated that I was not the first to have it inside me. I wondered who the previous wearer had been, and what had become of her.) Each belt must have come with several plugs, of different sizes. Sir Brandon asked us how deeply we could be penetrated without “too much” discomfort, in order to give us each the longest insert possible without doing damage. He didn’t specify exactly what he meant by “too much”, and feminine pride impelled us to go maximum rather than minimum. A similar, but mercifully smaller, shaft was provided for the rear entrance. The plugs made moving about a challenge, while sitting and squatting were virtually impossible. Putting on the belt took effort because the shield was semi-rigid, and unless we aligned the two stems perfectly with our cavities it required some back-and-forth grappling to slide them smoothly into place.

For added effect, strategically placed on the inside of the panel just above the slot was a bud or stud which, when the belt was snugly fitted, pressed against the clitoris, imparting into each and every sort of movement a very specific thrill. Unfortunately, as well as keeping us in an almost permanent state of orgasm, the “stimulator” rubbed against the urethra, so we also felt like we constantly needed to pee.

Lydia wore a slightly more streamlined version that made walking easier and did not produce a tell-tale bulge under her skirt. Nevertheless, how she coped with the plugs and the “stimulator” during her working day downtown was a mystery to me. Twice she returned to the apartment confessing that she had been forced to remove her belt. She never said why, whether it was to use the bathroom or to entertain one or more of the Masters from the Château. She was savagely punished, of course. She could have lied about it (just as Sir Brandon could have sealed the lock with wax or something which would break when the lock was undone), but it never occurred to us to contravene our orders. For what would be the point of our slavery — as much an assertion of our own true nature as it was a gift of devotion to those whom we served — if we violated its most basic tenet?

For Sir Brandon’s additional amusement, also implanted into the shield were twin electrodes which were in contact with our labia, and the plugs were wired as well. There was a small pouch on the back of the belt to attach a battery and remotely controlled switching mechanism. The Master used this to randomly shock us, individually or all at once. The settings ranged from mild jolt to lightning bolt.

So wearing the chastity belt was not easy, and as such it was a constant, bracing reminder that my body no longer belonged to me. The stimulator bud was a symbol of the purpose my body served, and the electrodes a token of the Master’s control. Just as my nudity took away my privacy and signified that I had surrendered the right to withhold any part of myself, that I would be at all times accessible. And it was a marvellous feeling, to be owned, subject to a power outside, beyond and above myself, to be utterly and abjectly and joyfully devoted to what I could never be. And Sir Brandon reinforced this on the morning when he removed the butt plug from each belt. This made wearing it slightly less awkward, but that was not his motive.

“Your comfort is irrelevant,” he told us. Then he used those words which had become our mantra. With just the one shaft, in the front, “the belt represents what you do not have in common with those who own you.” Its presence inside our bodies was to remind us constantly — never allow us to forget or to ignore — what set us apart from our Masters, what we were and what we were not. The symbolism was not subtle. It was not meant to be.

Yet despite such indignities, and the austerity, I found myself settling easily and happily into this strange new life, having no responsibilities except to serve, no obligations other than to obey, no liabilities, no uncertainties, no remorse, no guilt. The almost continuous state of arousal in which I found myself was exhausting at first, but I soon discovered a self-rejuvenating quality to my bondage and servitude that was not unlike the second wind I used to get at the athletics carnivals of my schoolgirl days.

But after four weeks Lydia took me into her study and closed the door. Even then, in private and no longer in our chastity belts, we did not sit on the chairs; but the rug was fleecy and warm, and I loved its tickly touch on my bare flesh. It gave me goosebumps. In the time I had been here, I had discovered sensations and emotions that, in my previous existence, I took for granted or which had existed below my level of conscious insight.

Lydia was more down-to-earth.

“Kate, pay attention. You are leaving here soon. You will be taken to a place in the country, not too far from here. There you will continue to serve our Masters.”

She described the Château, and explained that my life there would be rigorous, even more so than it was under Brandon’s stern authority, but the fulfilment of everything which had happened so far, the culmination of all I had experienced, the reward for all I had endured during these past months.

“Your first day in the Château will be one of the worst days of your life,” she said, gravely. “The second day will be one of your best.”

And as she spoke, I felt a certain numbness, the disappointment that this part of my journey was coming to an end counterbalanced by excitement and dread that another chapter was beginning.

At that moment the door swung open and the two of us prostrated ourselves on the voluptuous rug, hands behind our backs. Sir Brandon locked heavy iron collars about our necks. He was not gentle.

But it was Rebecca who next left the apartment, two days before my departure. When she was informed that her time had come, her expression was more fearful than I had seen on any of the women in the sisterhood, before or since. She was not headed for the Château. As with Lucy, two men came to fetch her. Unlike Lucy, Rebecca received no send-off, had no farewell dinner or other ceremony. The men brought with them an old and battered steamer trunk, and into it she was squeezed, folded up, bound hand and foot and gagged. There were air holes for breathing, but it was cramped and hot inside her box. She began sweating almost at once. She was sealed inside with a lock and encircling straps, and the men hauled their cargo onto a handcart trolley and wheeled it out of the apartment. From the balcony, I saw parked at kerbside a black van. I never discovered Rebecca’s destination, nor the meaning behind her melodramatic exit.

With her gone, I was afraid to be alone with Sir Brandon, and glad that my time also was nearing its end. My fears were confirmed when, after Lydia had left for work, he tied me in a strappado and kept me that way for several excruciating hours. While I dangled, he used and abused my naked body, inside and out. And yet, as terrible as it was, mingled with the pain and the shame was pride in my ability to endure the worst torments, but as well another sort of pride.

As I shrieked through my gag, writhed and twisted in my bonds, I felt something that even now is difficult to describe — like a flow of energy between my tormentor and me... but it was a two-way flow, invigorating not enervating. And I realized then, with full clarity, what had occurred to me when I began working at the Wooden Pony Club (not so far in the past and yet a lifetime ago) but had never quite crystallized in the conscious part of my brain. The power that men had over me (Masters Brandon, Jason, Stuart, Richard, all the weekend warriors of Gor) was equally a power which I held over them. What they demanded of me was no more or less than what I took from them. So in my subjugation and degradation, they were not so much perpetrators as collaborators.

For the Master and the slave, it was the best of both worlds.

***
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Soraka
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Post by Soraka »

***

“Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion.”
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Princess

From the window in the tower I could see out over all of the estate. Surrounding the house were manicured lawns dotted with tidily trimmed shrubs and bordered by dense woodland. A gravel driveway circled in front of the porch before veering off in the direction of the highway, which was partly visible in the distance between gaps in the trees. From the rear of the building, a cobbled path meandered amongst the flower beds towards a latticework pavilion, where two of the Masters were sitting in the shade sipping tall drinks. They were casually watching a squad of nine or ten slaves toiling nearby, pruning the shrubs and tending the gardens. It was a hot and humid summer afternoon. Apart from wide-brimmed straw hats and cotton work gloves, the girls were naked. Perspiration glistened on their bodies. To my left, a light breeze drifted across the tiers of terracotta roof tiles, carrying up from the courtyard music and men’s voices, and every so often a feminine shriek of laughter.

I was about to turn away and resume my chores when a movement caught my eye, at the far end of the road, where it emerged in a sweeping curve from the forest. The pink fuzziness gradually revolved itself into a short column of nude women, seven altogether. They were spaced no more than half an arm’s length apart, and marching slowly towards the house. Their arms were pinioned behind them; they were linked by a chain attached to their collars; all were gagged; and everyone but the first in line wore a blindfold. The leader was guiding her flock with measured steps, but they were being hurried along by a lone Master who moved up and down the file tapping bare backsides apparently at random with his cane. A few paces behind walked two young men attired in the flamboyant uniform (black breeches, white ruffled shirt, cordovan jacket) of novitiate Masters.

The women appeared to be aged in the typical range, middle to late twenties, with one exception. The one at the rear, tall with a splendid figure and billowing ash-blonde hair, looked to be well into her thirties. It is hard, with so many slaves passing through the Château, to remember them all; and the faces were partly covered; but these were clearly new to the sisterhood. As they followed the meandering path, I caught a glimpse of their rumps and saw that none had been branded. That was not a sure sign, since about half the girls even now choose against bearing the triskelion monogram permanently emblazoned on their skin. But three in the group still had pubic hair (and I felt pity and joy for them, because the depilation ritual is a favourite amusement for the Masters). When the seven had shuffled onto the circular drive, they were ordered to halt, and to bunch up until they touched.

Both males were fresh-faced youngsters. It seemed these days as if the Château was recruiting them as soon as they could shave. Perhaps it was. After all, I have never found out how or when Sir Richard came to be inducted into the brotherhood. (Of course, it is not my place to enquire nor my privilege to know.) Sir Luke and Sir Jonathan came down off the porch to greet them and to inspect the new property. They were thorough in their evaluation, and as each girl in turn was probed and prodded, at first not aware, from behind her blindfold, of what was happening, she jerked and cringed, and the compact line of bodies wavered and wobbled as the squirming rippled along it.

After this welcome, the women were herded up the steps to begin their new life. I envied them for their innocence as they embarked upon their voyage of self-discovery. Each sensation, each pleasure, each torment would be a novel experience for them, exquisite and excruciating — a fresh adventure, a brand-new thrill. I tingled inside at the thought of what must be going through their minds at that moment, what must be happening to their bodies.

Once they had disappeared inside the house, I went back to scrubbing the floor. Alongside me, Sabrina clicked her tongue in disapproval.

“If one of the Masters had caught you…” she whispered.

“They didn’t.” I grinned as she frowned. But I felt contrite. She had good reason to fret. We would both have been punished for my transgression.

Half an hour later, it was Sir Richard who came to fetch us. He was wearing his ceremonial cape.

“All females are required downstairs,” he said blandly.

Absent-mindedly, as I dropped to my knees I looked up, and our eyes met.

“Please forgive me, Master.”

He grunted a reply. Sabrina heaved a deep and disapproving sigh. So we were to be be punished, after all, for my impertinence. But that would have to wait. We raised ourselves and deposited our mops and buckets in a corner at the end of the corridor, near the window. I could hear more voices and noises drifting up from the courtyard. We put our hands behinds our backs. Sir Richard seized my wrists and locked the bracelets together, then clipped a leash to my collar. He tugged and shook it vigorously, trying to evoke a response, but this time I kept my eyes lowered. He thrust the phallic-shaped shaft of an oversized a penis-gag between my jaws. It had recently been used. The noisome knob was still glazed with half-dried saliva. He cuffed and gagged Sabrina as well before taking us down to the lobby. There, near the base of the stairs, a half-dozen women were standing silently and rigidly at attention, tethered in a single file, shackled, collared and gagged. We exchanged quick glances. At the front of the line was Lydia.

She and Sabrina are the oldest and longest serving females in the Château. They have been here since the beginning, or so I’ve heard. For although nobody has ever told the full story of how the Chaînerie got started, there is much you can learn from the whispered covert gossip of the slaves and fragments of overheard conversations from the Masters. That’s one aspect of being a slave in a mansion populated by slaves — you become part of the furniture (sometimes literally… footstool duty for instance). Things are said that are not intended for your ears but which you catch anyway. And Lydia was the subject of persistent and prolific speculation. She was the doyenne of the sisterhood, unquestionably, but there was a strong suspicion that she was much more. Most of us, if not all, owed our presence in the house to her tutelage. For it was Lydia who trained us for service in the Château; and it was she who prepared the men who would be our Masters.

Sabrina, on the other hand, was exactly what she appeared to be, a sort of mother hen to apprehensive new slaves and nervous new Masters. She was tall and slender, breathtakingly beautiful with hair as dark as midnight and emerald-green eyes that flitted about incessantly and sparkled with intelligence. Like me, she had left the halls of academia to enter the thrall of the brotherhood. Serene and self-assured, even in shackles she moved with a feline grace and dignity. A dribble of drool oozing from the corners of her mouth past the bulbous ball-gag did not diminish her radiant elegance.

Sabrina and I joined the end of the queue. Sir Richard hitched my halter to the collar of the last girl in line, the curvaceous blonde Camille, and when he’d done that he ran his hands along my torso, squeezing my boobs and pinching my nipples until I squealed through my gag, then down my belly to linger between my legs. As my body quaked and quivered, the Master mumbled something and laughed at his private witticism. Things had changed, between us, in the past year.

He ordered us to march, and as we passed by him in turn he slapped us each hard on the bottom, growling “Quickstep. You’re too slow.” We picked up speed, although our trot was little more than a brisk shamble. But our owners liked to prod and pressure us, to see our sweat flowing, our hair splaying, spittle spraying, buttocks wiggling, breasts jiggling. There were rules for everything we did; so as we jogged we had to hold our manacled wrists level with the small of the back to keep the posterior clear for fondling or flogging — whichever was the Masters’ pleasure. We pulled back our shoulders to push out our chests, because we were always on display. We kept our gaze fixed on the floor in front of us but were nonetheless expected to be alert to any signal or gesture from a Master who chose not to speak his commands. Nothing was done at the Château (not by the slaves, anyway) that wasn’t difficult or degrading; but that was, after all, the reason for our being there… indeed, for some of the women, their reason for being.

We were the last to arrive and the courtyard was crowded. The men already there stared impatiently while we were given our orders to form a single file, shoulder-to-shoulder, in front of the western portico, and then spread out until our tethers stretched taut between our collars. Sir Richard moved behind us, prying the gags from our mouths. Camille beside me gratefully flexed her jaws and puckered her lips; she must have been wearing hers for some time. Lined up at a right angle on our left were the women who had just come in from their outdoor duties. From their bodies, streaked with garden grime, wafted the faint musty odour of sweat and the pungent metallic tang of sunscreen. They were collared and leashed but not bound; their arms were behind their backs, wrists crossed.

Altogether there were nearly forty slaves and twelve Masters gathered for the induction ritual. It was rare to have so many people in the house at once. The males were splendidly ostentatious in their black breeches, velvet jackets and crimson capes, chatting and joking, the females placidly déshabillé, standing silently with our heads bowed, our bodies already twitching in anticipation of the festivities which always followed these observances. On a signal from one of their number, the men stopped talking and turned to face us. We were arranged in a broad V shape, with the seven new girls forming a line inside the arms of our V, and we all descended to our knees. The two novitiate Masters then stepped forward and placed themselves close enough that the faces of the kneeling pair in the middle were almost in the men’s crotches.

The ceremony itself was brief and simple, with no fancy rites, no elaborate pomp, no long speeches. The new Masters recited their pledge to respect and uphold the rules and customs of the Château Chaînerie and all the rights and privileges befitting their sex. Sir Jonathan, who spoke because he was the most recent initiate, admonished them. “This is your birthright,” he declared, pointing towards us. “If you do not claim it, then you do not just deny yourself what belongs to you. You dishonour the women who offer you their submission and obedience.”

The formalities ended with our slaves’ oath to serve and obey our Masters without question or hesitation, followed by the familiar creed. “I embrace what I am, I revere that which I am not.”

Those of us who had been brought to the courtyard by Sir Richard stayed on to entertain the men. The others went back to their chores, except for the seven neophytes who remained kneeling on the spot where they had been inducted, not daring to make a move or a sound. Every so often one or more would be picked out to provide amusement, and when the Masters had finished with her, she returned to her position, shaking and whimpering, happy and proud that she was passing the test of her first day of slavery in the Château.

Towards evening, there were two final sacraments to be administered. The three women with pubic hair were laid out on one of the tables and the Masters took it in turns to do the shaving. They performed their task conscientiously, leaving just a few nicks and eliciting just a few moans. But two others had volunteered for branding. The rest of us waited outside; so we were spared the sight. But we heard the screams, one a piercing shriek, the other a guttural howl. Afterwards, they each proudly showed us the mark embedded in the red, seared flesh of her left buttock. I knew it well, I wore it, but not on my skin… not yet. It was inscribed on my collar and on the ring I wore whenever I left the Château, and on the ringlet which passed through the lips at the entrance to my body.

The triskelion was such a commonplace theme in the Chaînerie, and yet no one seems to understand its full meaning… or those who know do not speak of it. And at some stage I discovered something special about that symbol. The three interlocking spiral arms are in fact the letter S. So I have made an educated guess. The institution of the Château Chaînerie stands on three legs. Slavery (or perhaps submission — both work). Secrecy (or maybe silence). Sisterhood. I have no doubt what the third S stands for.

The secret sisterhood of slaves… that makes perfect sense to me. Apart from a handful of words, such as those spoken in the courtyard that afternoon, there is nowhere, in whatever constitutes the unwritten charter of the Château Chaînerie, any specific reference to the brotherhood of Masters.

***

“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”
— Elizabeth I, Speech to the Troops at Tilbury

It is easy and natural to feel a good deal of pride in our obedience and humility, in our unconditional devotion to our Masters. As I have learned and relearned so many times, being a slave, being the property of men, to be owned willingly and joyfully, is not for those weak of body or of spirit. It takes strength and courage to submit yourself so completely to the control of others. Being powerless, you must be strong to endure the pain and the shame, the torment and torture, the degradation and disgrace, which are the everyday condition of your servitude. You must be self-reliant, even self-centred, because, in the end, all you really have (all that anyone has) is your perception of yourself, the qualities you discover within — what you are, what you are not, what you can be, what you need to be.

Indeed, the slave must be stronger than her Master. And yet for the men of the house, the lesson has been not so very much different. It takes many of the same qualities to command obedience as to give it, for if it is simple enough to act the tyrant, it’s a lot harder to be a true Master. While exercising his rights and indulging his whims, he must have full control over his passions. He must know his slave’s limitations as well as he understands his own. While demanding her submission, he must be sensitive to her boundaries. In guiding and training and restraining her, he must discipline himself.

It is, obviously, easier for the man… but that is his privilege, and the slave’s duty and joy to make it so. Though all in the Château seek a personal realization in their respective and complementary roles, while there cannot be a “top” without a “bottom”, and the relationship is in many ways a symbiotic one, it is by no means an equal partnership… nor for that matter a partnership at all. One has the power and the other cedes total control. Service and obedience may give fulfilment to the slave, but it is the Master who is being served and obeyed. It is the slave whose unconditional self-sacrifice, faith and trust seals the bond of ownership and obligation. She is willing to surrender and suffer for his pleasure, because her pleasure derives solely, absolutely and unreservedly from his.

But what matters is that our bondage and servitude should never be easy. It is not necessarily about passive acquiescence. The control you assert, as a slave, may only be over your own responses, both physical and emotional, and in your vulnerable position these can be manipulated; but in the end our reactions, as much as our actions, are the things which define who and what we are. And in that light, it is not through comfort and complacency that you challenge yourself, define and explore your limits, discern and assess your innermost desires, discover and draw upon your own resources, expose yourself to new experiences and open your mind to fresh insights. Your bonds become a liberation, your subjugation a gift, your service to others a self-fulfilment and a fruition of all your hopes and dreams and fears. And it is in the most intense moments of pain and shame, which you do not choose and cannot escape, that you feel the greatest serenity, because you have met your demons head on and they have not conquered you.

This is what gives you a sense of pride.

Yet that feeling was the hardest thing to get used to after I entered the Château, something I hadn’t experienced in Lydia’s apartment. For your natural condition here, if you are one of the slaves, is the unending sense of shame. You feel it in your willing and abject submission to the Masters, whose sole qualification for having dominion over you is that they have possessed, from birth, what you do not. You are embarrassed by the naked display of your womanhood, which emphasizes that fact. You are debased by the chains and other symbols you wear on your body which mark you as the property of men. You cannot feel pride in any of these things. But what you are proud of is that you do feel the shame, and that you are strong enough to bear it. So each excruciating torment, each degradation, each violation of your dignity replenishes the well of your strength and spirit.

There is the feeling of accomplishment that you have given up a major part of yourself. Every moment of your existence in the Château, every act, every chore, no matter how routine or trivial, is an expression of absolute, selfless devotion to your Masters. It is humiliating, exhausting, exasperating, infuriating to be so utterly subservient and obedient, subordinating your wants and needs to their desires and demands. But always it’s exhilarating, and powerfully erotic — a permanent orgasm. Everything you do, every sensation you feel, is subsumed within your servitude and defined by your womanhood.

So your arrival in the Château, for the first time, is like entering a mysterious valley, full of shadows, haunted by ghosts, stalked by strange beasts. It is an adventure that is at once terrifying and exciting.

I stole a peek at the seven women whose journey was only just beginning. We had now been assembled once more, every female in the house, to pay homage to the two new Masters. The men had taken their places at the long table in the dining hall, six on each side; and to form a backdrop for their dining, those of us not serving (thirty altogether) were arranged half on each side of the room. The thermostat had been turned down, as it often was, for no particular reason except that the cold air on our bare skin raised goosebumps and nipples. It reminded us (once more, as if we needed it) that comfort was the Masters’ privilege, not ours.

We were kneeling with our thighs spread and our hands locked behind our backs, wrists bound to the fetters on our ankles with a rope short enough that our torsos were arched backwards, with breasts and hips thrust forward. In this pose, it was difficult to avoid gazing at the men seated before us. I could only stare at the ceiling or off to the side. (We were not permitted to close our eyes, for that would be as disrespectful to the Masters as looking directly at them.) My body and arms ached from the stress of my posture, my knees from the slate floor under them. Dribble from the rim of my gag trickled down my cheeks and dripped onto my shoulders and chest. The rising pain and my hunger pangs, as well as the chill, made it impossible to zone out. I could not blank my mind nor focus my concentration elsewhere than on the discomfort and the tedium as, over the next two hours, our Masters unhurriedly ate their meal and were entertained by the new slavegirls, who had served it.

(It was only now, minus her blindfold, that I recognized the statuesque, thirty-something blonde. Her eyes were suitably downcast but nevertheless darting about nervously, impatiently, excitedly. Her ball-gag hung on its strap around her neck; her wrists were cuffed in front, with enough slack in the connection to allow her to perform her serving duties. Her ankles were shackled but she could shuffle around the table and to and from the kitchen. Her lush, flaxen tresses had by now been shorn. She had not been one of those depilated or branded that afternoon, but there were plenty of marks on her skin that had not been there when I first spied on her from the tower window. I was startled when I put a name to the face. It was a name seen and heard often in the news. The sisterhood was expanding its domain, from the halls of academia to the chambers of commerce and now into the corridors of political power.)

It felt nice, to be on show like this, exposed and helpless; and it was not just the bonds which swelled our chests — it was pride. There is no more exquisitely delicious manifestation of your potency as a sexual being than to be so desired that satisfying the desire becomes all that you are and all that you do. My parted knees touched those of the women on either side of me, but the closeness to my sisters which I felt was much more than merely the physical contact. We were so different, and so alike.

To my left, sandy-haired, freckle-faced Caitlyn restlessly scuffed the soles of her feet on the tiles. A brash and bubbly surfer girl, she had been introduced to the Chaînerie by her lover, Juliette. She felt no attraction to men, but agreed to serve them because she was servile to Juliette, who sometimes desired that which a woman could not provide. But when her inamorata departed the house, Caitlyn chose to stay on. She has discovered that, in her own frame of reference, when men are her superiors every woman is her equal; and though she finds delight in submission and servitude, it is the love of an equal that she needs.

At night, when not sharing the bed of a Master, the women sleep together in the dormitory, just a small room carpeted with mattresses. Although it is forbidden, unless for the entertainment of the men, Caitlyn and Lucy and the two or three other girls whose affections are for their own sex make the most of the cosy conditions. The rest of us don’t mind, and sometimes we join in. If we are discovered we are punished… but the Masters always some pretext to be punitive.

On my right side was Meiying, tiny and fragile, a porcelain-complexioned, genuine Chinese doll. Since she never speaks, except to a Master, I have found out almost nothing about her. But she is our resident physician, and why she gave up the medical profession to join the sisterhood, I have no idea… except that she has done no more or less than the rest of us. While she is the smallest of us, she is also the most stalwart. I have never seen her flinch, never heard her cry out. After a particularly rigorous session of games with the Masters, she will tend to her fellow slaves without any consideration of her own condition. And this evening, as always, she maintained her almost mystical stoicism. While Caitlyn fidgeted, Meiying never moved a muscle, never made a sound. She seemed able to retreat behind some impenetrable barrier.

From her right came a soft, drawn-out moan. Rachel, with the girl-next-door charm and femme fatale looks, did not have the ability to withdraw into herself the way Meiying did. I was glad I was that way. I have long since decided that I want to feel the full magnitude and unmitigated consequences of my slavery, to experience its pure, invigorating, clarifying intensity. It is why I am here.

Rachel, and Corinne kneeling directly opposite us across the room, had been at first reluctant additions to the household. Rachel had been installed in the Château as collateral on a debt. One story goes that it was owed by her fiancé; another is that it was her brother’s. She came and stayed willingly, allowed no special status or exemptions or concessions. He who brought her is now gone, but she remains, long after the debt was settled. While they both lived in the house, she served him no less than she did the other Masters, even though it was his dues that she paid. She stayed. In joining the sisterhood, having redeemed his bond, she freed herself from hers to him and found a more enriching one.

Corinne is, as far as I know, the only married woman in the sisterhood. For obvious reasons, marital bonds do not accord well with the rights and privileges the Masters enjoy over all the women. But her husband, Sir Jonathan, found gratification in sharing what he owned, and consented that she be common property. She, in turn, consented to be shared.

Next to Corinne was Desirée. She appeared to be in a sort of half-trance, her head lolling to one side and then rolling slowly to the other, her eyes half-shut, their lids fluttering, little blobs of foam glistening at the edges of her gag. She had not changed a lot since that time, not very long ago, when she managed the Wooden Pony Club; but her glossy dark hair had been severely cropped; when she spoke it was in a quiet, humble voice; and her sparkling eyes were never raised in the presence of a Master.

It was Desirée who had set me on the path which has led here; and ever since I have wondered what course my life would have taken if she had not offered me that waitressing job, or had I declined. When I encountered her the first time in the house, a few days after my arrival, she was in the yard with the two youngest Masters, being led on a bridle through the gardens on an endless figure-of-eight canter. She was the tallest woman in the house, towering over most of the men as well; and so she could not look down on her handlers, she was strapped into a leather harness which forced her to stoop. Her hands were locked at arms’ length in a heavy wooden yoke fixed tightly about her neck. A luxuriant mare’s tail poked from her rear end. Grunting and frothing through a bit-gag, she trotted unsteadily around the flower beds, steered and goaded with riding crops. Broad pink streaks criss-crossed her back and buttocks. I wondered at the time what offence she had committed. (I was still new, and had not yet learned the ways of the Château.)

She glanced up and saw me looking, and her expression — surprise at my being there, embarrassment at her present degraded state — unnerved me. She was so much like Lydia — tough, confident and self-possessed — and if I had known her elsewhere than in the Wooden Pony Club, I would have been mystified by her presence in the Château. But that was the point. Desirée was like Lydia, and not so unlike the rest of us. For whoever it was who had selected us for the Chaînerie — certainly not the Masters, perhaps Lydia, maybe some éminence grise or covert camarilla, lurking sub rosa in the shadows of our proclivities and passions — had not picked the low-hanging fruit. But such conceit can be hazardous, when you’re a slave. It is not wise to remind the Masters that we are special.

The morning after the inductions, about half the women, including Lydia, returned to their lives outside the Château, along with several of the men. The Masters who remained organized some games in the fields behind the house, to put us through our paces as a demonstration for their new comrades. The first event was a cross-country race. We had been sorted into pairs, and I was coupled, literally, to Justine. She was the ideal partner for our trial. Tall, slim and sleek, with lustrous coffee toned skin that gleamed a golden bronze in the sunlight, she was a champion athlete who had forsaken gold medals for the silver chains of the sisterhood. We were both gagged, Justine blindfolded, and hitched together by our collars, so that we stood face to face, chest to chest, our arms enfolding each other’s body with wrists shackled behind the other’s back. Thus arranged, the ten pairs were sent on our way with a whack on the backside, along a winding track across open meadows, up and down gullies and mounds, around clumps of bushes and stands of trees. As the sighted partner, I guided with grunts and gurgles and movements of the head and body, breasts and thighs. We established a cadence, tentative and jerky at first, quickly smoothing out into a concordial rhythm.

Nevertheless, it was hard going. As we carefully manoeuvred along the rutted, twisting path, which often disappeared entirely into the thigh-high grass, trying desperately to speed up while staying erect, beneath our bare feet the dry twigs and leaf litter was brittle, scratchy and prickly, the soil parched hard and peppered with small sharp stones. We had to climb over one railing fence, scramble under another, negotiate a creek that was not very deep but with water that was freezing cold, a craggy bed of uneven pebbles and banks which were slippery and lined with dense undergrowth… all the while locked in our naked embrace.

The midmorning sun beat down mercilessly upon our unprotected bodies. We were wearing crotch-ropes, of course, made tight enough that as we progressed, the more headway we achieved, the more effectively they did their job. Each step increased the stimulation, as the rope worked its way into my cleft and rubbed methodically against my clitoris. Linked so intimately to my partner, there was no way of bending or hunching to ease the stress and reduce the friction and relieve the ferment that burst inside me. Even before fatigue had set in, Justine and I were puffing and panting. I could feel the rapid pulsations of her heartbeat through her breasts which heaved against mine. The whiff of perspiration allied with her perfume to compose a bouquet of sweet, seductive piquancy, like some exotic spice.

But my rising rapture was disturbed every so often, when one of us tripped or stumbled. At one point, I lost my balance and we both ended up on our knees. One of the Masters loomed, swinging his cane to urge us on; and though we hauled ourselves inelegantly back onto our feet, he applied a few strokes anyway, just for encouragement. Justine was fit and firm, one of the most resilient slaves in the house, but she hated the rod. Unable to see and thus unaware of what was coming, she yelped at the first wallop, and a fine spritz of spittle sprinkled my face from the sides of her gag. I gargled a growl and she gurgled a giggle.

We came second in the race, beaten by Caitlyn and Suzanne. For their reward, they were sent inside and visited by the Masters, one at a time. The rest of us were allowed a few minutes to recuperate before our next challenge. The games continued until late afternoon; and at the end of the day, dirty, smelly and exhausted, we were pleased with ourselves for having passed every gruelling test. The males were also pleased that we had performed so well. Nevertheless that evening we paid the price for our vanity. There was a lesson to be learned by the seven neophyte slaves and the two novitiate Masters. To achieve anything, to take pride in achievement, means nothing to us. We are enslaved, of our own free will, not by virtue of what we have done or have not done, nor what we can do or cannot do. Rather, we were slaves because of what we were, and the men are our Masters because of what they are and we were not. I am finally beginning to understand that oft-repeated mantra.

***
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Post by Soraka »

***

“To master others is power. To master oneself is strength.”
— Laozi, The Book of the Way

My first sojourn in the Château lasted ten weeks. After that, my visits varied from overnight to several weeks. Back on the outside, I found a part-time teaching position at the university. It was impossible to resume my career, as I could be recalled at any time for any duration. I moved into an apartment not far from the house I had previously occupied. Lydia had arranged it, on condition that Sir Richard stayed there rent-free. Slaves were not permitted to live alone. There were two bedrooms and I was assigned the smaller one. At any time I could be called into Sir Richard’s, of course. For as well as paying his rent, I was expected to serve and obey him as I had in the Château. There were lots of additional rules to follow, in fact many more than there had been during those ten weeks, since life on the outside was less simple, prescribed and constrained. For instance, I had to keep my hair cut short; I could wear only dresses and skirts, never trousers nor any other “masculine” apparel; if I could not wear my Chaînerie collar I was to have some other kind of collar or choker, as a reminder of my slavery; I could not travel, change my job or my residence, make friends or find lovers without seeking permission.

My belongings had been safely stored in my absence; and although I was now Sir Richard’s property, he did not take ownership of my possessions as well. For according to the code of the Chaînerie, a woman is enslaved for only as long as she consents to be; and once released from her bond she is restored to that much of her former life as she can reclaim.

It did not surprise me to discover how I had managed to get my new job, nor by the way I received the news. On the third day of my recess from the Château, I was summoned to Lydia’s apartment. There was no explanation, naturally, just the instruction to prepare myself for entertaining the Masters and advice that I would be staying overnight. I had not anticipated being called for so soon after my return, and Sir Richard was annoyed that he had not been invited.

“You have me every other night,” I reminded him, but he did not seem appeased. I suspect that it was a breach of propriety to not consult a slave’s de facto owner (which Sir Richard was while he lived in my home). I am not, of course, privy to the protocols of the Masters; but I knew what his aggravation meant — he would take it out on me. I confess that I felt a thrill at the prospect.

By the time I arrived, a half-dozen guests were assembled in the living room, sipping brandy and claret. They were elegantly dressed, the four men wearing tuxedos, the two women in expensive cocktail frocks. It was the first time I had seen any female in the apartment wearing anything at all. I recognized Charlotte, from the Gor tavern, not accompanied by James. Lydia herself was naked but for a garter belt, silk stockings and stiletto heels, and a jewel-encrusted choker. She was mixing freely, playing the hostess as if oblivious to her déshabillé state. Out from the kitchen, skilfully manipulating a tray of drinks with one hand and a plate of hors d’oeuvres in the other, came a young woman, completely nude but for her leather collar, whom I had met before, in Lydia’s downtown office — the secretary Gabrielle.

To my surprise, I was not ordered to undress but instead invited to join the others, including Lydia, at the table. The two women looked amused when, as I took my place, I swept back my dress so that my flesh would touch the seat. And equally to my surprise, Charlotte raised herself off the chair, pulled her dress back and pushed her pants to her knees. She lowered herself delicately, frowning, as if expecting a shock or a jolt, then grinned. The other woman, Jessica, in her early forties whom I vaguely recognized, stared at us each in turn with a tight-lipped, quizzical expression, before doing the same. Her husband, sitting to her left, kept glancing under the table throughout the meal. Every so often his right hand would disappear, and Jessica would suddenly jerk or shudder, become flushed and allowed herself a tight-lipped smile.

Only when we had finished dinner and Lydia had helped Gabrielle to clear the table was I ordered to take off my clothes and kneel on the rug in the middle of the living room. Two of the men took Lydia and Gabrielle to the drawing room and soon afterwards I heard a loud, drawn-out moan, and then a high-pitched squeal. By this time, the remaining two men were tying me in the first of a variety of positions while Charlotte and Jessica sat on the sofa to watch, their panties still bunched at their knees. They never joined in.

The three men, those apart from Jessica’s husband, stayed the night, taking turns in bed with Lydia, Gabrielle and myself. Each had his personal preferences and penchants. Sir Anthony was the youngest, and turned out to be the son of Jessica’s husband from a previous marriage. He was clumsy and shy, apologized for his inexperience and promised to “do better next time.” I was not particularly reassured. On the other hand Sir Robert, who had administered most of my bondage in the living room, was so blasé that, while the rest of us got little rest that night, he fell asleep inside me.

In the morning, during breakfast (after Gabrielle had left), Jessica returned without her husband. She introduced herself as Professor M—, and I now recalled having seen her on the campus. We never talked about the events of the previous evening. Instead she informed me that she had already “interceded” with my former department head to secure a casual position for me. It was an odd word to use, “interceded”, but I was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. However, Lydia’s self-satisfied expression revealed as much as any words could have.

When I left the apartment, Lydia had arranged a taxi. I had not been allowed to shower, to wash the smells and stains from my body, and the three Masters did not finish their fun and games until mid-morning. I felt extremely self-conscious, until I identified the driver. It was Harry, who had taken us home from Charlotte’s place that time. Weary and sore, I analyzed our conversation, with some dread, for tell-tale signs of the brotherhood. There were none. We chatted politely, and at the end of the journey he raised his hand and said “Fare’s paid.”

I arrived home just before noon. Sir Richard was waiting for me. Seeing my condition, he shook his head and sent me to the bathroom. When I came out, feeling refreshed but drained and dead tired, he had laid out ropes and scarves on the floor in the living room. He saw the plaintive expression on my face, grinned and shook his head. I lay on the carpet on my belly and put my hands behind my back.

“So you got a job,” he said as he bound my wrists.

I looked up over my shoulder at him and he chuckled.

“Lydia phoned just before you got here.”

He gently caressed my lips before thrusting a ball-gag between them.

“It’s a good thing. This place needs some work.”

He knotted my blindfold tightly, wrenching my head backwards as he did so.

“And I think an increase in my budget is on order. Don’t you agree? I take that noise to mean yes.”

He trussed my wrists to my ankles and hauled on the ropes until my body arched backwards.

“You may need to get a second job.”

He turned me onto my left side so he could tie a yoke around my neck and run the free end of the cord down my front and between my thighs. He pulled firmly, and I grunted as it dug deep into my crevices.

“I know a place that’s hiring waitresses.”

He paused and laughed again.

“That sounds familiar. Isn’t this where we came in?”

I felt something slithering, in a leisurely fashion, across my bare bottom. It was the braided rawhide of his favourite whip. It felt good.

The End of Book Two.
nylongag
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Post by nylongag »

Is this The Story of O? Or just based on it?
Either way I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more attention
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