The Shame Gambit

by Emily Tilton

  “I’m pretty sure that’s Cynthia,” David said, in a level tone that Maia could easily tell concealed a great deal of tension—love and worry plus a healthy dose of alpha rage.

  “What?” Erin said, clearly trying to restrain her temper.

  Sarah answered the First Lady. “Someone is whipping Cynthia in a room just inside the chateau. She’s in a good deal of pain.”

  Erin’s face went crimson, and she visibly searched for some words that would cover the embarrassment that Maia knew so well resulted from a submissive girl’s terribly mixed reaction to such news.

  Maia cut in, to help ease the tension, as she fiddled with the few controls she had on the input from the drone.

  “I can’t change the signal on the drones’ end at all, but...” She pushed a slider on the control panel in her laptop audio analyzer, enhancing one part of the sound and dampening another, and felt her eyes go wide. “Yes,” she told the others. “The windows on the French doors are working like speakers. Sarah, do you hear that?”

  Sarah nodded, her eyes focusing on something off screen and her brow knit as she struggled to make out the words coming from the room where the sound of the lash had just ceased, though Cynthia’s sobs remained audible.

  “What?” Erin said, her imploring tone showing that all her frustration came from worry for Jessica and the other girls in danger.

  “Maia,” David said, “can we get a speech-to-text analyzer on that? It might do better than our ears can.”

  Maia nodded without losing her focus on the audio track in her headset.

  “...naughty... back here...”

  A middle-aged woman’s voice?

  On the control panel, Maia found the speech-to-text filter overlay and clicked it on, also invoking it for the stream Sarah and David saw.

  “What?” Erin asked again.

  “Hold on, ma’am,” Maia said automatically, barely registering the face Erin made at the offending form of address.

  “...had to bring... Selecta...”

  A man’s American-accented voice.

  “That’s Kevin Logan,” Sarah said grimly.

  Erin’s brow wrinkled, but she drew her lips into a tight line and waited.

  The text-to-speech kicked in, captioning the static picture of the grass and the wooden leg.

  Male 1 (35+): Why I’m here [unintelligible]

  Male 2 (30+): Are we going to claim these cunts, then?

  Maia clicked on the descriptor Male 1 and edited it to ‘Kevin Logan.’

  “The other voice may be Sebastian Fredricks,” Sarah said. “Accent fits.” Maia edited the descriptor Male 2 to ?Sebastian Fredricks.

  Male 3 (40+): By all means, Mr. Fredricks.

  Maia edited away the question mark, and said, as she did it, based on the elegant French accent in her ear, “Herrier, right?”

  “Yup,” David said grimly. Maia edited that descriptor.

  Female (50+): Est-ce qu’ il faut que je pars, monsieur?

  Jules Herrier: Non, madame. Gentlemen, I intend Madame Du Gare to remain, if you have no objection, with permission to punish all four girls again if necessary.

  “That’s his housekeeper,” David said. “She must have been the one whipping Cynthia. It happened a good deal while she was Herrier’s concubine. I imagine she’s whipped Barbara as well.”

  Sarah, who had lowered her eyes to concentrate on the feed from the drone, raised them to the camera for a moment. “Erin,” she said to the waiting First Lady who clearly had grave difficulty in keeping herself from demanding more information, “I’m nearly positive Jessica Logan is one of the four girls who are going to be claimed as pieces in the game now. I think she’s recently been punished by Herrier’s housekeeper.”

  Maia looked at David Mancini, whose own chin had tilted downward as he looked at his computer screen. His face remained impassive, but she could guess with what she felt sure must be complete accuracy the burning question in his mind: Who is about to claim my wife as his cunt for a game of Discipline?

  “Claimed as what?” Erin asked, incredulous.

  Jules Herrier: Go ahead, Mr. Fredricks. Show Mr. Granby and Mr. Mercator how it is done.

  Sarah addressed David, rather than Erin. “Barbara, right?” she asked matter-of-factly, simply confirming the obvious conclusion. “Herrier is giving her to Fredricks.”

  David gave an absent nod, but then Maia heard the Englishman’s voice, and saw the transcript.

  Sebastian Fredricks: Cynthia, darling, I understand you are another man’s wife, but I am going to do my best to claim you anyway.

  Maia watched David’s chest rise with a deep breath. His eyes found the camera.

  “What?” Erin asked, her own eyes very round as she picked up on the mood.

  Charlotte, who had followed along silently and patiently, clearly grasping a good deal more of the situation despite having even less information than Erin, said, “I think Cynthia is about to be mastered by another man, Erin.”

  Female (20+): Please... don’t... [moan]

  “Cynthia is very well trained,” Sarah said. “She’s going to handle this perfectly well.”

  “Absolutely,” David agreed, quite literally putting a brave face on the situation. “But I’m going to ask your permission, Sarah, to take a dark ride over there with some backup. I’ll stay outside his security, but if things go south I’m going to want to go in and help Mercator rescue whoever needs rescuing—assuming he’s still in the gardens and doesn’t need extraction all on his own.”

  “That’s fine,” Sarah replied, as Maia heard Cynthia’s submissive whimpers continue over the audio feed.

  David took off his headset and stood up, then vanished from the view of the camera completely.

  “What’s going on?” Erin demanded then.

  “The traditional beginning of a game of Discipline,” Sarah told her, “is the claiming of the pieces—that is, the girls—who the players are going to move around the board. According to the accounts that may actually come from Roman times or may be the clever fabrication of a Victorian Englishman, the slave girls had to consent to serving the officers who chose them.”

  “Consent?” Erin demanded. “How is Cynthia going to consent to... to the kind of thing I saw Jessica doing on the video? Does that mean Jessica consented?”

  “Well,” Sarah said, “yes... and as for how, well...”

  “Erin Metz,” Charlotte said in the same headmistress tone she had used earlier, “you know very well what makes a girl consent to undergo wicked things. Do I need to tell your husband that you require a reminder of the days when you and Jessica served him head-to-tail?”

  The blush that came into the First Lady’s face at the words of the Institute’s academic dean would have put a rose to shame. Maia didn’t know the whole of the story of how Erin had come to marry then-Senator Andrew Metz, and she had to clear her throat as she pushed down the urge to do a deep search of the net for information.

  Chapter Sixteen

  In the well-equipped van in which David rode with three other Guardsmen to the chateau, he watched the grass and the wooden leg, along with the captions of the scene indoors, on a laptop screen.

  Jules Herrier: Now, Cynthia, I hardly thought it would take you very long to become wanton under the hand even of a man you had never met, but just look at how wet your little cunt has gotten. Barbara, darling, I wish you could see how well my former whore knows her place. I want you to be just as ready to take the penis.

  The man truly knew how to degrade a girl who craved degradation the way Cynthia did. David had to give him credit for that.

  Cynthia Mancini: Oh, no... please... [moan]

  Sebastian Fredricks: That’s it. When you’re ready, cunt, just let me know, and I’ll let you suck my prick, so you won’t have to say anything more.

  Fredricks had less skill, David thought, but he could certainly get the job done, where David’s wonderful, gorgeous, kinky, beloved wife was concerned.

&n
bsp; He rubbed his forehead as the van bounced over a country road through an outer suburb. He knew he had to regard Cynthia’s kidnapping, and now her semi-consensual participation in a game of Discipline whose true nature still lay shrouded in mystery, with dispassion. His even demeanor, however, had begun to slip.

  Guardsmen and Ostia girls who took up with one another had to talk about this eventuality. Indeed, the Guard required it. Life in the Pretorian Guard for the single Guardsman presented a nearly endless series of sexual possibilities, with a nearly endless series of gorgeous, submissive young women. Single Ostia girls had the same opportunities in reverse, with the added wrinkle that their assignments more often than not involved submitting to powerful men outside the Guard—typically at the ‘Ostia parties’ for which the model agency/escort service was best known.

  When a Guardsman and an Ostia girl formed a couple, the pater of their region and the highest ranking Ostia agent sat down with them. In Cynthia and David’s case, that had been Sarah and Robert Bennett, in New York, though the unusual circumstances of Cynthia’s recruitment through her service to Herrier had complicated the matter somewhat: their cover as minions of Herrier had meant they couldn’t make their way to New York until their honeymoon.

  Nevertheless, Sarah and Robert had spoken to them as if they had not just vowed eternal fidelity.

  “Someday,” Sarah had said to Cynthia, “and maybe someday very soon, you are going to have to submit to another man, possibly while David watches and possibly while he is far away.”

  In the van on the way to Herrier’s chateau, David could see, clearly in his mind’s eye, Cynthia’s frowning eyes and the little nod she had given.

  “And you,” Robert had said to David, “are going to have to give into that dark fantasy I think you have—just as I do—of sharing your wife’s beautiful body with other men, to prove to both of you how much you value each other.”

  Despite all the Guard training he had already received, David had started to protest.

  Sarah had cut him off.

  “We’re trying to save the world here, and we’re all very kinky. Call it polyamory, or call it ethical non-monogamy, or call it open marriage for the salvation of civilization, but this meeting is to tell both of you that you can leave this life if you need to, but if you stay...”

  Robert had finished his wife’s sentence. “You’re both going to fuck other people, when necessary, and you’re going to let yourselves enjoy it, because you wouldn’t be here if your bodies didn’t crave what your mission will demand of you.”

  Perhaps the best proof that Jules Herrier held a less enlightened view both of the world energy markets and of dominant sexuality had come in the rather puritanical way he had treated David and Cynthia’s marriage while they remained under cover in his employment. David had never been called upon to share Cynthia, though they had regularly attended Herrier’s evenings, where Herrier took delight in sharing his current concubine, and most of his guests did the same with their own bed girls.

  “Oh, they are American,” the magnate would say. “And they are married.” The laughter that greeted this declaration would turn Cynthia’s face red, but it would also arouse her greatly, perhaps because of the polite request—really a command—he would usually give next. “David, why don’t you show us how Americans fuck?”

  Though Herrier had treated her in some ways as a modest married woman, the fact hadn’t exempted her from the most important requirement of his evenings, that the girls remain upon their knees, and that they be denied clothing except for the special silken cloak that a man could easily flick aside to gain whatever access he liked. David would make Cynthia put her face to the carpet, and he would move the cloak aside, so hard for her that his cock seemed to spring from his pants when he pulled them down. He would straddle her, holding her hips high, and use his bent, muscular legs to drive hard into her soaking pussy, while Herrier’s guests applauded,

  But neither of them had been called upon to share the other, until now. Closing his eyes, so that he couldn’t see the capital letters unscroll themselves under the picture of the torch-lit grass and the leg of the fucking block in the players’ pavilion, he listened in his headset to the digitally enhanced but still barely audible moans of his wife under the hands of the man with whom Herrier, not David, had shared her.

  “That’s it, whore,” Fredricks said. “Move that arse. It hurts, doesn’t it? You’re a little traitor, I hear, and you got a sore bottom for it.”

  “She’ll come if you go on like that much longer,” Herrier said coolly. “I know that treasonous little quim very well indeed.”

  Cynthia whimpered in a tone David knew much too well: Fredricks had taken his hand away.

  She said something that David’s ears couldn’t make into a word. He opened his eyes to look at his laptop screen.

  Cynthia Mancini: Please.

  “Please what, whore?” Fredricks said in the most cultured, ironic way David could imagine.

  David closed his eyes, but again Cynthia’s words eluded him, though the tone didn’t. Not in the slightest. His wife needed cock, and David’s cock was still far away. He took a deep breath through his nose and opened his eyes.

  Cynthia Mancini: Please, in my mouth.

  “Good girl,” David mouthed, without even whispering it. “I love you.”

  “Do you consent,” Fredricks asked, “to serve me as my cunt, and to accept what I give, according to the rules of the game of Discipline?”

  David imagined the deep crease on Cynthia’s forehead. She moaned; Fredricks had put his hand back.

  “Yes, sir.” David couldn’t actually hear the phonemes that composed the words, but the cadence had engraved itself on his brain, ever since the first time Cynthia had said Yes, sir, to him.

  “Good girl,” her husband mouthed again. She needed no permission—or, rather, in that meeting with the Bennetts, they had given each other all the permission they needed to give, forever. As long as they communicated honestly with one another, the unusual sexual responsibilities of their mutual career would always find both of them ready to rise and to do what needed doing—or to take what needed taking.

  Sebastian Fredricks: I claim you, cunt.

  David hadn’t even heard the man’s voice over the thudding of his heart.

  Cynthia, claimed for a game of Discipline. David looked at the video window that showed the feed from the tree. A board in a grid like a chessboard. Home squares in the corners. Players in their pavilion, any sight of the board blocked by the tent’s single wall, directing naked young women on the board with a gamemaster to conduct the pieces to their next square and declare the conflicts.

  Contests of mastery, in the players’ pavilion: the true point of the game, it seemed to David, though Jeremy Hobson, the Selecta executive who had briefed David on the game, maintained that the strategy mattered more.

  From the room just off the garden, Herrier said, “Let’s have Mr. Mercator claim my naughty little Barbara, now.”

  Oh, fuck. Had they caught Jean or had he somehow inserted himself into the scene to help Barbara and Cynthia? Were all their covers blown?

  Jean’s voice spoke in French too fast for David to catch, and he glanced down at the screen, where the translation appeared almost immediately.

  Male (25+): I still don’t understand, sir? What am I to do?

  “English, if you please, my friend. You are to obtain young Barbara’s consent to serve you in the game,” Herrier said, “in the same way you just saw Mr. Fredricks claim Cynthia. Look, he is going to claim her other holes, now—first the cunt and then that adorable anus I trained myself, before Selecta decided to infiltrate my affairs.”

  David gritted his teeth as Cynthia’s moans came again to the mic, through the French doors. He worked past the distraction of knowing a British financier had just begun fucking his wife to try to focus on the new intelligence they had just obtained concerning Herrier. Since the unsuccessful operation to destroy the Gro
upe Synergistique and the extraction of Cynthia and David, the Guard hadn’t known what precisely Herrier knew or had guessed about the Mancinis—or the Guard itself. Now it seemed clear that Herrier thought Selecta responsible for the infiltration.

  Jean’s voice, then, just loud enough on the feed for David to catch, “Is this what you need, slut?”

  David felt his eyes widen a little. Jean had adopted, with spine-tingling accuracy, the tone of a dominant young man who had just discovered his girlfriend’s submissive desires.

  Barbara’s moans joined Cynthia’s on the audio feed, higher in pitch and more rapid in pace, as Jean must be working her between her thighs.

  “That is indeed what she needs, my friend, along with strict correction when she is naughty,” Herrier said. “And tonight I am going to allow you to give both to her. Mr. Logan and Mr. Granby, why not begin claiming your pretty young wives?”

  “Watch, Henry,” said the voice that David recognized now as Kevin Logan’s. “It’s easier with a girl who’s used to her husband’s firm hand.”

  The sounds became very confused. Three girls’ submissive sexual noises came over the feed, and then four. Jean asked, “Do you consent?” and Barbara said, “Yes, sir.”

  Still another masculine voice, which must by process of elimination belong to Henry Granby said in a bemused tone, “And what does this have to do with Mithras?”

  Kevin began to reply, but Herrier obscured the beginning of the American’s words with his own question to Fredricks, “How is that bottom? Still tight on a man’s shaft?”

  David moved his chin in a jerk first to the left and then to the right, shaking off the rage and trying to hear Kevin’s response to Henry Granby.

  Fredricks said, “It’s like velvet. Her husband hasn’t widened her too much.”

  Cynthia gave a piercing cry of shame at that. Good girl, David said in his mind. I love you.

  Then the end of Kevin’s answer to Granby’s question became audible, and David’s eyes narrowed as the American’s words only deepened the mystery of the Logans’ conduct over the past several months.