The Shame Gambit

by Emily Tilton

  Jean wished he did.

  “Very well,” Henry said. “As long as you assure me that Jenny and I won’t feature on the video.”

  Jenny Granby blushed so deeply that Jean could see her color even in the torchlight.

  Kevin laughed. “Of course. I won’t get my phone until very late in the game, and I’ll show you exactly what I’m shooting. Even if Jenny is involved, I promise that only Jessica’s face will appear.”

  Fredricks, who had listened patiently to the conversation thus far, chose the moment to return matters to the salacious. “Perhaps your wife’s face will be between Jessica’s legs, but if she does what you tell her, and pleasures the cunt properly with her head down, no one will know who she is.”

  Jenny gave a tiny cry in response to the degrading words. She reached out her hand to clutch at her husband’s blue robe as her eyes went from Fredricks upward to Henry.

  Henry looked down sternly at her, then turned to his fellow players. “Jenny’s never pleasured another girl,” he said. He looked down at her again. “But she’s known for a while that the time would come when she would have to, or lay herself down for a sound belt whipping to help her reconsider. Haven’t you, sweetheart?”

  The expression on the young wife’s face—the blush and the wrinkled nose—almost made Jean forget about the threat this game meant to the global economy. Jenny gave a little nod.

  “And with that,” Herrier said, smiling, “let us begin. Gentlemen, follow me with your girls. We will place the pieces on the board.”

  * * *

  Having received only a short briefing about the game, Jean found it easy to pretend the complete ignorance his cover required. Herrier directed him to the corner square the magnate called a1, as in the algebraic chess notation with which Jean had some familiarity. Fredricks led Cynthia to h1, in the opposite corner.

  As the Green player led the Ostia operative there, Jean risked his first glance in her direction since Herrier had led him into the room where four naked female backsides had confronted him, for claiming over the fucking blocks. Cynthia, crawling behind Fredricks, turned her head at that moment to look at the others on the board, and for an instant her eyes met Jean’s. He kept his face immobile, as if he had never seen her before tonight, and she did the same, but he found a surge of hope, as well as courage, in his station chief’s gaze: her blue eyes had in them not submission, despite the terrible whipping she had received over the block from Madame du Gare and the hard fucking Fredricks had bestowed, but calculation.

  Cynthia Mancini, at least, thought she could extract the Logans, willing or unwilling. Jean felt certain he could see that resolution in her face, and it made him realize that he had given way, for a few moments, to a passive acceptance of Herrier’s terms for this strange encounter.

  Follow your dominant instincts, he told himself, in this game as when you tamed Barbara.

  He looked down at where his nupta crouched at his feet, and saw her face troubled by her own understandable lack of comprehension of the situation. She looked around the board, her face turning rapidly as if she meant to take in each player and each piece and somehow bring them all into a semblance of sense.

  Jean shifted the handle of her leash to his left hand, so he could put his right hand down upon her golden hair and cup the back of her head. Barbara gave a little cry and turned her face up toward his, eyes wide.

  Saying only what he could say as the economics fellow who hadn’t had the dominance to hold onto a beautiful young woman like Barbara Edwards, he murmured, “We’re going to be fine, darling.”

  She returned his little smile, but then her face grew troubled and she turned away, twisting her face over her shoulder to look at Herrier. The movement could represent maintenance of her cover as the girl who acknowledged the magnate’s superior dominance and erotic possession of her—or, Jean thought with a pang to his heart—that could truly be the case. He had little fear Barbara would turn and become Herrier’s minion, but whether she would want to belong to Jean after this mission... that glance at her billionaire master seemed to tell him that her words of parting, her telling him she needed a stricter man, had carried more truth than either of them might wish.

  Herrier had just directed the Granbys to a8. The Logans, apparently knowing where Purple started, had already taken up their position on h8. The magnate-turned-gamemaster turned to look at Barbara, his eyes narrowing. Then the steel-gray eyes of the man at the center of the game board rose to meet Jean’s own.

  Jean read in Herrier’s expression such self-satisfaction that the part of his mind devoted to maintaining his cover almost made him drop Barbara’s leash and rush the magnate with the intent of landing a right cross to his aristocratic face. At the same time, though, the operative at the top level of his brain gained confidence from the knowledge that Herrier underestimated him: Jean just had to make sure he continued to appear unable to master Barbara effectively. Right now, that meant, Jean supposed, pretending too much concern for her feelings about what he commanded her to do as his piece in the game.

  “Hey,” he said, and she turned to look up at him. “You alright?”

  Barbara frowned, clearly taken aback, for Jean had never asked her this kind of question before. Then her eyes widened for a second, and she responded sarcastically, “Yeah, I’m fine,” with a toss of her head. A glance back to Herrier told Jean that the Frenchman had noted the interaction, and his smug smile had only grown.

  Good, Jean thought. I still have a chance to save the world... even if I lose Barbara. He pretended to himself, for a moment, that he wouldn’t rather have Barbara than a softly landed civilization, then gave up. He would soldier on and keep his vows, but in the end it might matter to the rest of the Guard, but nothing would matter much to him if he lost his lovely American nupta.

  “Players,” Herrier said. “You may remove the leashes and follow me. Girls, you may stand up, now. I will return with the penalty markers and the game’s first moves.”

  Jean leaned down and unclipped the leather leash from Barbara’s collar, then helped her stand up. As himself, he would have put his other hand on the back of her head, now, and kissed the girl deeply and forcefully, but he settled—hoping that Herrier would see—for an uncertain peck on the cheek.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jenny watched, trembling, as Henry followed Mr. Herrier across the game board and into the players’ pavilion. The torches, two on each side of the board, shed broad pools of yellow and orange light, but the corners where the four naked girls now stood lay in the darkest parts of the game board.

  Jenny thought each side of the board must be about eighty feet long. Each square would be ten feet on a side, then. And the area of the whole playing field, here in this French garden, naked, outside, in the middle of the night with a collar around her neck to which her husband had attached a leash...

  Her mind kept trying to do the math: eighty times eighty equals...

  But her forehead creased, and she looked to the left, where Barbara stood in her red collar.

  Eighty times eighty is...

  Mr. Fredricks had said Jenny might have her face between Jessica’s legs when Mr. Logan took a video.

  Eighty... But this is France, and they use meters. A meter is a little more than a yard. Eighty feet divided by...

  Jenny knew that some men who dominated their wives liked to watch them have sex with other women. Max had said something about it, which Jenny had hardly heard because of the way the idea made her face burn. Then, in Rome, she had seen husbands and masters doing it, at the party, making their wives and bed girls kiss each other, even down there. Jenny had thought she might die of embarrassment.

  How could Henry consider making Jenny do that?

  Eighty feet equals how many yards? Then I’ll divide by three, and add a little, and then I’ll multiply...

  Jenny looked to her right, toward the other corner, h8, where Jessica Logan stood, wearing the purple collar. The young wife bit h
er lip and heard a tiny whimper come from her throat. She felt grateful at least that since she was some big number of meters away from the older girl, who had pushed Barbara’s mouth down over Mr. Logan’s penis, Jessica couldn’t hear the whimper.

  But the wife in the purple collar looked back steadily at Jenny, with some kind of message in her blue eyes that made Jenny’s knees tremble. Who were the Logans? They must have something to do with the favor Maia and Gordon had asked, in wanting Henry and Jenny to come to Monsieur Herrier’s wicked party.

  Jenny felt her chest heave with the swelling inside her of an awareness she wanted to push away, of why it made her blush to even to think about two girls having sex, let alone watching it at a party... let alone being told by her husband that she... that Jenny herself... would have to do it for the first time with another girl.

  With the girl who had made the other girl suck her husband’s cock, the girl who looked back at Jenny now so steadily, as if she meant to tell the young wife that, yes, she looked forward to receiving pleasure from her inexperienced mouth... and that she had something else to tell Jenny, something even more important, something she had to understand and to convey.

  Who were the Logans?

  Monsieur Herrier came back only a minute or two after he had left. In the flickering light Jenny saw that he carried in each hand two red Xs, made it appeared out of plastic, from the light way he carried them. He went first to where Barbara stood, giving her what seemed to Jenny like the kind of look she got from Henry when she was naughty at the country club—the stern eyes, and their up-and-down sweep of her body, that told her she would go over the pillows in the guest room when they got home. It made Jenny shiver to see it happen even to another girl, and she felt compassion for Barbara, whom Monsieur Herrier seemed to have put in an impossible situation.

  How could a girl’s master punish her for having sex with her old boyfriend, when he himself had commanded that the old boyfriend be made part of this degrading game? Now, if Jenny had read the look correctly, Monsieur Herrier meant to whip Barbara for it, even on top of the punishment the housekeeper had given. Jenny fidgeted in her square, and put her hand back to rub her own bottom as she became aware again of the soreness Madame du Gare had left there with her awful strap, just because Jenny had waited to listen to what the other girls had to say. Monsieur Herrier was so strict... how could Barbara endure it?

  The gamemaster put one of the red Xs in a square that, if she had understood what the men had said about the board, must be b3. He had said something about penalty markers, hadn’t he? Jenny wondered what would happen if Henry moved her onto one of the Xs. A penalty, surely, but what did that mean? Her mind filled with wicked thoughts, and it sent a humiliating quiver through all of her, especially down between her legs.

  Eighty feet, divided by three, plus a little. Then, area is length times width. Eighty times eighty, but not, because Monsieur Herrier uses meters, and so if he canes a girl his cane is probably a meter long, and not a yard.

  Jenny felt her face go hot again, as the gamemaster went over toward Cynthia. She had also belonged to him, hadn’t she? Like Barbara did now? Jenny didn’t understand, but Cynthia seemed almost as difficult to understand as Jessica. Did she remember Cynthia from the Rome party? Jenny suddenly wondered if she had seen Maia and Cynthia together there, both clad in elegant haute couture, both wearing necklaces that looked very much like collars.

  Jenny couldn’t see how Monsieur Herrier looked at Cynthia, but she remembered how the older wife had cried out as the housekeeper whipped her, so much harder and for longer than she had whipped Jenny. She remembered how Cynthia had moaned under the cock of a man not her husband, the man Monsieur Herrier had decided should claim her body for the game. How could a girl, like Cynthia or Barbara, bear to belong to that kind of man?

  Her whole body shuddered, as the magnate put another X on h3, because the way he moved his body in his elegant suit told her that some girls needed a very strict master, one who had them whipped by the housekeeper simply because he liked to see how their backsides looked with pretty red stripes across them.

  Because he liked to fuck bottoms he had marked that way.

  The way Henry marks my little bottom with his belt, when I’ve been naughty at the country club, before he fucks me there, to teach me to obey him. Just like he did when I was strapped down with the other naked girls, over the fucking blocks, his hands on my hips, holding me so much more firmly than even leather could do, making me need every thrust of his hardness.

  Jenny realized her jaw had dropped open as she watched Monsieur Herrier walk toward Jessica Logan and drop the third X on f7, and her breath had started to come in rough little pants. Her right hand had come to rest on the top of her thigh, the ball of her thumb over her hipbone and her fingers rubbing gently but far from idly over the very start of the crease that led down to the place Henry kept so bare and smooth for his pleasure.

  The gamemaster exchanged a few laughing words with Jessica, too soft for Jenny to hear. A smile broke out on the blonde American’s face, but Jenny thought it had a tension to it that made her again wonder what really lay behind all this. She hadn’t followed much of what Kevin Logan had said about the world economy and Relicorp and Selecta, but it seemed to her that Jessica’s face had a message in it that somehow belied all of that—as if the movements of energy and money and corporate structure paled in comparison to the real reason the Logans had come to France.

  Monsieur Herrier turned to walk toward Jenny. She saw the dominant look in his gray eyes as he moved through a pool of yellow torchlight and she heard another little whimper come from her chest. Her fingertips moved lower, along the side of the tender triangle where her husband had given her such a hard fucking, over the block.

  How could Barbara and Cynthia submit to a man so strict, and even capricious, in his discipline and his masterful use of their pretty bodies?

  Jenny bit her lip as the French billionaire came toward her, because she knew. She knew that if Henry wanted to treat her that way, and make her kiss Jessica Logan’s pussy while Jessica pushed Jenny’s little face down into the musky, shameful place where another girl’s mouth shouldn’t go...

  Eighty feet is twenty-six meters, and ten feet is nine meters, and twenty-six times twenty-six...

  “Hello, Jenny,” said Monsieur Herrier. “When I tell you to move, in a few moments, you may go ahead and change your square.” Jenny blinked as the Frenchman put the last red X down on c8. “We’ll do two moves at once, now, because the first time a piece may enter a penalty square is on the second move.”

  Jenny felt her brow crease, and she nodded hesitantly to show that she thought she understood.

  “Wh-what happens if...”

  “Don’t worry about that, my dear,” Monsieur Herrier replied. “You’ll find out.” His eyes held hers for a long moment. Jenny bit her lip as she realized the magnate was enjoying her blush, and the way he could dominate her without touching her.

  She almost sobbed, as she looked down at his shiny black shoes on the grass. Oh, yes, I know how they can bear it, she thought, as she suddenly realized that her fingers had crept even closer to her aching pussy, and snatched them away.

  “It’s alright, my dear,” Monsieur Herrier said in a gentle voice that still had in it a hint of degradation. “Look at me.”

  Jenny raised her eyes, feeling both that by obeying the gamemaster she had just betrayed Henry and that Henry would surely whip her if she did not obey Monsieur Herrier. The contradictory ideas brought a tiny sob to her lips as she regarded the gray eyes once again.

  “I promise you will do fine, Jenny Granby,” the billionaire said softly. “You will have no choice.”

  Jenny felt her eyes go wide and her hands clench convulsively. She didn’t think she could bear to be under those eyes a moment more. She would have to run away, run to Henry. Then Monsieur Herrier turned away, though, and moved back toward the center of the board. Jenny realized that though th
e corners of the board were in shadow, the place in the middle, where d4, e4, d5, and e5 met, had the least light of anywhere on the board. Monsieur Herrier looked to her like a looming shadow, though as he turned to deliver his instructions to all four girls his eyes glittered in his face.

  “Red to b2, then c2,” he said, and Barbara, with a frightened look on her face, went to stand where he had placed the first X. Jenny realized the gamemaster was speaking at a low enough volume that the players wouldn’t hear, and she suddenly understood about the pavilion in a way she hadn’t before: this game wasn’t like chess, where both players always knew where all the pieces were—Henry wouldn’t know where any of his opponents were moving, and Monsieur Herrier’s job was to direct the pieces so that the players had to guess at each other’s locations.

  Most of all, Henry didn’t know where the red Xs lay.

  “Green to h2, then h3. Purple to h7, then g6.”

  Monsieur Herrier turned to Jenny. She looked at the red X on c8, and then at Cynthia, who hadn’t, Jenny could see, played the game before, gazing down at the penalty marker in her own square with an expression of dismay.

  “Blue to b8...”

  Oh, no... b8 was one square from the X. Jenny couldn’t hold back a little cry of fear.

  “...then c7.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Henry heard Herrier, from the other side of the pavilion’s one solid wall of canvas, announce, “Penalty for Green.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked Kevin, who sat in the purple area right next to Henry’s blue one, each player’s area marked by a banner of his color behind an armchair. Their backs, as they sat, were toward the side of the tent that concealed the game board from their eyes, and Henry found that the nape of his neck had grown oddly sensitive, and strangely connected to his libido, as he thought about Jenny, naked and collared there in the square to which he had just dispatched her.