by Emily Tilton
Joe had secured her in place on his bed, that first night, when she had watched him fuck Mary and all the strange feelings Ma Gantner had awoken in her, with her wooden spoon and her tender hand, had seemed to boil up in Alice’s heart, and further down.
Soon. Soon, they would make her take off this lacy robe that made Alice feel more naked than if she had nothing on at all. They would make her lie down over the bench, bottom up as if for whipping.
And they would whip her, if she resisted. Miss Reynolds, who walked very stiffly today because of the caning about which the girls whispered to one another, had told Alice that. Once Alice had made the promises, the man to whom she belonged would punish her whenever she showed any reluctance to provide him with the pleasure he deserved as her master, her natural man. If Alice hesitated to obey him, when he commanded her to lay herself down for his cock to enter first her pussy and then her bottom, the men would come forward and do it for her, and then the special town strap that hung on the side of the rostrum would rise and fall until Joe felt satisfied that Alice would not defy him again.
She had no wish to defy him, after the previous night, over his knee and in his arms… after he had spent in her mouth and then kissed her, praised her, held her.
She had no wish to disobey, but…
That tiny spark of rebellion that had seemed to rise from the ashes even as she complied with his shameful command to suck his penis, as she accepted his lewd silencing of her with his manhood when she wanted to feel him moving inside her down where it would answer her real natural need, the real hunger nature had placed in her young body and made her crave even the terrible prospect of taking all the cocks in the bunkhouse, returned as she looked at the bench. Shouldn’t Miss Alice Rhodes be whipped before her master fucked her, to show that she didn’t mean to stop being a problem?
Irma said her final, “Yes, Elder.”
Elder Shaw said, “Can any natural man show just cause why the elders of Brownsville should not award the right of the phallus over Miss Alice Rhodes to Mr. Joseph Smithers, and over Miss Irma Fenton to Mr. Kenneth Sweeney? Or why these young ladies should not now be bound to the town benches and used for the enjoyment of their new masters, erect penises penetrating their vaginas and anuses for the first time?”
For a moment Alice thought she herself might object, and give as the just cause the same problematic idea that had caused so much trouble: that she knew she needed it, but she could never willingly tell a soul about that need, and so shouldn’t they send her away to the Indians?
Then she realized that the elder had not addressed her at all, and that if she spoke up they would almost certainly bind her to a town bench immediately, gag her to keep her quiet, and whip her with the town strap before they turned her over to Joe for fucking. The thought made her knees tremble, drew a tiny whimper from her chest, made her burn down there so much that she could feel the shameful arousal trickle onto her thigh.
Now, she thought. It’s going to happen—
“Elder Shaw,” a voice called from the back of the meeting hall. Every head turned to see that Ken Sweeney had emerged from the men’s vestibule that mirrored the one in which Alice had been made to take off her dress and put on the nearly transparent red robe that, Miss Reynolds had explained, meant her cunt would soon shed its virginal blood. He wore a robe of his own, of black wool, much longer than Alice’s and Irma’s, and his face blazed with florid anger to match the fiery red of his hair.
“The chair recognizes Mr. Kenneth Sweeney,” Elder Shaw said levelly, though Alice thought she could hear irritation, even anger, in his voice.
Ken strode forward to the rostrum, then turned to face the assembled townspeople, male citizens and young ladies.
“I thought that I could sit down under this,” he said, clearly struggling to keep his temper under control. “I thought that I could.” He looked at Irma. “Miss Fenton, I mean no disrespect to you. You’re a lovely girl, and I mean to fuck you someday soon.”
Alice turned to see that pink had suffused the cheeks of light-brown-haired Irma. She looked none too pleased; she had hoped to be given to Vic Rottner, on whom she was mildly sweet, but had accepted the congratulations of the girls on the honor of having Ken for her master very graciously. Like many of the girls brought to Brownsville by the elders on their recruiting journeys, Irma had been destined soon to have her virginity sold at a brothel. Elder George had purchased her outright from the madam, who had in her turn acquired the girl from the orphanage where she had grown up. It seemed to make for a rather different attitude toward the question of to what natural man of Brownsville a girl would go, and it further highlighted the problem of Alice—at least to Alice herself.
Moreover, it would seem, she thought with a detachment that surprised her, to have created the problem of Alice where Ken was concerned—and perhaps Joe, as well. Miss Reynolds had already received a terrible caning, they said, for her mishandling of the problem. Now it seemed the elders themselves might bear the brunt of a rent in the hitherto utopian social fabric of their unique community.
“Mr. Sweeney…” Elder Shaw began, clearly meaning to make an attempt to placate him.
But Ken seemed to have no intention of allowing that. He glared at the elder for a moment, then turned back to the townsfolk.
“Now I’ve never been what you might call a good student, though I guess I studied Dr. Brown’s little book better ‘n I studied anything else in my whole life. Still I’m not gonna claim that I understand all that highfalutin’ stuff—I mean no disrespect, Elders,” he hastily added as he heard Elder Hilton and Elder George start to come to their feet, voicing their protest, behind him.
Ken turned to address them, a dour expression fixed on his face. “I mean no disrespect, but if’n I understand right, a natural man’s gotta do what a natural man’s gotta do is what the doctor is sayin’, and…” He turned once again to the meeting. “I gotta do this, because Miss Rhodes belongs to me even if she came to Joe Smithers first, and one thing I remember from the town bylaws the elders made us read is that I can challenge him to a test of manhood according to the rules Dr. Brown put in his little book.”
“Here, Ken—” said Elder Hilton.
“Mr. Sweeney—” started Elder Shaw.
“That’s ridiculous—” Elder George exclaimed.
The murmur that had continued throughout Ken’s angry speech grew now to what Alice, realizing now that she had become detached as a sort of preventive measure against swooning, thought an observer might call a hubbub or even a turmoil. Whispers had become pronouncements and even shouts, here and there.
The loudest shout, though, belonged to Joe, whom Alice, turning anxiously to survey the people of Brownsville, now saw emerge from the men’s vestibule in a black robe identical to Ken’s.
“Elders!” he thundered, and suddenly the room fell silent, everyone looking, along with Alice, at the broad-shouldered, bearded farmer whose eyes flashed fire as he advanced down the aisle to the front of the hall. He spoke his next words in a lower tone, and more simply, but with the same authority he had infused in the single word with which he had silenced the whole town. “I accept the challenge.”
As Joe reached the rostrum he extended his right hand to Ken. The red-haired man reluctantly took it and shook it briefly before dropping it with a bitter air.
Meanwhile, the three elders, standing in a huddle among their chairs, conferred in hushed tones.
Alice’s detachment served her well, or at least seemed to, for though part of her thought she should probably be fainting dead away, and her knees kept shaking, what she felt most strongly was the most intense curiosity of her life, to see what would happen. She wanted Joe… oh, she wanted him so much. But to have a test of manhood made, for the right of the phallus over her? Perhaps she should be swooning, but the only swoon she foresaw was the one for Joe’s handsome naked body, next to Ken’s—all covered in red fur—as they dropped their robes without even a word from the elders
and showed themselves ready for the challenge.
Elder Shaw turned when he heard the crowd begin to murmur again, at the sight of the baring of strong limbs and massive cocks. Seeing that Joe and Ken had not waited, he said to Irma and Alice, “You may sit for the moment, Miss Rhodes and Miss Fenton.”
Gratefully, Alice found the bench behind her, sat upon it. To her comfort, Irma put an arm around Alice’s shoulders, and the two sat close together, sharing that sisterly embrace in the face of the strange and alarming actions by those sometimes-very-foreign-seeming but nevertheless irresistible creatures, strong men in need of sexual release.
Elder Shaw stepped forward to the rostrum and spoke again to the citizenry. “With a challenge issued and accepted, we elders have no choice but to allow the test of manhood to proceed. As those who have studied Dr. Brown’s treatise and read the town bylaws know, the proof of a natural man’s suitability to hold the right of the phallus over a young lady stands at the very heart both of the doctor’s theories and of this town’s ideals. It is for us elders now to set the test and to judge the result. The prize sought by both men, Miss Alice Rhodes, will then be awarded to the natural man judged to have shown the greatest masculine power.”
The elder looked back at his fellow leaders, and saw them nod gravely to him.
Elder Shaw continued, “Miss Mary Jones and Miss Mae Burton, would you please come forward?”
Alice frowned as she turned to see the junior young ladies of Elder George and of Elder Hilton rise from their seats further down the front bench, one of them Alice’s best friend in Brownsville—and, frankly, the world, when Alice considered the question. Mary and Mae seemed unsurprised at the summons, and so Alice gathered that the enlistment of the elders’ second girls in such affairs must be frequent—or at least not uncommon.
“Elder George,” said Elder Shaw, “do you consent that Miss Mary Jones should be disciplined and fucked here today before the town?”
“I do,” Elder George replied.
Alice’s eyes went wide and her breath caught in her throat. Why Mary? She remembered… of course she remembered… that first night, but… here? And… by whom? She had watched Joe fuck Mary’s bottom, but that was before… before everything.
“Elder Hilton, do you consent that Miss Mae Burton should be disciplined and fucked here today before the town?”
What’s happening? What does it mean?
“I do,” said Elder Hilton.
“Mr. Sweeney, as the challenger, will go first. Bring Miss Mary Jones to the bench on the young ladies’ side of the hall, please, Mr. Sweeney.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Had Joe gone crazy, to accept the challenge when the elders would probably have simply quieted the crowd and allowed the awarding of Alice and Irma to continue? No: as he watched Ken go to Mary and take her firmly by the arm to lead her to the bench on the elders’ left, Joe knew he had done the right thing—the only thing he could have done.
Not only did the challenge call out to his dominant character so forcefully that Joe knew he would never be able to live with himself if he refused it, but from the practical standpoint of life in Brownsville from this day forward, he had no choice. If he declined the challenge, not only would the rest of the men in the town regard him as weak and even unworthy of Alice’s love—not only might Alice herself see him that way, much as she tried not to and professed the contrary—but the grumbling over the way the elders had given Miss Alice Rhodes to Mr. Joseph Smithers would seep into the fabric of the community and begin to destroy the very harmony the elders had tried to save by settling the matter this way.
But though Joe knew confidence meant everything in this kind of moment, and he knew that where natural manhood was concerned he had no cause to yield to any other man, he couldn’t completely suppress a very particular anxiety about this contest. Ken would have no difficulty dominating Mary Jones exactly as a natural man should dominate a girl: mastering her with the town strap, his big hands, and his hard cock in the sight of all. Joe, on the other hand, didn’t have any desire to master any girl but Alice Rhodes right now.
Ken had Mary in front of the bench, now, her back turned to the townsfolk and her front to the elders, who had reassumed their seats to observe the test. He was speaking quietly into her ear, his grip still firmly upon her upper arm. Joe, standing next to the rostrum, could see Mary’s face: it had looked serene when the elders had summoned her to serve in the challenge, but it reflected a little fear, now, and a great deal of arousal. She bit her lip, and her adorable nose twitched at the dominant words the proudly naked red-haired man spoke; the promises he must be making of discipline and hard fucking.
“Mr. Smithers,” said Elder Shaw, “please bring Miss Burton to the bench on the men’s side of the hall.”
Joe took a deep breath through his nose and narrowed his eyes at Mae, standing at the head of the center aisle. He must do this, for Alice, as paradoxical as that seemed. Beautiful Miss Mae Burton, second young lady of Elder Hilton, looked back at him, and he could see in her face that she had no idea that Joe’s heart and body had divided against one another. She bit her lip just as apprehensively as Mary Jones just had for Ken—and Joe hadn’t even approached her yet. That spoke well of his chances: clearly to accept the challenge as forthrightly as he had gave him some advantage—Ken had meant to make Joe look weak, but instead he had made him look strong, and that couldn’t but have an effect on petite Mae in the pink robe that set off her ash-blonde hair so well.
Suddenly a passage from Dr. Brown’s treatise came to his mind, and it showed to him the course of action he must now take, for himself, for Alice, and for the town. The idea carried risk, if the elders didn’t interpret the doctor’s principles the same way it now seemed right to Joe to do, but having seen this path Joe knew he could follow no other.
In the section concerning The natural man’s so-called ‘waywardness’ Dr. Brown had written,
As we are embarked upon the study of erotic matters as they are, and not as we would have them, let us not allow the so-called morality of our society to mislead us on a central point. A natural man is aroused by the prospect of enjoying a submissive girl whether or not she belongs to him. No matter how many moralists and religionists tell us that some providential supernatural power has given unto the race of men the ability somehow to curb this arousal, the experience of every man reading this treatise, as well as the evidence of my extensive research with the assistance of natural men and submissive young ladies, will shout the opposite. A natural man may not wish to find his penis erect at the idea of disciplining and enjoying a young lady not his own, but that intellectual choice will not keep his manhood from swelling in order to ready him for sexual congress according to the dictates of nature.
His providence-given intellect will, to be sure, allow him to resist the temptation in which he may be placed. The natural man will never knowingly abridge the rights of another natural man by using a young lady for his pleasure, or even troubling her, without the permission of the man who holds the right of the phallus over her. Nevertheless, if he should be so circumstanced as to have that permission, or to establish his right of the phallus over the girl in question, the claims of morality, nature herself avers, must not hold him back.
The natural man must, however, take the same care he exercises in training a young lady with pleasure as well as with punishment, to pay due heed to the feelings of those young ladies he may already have under his protection. He must, above all, be honest with them.
Should the reader draw back, and call me perverse, saying to himself that he—who is pleased to call himself a natural man—would never think of wounding his sweet girl’s heart with the disclosure of the other amours into which his natural character will inevitably lead him; should he say “You must be joking, Dr. Brown, if you think I should enlist my Josephine’s favor for my tryst with that young hoyden Deirdre who treads the stage so gracefully that my cock stands at the mere mention of her name!
”; should he find me mad for the suggestion that he bring Josephine to the tryst, so that she may assist in the opening of Deirdre’s hindquarters for the insertion of his penis in the actress’ inviting anus, let him only consider this: if he be the natural man he professes himself, he must have told his sweet Josephine already of his masculine right to lend her to his friends for their enjoyment, and to enjoy other girls as he chooses. But perhaps he has not? Perhaps he has some way to travel, before he may call himself truly natural. Let him consider my advice, for if Josephine is the girl he thinks her, she will discover, if given the opportunity, that opening an actress’ bottom for her master’s cock makes her own arousal so urgent that she will beg to be allowed to have his penis in her own bottom next.
Joe loved Alice, and he wanted her to know how sincere, and how urgent, his intention to take care of her would always be. But Miss Mae Burton had an expression on her face that said she needed his firm hand and his hard cock, and as he advanced toward her he felt that cock growing as it swayed a little from side to side. He saw Mae’s eyes go down to his waist, watched them grow round, as her lips parted and she swallowed hard.
He stood before her now, and he did something Ken had neglected to do, perhaps because Joe’s ready acceptance of the challenge had caught him off guard: Joe reached out and took the sheer pink fabric of the lacy robe and ripped it down off Mae’s shoulders, then let it drop to the floor.
A little gasp sounded from several throats in the young ladies’ section of the hall, and a louder one from Alice. A pang went to Joe’s heart to hear that, and then, as the way he might put Dr. Brown’s wisdom into action came to him in a flash, that same heart skipped a beat. Slowly and deliberately, he turned to look at Alice, as at the same time he took Mae by the arm. In his sweetheart’s face he saw a look that took him back in a flash to the first night in the cabin, before he had any inkling he would fall in love with the girl who had come out of the snow. Alice’s brow had the same furrow that had occupied it when, bound to the wall, she had watched him fuck Mary Jones’ bottom: the look of a girl who wishes she could pretend she had not grown wet down below her belly, where a good girl would never feel such heat at such a very shameful sight.