Innocence Examined

by Emily Tilton

  “Alright, Caroline,” said Dr. Fairleigh, “it is time to practice your entrance.” In those few words, watching his face and seeing that he struggled to master himself as he spoke, Anne knew that he loved Caroline, and that he would try to prevent this perverse show. To her horror, Anne realized that a part of her was disappointed. That feeling, however, made Anne resolve then and there to assist in the prevention of the spectacle at any cost.

  Dr. Fairleigh took Caroline by the hand and led her to the back of the hall, where it opened out from the foyer, with its immense spiral staircase. “Caroline will come down the stairs,” Sir Gerald explained, “completely naked, with her hands bound in front of her.”

  Dr. Fairleigh had clearly informed Caroline herself of the same specification, for as everyone looked out through the immense opening of the open double sliding doors, they saw her, head bowed, hands bound with a thong of leather. Silently she descended the last few steps, led by Dr. Fairleigh, who held a sort of leash that was attached to the binding around her wrists.

  “Slowly, girl,” called Mr. Vance. Caroline slowed her step.

  “Her physician will accompany her,” said Sir Gerald, “to show the natural men present that what we do here is founded entirely on scientific principles. As she approaches, Dr. Brown will announce what shall occur, and make an appropriate speech in celebration of the occasion of Caroline’s first fucking, laying out the principles of his revolutionary theory.”

  Caroline, led by Dr. Fairleigh, had reached the front of the stage, having walked through the midst of the chairs that represented the audience.

  “During that time,” said Mr. Vance, “you girls will be sucking the cocks of the most important guests, who will sit in the front row.”

  “Oh, Charles,” Charlotte said, as always refusing to admit that she needed exactly what Mr. Vance gave her.

  “Hush, Charlotte,” he said. “You have been practicing, and you are far better than you were.”

  Charlotte could only close her eyes and bow her head. Anne pictured her going from lap to lap, struggling to please the invited guests who took their cocks out eagerly at the approach of the naked girl upon her knees. Again she felt that dominant thrill that it seemed Caroline had awakened in her.

  Dr. Fairleigh led Caroline to the divan and gently made her lie down upon it. They all watched in silence as he strapped her wrists and ankle to the corners.

  “Then,” said Sir Gerald, “Once Fairleigh has removed Caroline’s chastity belt, to display her cunny and bottom to the audience, I shall remove my robe and declare my natural right to fuck my ward. Dr. Fairleigh will ask Caroline if she acknowledges that right, and when she does, I will commence to enjoy her. After I have spent, Vance and I will change places, and he will have her. Then Dr. Brown, then Dr. Fairleigh. After that, Anne will lead the man whose cock she is sucking to the divan, then Charlotte will do the same, then Mary. After each man has been brought to fuck Caroline, the girl who brought him will go and suck the next man’s cock, to prepare him, also, to enjoy Caroline.”

  Caroline’s face was turned away from Anne, but she could see the girl’s shoulders rising and falling with terrible quickness. In fear? Sadness? Excitement?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Late that night, James went to find Caroline in her dungeon cell. Vance had decreed she would lodge there until her defloration ceremony, and that she would not, from thenceforth, be given her daily climax. As with practically everything Vance decreed, James could not deny that such an ordinance excited his natural tendencies. Too, he had seen on Caroline’s face, as she looked at him for confirmation of Vance’s declaration, how it aroused her to be sent to the dungeon thus. But Vance had clearly also done it because he wanted to hold a key to Caroline’s body that trumped the key Fairleigh held: Vance had requested of Sir Gerald, and had been given, the key to the dungeon cells. Not wishing to overplay whatever hand he held, Fairleigh had not requested that key, thinking it would be immaterial, because when the time came to steal Caroline away, she would not of course be locked in the dungeon.

  Vance had seen to it, however, that that was exactly what happened, and James, taken by surprise, had decided it was better not to protest. He and Vance had locked themselves into a silent war; James’ only hope was that Vance did not imagine just how far James would go to save Caroline from the coming grand occasion.

  And James would have waited, too, until he was certain what he meant to do was right, but then, that morning, the post had brought a letter from Dr. Brown that threw him into confusion.

  Fairleigh, I shan’t mince words. I have deceived you, though I suspect you have already seen through my deception, it having been engaged in not truly to make a fool of you, but of Vance. Or, rather, not even to make a fool of him, but to persuade him that the time has come to change his policy and with it that of Carruthers. I write now, taking the slight risk that Vance may intercept this epistle (that which, if it should occur, would, I think, only alert him to my stratagem a few days early, and perhaps make our negotiations a little more difficult, but would not, I think, blow up my plans), to ensure that you do not try to elope with Miss Hollins. It has never been my intention that she should undergo the ceremony I proposed, which proposal I made only to entice Vance to allow you entrance into Sir Gerald’s house. I cannot, for fear of the letter’s interception, however, tell you the extent of the stratagem. You must trust me, as you value the truth of my theory. I can offer you one surety, perhaps: though others may not have read the sixth section of my essay very carefully, I assure you that I take it as of the utmost importance. I am, until we meet, your obedient servant, Brown.

  The sixth section of On the necessity of men’s exercising their natural rights in erotic matters concerned what Brown called ‘affection,’ and its relation to men’s enforcement of their erotic wills upon young women whom they have taken into their possession. The section was brief, but very pointed.

  Such bonds of affection as form between a natural man and a young woman, as are called in conventional morality ‘romantic,’ are not to be eschewed by natural men, for nature decrees through them that the natural man must love and cherish the object of his affection, over whom he exercises the right of his phallus. Nature has indeed decreed no sweeter gift than this tender affection, and where it exists, all natural men must feel their obligation to uphold it. And as long as the traditional legal and financial concerns of matrimony remain in force in society, there will be good reason for natural men to make marriages along these affectionate lines. Moreover, though natural men may wish to delay their young women’s childbearing, such childbearing is, and ought to be, a girl’s recompense for the natural right of her master to enjoy her.

  James had reread this passage directly after reading Brown’s letter. He had skimmed over it the first time he read the essay, thinking it was a sop thrown to any conventional reader who might be horrified at the idea of men doing as Vance and Carruthers had done. He suspected Vance had regarded it the same way.

  But, read literally, the passage seemed to indicate that when a man fell in love with a girl, he should have the right to appeal to all his fellow natural men to help put him in possession of that girl, should she wish to belong to him.

  “Caroline,” he called now, softly, through the grating in the door of her cell.

  “James?” Her voice came back to him.

  “Yes, my darling,” he said. The little cell was pitch-black except for the single ray of light that fell on the middle of the floor, from the light on the stairs that led down from the hidden door in the library. Now he heard Caroline get up and move into that light, and he drew breath to see her naked but for the black leather that imprisoned her charms, to which he held the key—a fact that never failed to give him a thrill and stiffen his cock when he considered it, whether Caroline were nigh or not.

  Since the night of the ceremony that marked the beginning of Caroline’s role as observer, when Sir Gerald and Vance had shared Mary, with i
ts enchanting sequel in James’ bedchamber, they had not been able to exchange any communication about their love for one another beyond the very lowest whispers, until that afternoon when James had taken her up the stairs to rehearse her entrance. Even when he had brought her to her daily spend, he had been afraid that Anne or Charlotte might bring a tale to Sir Gerald or to Vance, and so all he felt he might do was whisper, “darling” in her ear.

  Then, during the rehearsal, as he led her up the stairs and bound her hands together, he had spoken as rapidly as he could. “Don’t be frightened. I have reason to think that you and I may be permitted to wed, and that this terrible ceremony will not take place.”

  “What?” she had said, raising her voice despite herself. Tears came into her eyes. “Oh, James.”

  “You would like that?”

  “Oh, yes, but…”

  James felt his brow furrow. Then his eyes widened as he realized what lay hidden in her heart. “But you want to undergo the ceremony.”

  “N-no,” she stammered. “Not… want. But… but I feel somehow that I must undergo it.” She began to weep in earnest. “Oh, I don’t know!”

  James’ heart was in anguish, torn between his erotic, natural instincts and his affectionate ones. How could the war between them ever be resolved?

  “We must go,” he had said urgently. “I will come to you tonight. Vance means to put you in the dungeon, so you will be alone, at least.”

  Now, as she stood there in her cell, her face in darkness and the ray of light from the grating falling only upon one of her perfect little breasts, she whispered, “I am so wet, James, thinking about the ceremony. I cannot help it.”

  James felt himself gripped by an erotic fervor he could not withstand. “Come stand against the door,” he said softly.

  Vance had designed a shameful thing for the cell doors of Sir Gerald’s new dungeon. He called it the ‘fucking port’: each of the doors had a small door of its own, set into its surface at the height of a girl’s cunt and bottom. The gaoler could open this door, which was merely latched and not locked, and command the girl inside to present her bottom hard against the fucking port, or—kneeling—her face, so that she might be inspected or enjoyed. Vance had also provided helpful handles on the doorposts, so that the lucky man given the privilege of fucking a prisoner might hold himself upright and fuck as hard as he liked.

  When Caroline had obeyed wordlessly, and James could see her lovely face through the grating in the door, he knelt down and opened the fucking port in the door, thus exposing his darling’s loins, girt in the terrible belt. He took the key from around his neck, where he always kept it, reached into the cell through the fucking port, unlocked the belt, and pulled it down to her knees.

  The wonderful scent of her cunt, which had imbued the leather thoroughly now, so often had she wet it with her arousal, came sharp and exciting from her beautiful slit with its coral inner lips peeping out. James kissed and licked, and Caroline moved backwards with a little cry.

  “Hush, my darling,” James said. “Bring your sweet cunny here, and bite your cheek, if you have to, to keep yourself from crying out. I must make you spend.”

  “But…”

  “Obey me, Caroline. You belong to me.”

  “I-I do? But I vowed…”

  “It does not matter. Bring that cunt here to my tongue, or I shall whip you ever so hard when finally I am at leisure to do so.”

  “Oh, heavens, James… But I mustn’t, for they will punish me.”

  “They will not. From now on, I will be the one to punish you.”

  Caroline stepped forward then, and put her hands up to grasp the bars of the grating, so that she could thrust her hips even farther forward, and James again began to pleasure her with his tongue and with his fingers. Caroline bit her cheek and muffled her wanton cries, and her wetness seemed to gush onto James’ tongue. At last, with a strangled moan, she spent, and James had the intense pleasure of watching her sweet cunt lips contract to show how much ecstasy he had forced upon her.

  “Thank you, sir,” Caroline whispered.

  James quickly pulled up the chastity belt and locked it. “Kneel,” he whispered, and there was Caroline’s face, looking through the fucking port. James kissed her tenderly, and then he stood and unbuttoned himself. Caroline took him in her mouth instantly, with a grateful little sound that made his heart sing. Loving the masterful feeling, James took hold of the handles on the doorposts and began to fuck his darling’s mouth, pumping his hips with abandon as she tried to keep her head still and give him a soft place for his use.

  Soon he whispered, “I am spending,” and then he had to bite his own cheek, for his spend, so long denied, was so great that he thought he must shout so loud that he would rouse the whole house, unless he stifled his pleasure.

  Immediately he knelt again and kissed Caroline’s mouth, though she tried to turn away, perhaps in shame that he might taste his own seed. For James, though, to kiss that mouth that had given him such pleasure seemed sacred, and he held her chin and kissed her passionately through the fucking port.

  “What shall we do?” Caroline whispered after James had broken the kiss at last.

  “I think,” said Vance, stepping out of the shadows at the end of the passage, “you shall be parted now.”

  James whirled around and stood up, his cock still hanging out of his trousers, to see the darkly handsome man approach. Vance had a faint smile on his lips—he did not even seem angry. Of course he isn’t angry, thought James. He’s just won. As he put himself to rights inside his trousers, James glared at his rival with as much authority as he could muster.

  “What do you mean by intruding here, Mr. Vance?” he asked. “Dr. Brown expressly gave me authority…”

  “I suggest you avoid all such foolishness, Fairleigh,” Vance replied calmly. “You have a choice before you: you may either participate with Sir Gerald, me, and Brown in the sharing of Caroline, or you may depart this house forever. Caroline belongs to us, but we are happy to share her with you.”

  James heard Caroline give a little sob inside her cell. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “Please, no.”

  “Very well,” James said. “I shall stay.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The next days, for Caroline, passed with aching slowness. She spent most of the days and nights in her cell. James had been forced to give the key to her belt to Mr. Vance, and so it was he she must call to open the belt so that she might relieve herself in the chamber pot he brought to her cell, while he watched—which James had never done.

  That difference seemed to serve as an emblem of the terrible dilemma in her mind. For having the cruel Mr. Vance watch her make water in the chamber pot excited Caroline so terribly that she longed for the awful ceremony that drew closer day by day. When he said, “Very pretty, child. Your stream is very full today, and it gushes sweetly from your cunny,” she thought she would die not from shame—though the shame was great—but from the arousal that flooded her loins.

  She was made to bathe with the belt on, using a basin that Anne and Charlotte brought to her. “We heard what happened,” said Charlotte on Sunday, the day after the rehearsal and the fateful scene in the dungeon that had followed late that night, as she helped sponge Caroline’s back clean with the warm water from the basin. Her face bore a sympathetic expression. “We are trying to think of some way to save you, Caroline.”

  Caroline felt herself start to cry. “But I don’t want to be saved. I mean, I don’t want it to happen, but… Oh, I do not know how to say it! I want to belong to James, and I don’t want the thing on the stage, really…”

  Charlotte gave Anne a puzzled look. Anne said, “But there is a part of you that does want it, isn’t there?”

  Caroline nodded.

  “What?” Charlotte asked. “How can that be?”

  Anne said to Charlotte, “When Mr. Vance fucks other women, and talks about fucking Caroline and sharing her, it shames you, I know.”
/>   At the mere thought, it seemed, Charlotte colored.

  “But does it not also excite you, a little? And if Mr. Vance belonged to you, somehow—if, let us say, he gave you a baby of your own—would you not think it terribly exciting to hear of him fucking other girls, and even to watch him do it? Even if it were Caroline?” Anne changed her tone from questioning to affirming then. “Especially if it were Caroline.”

  Caroline saw Charlotte go white at that. She had opened her mouth when Anne began to speak, but now she shut it. Her mouth made a sad little moue, and she looked at Caroline. “I am sorry,” she whispered.

  Anne said, “And that is the same sort of feeling Caroline has about this ceremony.”

  “But it is all wrong,” Caroline wailed, “because it should be James who… who owns me, and… does that to me. And then Sir Gerald may have his turn, and even Mr. Vance… and even the others—the ones I don’t know, who have come all that way to…” Her voice trailed off, as she became lost in a reverie of erotic submission. “Only not twenty… twenty is too…” Suddenly she giggled. “Isn’t that funny? When I imagine it as ‘lots and lots of strangers fucking me,’ it is quite alright, but something about the number twenty frightens me.”

  Anne smiled bemusedly, and Charlotte shook her head.

  “Perhaps you can imagine,” Charlotte finally said, “that it is Dr. Fairleigh who goes first?”

  “No,” Caroline said sadly, “I don’t think that will work.”

  The next evening, Monday, when they came to give Caroline her bath, Anne whispered excitedly, “I have talked to Dr. Fairleigh, and he thinks that Dr. Brown has a plan different from what we have thought. He could not say what it is, and you must not let on that you know anything about it, but do not give up hope, Caroline.”