Into The Arena

by Sean O'Kane

  "Don't clench!" Carlo warned. "Not unless you want the stroke repeated."

  The buttocks reluctantly relaxed.

  "Begin!"

  Thwack!

  Tara jumped at the sheer loudness of the crisp report of rattan on flesh. There was a muffled grunt from the brunette.

  Thwack! The second lash was delivered and this time Tara actually saw the way the cane bit into the flesh, flattening the natural curves of the buttocks, making shock waves in the fatty tissue above and below it. And she noticed the white line it had traced across both mounds of her bottom, a white line that filled rapidly and turned an angry red.

  She watched, fascinated by the play of the man's muscles as he lifted the cane, steadied it and then fired in the third. The girl's head jerked up this time and there was a soft gasp as she absorbed the cut.

  Horror, fear and a shameful, vicarious excitement consumed Tara. Her legs had remained parted throughout but now she felt an urgent desire to close them, to squeeze her thighs together and savour the moist heat in her sex. She fidgeted and again realised she wasn't alone. Her companions were doing the same.

  Carlo turned and his look stilled them immediately. The fourth and fifth lashes fell. The girl was now giving squeals at each lash, her feet pulling at their bonds, her wrists twisting in their restraints.

  Thwack!

  Thwack!

  The tracks of the caning were being carefully laid in a neat and closely spaced ladder down the proffered bottom. The squeals were fading into sobs and moans. But they rapidly escalated into full-blooded screams for the last three, as the cane was laid on so that its tracks crossed the previous welts. By the time it was over, the victim's panting and gasping were to some extent reflected by the female onlookers. Tara realised her chest was heaving and her throat was dry. But there was one more ritual to observe. In a way it was similar to the one the previous night when the redhead had appeared to cooperate with the man who had flogged her. In this instance the cane wielder put his implement down and reaching across the girl, spread her labia wide open, so the pinkly vulnerable inner sex flesh was exposed. Then he ran one finger up the crease of the vulva, stood up and theatrically smelled it. He laughed delightedly and then wiped it on one buttock before freeing her. She clasped her hands to her flaming backside immediately and limped over to the food where she was served a meagre portion and led back to her cell.

  And so it went on. Each time the loser was caned. One girl getting fifteen stinging lashes for an abject performance. Tara watched carefully, even as she grappled with her mounting excitement at the prospect of performing so lewdly and humiliatingly in front of this audience of cruel men. And then, at the very last her number came up and she was matched with a rather chubby brunette who, while being of more solid build than Tara, didn't look to her nearly as fit.

  As ever, the will to win consumed her as she stepped forward almost eagerly. And as their wrists were chained, she laid her plans. She felt how the other girl was wrapping her fingers round the chain while they waited for Carlo's signal. As soon as he shouted, the brunette yanked forward hard, trying to pull her after her, but Tara simply put her left leg out in front of the other girl and let her own momentum trip her over it, she leaned to her left to avoid the chain dragging her over as the girl went down, then twisted and pulled with all her strength, keeping her feet well clear of the girl's free arm. Even though her body was heavy and she wriggled like an eel, Tara was simply too strong. She even managed to grasp the flailing arm as it groped desperately for something to hang onto and then with both the girl's hands imprisoned it was no contest. Tara backed into the bulkhead practically before the guards had even begun yelling encouragement.

  She stood up proudly. She had won in less than half the time the others had taken and had hardly broken sweat. She flicked her hair back and looked over at Carlo; at the sight of his face all her pride and pleasure vanished. He was tight lipped and pale with fury.

  Chapter 6

  He didn't bother with asking for thumbs up or down, instead he simply barked an order for the brunette to be given fifteen with the cane and then to Tara's dismay he ordered her taken above decks for special attention as he termed it.

  "This bitch thinks she's something special," he snarled. "Well we'll see how special she feels after an hour of Carlo's whip!"

  She opened her mouth to protest but one glance at Carlo's furious expression decided her against breaking the rule of silence. She seemed to be in enough trouble, but why? What had she done wrong? And even as she struggled to come to terms with the unfairness of it all, a part of her was quailing in terror at the prospect of an hour under Carlo's whip.

  Holding her by an arm each, two guards led her through the door the men used, it led into a small mess room with chairs gathered round a table, a TV and a bar. From there she was marched into a corridor and then right, up a steep staircase and out into sunlight. For a moment she was blinded and couldn't look around her as she was led, stumbling out onto the deck. When they halted her, she was able to squint around and she saw she was aboard what looked like a bulk carrier of some sort. It was fairly large, with its own derricks above large hatchways, which presumably covered holds like the one she was being held in. At the stern was the main superstructure and up at the top of that, on the bridge she could make out figures moving behind the glass. But there would be no help from that quarter, whoever commanded this ship just had to know what its cargo consisted of. They had emerged, she realised from the fo'c'stle and the main deck was reached by a stairway down from where she stood, Carlo led them down it. The wind was cool and added to the goosebumps which fear had made start out all over her, her hair kept blowing into her eyes and she had to constantly flick it back to see where she was going. And when she did see; she wished she hadn't.

  Out in the middle of the deck was a large frame made of wood. It stood about ten feet high and was about six feet wide. From its four corners hung chains, the lower two having leather restraints already attached.

  Tara tried to hold back and struggle. "No!" she whimpered. "Why? I don't......."

  Carlo whirled round and raised his hand. She shut her mouth instantly.

  "You don't speak! Not now; not ever again till a man tells you to! You have got a big lesson to learn, but you won't need to speak to learn it," he relaxed and smiled as she subsided. "Maybe scream a bit, that's okay."

  The men holding her were laughing as they dragged her forward and attached her wrists to the two uppermost chains. Then they hauled on the chains until she was stretched out, her arms straining out and up, her toes just able to support her. But when they had looped the chains around hooks on the frame's sides, they each took an ankle and as Tara gave a despairing wail, they pulled them savagely apart until they were some inches off the deck and then buckled the restraints on. The strain was incredible; all she could do was try and wrap her fingers round the chains above her wrists to try and take some weight off her shoulders. But it was plain that that would only be scant and short-lived relief. She looked down at her straining body, strung up and spread like a starfish, even her breasts, normally so full and prominent were pulled into low mounds by the strain. Instinctively she tried to close her legs; aware that her widely spread thighs were the source of how truly vulnerable she now was. Carlo could do anything he wanted, she had only ever seen and experienced the whip applied to back and buttocks but she shrewdly suspected that a man could apply it to pretty well any part of a woman who was displayed like she was. Certainly a man as cruel as Carlo could.

  He came to stand in front of her, holding a three foot long, thin, wickedly flexible rod with a tasselled end.

  "You're going to taste this for the next hour, Blondie. And while you do, I'm going to explain what you are now. You nod your head or shake it when I ask you a question. No one wants to hear what you got to say, and you're gonna stay up there for a while longer for speaking just now. Understand?"

  Tara opened her mouth, then snapped it shut a
nd nodded her head. She was desperate to find out what she had done wrong, why she was being punished. But all she could do was endure her 'lesson' and maybe find out in Carlo's own sweet time.

  He moved to stand behind and to one side of her. "Going to warm you up a bit first," he told her, and then struck.

  The 'Sshwack!' noise the whip made sounded oddly dead out here in the open with no echo, but the impact was no less devastating. A thin line of bitter fire erupted across her buttocks and around her left hip where the flexibility of the rod allowed it to lovingly follow the contours of her body. Even strung up as tightly as she was, she jerked and groaned. A second lash cracked in, again across her buttocks and hip, again she jerked and twisted. A third one hit her and she couldn't restrain a cry this time as another narrow blaze of pain was ignited. The fourth lash made her yell as it crossed the earlier tracks and redoubled the fires raging across her bottom.

  This was so unfair. It was so savage and senseless. So cruel! She was so helpless and vulnerable and yet this tyrant was taking no pity, just lashing her for no good reason.

  And as she jerked and screamed her way through another six lashes, no longer able to feel where individual lashes fell, just hear them, feel the impact and experience an escalation in the blinding inferno engulfing her backside, the very cruelty, the injustice and the pitiless nature of a man who could treat a helpless woman like this, began to assume a dark eroticism. When he had whipped her to his heart's content, then he could take her and she could do nothing about it. It was terrible! It was darkly, sweetly terrible.

  When the whip stopped falling and the scarlet storms of pain stopped mounting for a moment, Tara was aware that that treacherous heat was building once again in her lower stomach. No! She gritted her teeth, she wasn't going to become like the girls just now who had juiced so shamelessly under the cane.

  Carlo returned to stand in front of her. He lined up his whip against the fronts of her thighs. Tara groaned and shook her head desperately.

  "You are here to learn to entertain the people who watch you. Understand?"

  The final word was accompanied by a lash which had her desperately trying to twist away from the bitter stinging in her thighs. She nodded her head vigorously.

  "You don't just win. You entertain. Understand?"

  Again her thighs exploded in pain, this time high up, just beneath her wrenched-open crotch. But even as she screamed and nodded her head furiously, his cruelty in whipping her just there cranked up the thrill another notch. She fought it down, but another lash, then another had her screaming and shaking her head in denial of the fact that being taken this far, this harshly, was appealing directly to that part of her which had always sought out extreme experiences. Once again she was throwing herself - no, she was being thrown - into a challenge and she knew how that thrilled her.

  "No one cares about your pride anymore. Understand?"

  The whip curled around her stretched taut stomach, she flinched backwards as far as she could, unable even to scream, but nodding her head again.

  "If you win, you win good! You give the audience a good show. Understand?"

  Sshwack!

  Yes, she understood now. She herself was nothing, just part of a show. They didn't care whether she won or lost, just so long as the watchers got a good eyeful.

  Sshwack! Another, higher up, just under her breasts.

  Then he stopped again and came forward, reaching towards her nipples. She drew in her breath and then gasped at the shock of his touch on her sensitive skin. It sent shivers down her and she felt a wave of aching lust in her sex. She groaned in dismay and once again Carlo showed he knew what was going on, he played with the hardening nubs, rubbing them, rolling them and pulling them hard enough to make her give breathless little cries.

  "If they give you the thumbs up or down. It doesn't matter. Understand?"

  She bit her lip, trying to follow his words from behind the storms of pleasure and pain so bizarrely roiling through her whole body. Her arms ached atrociously, her skin felt as if a flamethrower had been played over it, and yet inside she was molten in quite a different way. She nodded and then shook her head. She didn't know what he meant; she didn't know what she was feeling.

  He laughed. "I'll give you a little rest. Let the pleasure die down and then we'll go back to your lesson. A bit of tit whipping I think."

  She gasped in horror. He couldn't mean it! Her eyes followed him as he sauntered over to the railings at the edge of the deck and one of his men brought him a drink. She longed to speak, to beg him not to carry out his threat. But she couldn't, she didn't dare think of what he might do if she spoke again. She watched him take a long drink from his can, her throat was dry and she burned and ached all over. She licked her lips, Carlo saw her and raised his can to her in a mocking salute, then went back to talking with his comrade.

  When he at last returned to her, she had to admit that he really knew what he was doing. She was so desperate to get on with her lesson and be taken down that when he asked, "You want the tit whipping now, Blondie?" she nodded in resignation, biting her lip in readiness.

  She needn't have bothered. Nothing could stop the scream which exploded from her as the thin whip sliced across the tops of her breasts. Just as with her backside, the soft, fatty tissue let the whip dig deep before it fell away and the burn seemed to etch itself on the insides of her eyelids.

  "It doesn't matter if you win or lose. No one cares if you're whipped or not. Just so long as someone is. Understand?"

  She arched in her bonds as a second blast of pain ran across her chest. And it was a few seconds before she could nod her understanding. And strangely enough, even in her pain-befogged condition, she really was understanding. Her only importance lay in the entertainment value of this body which she had always been so proud of. It could give good value sexually, athletically, and now she was discovering, by simply being punished. Suddenly she wished she could see what she looked like, suspended and pulled taut, her long legs split, her breasts stretched and laced with whip marks. The spurt of arousal which then shot through her as she visualised herself, left her gasping in its wake. And she was too late in nodding this time.

  Carlo repeated himself and this time landed a millimetre perfect lash across her nipples. She convulsed like a gaffed fish and howled to the sky, but managed this time to nod her agreement before she earned any more. She was sweating and shivering by now, a confused mass of agony and arousal, her head hung down as she waited for the next lash. But instead Carlo came close and again, as she whimpered, he reached for her nipples. They were hard and throbbing, more engorged than she could ever remember seeing them, or feeling them. Just his touch, his cruel, hard fingers on the tender flesh, took her breath away. She shivered all over.

  Carlo came closer, squeezing her throbbing, pounding nipples until she cried out.

  "You like the idea that someone will like seeing you whipped," he whispered.

  "Aagh!" He twisted them cruelly hard and she yelled again, and then nodded her head, before letting it loll onto one shoulder as he stepped away.

  "You have a few more on those lovely tits and then you can rest again."

  She groaned at the prospect but renewed her grip on the chains and prepared herself. The wind whipped her hair into her eyes again and she shook it back, just in time to see Carlo adjust his trousers before he took up his stance again. She realised he had a wonderfully straining bulge in them and suddenly it was as if there was a secret bond between them. They shared the thrill of what was being done to her. They had different perspectives sure enough; he wasn't hanging in chains, sweating and hurting all over, but he understood what it was doing to her and shared the arousal.

  From somewhere she found the strength and courage to nod to him before he started again. He nodded back gravely.

  "You are nothing except the pleasure you give. Understand?"

  He launched an uppercut sweep which cut into the lower slopes of her breasts this time and the
n he immediately snapped the whip down onto the tops. Again she convulsed but nodded. The burning, stinging pain now running straight through her to her sex which seemed to almost flutter and spasm as she thought of Carlo's straining erection and the aching emptiness between her legs.

  "If I tell you to lose a fight because someone wants to see you whipped. You lose. Understand?"

  Up and down again, the tasselled end of the whip adding its final spiteful sting to the maelstrom raging across her chest. But again she nodded.

  He left her for a few minutes. Tara had no idea how long she had been hanging there, nor how much longer she would have to endure. But again, now the whip had stopped falling, she felt ashamed at how easily she had succumbed to its seduction. There was even a part of her that was eager for Carlo to come back and finish her off, then take her down and have her right there on the deck in front of everyone. She knew she should fight herself but the whip was too powerful.

  Carlo returned and pushed her hair forward onto her chest, just as he had the night before and Tara steeled herself for an onslaught on her back. But before he started she gave a shivering cry as she felt him run the whip along the crease of her sex, then saw it back and forth, pushing it up at the front so it slid its evil length along her clitoris.

  "It hurts more when it's wet," he whispered. "You want to be whipped with your own juices?"

  Desperately she shook her head. That was too much! She couldn't admit to wanting that!

  She snarled wordlessly and fought the gathering tide of ecstasy as it mounted under the exquisite cruelty of the whip, shaking her head, biting on her lip till it bled. He went on and on, and then just as she was about to give in and start bucking her hips in response. He stopped.

  "There's plenty of time, Blondie. By the time you leave this ship, you'll come, just like the others."

  She never knew how many lashes she took. From time to time he would stop and let her gather her diminishing strength. Then he would start in again and dimly she heard Carlo's voice as he belaboured her sweating, exhausted body. Letting the whip wrap her ribs and the tassels bite into her breasts again. Then back to her buttocks but this time letting the tassels bite farther around her hips and snap at her very mons, just inches from her sex.