Clipping the leashes to the girls’ collars once more, Persephone led them to the door where she stopped to cup one of Ellen’s firm tits in one hand. “You’ll be here when I return?”
“Until seven, Mistress. Barbara takes over then.”
“Your lover?”
The girl nodded.
“I’ll tell them at the desk I need you both this evening.”
Persephone led the way to the street and into a steam-taxi. As in the train, the slaves knelt gripping a bar while the Freewomen had seats. Pam did not mind. Her buttocks were still ravaged and aching from the caning and flogging Christine had given them. As the taxi chuffed into motion she saw Lord and Taylor’s department store through the window in exactly the same place it was in her world.
The journey was brief. The taxi dropped them in Midtown Manhattan just past Forty Ninth Street. As Persephone strolled along Fifth Avenue, towing the leashed girls behind her, Pam began feeling just a little less self-conscious about her embarrassing nudity. Well over half the people on the crowded sidewalks were accompanied by one or more slaves, all near naked and all female. She had not seen a single male slave since her arrival and had a feeling it would remain that way. Everything Pam had witnessed told her that men had the upper hand here and the women, even the free ones, were not just expected, but required to be subservient. Lone men and couples far outnumbered the single women leading slave girls and Pam saw no children at all.
Persephone took her time, occasionally lingering at the windows of the prestigious shops that lined the avenue as far as Sixtieth Street, just as they did back in the real world. Next door to Gucci, Pam saw a booking office for the Empire Star Line and right beside it another for the American Airship Corporation. A short way past Barney’s was one for Austrian Imperial Airways. Austrian? That one was beyond her ability to figure out.
The clothes on display in Versace’s windows showed that a bare right breast and a nipple clip was the height of female fashion, as the number of women on the street dressed that way confirmed. Persephone walked almost as far as Central Park before returning the way they had come, window shopping but not stopping to buy. Many of the store’s names were familiar, at least in part. Pam saw a Bergdorf’s and almost directly across the avenue from it a Goodman’s, apparently competing with each other. She had seen Saks, Armani, Prada, and De Beers, as well as unfamiliar names like Gustavson, Wilks and Vienna Elite by the time they arrived at Tiffany’s, but no Chanel or Cartier or any of the other French shops so prominent where she came from. She had also realised that Persephone’s promenade was more a display of her wealth and importance by ostentatiously flaunting her expensively decorated slaves than it was a shopping expedition. Plenty of other people were doing exactly the same.
The male store manager at Tiffany’s almost fell over himself in his rush to reach the door when an almost naked slave girl, with the store’s logo and her name tattooed on the skin of her bare left breast, opened it and Persephone stepped inside. Clearly she was a frequent customer. Within seconds of establishing the reason for her visit, the manager snapped his fingers and a slave took away the offending nipple clip for adjustment. Persephone browsed the counter displays. Though the world might appear to be dominated by men, Pam wondered if wealth and the power it gave had an even greater influence, as it did in her own. The blonde clearly had plenty of both, as she proved by ordering two solid platinum slave collars and two matching ‘pussy plates’, to Pam’s surprise, labelled as such by the store. They were identical to the gold one that was reminding her of her lowly status and provoking little shivers between her thighs and in her anus with every movement.
“’Sephone, darling,” a female voice called as they left the jeweller’s. A tall, attractive redhead appeared out of the crowd, leading three leashed slave girls and accompanied by a woman who was as obviously a bodyguard as Eve was. “How lovely to see you again so soon. It’s barely three weeks. Isn’t London keeping you happy any longer?”
“Miranda, how marvellous.” Persephone’s smile changed to a pout. “I was frightfully bored, darling, and you know I love flying. So I thought, why not?”
“Then you must come to my place in the Hamptons. I’m having a little soiree there when the weekend is over. Girls only, darling.” The redhead gave her a knowing grin.
“I’d love to but I have to take the flight back in a couple of days,” the blonde replied. “Boring business matters, I’m afraid.” She looked at the slave girls accompanying her friend. “Oh, you’ve had Vulva pierced, and Labia too! How interesting.”
“It’s only while I’m in town,” Miranda said. “I’ll take them out again when I leave.”
Pam had also been staring at the gold rings in the girls’ clitoral hoods. Their leashes were attached to them and they were not the first she had seen being led in that fashion, but it was the humiliating names their Mistress had given them that made her sphincter tighten around the gold penetrating it. Her change of name had been an accident. Theirs had been deliberate and degrading. It emphasised her own helplessness and heightened her desperate desire to escape the horrors of the awful alternate reality into which the blackness had delivered her.
“They look pretty,” the redhead continued, “but I find they get in the way when I’m… you know.” She gave Persephone a wide smile.
The blonde mistress responded with her feline one. “I do, darling. I certainly do.” She gestured at the third of Miranda’s slaves. “Is this one new?”
Miranda moved closer. “I’ve had her two weeks, and she’s amazing. She’s one of That Kind. You know how rarely they come up on the open market, and now I know why.” She glanced around at the people passing and lowered her voice even more. “The things she can do with her fingers and tongue are simply incredible.”
Pam eyed the beautiful girl with greater curiosity. So this was what everyone had mistaken her for. As tall as her Mistress, the dark brunette looked back, her large, brown eyes bright. She moved her weight restlessly from one foot to the other. Like the other two she wore a tightly laced, boned corset of black satin and a kind of metal bra of gold filigree with openings to expose her nipples. Her leash was attached to her gold collar and she was not pierced. She was excited, though. Her bud stood out from its fleshy covering and her inner thighs gleamed with moisture.
“She’s a real handful.” Miranda laughed and glanced at the slave’s erect nipple protruding through the gold cage enclosing her breasts. “And in more ways than one. She’s utterly insatiable. I’m trying to train her to only come with permission but it isn’t easy. Every time I flog her, she comes. I don’t even have to touch her pussy. I tried chaining her wrists at night to stop her playing with herself but all she has to do is rub her thighs together and she gets off. I have to chain her to the bed with her legs apart to stop her, and cuff her wrists behind her during the day to keep her hands off. Even then, if she can find something to rub against she’s away again.” She turned the slave around. Her arms were crossed behind her and metal bands held each wrist to rings at either side of the lower edge of her corset. Her buttocks were wealed, striped in colours varying from carmine to deep purple and blue. “She adores public humiliation. The first time I walked her here, she came twice in the space of three blocks. But we’d better stop talking about her or she’ll be dripping all over the street. I was about to look in at the auction. Will you join me?”
With the horrible feeling she knew exactly what was being sold, Pam trailed the few yards to the auction house in the wake of the two women. She was right. As they entered, her nostrils quivered at the odour of sweat and female arousal. Belly fluttering, she stared into a railed, semi-circular space facing a stage, upon which was a raised platform. On the platform was a naked girl. A man standing beside her tapped a short, thick cane on the girl’s bottom. Pale and trembling, she turned her back to the crowd, bent over and spread her feet apart. The pace of the bidding immediately increased.
Pam felt sick. The girl was being sold like a c
hattel, like human cattle, the same fate she would have suffered if Drake had not decreed she should remain on the airship. Had he really taken a liking to her as everyone seemed to think? There were girls more beautiful than she amongst the slaves on the Empire’s Triumph. She was attractive and a lot of men had told her so, but she was nothing special in this world where even lovelier girls were abundant and commonplace. Drake was no different to Rick, his words harsh, his manner cold and unfeeling, yet commanding and insistent, demanding always that he have his way regardless of what she wanted. Yet was that not what had attracted her to Rick and helped turn her attraction into love? There had been times he had treated her more kindly, not many but a few, and Drake had showed sympathy at times too, proving there were emotions behind his dispassionate exterior. There were desires behind it too. Pam remembered his erection straining upright before her face and his fingers slowly exploring her sex. Her thighs quivered.
“Let’s go to the viewing pens,” Miranda said. Her jerk on the leashes of the two slave girls with the demeaning names made them wince at the stretching of their delicate hoods as she set off. A slightly less distressing tug on Pam’s collar had her and her companions also skirting the edge of the auction room and exiting through a door at one side. The room beyond was large, divided into sections by wooden partitions and lit by large windows of frosted glass in one wall. There were bars across them. In each partitioned area was a cluster of naked girls.
Heart beating fast Pam read the sign on the back wall of the first one, ‘Virgins’. A man with a whip stood nearby, giving the two wealthy women and their slaves the same appraising look. Several other guards and men who were obviously potential customers did the same as Miranda and Persephone walked between the two rows of pens. There were sections for White, Latina, African and Asian slaves, all filled with a dozen or more nude females whose faces showed emotions ranging from outright fear to blatant sexual excitement. Something of their feelings seemed to communicate itself to Pam, and the anxious tightness in her belly was joined by a warm glow lower down and an odd prickling over the surface of her skin, which could only be the last effects of the Venus Dust.
The two mistresses stopped frequently, comparing and commenting on the girls and occasionally stepping over the red line painted on the floor at the edge of each pen to examine one of them more closely. Pam had no difficulty imagining what would happen to a slave who crossed that same line without permission. They passed the pen containing a half-dozen girls in varying stages of pregnancy without stopping but paused at the next, labelled ‘Milkers’, where the two mistresses giggled girlishly while they sprayed milk from the mostly large and heavily-laden teats of the slaves occupying it. They were interrupted by the big door at the end of the room sliding back and abandoned their game of squirting milk to see what was happening.
A loading bay lay beyond the door, a steam truck backed up against it with its rear doors open. With several men cracking whips and calling encouragement, about twenty nude girls spilled from the back of the truck, down its ramp and into the room. Leather smacked flesh as the girls were whipped into line and marched towards a side door. Persephone hurried forward, dragging her slaves after her as she made towards the open door. Over the heads of the girls being herded into the room, Pam thought she glimpsed steel-barred cages, before a man coiling a whip between his hands blocked her view. His bulk stopped Persephone in her tracks.
“That’s closed to the public.”
“Oh, what a pity,” she said. “I’d really like to see what goes on inside.”
His grin held no humour. “No, lady, you wouldn’t. Believe me.” He pointed the coiled whip in the direction from which she had come and made no attempt to disguise the appraisal he was giving her. She turned back, her cheeks flushed pink.
Miranda’s new slave climaxed.
“Oh, there she goes again!” the redhead said. “Honestly, she’s uncontrollable. When I get her home I’m going to strap her naughty pussy for embarrassing me.” The threat only seemed to increase the slave’s breathy moans and the dribble of juices dripping to the floor below her sex and flowing down her quivering thighs.
“I think she’s delicious, darling,” Persephone said, bright eyes fixed keenly on the slave and the flush on her cheeks, which Pam had taken for embarrassment, deepening. “Oh, lord, she’s got me going too! I’ve got to do something about this.”
The slave girls and their keepers had vanished but the loading bay door remained open. Persephone hurried through it, dragging the slaves after her, with Eve following. She turned right at the end of the loading dock, where there was a short alley leading to a door that looked as if it had not been opened in a long time. Persephone handed two leashes to Eve and scampered down the alley, leading Tania on the remaining one. She leaned back against the wall.
“Get your head under my skirt,” she said breathlessly. “Come on, be quick.”
“Ma’am, this isn’t a good idea,” Eve warned, but she moved closer, placing herself, Milly and Pam between Persephone and the mouth of the alley.
“She’s right, ’Sephone.” Miranda had followed them with her slave girls and also moved to shield her. “It’s a public flogging if you’re caught.”
“Ooh, I know! But I can’t wait. Oh, yes, Tania! Good girl. Deeper.”
The steam truck chugged past the alley and Pam saw the driver staring in their direction. Persephone pulled up her skirt and ground her blonde-crowned pussy harder against Tania’s mouth. Her miniscule panties were halfway down her parted thighs, their elastic waist indenting her smooth skin. Miranda was staring, her cheeks flushing as much as Persephone’s. Pam watched the redhead unconsciously run her tongue over her full lips and the jewelled clip standing out on her breast as her nipple thickened and elongated.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, I won’t stay” her bodyguard said. “This is crazy. I won’t take the risk.” She turned to leave.
“Stay where you are! And the rest of you.”
Chapter Nine
Every head but Tania’s swivelled towards the mouth of the alley. The slave whipped her Mistress’s panties into place and shot to her feet, quickly wiping a forearm across her moisture-coated lips. Miranda’s bodyguard scuttled back to the group as two policemen came towards them, swinging long nightsticks in their hands.
“Looks like the trucker was right, Sarge.” The younger of them pushed his broad-crowned cap further back on his head and surveyed the huddle of women.
“Sure does,” the second cop, older, craggy-faced and with three stripes on the sleeve of his brass-buttoned frockcoat, replied. “Public Sapphism. They flogged two like you in Times Square this morning.” He looked from Miranda to Persephone, who were both pale and tense. “Against the wall.” Prods from his nightstick arranged them, the Freewomen, nearest the alley’s exit, the six slave girls next to them and then the two bodyguards.
“You’re mistaken, Sergeant. This isn’t how it looks.” Persephone’s words held none of her usual faintly bored and mocking tone. A jab of the sergeant’s stick to her belly cut off anything else she might have been going to say.
“Save it for the Judge, and it’s Hankin today, so expect the full hundred, even if it’s your first offence. If it’s not, I wouldn’t give any odds on you still being Freewomen by the end of the day.”
Miranda made choking noises. Persephone’s bright eyes widened and her mouth opened but it was Miranda who finally managed to suck in a noisy breath and speak as she took a step towards the policeman.
“Please, I wasn’t….”
The cop smacked the flat of his hand upwards onto her bare right breast, knocking its jewelled clip from the redhead’s nipple. “Shut it, you Sapphic slut. Back against the wall.”
Eyes watering, she clutched her tit and stepped back to her place beside Persephone. The blonde was quivering like a doe about to take flight. Pam shivered too, along with the other slaves. What would happen to them if the two women were arrested and convicted? Her assumpt
ion that power and wealth were more important than gender was clearly wrong in a situation like this.
While the younger cop blocked the alley’s entrance the sergeant went to the bodyguards. “Drop the gun belts,” he ordered, and grinned when they quickly complied. “Now your pants.” Neither girl hesitated to unfasten her leather trousers and push them down. “Both sets.” Their brief, thong-like panties joined the trousers around their ankles. “Face the wall and lean against it, and I want those feet well back.”
With their dropped trousers impeding their movements the bodyguards shuffled into position, their bare bottoms sticking rearwards.
“Now there’s a couple of nice big asses, Murphy. Real tight too,” the sergeant said and pushed his nightstick between Eve’s thighs. “Legs wider. You stay like that or you’ll end up on the same charge as your employer.”
The bodyguards exchanged glances and Pam saw relief flood Eve’s anxious face. A second later it grimaced in pain as the cop smacked his stick onto her ass and then that of the other girl.
“Face the wall, I said. You slaves, get your hands behind your necks and keep them there.” When the tall brunette failed to obey, he leaned closer, saw her wrists locked to her corset, and looked a question at Miranda.
“She… she’s That Kind,” she said hoarsely. “I have to chain her to stop her….”
The cop grinned. “Yeah, I get it. That Kind don’t come cheap. I guess you really are the rich bitches I took you for.” He plucked Miranda’s purse from her hand and poked around inside. “Yeah, a rich bitch for sure, but a foolish one too.” He withdrew a wad of bills and pocketed them, took Persephone’s purse and did the same with her money. “Okay, that’s enough to persuade me to listen to your explanation. You’d better make it good.”
Persephone’s upper lip quivered. “I… I needed to… to….”
He grinned again as she faltered. “You needed a piss and all the johns inside were busy so you came out here. And the others came to hide you from anyone passing. Didn’t work too good, did it?” He glanced at his companion and then looked the blonde in the eye. “Not very original. This isn’t the first time you’ve been caught, is it?”
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