And Jessup had said that the brothel would be less sadistic than his detention center! Shelby recalled that promise clearly. But, of course, Jessup was prone to lie when it suited him. His voice rang inside her head…
I say a lot of things that I don’t mean. I wouldn’t bother trying to find out which is true and which is bullshit.
The woman was as brutal as the Colonel, which only reinforced the fact that Shelby had no desire to be tied up and tortured as this young woman had been. If it hadn’t been clear to her before, it was clear to her now – she would step on no one’s toes in this new place. She’d make no waves. She’d go submissively into this next ordeal, knowing that only divine intervention could save her. There would be little way to save herself while under the jurisdiction of Madame Stafania Pavlenco. If Shelby correctly understood the next steps in her captivity, ones Jessup alluded to in their last conversations, she could only hope that whoever purchased her would have some degree of mercy, a trait obviously lacking in the ruthless Madame.
When Madame Pavlenco finally finished with the girl, she turned and walked away, offering up a triumphant smile to her company of friends, or followers, or whoever these strangers happened to be. Shelby could only guess. Then, almost as an afterthought, Madame abruptly stopped her trek toward the house and turned toward Shelby. After a few moments of careful inspection, she strolled a little closer to the newcomer.
“So, I suppose you’ve learned something?” she asked. Her cool reserve had returned, her manner as placid as still water.
“Yes, ma’am, I have,” Shelby replied in her most submissive voice.
“Very good.” Madame peered at her more closely, lifting Shelby’s chin for a closer scrutiny. Then she managed a cool smile as if she liked what she saw.
She turned away, and without further comment, Madame disappeared into the lavish house. The brief moments that followed allowed Shelby her first real look at her new home. The walls were a pale pink stucco and the roof was tiled in blue like a French country house. The windows and doors were rounded at the top and surrounded by fieldstone, while on one side of the building, a rambling vine of ivy climbed upward toward the chimney. What might have looked like a forbidding mansion was softened by the erotic vine, making it appear as charming as a quaint country inn. The surrounding area was dotted with fruit trees and fields of maturing grapevines, completing an innocuous pastoral setting for the Madame’s house that would belie the kind of harsh reality that was apparently a way of life at the brothel.
However, as innocuous as the country brothel might have appeared at first, another cell awaited Shelby Ryan once she was led inside the house. Escorted by one of the men who had attended the whore’s whipping, Shelby was taken to her new home through a side door near the kitchen. She would see little of the rest of the house while she was there, again confined to a small secluded space. Her new cell was much like the one at Jessup’s detention center, although the air inside was far warmer, and there was a pallet bed on the floor, a pillow, a blanket and a chamber pot. Under dismal circumstances, one becomes thankful for small things.
Her escort didn’t say a word as he pushed her into the small space, and Shelby was too afraid to speak. But once the lock clicked shut and the fellow was about to walk off, the captive found her voice. “What’s to happen to me?” she called out in sudden desperation. Her hands clung to the cell’s bars, while a moment of panic swept her submissive calm away.
The man moved her way, taking a moment to appreciate her fine body, when it had not seemed to affect him before. “Hell if I know,” he answered. “But I imagine you’ll come in mighty handy for some man’s hard prick.” He cackled as he turned around and sauntered off.
There were two cells side by side, both close to the kitchen – something Shelby could tell by way the fine smells of cooking food wafted down the corridor and into her small space. In the distance, she heard the sounds of chattering voices, clanking pots and running water, the sounds of a busy kitchen preparing the midday meal.
A long time passed during which Shelby realized that she’d become very thirsty. Finally calling out for water, she was rewarded when not a minute later a barefoot girl in a skimpy costume came running down the corridor with an earthenware cup.
“Shhhhhhhh.” Her finger covered her lips as she pushed the cup of water between the bars and rattled on in a language Shelby did not understand. Shelby thanked the girl with a smile and her silence, having gratefully accepted the drink of water.
The girl smiled back and left in a hurry, leaving the scent of fear in her wake.
Later there was food – a small repast of meat and fresh-tasting vegetables – but still no Madame Pavlenco, and not word on her fate. It would seem that the wheel of bad fortune turned slowly in this place and for hours she would wait in dreary silence. That night Shelby fell soundly asleep, then toward dawn, when the light in her dank corner of the house began to lighten, she began to dream, moving in her consciousness back and forth from the present to the past…
She stood in front of Jessup naked, feeling his eyes intent on her, his hand grazing her body, her limbs trembling, her pussy ravenous with sexual heat. He would whisper in her ear and she practically swooned against him. More of his hot breath and she sunk to her knees with lust, grappling for the cock hidden in his pants.
“You little beast…” he said, standing over her begging body, smirking.
Jessup’s face so clear one minute became another face in the blink of an eye. “Mr. Darcy,” she sobbed, looking up into the steely eyes of her owner with a face of fear.
“Please, please don’t sell me away…please…”
And then Padraig’s smiling eyes and handsome face appeared to her and she woke up sobbing, begging her mind to bring him back. But already his face had vanished and she could not even recall what he looked like.
Chapter Seven
“You are not right in the head, are you?”
Shelby raised up from the pallet and looked across the cell, seeing the girl from the whipping post huddled before her, looking limp as a rag. She was such a small thing. So frail. Her wild mop of red hair overpowered her slight body.
“You?”
“Me? Yes, Eugenia. An’ you?” She spoke with only a slight accent, but one that was strangely familiar though Shelby couldn’t quite place it.
“I’m Shelby.”
“You were there, you saw it all, huh?” the girl wondered aloud, cocking her head. Her face was quite pretty now that the thick make up had been worn away from all her crying.
“I did. You must have made the Madame very angry.”
“Ach! Madame always angry. Nasty bitch. Only when she makes love is she human.”
“And you’ve made love to her?”
She laughed. “Of course, everyone in this house is hers. We belong to Madame. We worship her. Then she tires of us and she sells us down the river.” Eugenia chortled in a strange sort of way. Frowning, her face looked miserable and disturbed, pale as a ghost. She fidgeted nervously with her clothes. With the bright halter dress long gone, she wore a thin white shift that hardly hid a thing from a discerning eye. Her heavy breasts pressed against the fabric, her dark nipples just small pebble-like shapes making clear indentations against the stark white.
“Is that what she’s doing to you? Selling you down the river?” Shelby wondered.
“Me. I’m just like everyone else. I try to be different. I try to love her, I try hard to love her and do what she wants. But, always she ends up hating us. Don’t bother with Madame, you end up scorned like all the rest.” She gave up a deep sigh and settled into the side of the cell, with her hands clutched to her breast, her eyes shifting, then her entire being drifting away for a long while.
Had she gone mad!
“So, what has my poor Eugenia told you, Ms. Ryan?” a sultry voice interrupted Shelby’s reverie.
She looked up, seeing that Madame Pavlenco had glided down the corridor unseen and had obviously
been listening to the strange dialogue between her two slaves.
“Nothing, ma’am. Nothing that makes any sense to me.”
Madame stood in the corridor beyond the cell’s bars, dressed in her black from neck to toe, her hands on hips, her demeanor more benign than what Shelby had previously experienced.
“But maybe it will make sense to you after you’ve been here a while,” her voice was mellow and melodic now, quite different than the harsh one that had crackled in the morning air. “Eugenia is very astute. She will have lots of nasty tales to tell you about me. You can assume that her stories are true. If you think she’s mad, you’ll find that she only takes after her mistress. Some think I’m as mad as the mad hatter. I prefer to think of myself as wickedly brilliant. You see, those that think I’m mad haven’t had the opportunity to see me when I’m sane, or if they did, they didn’t realize what they were seeing. I find it exhilarating to be seen as eccentric and peculiar. I even get that lovely ‘mysterious’ label sometimes. I’ve spent a good deal of time crafting my persona. Years in fact. I studied corporate executives in the West for many years, which is why my English is so precise.” She laughed lightly. “It’s a bit daunting when my customers travel so far into the wilds of these shadowy places only to find a woman with Eastern blood speaking to them in the language they understand. All part of my craft.
“One thing you’ll surely learn is that for all the talk of madness and eccentricity, I rule my little kingdom here with an iron fist and no one crosses me. I think perhaps you got that point today.” Madame Pavlenco suddenly sighed heavily, a little sadly in fact, as if she felt some remorse clutching at her hardened heart. Suddenly, her mood shifted and she spoke crisply. “Well, now that you’ve heard my little speech, you can prepare yourself for tonight. I’m afraid that I need to call you into service immediately, since Eugenia is going through a spell, as you can well see.” In fact, Eugenia seemed to have passed out on the cell floor; she hadn’t budged or made a sound since the Madame had announced her presence. “You’ll take her clients tonight, standard fucking mostly, but if one of the men should ask for something out of the ordinary – which here would mean heavy bondage or beating – you will direct them to me first. I do make certain that my girls are protected from the thugs. Since you will eventually be sold, I don’t want to see your value slide. What I’m glad about is that you are amenable to the hard action. So many of the girls have to be sexually reprogrammed to endure pain. And that takes so much time, such a tedious thing. However, Col. Jessup assures me that won’t be necessary with you, that you have a natural predilection for masochistic sex. He also said your body heals fast. That’s very good. You don’t know how grateful I am that you won’t be out of service for too many days after a good session. But then that sometimes can’t be helped when most of our customers tend to prefer a clean slate on which to write their tales of power.”
The women sighed again, “So, Shelby, Victor will be along shortly to get you ready for tonight. And please,” her brow furrowed as if she were perplexed, “do put a little sweetness into your expression. You’ve looked like nothing but a dour urchin since you’ve been here. Certainly we’re a far cry better than that grimy detention facility the Colonel runs. Here, my whores can’t afford to wear their emotions on their sleeves. So whatever feelings of gloom and doom you might be entertaining because fate has led you to me, rid yourself of them now. If you enjoy sex at all, you might even enjoy the night. There are no injunctions against a few good orgasms, so why not indulge yourself? Most of the men are clean and well kept. Not those rugged-smelling brutes you normally find. I’m very particular about my whores and my clients, which makes my brothel one of the finest in Eastern Europe. I think you’ll find it a rather pleasant place.” Her attempt at a smile was strained but reasonably genuine. And then her glib speech was over.
For one brief moment the bizarre thought flashed through Shelby’s mind that she was in the presence of a country club wife arranging a cocktail party. Weird, how the mind twists itself in extreme circumstances such as these. Only after Madame Pavlenco left and Shelby shook herself back to reality did she let that crazy thought go.
As far as Shelby could tell, the Madame of the house was quite sane, alarmingly sane in fact. Everything else was just a show, intended to throw the rest of her world off guard so that she could remain in control. For God’s sake the woman even spelled it out in plain, and, yes, very articulate English. Who could argue with that? If she hadn’t feared her so much, Shelby might have admired her cunning.
Of course, there was Eugenia still huddled in the corner of the cell. Her white shift had ridden up so that Shelby could see the marks from her beating, savage welts that would take days to heal. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, until Shelby’s staring eyes penetrated her somnambulant stupor and the girl awoke.
“Oh, damn! My pussy aches!” Eugenia sat up, grimacing. Suddenly wide awake, she launched into an amazing monologue. “You know the way she stretched my labia? She likes to do that, she likes to make it hurt like hell. She’s teaching me to absorb the pain. I’ll bet that you didn’t know that she attached the weights to my inner labia, did you? Not the outer ones. That’s what everyone would think. Those wouldn’t have hurt at all. No, it’s the inner ones that arouse her, that caught her fancy because mine are so naturally pronounced. She says she’s only enhancing what God has already given me. She’ll stretch them out until they are dangling between my outer lips, until they are red and swollen, signaling my sexual ripeness, my fertility.” Eugenia laughed for a moment before being reduced to tears again. “Isn’t that ironic. I’m not fertile at all. That was taken from me…” her sad voice drifted and she gazed down at her bruised knees, picking at the skin in a disturbing way. Then her face transformed again, and she looked up with a lighter expression, speaking wistfully. “Sometimes I think she’s making me into a freak. She does that, you know. Turns us into freaks, when it suits her. Watch your back, Shelby Ryan, make sure you watch your back. I was once a little American girl from Maine. Maine, what a nice sound that has, firm, steady. It’s a very sober place, but not nearly as sober as Madame’s Pavlenco’s house.”
Shelby shivered from the base of her spine to her fingertips. The warning from Eugenia’s lips might have been so much nonsense, just like much of what she said. But in that instant, the redheaded girl was brutally honest. As sane as Shelby would ever know her to be. And her warnings were not ones that she would take lightly.
For nearly three days Shelby was on call in the house as resident whore. Because she was new, all the regulars had to try her out. They took turns, rolled dice to see who had the right to initiate her as a prostitute, then rolled the dice again to see who had her next.
In a few hours, once word got around that there was a sexy American in the brothel, a fight nearly broke out. Shelby was huddled on the sidelines, her eyes wide with fear as the men tussled with each other, trading barbs in a foreign tongue.
Suddenly, Madame Pavlenco appeared on the scene in the common room, hands on hips and a withering smile on her red-painted mouth. The room fell silent and the fight immediately stopped, four petrified men shaking off their anger, knowing what would come of it should they continue.
Madame looked at Shelby. “You’re the cause of this. On the table!” she ordered tersely.
Once the champagne glasses were swept away, Shelby mounted a small cocktail table with the help of a vigilant Victor. Balance proved difficult since she was wearing high heels along with the slinky red dress. But when she was about to stumble back against Victor, Madame rifled a reproving grimace her way. “Deal with this, Ms. Ryan. Don’t make me have to take out my anger on your lovely body.”
“Yes, ma’am,” and Shelby stood up straight as an arrow, finding a focal point on which to focus her attention. A few seconds ticked by and she almost relaxed.
“So,” a more pleasant Madame Pavlenco gazed at her minions, “you want her, you’ll have to bid for her servi
ces. Let’s start with a thousand, you’re all good for twice that, so don’t complain.”
Until that point, Shelby had not been naked the entire four hours she’d been working the floor. The men that took her were too anxious to make her strip. Twice in her cunt and three blow-jobs; Madame was right, whoring was easy in this place, and at least so far she was enjoying a honeymoon with the brothel customers; one to enjoy while it lasted. No, she didn’t particularly want to be giving up her body for cash, but there were worse things.
For the auction, however, Shelby was in the Madame’s hands and the woman planned to make a show of it.
“I think a little strip-tease, what do you think?” Madame Pavlenco turned to the crowd.
Shouts, catcalls and whistles followed. Shelby had only to think of the girly bars at home…Mr. Darcy had taken her there once. Ironic now.
With a fresh burst of confidence and buoyed by a sudden change in background music to something that was decidedly more erotic, Shelby began to move as she’d been ordered, slowly at first, but not faltering in the slightest. She could see the lust in the men’s eyes, their momentary adoration of her sex. She knew that adoration would falter once she became just another girl in Madame’s whorehouse. But for now, that didn’t bother her. Her body fed off their attention, her lust on their lust. What had been difficult in her past, the blatant exposure of her body to strangers was easy for her now, her inhibitions tossed away in a place where having inhibitions mattered to no one, and for her, could be a definite liability.
Maybe Jessup was right, she would get used to a new life and forget about the one she lost. The music moved inside her with its steady beat, while the look in the old men’s eyes held her enthralled. She was gone. Yes, Jessup was right. Her past, her life were losing their grip, all of it drifting away. This was Shelby now, the sexy dancer, the peep show queen, the brothel whore, clamoring for their attention, for the horny adoration of a room full of appreciative men
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