by Eden Myles
FELIX
The Dollhouse Society
By
Eden Myles
Copyright © 2013 Eden Myles
Published by Courtesan Press
http://courtesanpress.wordpress.com/
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be distributed, shared, resold, posted online, or reproduced in any electronic or hard copy form.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities between actual persons or events is entirely coincidental. This book contains adult content and is intended for a mature readership. All sexual scenarios depicted in this book occur between consenting adults over 18 years of age.
Cover art design by Courtesan Press
***
CONTENTS
The Rules of Conduct Inside the Dollhouse
Felix by Eden Myles
Previews & Excerpts
***
THE RULES OF CONDUCT INSIDE THE DOLLHOUSE
(Failure to comply with these rules shall result in immediate expulsion from the Dollhouse.)
- No gentleman/lady under the age of thirty shall be permitted to enter the Dollhouse. Gentlemen/Ladies desiring permanent membership within the Society shall be subject to a trial period lasting no less than one year, after which he will be reviewed for possible permanent inclusion in the Society.
- A gentleman/lady and his/her courtesan/courtier may do anything they wish, so long as it is consensual, tasteful and entertaining. Consensual acts of entertainment within the Dollhouse are hitherto referred to as “plays”.
- “Plays” between a gentleman/lady and his courtesan/courtier may not be interrupted in any way or for any reason by a third party. “Play” can only be begun or ended by the parties involved.
- “Plays” shall be conducted only in a designated playroom of the Dollhouse. The only time this rule shall not apply is for a new courtesan’s debutante party, in which “play” shall be conducted in the great room.
- A gentleman/lady is not permitted to touch, address or otherwise acknowledge another gentleman’s or lady’s courtesan or courtier while in the Dollhouse.
- Proper decorum must be observed at all times.
- Courtesans/courtiers shall not be allowed to imbibe any kind of alcoholic beverages while in the Dollhouse.
- Courtesans/courtiers shall be shown the utmost respect while in the Dollhouse.
- A new safe word shall be issued at each gathering. When a safe word is used by a gentleman/lady or his/her courtesan/courtier, all “play” shall immediately cease between all the parties involved.
***
FELIX
by Eden Myles
I stood on the fringes of the crowd and watched the gentleman secure his courtesan to the post of the bed. She was naked excerpt for a feathered owl mask and he was securing her wrists to the bedpost with a number of long, colorful silk scarves, stopping periodically to run the pads of his fingers up and down her thighs and whisper intimately in her ear. She moaned and rolled her head back, and he nested one hand into her long, bright red hair and yanked her head back until the pain made her gasp and her eyes fluttered with pure, unadulterated lust.
He kissed the back of her neck, moved to the chair where a long, rattan cane waited. He snatched it up and returned to her side, rubbing the hard wood against her back and ass until she moaned again. She closed her eyes and hugged the bedpost. She knew what was coming.
The first crack of the cane against her bare ass made me jump almost out of my skin, it was so loud and unexpected. Jesus, Joseph and Mary…
I was surrounded by more than a hundred well-dressed strangers, all of them focused on the gentleman and his courtesan’s play, and almost everyone in the room wore masks, myself included. Even so, I was finding it very difficult to “hide in plain sight,” as it were. I knew the other gentlemen and courtesans and courtiers gathered around me thought I was with someone—I kept shuffling up beside various men in a kind of incognito dance of invisibility, and I was sure no one had caught on—but I kept thinking someone was looking at me, maybe noting that my “gentleman” seemed to keep changing over the course of the evening. Maybe they noticed, or maybe I was just feeling paranoid.
I had never been undercover before.
Normally, I was good at disappearing in a crowded room—mask or no mask. The baby fat stubbornly clinging to my curves made me look younger than twenty-two, and with my plain brown bob of hair, grey eyes, and freckled, girl-next-door looks, I could usually pull off looking like everyone and no one. It was inevitable I should go into journalism and do this undercover gig. It was either that or the FBI, I figured.
Thwack!
I jumped again and watched the beautiful, elegant courtesan writhe and gasp against the bedpost. She was gorgeous, glamorous in a way I could never pull off, and she seemed to be enjoying herself. But I had no idea why men and women would want to subject themselves to this type of public humiliation.
I felt someone large moved up behind me and I grounded myself and fiddled with my black feathered ostrich mask as the gentleman performing for the crowd landed yet another expertly-delivered blow against his courtesan’s pert ass, a little bit below the first blow. I swore I could feel the vibration of the caning in my own flesh, and there was a slickness of the folds between my legs that made me uncomfortable. The whole great room at the center of the Dollhouse smelled like sex and roses. The hundreds of portraits and erotic photographs covering the walls seem to look down upon the play with enormous approval.
The man standing behind me made a sound halfway between a snort and a harrumph. I suddenly thought of that old Sesame Street song: One of these things is not like the others. Could he sense I was one of those things? That I didn’t belong here?
It’s just your imagination, Felix, I told myself. Relax. The more relaxed, worldly and faintly bored you act, the better you’ll fit into this group!
But it was hard to relax in this atmosphere. You would have thought I was behind enemy lines, like Walter Cronkite covering the Vietnam War. As a journalist—well, okay, a journalist-in-training—I wasn’t anyone’s courtesan and I sure as hell didn’t belong here tonight, watching this gentleman and his courtesan play.
The assignment in my journalist class said we were to write an impartial article on a controversial subject we had no previous knowledge about. We were to research it extensively from the ground up and that it would decide our grade. The other students had chosen subjects like cloning animals, abortion, stem cell research, and gay marriage. I, being the overachiever I was, wanted something more esoteric.
I’d heard rumors about the Society all over the college where I was studying journalism. At first, I’d thought it was one of those urban legends, like losing a kidney after getting a roofie, but since I was studying to be the type of crack reporter who eventually won the Pulitzer, I knew I had to learn more. I started digging.
At first, everything I found came up dry bones. Rumors, vague whispers, some ancient documents in the school vaults written during the Colonial Period. None of it concrete. But eventually it led me to some journals kept by the city elders around the early part of the Seventeenth Century, when New York City was little more than a collection of ambitious Dutch, Irish and English immigrants. Eventually I found a solid lead in the form of a man named Tiberius Sloan, a British importer and ex-soldier who’d taken to writing extensively about his and his wife’s travels around the world. He had included very detailed information on “the Society,” as he called it, an exclusive collection of powerful New York businessmen who kept “courtesans,” or paid companions.
Naturally, I was intrigue
d. An ancient sex trade taking place in Colonial New York, right under the noses of its citizens? You bet I would be.
A few more trips to various libraries and some visits to underground clubs proved useful. The Society was still around, I discovered, nearly four hundred years after it had been established, and there were still regular monthly meetings at this old, secluded colonial on Long Island. The hard part would be getting inside, getting the exclusive. But if journalism teaches you anything, it’s how to work the angles.
Tonight I’d gotten in dressed as a server before quickly ditching my costume for the borrowed evening gown I’d brought along. Everyone was wearing masks—even the courtesan presently bound to the bedpost—so that made things even easier. I could be anyone’s courtesan. I just needed to act the part and stop fidgeting and being so nervous.
Yeah, right.
“Are you enjoying the show?” A soft, course male voice said low in my ear. The way he said it made it clear the words for my ears alone, and the sound sent a flush of gooseflesh crawling down my back.
I stood stock still and said, “It’s very…interesting.”
“What do you find interesting about it?”
The man was standing very close, almost on my heels. His was big, and his presence made my nerves jangle. His voice had a strange, alternating inflection, the clipped briskness of an English accent with something else underneath, something foreign and exotic. I thought about moving away, but I was already on the group’s fringe. If I moved forward, I would be deeper in the crowd. If I moved back, I would literally be stepping into his arms. I took a deep breath to calm my flitting heart and half-panicked thoughts and stayed where I was. “They’re very pretty together,” I said lamely.
The man behind me put his big hands on my shoulders. The scent of his cologne—light, breezy, foreign, incredibly masculine—enveloped me. I could literally feel the adrenals picking up in my blood. He put his mouth very close to my ear, so close I could almost sense the roughness of his chin, and said, “I should put you over my knee and spank you for what you’ve done, my dear. You don’t belong here.”
My heart seemed to stick in my chest. Speaking was impossible. Moving was a fantasy. I shivered instead, and he responded to that and tightened his grip on my shoulders as if afraid I might bound away like a frightened rabbit.
“Give me one good reason why I should not alert everyone here as to who you are?”
I realized I had one of two choices—I could scream bloody murder and alert everyone that I was an unwanted guest, or I could try and negotiate with the brute standing behind me, ready to unmask me, figuratively speaking, for the pleasure of the Society. After I got my panic swallowed down to a manageable level, I whispered in a shaky voice, “What…what do you want with me?”
“Come with me,” he said. His big hand enveloped my elbow, his grip powerful enough to make me wince and prove he meant business as he turned me around. A part of me wanted to resist, to fight him, but I had this fantasy of being dragged, kicking and screaming, away. I wasn’t sure I could deal with the humiliation of that anymore than I could deal with the idea of being tied up and caned in public for the delight of some of the most powerful men in New York.
The gentleman dragged me toward one of the playrooms. As I looked up to see what breed of man had captured me, I wondered if screaming wouldn’t have perhaps been the smarter thing to do.
***
Moments later I found myself in a playroom fashioned to look like an old Eighteenth Century English study. There were walls of books, a large ornate desk, and dozens of different types of crops, martinets and whips lining the walls, all there for the gentlemen and their companions to play with. The gentleman who’d outed me pushed the door closed and turned to give me a fierce once over. He stood casually, hands in the pockets of his tuxedo trousers, but it was the kind of stance that made me acutely aware of how he was barring my way. I knew there would be no escaping him.
I’d known plenty of pushy guys in my time, playboy types and bad boy types. I’d grown up around tough guys. The college was full of them. I’d even dated a few, but I’d since learned the error of my ways. Bluster didn’t impress me, and that’s what they were—all bluster and sexy come-hither, but they weren’t the type of guys you trusted. Who was I kidding? Those weren’t the types of guys the girl next door landed.
But something about the fact that this man preferred silence to bluster made me move to the center of the room, leaving plenty of space between us. I tried to look tough but made the mistake of crossing my arms over my ample bosom. I wanted him to know he didn’t impress me, but I knew by doing that, by crossing my arms over myself protectively, I was telling him the truth—that he scared me half to death.
He was tall, well over six feet, and very slender. His tuxedo fit his wide shoulders and sleek hips like he’d been sewed into it. He had a lean, determined face that made it difficult to judge his age, high cheekbones, and a faintly Roman nose that was at odds with his almost black almond eyes. His silken black hair was long and hung in a thick, shining, blue-black braid to his waist. It wasn’t until he spoke again that I recognized the clipped Asian inflection lurking beneath his British accent. Ah, that would explain his look—it was obvious he was of mixed descent. “What’s your name, little girl?”
I worked hard not to say something wry and stupid. I swallowed. “Felix. And I’m not a little girl. I’m twenty-two years old.”
He smirked, briefly, like I had amused him. “Felix.”
“That’s not a made-up name,” I told him defensively. “And it’s not short for Felicity, either, so forget about that.” I’d spent so much of my life explaining about my name that it made me want to carry a sign around so I could just hold it up when folks gave me the anticipated surprised and/or suspicious look. When he did, I sighed and explained, “My dad had this obsessive love for the Felix the Cat cartoons as a boy. You know? ‘Felix the Cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat?’ He wanted to call his son Felix, but he and my mom only ever had me. So guess who got stuck with the wonderful, wonderful name?”
I expected him to laugh at my sarcasm. He didn’t. “I’m Alex Ishikawa,” the gentleman said. He said it in a bored, offhand way, like I should instantly know who that was. “And you must be a little girl if you thought you could fool anyone tonight with that silly disguise.” His eyes scraped over the length of me, making me want to hug myself tighter.
I dropped my arms instead. “It’s not a disguise. I really am a courtesan. I’m just new.” I might be short and plump and a little on the young side, but I thought I’d fit in quite nicely with the other courtesans. To my surprise, not all of them were tall and sleek. There were as many different types of courtesans here tonight as there were gentleman who owned them. I’d seen black women, white women, Asian women, women of mixed descent. I’d seen tall, willowy women and short, plump women like myself.
Mr. Ishikawa arched an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed.
I sighed. I saw no point in perpetuating a bad lie. He would just ask me who my gentleman was, and trying to come up with a generic name would make me look stupid. I hated looking stupid. “Fine. How did you know?”
“Courtesans don’t speak to other gentleman. It’s a house rule.” Mr. Ishikawa nodded toward the settee. “Sit down, take that mask off, and we’ll discuss what to do with you.”
“No,” I told him. I wanted to remain standing. I wanted to be able to run…in case I needed to.
He lost the smirk. “Sit down, little girl, or I’ll call the others and let them decide what to do with you.”
His voice, not raised but more of a sibilant hiss, made some of the crystal in the room vibrate, so I went and sat down on the settee. I fiddled with the tie on my mask until it came off. My face underneath was as damp with sweat as my fumbling hands. A big part of me kept thinking this couldn’t be happening even as I dropped the black feather mask to my lap. My heart felt like it was trying to beat its way up into my throat. My blood soun
ded in my ears. “My friends know where I am. If something happens to me, they’ll come looking for me,” I proclaimed bravely. I always heard something like that, or a variation on it, in the slasher movies I watched. It usually worked.
Mr. Ishikawa watched me a long, silent moment, his black-eyed gaze centered on me. He didn’t look particularly impressed by my threats. I started to squirm under his intense concentration once more. Finally, he tore his eyes away and went to the wet bar to fix himself a drink. I watched him prepare a saki, neat, vaguely hypnotized by the snugness of his trousers over his incredibly tight ass and the way his long braid brushed between his shoulder blades as he worked.
“Whatever you have planned, you won’t get away with it,” I added, but felt even more ridiculous. Was there a point when I would just stop delivering bad lines from B-movies?
“And what do you expect will happen to you, Felix?” Mr. Ishikawa mused. “I work in miniaturization. Acorn Technologies. Have you heard of it? We produce pacemakers and defibrillators and shrink smartphones. We’re not exactly Yakuza, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Oh.”
He moved to the settee, carrying the saki for himself, a white wine for me. He set the tall stem-glass down for me on the teak-inlaid, cherrywood tea table, along with a cocktail napkin, the way they do in expensive bars. I expected him to sit down beside me, but he stayed standing instead, looming over me, but set one foot on the edge of the antique tea table. “Normally, courtesans are not permitted to imbibe alcohol during a meeting of the Society—we gentleman require their sobriety throughout the evening—but you’re not really a courtesan, are you? So we’ll make an exception tonight.”
I gulped the wine to give myself strength. “You gentleman require,” I said as sarcastically as possible. Fear always translated to sarcasm with me. “What gives you the right to require anything of these women?”
Mr. Ishikawa offered me a closed smile. “What you witnessed out there offends you. We offend you.”
I nodded and gulped more wine. If something unfortunate was going to happen to me tonight, I wanted to meet it head-on and maybe a little less sober than I felt right now. I fumbled around mentally and sought my argument. “Women were the absolute last group of persons to be truly emancipated in this country. Black men could vote before women could.” I indicated this room, this house, this life, with the glass, sloshing a little wine over my wrist as I did so. “You have no right to take women’s freedom away like this. To reduce them to…paid companions that have to do whatever you say. It’s unethical. It’s immoral.”