Backwater Bondage

by Reese Gabriel

  A date. Lord, was it really that? A date with Shep after all these years?

  “So you have a child?” he asked at last, after they’d ridden some distance down the road.

  Stretching her legs in the roomy Land Rover she said, “Yes. Reyna just turned eighteen last spring. But I’m not with her father,” she added hastily. “I’m not married or anything, I mean.”

  She winced, realizing she was making an idiot of herself.

  “I’m alone, too,” he replied, catching her meaning and responding in such a way as to put her instantly at ease.

  “Oh?”

  Steady, girl, steady.

  “Where are you staying, Cynthia?”

  Lost in his profile, she said dreamily, “My aunt’s house. Did you want to go there?”

  “Well I thought you needed to check on your daughter.”

  “My daughter, Reyna,” she reminded herself. “Yes, I do.”

  She was silent for the rest of the way, and mercifully he followed suit. Despite her embarrassment and her apparent inability to keep a coherent thought in her head, it amazed Cynthia how natural this felt, just the two of them riding together, like old friends. Or maybe it was more than that.

  “I’ll just be a minute!” she cried, leaping out the door once he’d pulled in the driveway.

  “Take your time, Cynthia. We’ve been waiting almost twenty years.”

  She flew to the door, praying over and over that Reyna would be gone. It made her a terrible mother, she knew, but how much worse of a parent could she be at this point? Oh, yes, she knew her mistakes all too well: Smothering her daughter, interfering in her life, pushing her away when she should have been supportive. The truth was she’d become terrified of her own child who was now so much more mature than she could ever hope to be and capable of such powerful emotions. One look at those blue eyes intimidated her to the quick.

  “Reyna?” Three more times successively she called out her name, going room to room. No one there, just a note, next to the one she’d left, saying that Reyna too was gone for a while. She should be worried about that, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t. Not now. Eighteen years of motherhood and now it was time to be a girl again. Leafing madly through her clothes, wishing she had something suitable, she settled finally on a flowing knee length skirt and a sweater blouse, just a little bit low cut. It was flirtatious and pink, and about as elegant as she could manage on her tiny budget.

  “Is your daughter okay?” he asked, when she hobbled out ten minutes later, still adjusting her high heels.

  “Huh? Oh, yea. No problem,” she beamed, urging him onward. “Let’s go.”

  Shep glanced across at her. “You look nice,” he observed.

  “Thank you.” Mostly she was thankful he hadn’t drawn too much attention to this latest sign of her throwing herself at him.

  “Reyna is a pretty name,” he observed.

  “It’s a family name on her father’s side.” She tried to focus on the lazy trees lining the street, but she was all emotional, just hearing him say her name. It made them closer somehow, like he’d been there all along, sharing the struggles with her. “She’s a good kid. Head strong. I did my best, but it wasn’t always easy. She’s real smart when she applies herself. Pretty, too, which has its own dangers.”

  Cynthia gripped the armrest. She was rambling.

  “You love her more than anything, don’t you?” Shep asked, surprising her with his ability to see to the depths of her soul.

  “I do,” she replied, turning towards him to find him looking intently at her. “I just wish I could have given her more.”

  “You gave her your love,” he said, returning his eyes to the road. “That’s all that matters.” After a moment’s silence, he added, “I can’t have children myself.”

  The lump of sadness came fast and hard to Cynthia’s throat. “Oh, Shep. I didn’t know.” She wanted to reach for him, but still lacked the courage. “Was it a...”

  “It was a vasectomy,” he supplied, sparing her fumbling attempt to inquire further. “Many years ago, when I was involved in a lifestyle which could well have resulted in unwanted pregnancies.”

  Cynthia resisted the temptation to ask for details, although it was intriguing, to be sure, that the likes of Shepard Trace III could have been involved in something sleazy. She wondered now if all those rumors about the sex cult might have had some bearing in reality. “Do you ever wish you could have them, Shep? Children I mean?”

  The question was probably far more intense than anything about his sex life, but somehow it seemed safer.

  “No.” His voice was steady, betraying a tinge of pain but not an ounce of regret. “I chose a different path, one requiring unencumbered relations between man and woman.”

  Cynthia ran her hand over her skirt-covered thigh. Such a strange statement. What on earth could it mean? And why did it heighten her pulse so just imagining the possibilities?

  “I didn’t realize there was such a thing. Unencumbered relations, I mean. Every relationship I’ve ever seen is a mess.”

  Shep nodded as he turned left down a fork in the road leading to Meander, the next town over. “That’s because few people know themselves well enough to find their true place in life. Fewer still have the courage to act on that knowledge. I hope you don’t mind if we find somewhere outside Charred River to talk?”

  “Fine by me. I’ve had enough of the place to last me a while.”

  “What made you come back?”

  Cynthia folded her arms. She should have known he would cut to the quick. He always did. “I don’t know. Looking for a second chance maybe. Or else I’m just a glutton for punishment.”

  Or maybe it was you I came back for.

  He shook his head, opting not to laugh at her feeble joke. “No. You seek out experiences to grow, that’s all. It’s a gift. Most people can’t do that, they stay in the same rut.”

  “Some gift,” she mused. “The ability to mess up your life on a regular basis.”

  He shook his head decisively. “There’s no shame in anything you’ve done. Actually, I’ve always felt, Cynthia, that you are the bravest person I’ve ever met. I wish you knew how many times I lay close to death, praying to survive for the sole reason that one day I might have the opportunity to tell you that face to face.”

  Cynthia tried to absorb the impact of these words. They spelled out something profound, something as deep as anything a person could imagine coming from one heart to another, and yet the pieces just didn’t add up. “You didn’t seem so keen on me when we saw each other last,” she reminded him bluntly.

  Shep was silent, making her regret instantly her ill chosen words. She just couldn’t handle the sudden closeness that was all. Not when she was sure it would only come at the price of more rejection.

  “I never meant to hurt you, Cynthia,” he said at last. His voice was very soft, very low, but incredibly clear. “I’m sorry.”

  She grabbed his shoulder. “Oh, Shep. I’m sorry, too.” The tears were going to come and she didn’t know if she could stop them.

  Shep pulled to the side of the road. “It’s time I told you some things. Okay if we do it here?”

  She looked around her, eyeing the wide-open cornfields under blue sky. Laughing as she wiped her eyes she said, “Hey, I always was a cheap date, right?”

  His smile was belied by the pools of sadness shimmering in his eyes. He never had been able to conceal anything from her. “It’s a long story,” he apologized, “and I’m afraid I’m not even going to start in the right place. But it’s the only way I know how to tell it.”

  She touched his hand lightly with hers. “I’m all ears.”

  Drawing a deep breath, he began. “It’s difficult to explain the pressures of being born a Trace. Your whole life, you’re being watched. Some want you to succeed, most hope you’ll fail. It was after high school that I finally cracked. I had been expected to attend a prestigious university, or perhaps a military academy.
I opted instead to enlist in the Merchant Marine, as a seaman. My family was thrilled, of course.”

  Cynthia smiled, imagining the looks on the faces of Shepard I and II to hear that little piece of news.

  “I had my reasons. I needed to explore for myself a different side of life. I more than got my wish. In the first two years alone, I visited forty-seven nations on five continents. What fascinated me most, though, at every port I stopped in were the women. It had never occurred to me the universality of female degradation. From prostitution to forced marriage to a dozen other forms of servitude scarcely different than slavery, women are everywhere oppressed. Incredibly, I discovered that these practices are as old as society and backed by the most venerable religious and ethical creeds. In ancient times, temples even had their own stables of prostitutes for use in so-called fertility rites. In some places in the Indian subcontinent as recently as the last century, women were still pressured to follow their husbands into death rather than remain as widows.

  “Surely, I thought, there must be something natural, biological and noble in a woman’s subservience, and yet invariably I saw the majority of women to be lonely, neglected creatures. Why was this? Throughout the Third World, fathers still sell their daughters. As close as Mexico, and even in the US, there are underground operations using indentured women whose bodies are exploited nightly for the profit of others. In Tijuana I visited a brothel where women are chained by the neck to heavy iron rings in the wall. Day and night they lie on stinking straw mats, available for the price of a few coins.

  “In some places, of course, the stakes are much higher. In the desert country of Marakastan, I was the guest of a sultan who gave to me for the night an American girl, a former beauty queen from Ohio. He had acquired her through the white slave trade for the sum of nearly fifty thousand dollars.

  “It was with this girl, whose name was Melanie that I discovered my own deep desire to master and own the females with whom I copulated. For some reason, her subservience awoke in me urges that no one else had before—not the copper skinned coin girls of Tijuana, not the jade eyed beauties of Bangkok, nor even the scads of nubile Eastern European girls, who fill every street corner in Europe, giving themselves away for the price of a warm bed and a hot meal.

  “Maybe it was her training, or the fact that she was born American like me, yet given in life to a role so different from her upbringing that made her so desirable. She was sent to me wearing a flimsy halter of silk and a flowing, nearly invisible silk skirt. She was belled and collared and quite naked underneath. There were rings in her ears and in her nipples. Whether she was pleased at the sight of me, I cannot say. She did, however fall at once to my feet, commencing to kiss them.”

  ‘I am your girl, Melanie, yours for the evening,’ she declared, her head still lowered.

  “Not having seen a fellow citizen in quite some time, I tried to engage her in a discussion of the sort common to exiles, but she preferred to remain at my boots, licking them clean. It was not until I tried to force the conversation and she began to sob pitifully that I realized her true predicament.

  “Pulling her to her feet I asked her what in God’s name was the matter.

  ‘Master,’ she sniffled. ‘This girl is not permitted to engage Masters in free discussion. She exists only to please them with her body. Please do not bid me open my mouth again, unless it is to receive your glorious cock, or else I will surely be punished by my Master’s men.’

  “How lovely the girl looked in her terror, with her flowing blonde hair, her tear streaked cheeks, gold bands adorning her wrists and upper arms, as well as her slender ankles and even her neck. I had thought them mere items of jewelry at first, but upon closer inspection, I saw they had no means of removal, and quickly concluded they were designed for chaining her, not adorning her.

  “Her beauty and her utter openness to me both aroused and terrified me. She neither blinked nor blushed as I stripped her with my eyes, baring her to her soul. There was in her not one ounce of evasiveness or dissimulation.

  ‘Does Master not desire me?’ she asked, her voice tiny and lost, as I continued to hold her at arm’s length.

  “My manhood surged. How could I not want to possess such a creature? To dominate her utterly in front of the whole world, branding her as my own? In fact, at that very moment, Melanie had become for me the composite of every girl I had ever wanted and been unable to have.

  “Ruthlessly, I shoved her down to her knees. Whipping out my organ, I placed her mouth over it, forcing her to take it in one gulp. Melanie never hesitated, but took me instantly to the back of her throat, demonstrating as she did her exquisite training as an object of pleasure. With her back perfectly straight, breasts displayed, legs widely spread she clasped her arms behind her, giving me unencumbered access to her, neck to knee. Though I hadn’t intended to end it so quickly, I found myself ejaculating in her warm pinkness almost at once. As my hands pressed the top of her pretty head, she remained in place, swallowing every drop.

  “The act itself was not novel for me. By this time I had enjoyed hundreds of women this way. But it had always seemed impersonal in the past, as though the girl were a mere pleasure-dispensing machine. Melanie, however, had retained her femininity. She was giving to me from the depths of her soul, as though we were one flesh, and all this despite, or rather because I was a stranger, a man to whom her Master had lent her for the night.

  “To my amazement, even after coming in her mouth, I stayed hard. Pushing her to her back, I stripped away her mockery of a skirt and entered her at once, intoxicated by the scent of her, the sight of her, the sweet air of jasmine mixed with perspiration. Laughing like a madman, I tore away at the flimsy top as well, baring her breasts and rendering her naked before my onslaught. It was then I first noticed the tattoo, small, delicate, in the shape of a desert rose, just below her left breast.

  ‘That is my Master’s mark,’ she whispered, sensing my interest.

  “Unable to restrain myself, I planted my palms on either side of her, plunging into her belly and riding her to a second even more explosive climax. Four times I counted her shuddering to orgasm beneath me, with an abandon so helpless, so utterly female, I scarcely believed I was not myself reborn of the race of immortal gods to have brought her such pleasure.

  “Five more times would I spill my seed into Melanie that night, each time more devastatingly perfect than the last, and all with almost no refraction time. The fourth time I came inside her narrower channel, which opened for me like a flower. For my final act of possession, I spilt upon her face, a gift for which she thanked me most abjectly. Can you imagine my joy? In one fell swoop I had shattered my every conception of the limits of my sexuality. At the same time, I had realized an almost sacred truth: namely that in as much as I found my fulfillment through mastery, this girl had found it through slavery.

  “Unable to sleep, I chained her hands above her head using a pole set in place for this purpose in my room and set about to interview her. Naturally, I neither clothed her nor allowed her to clean the jism from her lovely face and breasts. Furthermore I required her to keep her feet widely spaced that she might be available to me and visible in her deepest femininities.

  “Under these conditions I had hoped to unlock the secret to her condition and to the joy of submission that was obviously hers. Sadly, however, I could find little in her story that was unique or decisive. Truly, there were thousands, maybe millions of girls just like her. Only circumstance seemed to have made her life so different. In her case, she had encountered a handsome young Arab at a trade show where she had landed work displaying turbine motors in a bikini. The man had revealed to her the joys of submissive sex. In short order, she had been lured overseas, where she soon found herself in over her head. It was the man’s uncle, a sultan, who had been the first to formally purchase her flesh and to have her trained as an infidel slave girl. But why her and not any one of the others of pretty American girls who flaunt their flesh each
day? And why did she have joy in her forced sex where most women knew only misery? And above all, what would I be required to do to find for myself such a creature?”

  On the edge of her seat, Cynthia asked, “And did you? Find a girl, I mean.”

  He smiled sadly. “Alas, yes, although the end result was not what I sought. Through the sultan, you see, I became acquainted with a white slaver named Leopold, a burly, goateed man with a shaved head and a bull neck. Though his activities were hardly legal, I found him to be a man of great honor and good humor. He was a ruthless trainer, of course, and it was said he could break any female to abject servitude. His specialty was in providing concubines for wealthy potentates and captains of industry. Only the finest merchandise crossed his hands and I daresay every girl that came to him, no matter how beautiful and haughty, never failed to leave as anything but a tamed and willing pet.

  “He was a man of iron will. For his training center, he took a castle in the remotest part of the Alps, a location affording him absolute freedom and privacy. To begin with, he would play upon the new arrivals a most subtle and cruel trick. Naturally, being brought to him from whatever kidnap ordeal had befallen him, they would protest their innocence and demand immediate release.

  “Most patiently, seated behind his enormous mahogany desk, he would hear their stories, appearing quite sympathetic and concerned. By facial gestures and body language he would betray great sympathy, winning their highest hopes. By the end, they invariably anticipated their rapid release, along with extensive reparation.

  “Prior to such a happening, however, he would indicate that there was just one minor hitch. Since this was in fact a slave training facility, there needed to be some proof that in fact the girl did not by natural propensity belong in such a place. Tensing, the girl would ask what proof was needed. Leaning back in his seat, visage implacable, Leopold would tell her that she must insert into her cunt a single hand, in his presence, removing it in a state of perfect dryness. Unwilling to appear guilty, and having been manipulated this far, they would inevitably relent. The looks on their face, the fear, the arousal never failed to be priceless as they did his bidding.