I finally did get the thing unwrapped. Legal papers. And I knew exactly what they said-what they had to say-before I began to read them. I went hot. Then cold. Honestly, I started to shiver, though I knew that the air in the room was perfectly warm, from the fire.
"Do you like it?" she asked me nervously. "Is it a good present?"
The papers were meticulously drawn up, written in that half-pornographic, half-legalistic style that Brewer and his troops could do so well. The slave called Carrie... to be purchased by Ms. Clarke and certifiably owned by Mr. Keller... under the direction and tutelage of Ms. Clarke's corporate agents.... -
"You'd do that for me?" I breathed.
She nodded, averting her eyes, looking small and defenseless, behind her knees.
"Hey," I said, "come here. Look, it's okay. You don't ...we don't... have to do this."
She lifted her chin. "You do still want her, don't you?"
I was ashamed to admit how much. Even though life had been so full those past few months, I'd still feel the yearnings from time to time. I'd find myself thinking of you, wondering how you were doing, and wanting to hear you tell me about it. Well, wanting a great deal more than that, really Most of the time, I was able to ignore these feelings, but not always, not completely.
"I do," I said sadly, "but...."
"Just what were you planning to do about it, then, come next March 15th?"
I'd avoided thinking about it. Go to Avignon and wing it, I supposed.
She supposed so too.
She stood up, opened the French doors that led to the deck, and walked out into the chilly night. I heard a sudden rush of wings. An owl, perhaps swooping down on a mouse or a hare. It was a wrenching sound, and a slightly arousing one. I followed her outside, pressing myself against her back, feeling her rotate her ass upward just a little bit toward my cock. That rotation was second nature, a way of adjusting for the difference in our heights. I took her breasts in my hands. Her naked skin was icy, the flesh below still warm.
"What do you want?" I asked. It sounded adolescent, the way I said it-a silly, portentous, metaphysical question about absolutes and the meaning of life.
And she answered me back like another adolescent.
"Everything," she said.
I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't help it. "Everything?"
"Everything," she repeated.
I remembered the last time we'd spoken like this-when she'd broken up with me, when we were teenagers. It had made no sense at all to me then. Well, she hadn't been very articulate, and I'd been stunned and enraged by loss.
"Everything," she said now, turning around and pressing her front to me. "As many pleasures as one has the will, and the energy, and the desire for-and the patience and talent to arrange."
And this time it seemed quite reasonable, out there on her deck, in the midst of the little empire that she'd built. I didn't need to feel guilty and dismayed by my desires for you. With enough patience and talent-and money-it could all be arranged.
"I'm having a very happy birthday," I whispered, my voice a little unsteady. We were holding each other tightly. "Thanks again."
We talked more the next morning, as we finished breakfast.
"You'll have to go to Avignon and get her to come back with you," she said. "She has to want to do this, and she has to understand-fully-what the terms of the deal are, and what she can expect. I'll keep her as exercised and disciplined as she needs to be, on a daily basis. I mean, you can't just stash her away like a princess in a tower, times when you're not using her."
"I've seen her," she added. And I guess she'd have told me the whole story, if I'd insisted on it, right then. But I let the moment pass, and she smiled, and continued.
"She's had an excellent trainer and she's quite acceptable now. Not quite on the level of my particular three, but she'll be able to hold her own, more or less, among the other six.
"She's become a pony, you know," she said then. She knew that I didn't know that. "She's had a good season, win ping a few prizes I thought Sylvie would take easily. They've been sharing most of the big purses between them this summer and fall."
So that's what you'd been doing. I remembered the first time I'd seen you bridled, the thick bit distending your mouth, the fear and humiliation widening your eyes. I've never been much for the racing circuit-I know how cruel it is. So they'd been as cruel as that to you... interesting to think about. Breathtaking, actually.
And, even more interesting, the rapt look in Kate's eye.
"She's really," and she paused for a moment, "an unusually charming pony"
I thought at first that she was teasing me, flaunting the fact that she'd seen you-perhaps used you-sometime during the racing season, and that I hadn't. And then I realized that she wasn't thinking about me at all, she was treating herself to a hot memory of...something, I didn't know what. And the rush of jealousy almost knocked me over. Well, I guess I'd be jealous of anybody who made Kate lick her chops like that. But envying you that way, Carrie-well, it took me by surprise. It was a new sensation, a strange taste in my mouth, like tobacco or vodka or foie gras, one's first time. A dangerous taste. Rich and poisonous and strange and addictive.
Kate and I looked at each other, evenly, for a minute. I know that you know. And same here, love. And then we looked down at the table. I poured us a little more coffee.
"Of course," she offered, "she still has some untapped potential-she could be polished to a much higher gloss."
I nodded. "If you paid her a little personal attention, you mean."
"I don't know where I'd find the time." Now she was teasing me. And herself. "But there are a few things I could do that would, um, make all the difference."
"Oh, well, please," I said. "I mean, if you could find the time."
"And you'll let me race her, won't you?" she asked. "She'll be a good project for Ariel."
I nodded.
"And come with me to watch her run?"
You bet I'll come watch you run. I'll wear my goldbuttoned blazer, with Kate next to me in the stands, wearing a pale peach linen dress and a slightly silly hat that I love. We'll hold hands and pass the binoculars back and forth. We'll scream along with the rest of the crowd, and we'll bet big money on you. And you'll win for us. Well, especially with Ariel driving you.
I nodded again. Yeah, definitely the pony races.
"And sometimes," I asked, "you know, once in a while, I mean, you and I could use her together, maybe. Share her, you know?"
She smiled at me over the rim of her coffee cup, "Thanks, sweetheart," she said, "I'd like that."
CARRIE
I could handle the birthday present part, I thought. Well, it beat jumping out of a cake, anyway. And it made an odd kind of sense, her wanting him to have me-at her place, where she could keep an eye on things. He makes her happy. And she wants him to be happy, too. Although (I couldn't help taking a little pleasure in the thought) she must have had some not-so-happy moments while she waited for him to come around. But he had come around. As we all would, in a complicated protocol that was obviously delighting him, and which I was having some difficulty grasping at the moment.
Still, I didn't really have to understand it all at once, did I? I supposed that all I really had to understand was that everything could be arranged. I thought again of Kate's foot parting my thighs, her fingers tugging at the straps of my bridle, her careful attention while Sylvie punished my breasts with the little whip.
And I thought how, when 0 first comes to Roissy, one of the girls asks if it was her lover who brought her. Yes, 0 says, and the girl tells her that she's lucky, because they'll be much harder on her that way. And if it was the boss lady's lover who brought you, how hard do you think they-how hard do you think she-will be on you?
I decided I'd better ask a question. Keep it technical.
"Well, but, Jonathan, how are these things managed? I mean, the contract, and my, uh, price? I mean, well, if the sale doesn't happen at an a
uction, you know?"
He laughed. "You don't have to worry about your price."
"It'll be substantial," he added. "Annie's very highly regarded, and after all you've done so well in those races and competitions."
But the decisive thing, really, was that Kate was buying me for him. Because slaves exchanged between lovers were considered extremely valuable.
"You'll get to read the papers that Brewer drew up. Of course, we still need to dot the is and cross the t's. And get you entered into the system."
He meant the association's new online information system. It was up and running now, he said, and I'd be measured, examined, filmed, and photographed, so that I could be accurately classified and represented on the databases, the Web pages.
Yeah, I thought, whatever. And then I felt my eyes widen, as an idea began to take shape far back in my brain.
He nodded, pleased that I seemed interested. "It's very impressive. Holds an astonishing density of information. Numerical, of course, about the, uh, population. But there are also graphical representations, film-clips. Well, you must have been on there at some point, now that I think of it. Didn't you tell me Kate said they'd filmed you winning that first race? Graphics take a lot of computing power, of course-a picture's worth considerably more than a thousand words online. But the hard part, it turned out, was building the security system. And we were lucky there, in a sense, because a hacker got in late last summer and showed us the weak points of the version we were running. He found a very subtle bug, and it took a long time to fix it."
Hmmm, I thought.
"Well, we probably shouldn't have put all that live auction and competition data up there quite yet," he said. "The hacker was on for about an hour, just looking around, it seems. Jerking off, I guess. No clue as to who he was. People who understand these things were very impressed with how cleverly he got in and out. They speculate that he could have covered his tracks completely, but didn't want to. Wanted to let somebody know he'd been there. Sorry-he or she, I guess I should have said."
I had to smile a little at that fastidious, PC touch. But it was a he, I thought. Because I know....-And I thought that maybe I should tell....-But surely, I thought, Jonathan can read it in my face, and will demand to know what I'm not telling him.
But he was drifting somewhere, still far away in the land of his story. He caught himself now, apologetically, willing himself back into the here and now.
"It was interesting," he shrugged, "to see how they put together something like that. Kate and I had fun learning a little about the technical stuff. But it's probably a lot less interesting to hear me tell about it."
"Oh," he smiled now, "and we'll make sure you get real books to read this time. We'll get that into the agreement as well."
I blushed as I thanked him. I was pleased that he'd thought of it.
"Which reminds me," he continued, "that book you were reading before the auction-and it was a cyberpunk book, too, wasn't it?, how appropriate-anyhow, which of the stories did you like?"
Well, why not talk about books? After all, we'd gotten all our business affairs out of the way. And maybe, I thought then, I didn't really have anything to tell him after all. Turned out we'd enjoyed the same stories in Mirrorshades, too.
He continued, "We could go to the movies, tonight, if you'd like to. We can probably find some interesting American film that won't open in the States for another month or two."
"Sure," I said eagerly, "uh...Jonathan." He nodded, enjoying the way I'd said it, the two rhythms superimposed. The casual chatty rhythm of a man and a woman planning an evening out-and underneath it, the fetishes speaking in their own measured cadences. He smiled at the angle of my shoulders, the little arch in my back that kept my breasts displayed to him, the stiff nipples outlined by the dress's soft red wool.
"They were right," he said, contentedly. "Kate and all those professional types. I didn't know how to train you, didn't know at all what I had. But I did find you, after all, which ought to count for something. And I've got you back now, that's the important thing."
We checked the movie listings. Easy to agree on one-the one with Isabelle Huppert as a sentimental pornographer. Not bad, either. Hip and knowing, if not quite coherent, we agreed, walking out of the theater into misty, light rain. And we do like the same movies (same books, too), I thought briefly, though I didn't suppose it really mattered any more. The sidewalks were slick, and I had to walk very carefully in the fetish shoes. We went to a nightclub, to slow-dance for a while. The shoes made me as tall as he was; my head was on his shoulder, one of his hands on my ass. I could feel his cock hardening.
"Enough," he finally whispered. "Let's get out of here."
And in the little gilded elevator, riding up the six flights to our hotel room, he said softly, "Play with yourself, make yourself come."
Obediently, I put my hand up my dress. I moved my finger slowly. I finished in the hotel room, standing up, teetering on the heels, while he watched intently.
"Take off your dress and hang it up," he said, after I'd gotten my breath back. "Leave on the shoes and stock ings." And when I turned back to him, he was balancing the new riding crop in his palm, frowning in perfectionist concentration.
He took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and fixed a gag very tightly to my mouth. It was the kind with a rubber ball in it; he'd bought it at the store where we'd gotten my shoes. It would work well. It even stifled the sound of my gagging.
The room had a little alcove, in front of the window. He nodded for me to stand there. I could see the lights of Montmartre over the rooftops, through the thin curtains and the mist.
"Hands over your head," he said, climbing onto a chair to slip a chain through the hook that was mounted in the ceiling. He didn't have to tell me to arch my back, to spread my legs-so that I could balance better, be more open. I knew all those things, I did them without thinking.
I heard a clock strike somewhere. I think it was three in the morning. I remember the first blow, my stifled scream behind the nauseating gag. And then he whipped me until I fainted.
At least, that's what he told me afterward. He'd used smelling salts, he said, to bring me around, after he'd unfastened the hooks of the corset. I couldn't remember much, but I didn't think that I'd fainted from the pain. It had been the dizzying effort to understand what was happening to me.
Jonathan and Kate, I thought, rotating their names around in my mind. My goodness. It would be like having McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Well, if you could call it having them. I mean, they'd be the ones doing the having, wouldn't they? Slaves exchanged between lovers. Always the most valuable. I thought I might swoon again if I thought about it too hard.
He'd been disconcerted by my fainting. I'd never done that before, and he wasn't sure what to make of it. And I couldn't help him, though part of me wanted to. But my vertigo and confusion, and the detachment that they seemed to produce, were making it hard for me to know what I was feeling just then.
He rubbed salve gently on my ass, after using a wet towel to wipe away the little bit of blood he'd drawn. I could see that the blood had freaked him. Drawing blood was against the rules of the association, and Jonathan believed in rules. Especially after his run-in with Mr. Brewer. In any case, if the terms he'd outlined to me were a little much for my imagination, the blood and fainting were all a little much for the control freak in him.
He brought me brandy, stroked my face, gave me drags of his cigarettes. I lay on my stomach, facing the window. The clouds were clearing, and the sky behind Montmartre was turning to that inky predawn blue that makes you realize how soon it will be morning. He took off my shoes and stockings. He even loosened my collar a notch.
He told me things, stray marginalia from his stories, odd, confessional fragments of meta-narrative. "I didn't want to tell you about Kate, you know, until after you'd agreed to come back to me. I wanted you to come back to me, not to her and me. And I'm still a little afraid that you'll become more devoted to
her than you are to me."
"I do care about you, you know," he concluded, sadly, but a little aggressively, a little self-importantly, as well. Yes, I thought, and as I reviewed all the stories we'd told each other these last days, I'd be able to figure out exactly how much. It might be a complex pattern, but it was a finite one, a closed system. I closed my eyes, seeing things I'd seen and things I'd just heard about-Kate a riot of Renoir flesh in a red armchair, Jonathan kissing Ariel in the pony cart. Everything not just itself, but a sign of power or passion or need. I'd be a cipher in this system, a tremulous ground for communication and fantasy. They'd use whips to write each other love letters on my skin. And they'd tease and torment each other-by how he indulged me, or she fine-tuned my discipline.
I felt dizzy again. Alice falling down the rabbit hole, flying past cupboards and bookshelves, maps and pictures on her way down to the center of the earth. Free fall through a closed system. But it wasn't really a closed system, I reminded myself. Not quite. It had a leak-somebody had sneaked in uninvited, an outsider had imposed his own point of view. I found myself concentrating on that rogue viewpoint, that intruder's eye pressed to the keyhole. When you're losing your balance you can steady yourself, you know, if you concentrate your vision on a still point somewhere in the distance.
Jonathan stroked my head, and put a sheet and a comforter over me. They were light and warm and silky, and didn't hurt my welts and bruises too much. I thought I'd be able to sleep.
I remember that the sky was grayish when I drifted off. And I don't remember him coming to bed. I think he was still sitting up, smoking and drinking brandy and watching me.
The Fifth Day
CARRIE
'didn't see him when I woke up late the next morning either. .There were croissants and pain au chocolat and coffee in a thermos pot for me, and I was almost indecently hungry. My muscles were stiff, and my ass hurt, but really, it was nothing I wasn't used to. And as for last night's sadness and confusion-well, it's funny, isn't it, how you can fall asleep entirely confused and wake up clear-eyed and confident about what comes next. I got out of bed, stretching my body in the daylight that was streaming through the big windows. It was almost noon-a beautiful, unseasonably warm, gloriously sunny day. I did some yoga and lots more stretches, and took a shower. And then I ate the food and drank the coffee, made up my face, and got down on my knees in the pool of bright sunlight in the middle of the floor to wait for him.
Safe Word Page 19