Faith in the Flesh

by Maira Isabel Pita

  I followed his gaze. Only a faint pair of stars was visible through the city’s veil of light pollution. “I’m wondering if I knew you in a past life,” I heard myself say before I realized I was thinking out loud. “When you were a Mayan priest…and I was your sacrifice…”

  I felt his body tense slightly as he turned his head to look back at me and the quality of his silence encouraged me to go on.

  “Every time I look at you, Manuel, I get this hot, feeling in my chest like you’re trying to rip my heart out.”

  “I’m not trying to do that, Ariana,” he said very quietly, still not moving a muscle as he stared back at me.

  “Well, you’re still succeeding.”

  “John is a very lucky man.”

  “I’m sorry… I don’t know where all that came from.”

  “It came from your heart, which does not belong to me.” Still keeping his back to me, he stood up. “But which I feel very fortunate to inspire a small part of.”

  “No part of my heart is small, Manuel.”

  He hung his head abruptly. “Forgive me,” he whispered.

  I felt flushed more with triumph than from the alcohol as I rose and grasped his arms. “You’re so beautiful!” I breathed, resting my cheek against his hard back.

  “Thank you, Ariana.” He lifted his head but still didn’t turn to face me.

  “Is John training me to be his slave?” I asked curiously, the mescal affecting me like a powerful truth serum.

  “Perhaps, but he wouldn’t put it that way himself. His style and his preferences are more uniquely subtle.”

  “He ordered me to obey your commands last night.” I spoke softly, running my hands slowly down his long back. “I hope he orders me to do that again, Manuel… I hope he orders me to do that a lot because I want to be your slave too. But not like those other girls,” I added firmly. “They’re nothing. I could give both of you so much more…”

  “I know.” His voice was barely audible. “But now it’s time to go back inside and deal with our guests.” He reached around and grabbed my hand before I could succumb to the temptation and caress his ass, so enticingly encased in sleek black leather. “Come,” he commanded.

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * * * *

  I was surprised and pleased to observe that Manuel’s lovely “slaves” had not just left his side but had left the room and maybe even the house entirely. Perhaps they were well-trained enough to understand the slightest modulation of his voice. He had said “leave me” in such a way they immediately knew it meant “go away and stay out of sight”.

  I amused myself with exciting speculations while forced to make pleasantly boring conversation with the couple who had been monopolizing John’s company until Manuel steered him away to introduce him to other potential buyers, leaving me behind. I couldn’t imagine this sedate-looking man and woman owning one of John’s overtly sexual statues but appearances can be deceiving.

  I found myself wondering if Manuel’s maid knew about his pretty slaves. Strangely enough I imagined that she did know and that she respected him for behaving in such a traditionally aristocratic fashion.

  As I strove to entertain John’s potential buyers with charming conversation I surreptitiously kept my eyes on both him and Manuel as they made their rounds, gracing a small group of people with their presence for a while before moving on to another.

  Then finally guests began to leave, including the couple I had been chained to for what felt like hours. Eric still hadn’t shown up. I wasn’t surprised and I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed either. Perhaps I was even relieved. John and Manuel together were more than enough for one woman to handle. Did I really need to add another man to the erotic equation? No I didn’t but I got so hot doing some seriously naughty math in my head that I was forced to cross my legs where I sat on a couch, impatiently watching people depart.

  The room was beginning to look promisingly empty when a police officer in full uniform suddenly strode in.

  I heard a woman catch her breath and glance at Manuel as if she immediately suspected him of illegal dealings.

  John looked my way.

  I quickly got up and carefully smoothed down my dress, concentrating on the difficult task of walking a casual straight line, further distracted by the guilty sensation of my wet silk panties clinging to my labia.

  Eric spotted me at once and headed in my direction, his expression stern, as if he was really here to arrest me.

  If nearly overdosing on illicit fantasies was a crime, I was definitely guilty as charged.

  I was ostensibly walking in John’s direction but I paused now and pretended to adjust my sandal strap, giving Eric time to intercept me.

  “Hi,” I said brightly, tossing the hair out of my eyes as I straightened.

  He was looking around the room and my heart seemed to stop as I saw him lock eyes with John.

  “Is that him?”

  “Yes.” I felt like a parody of a good citizen helping the cops catch a suspect. Because it was true that John was breaking all sorts of relationship laws I had innocently lived by until I met him.

  Eric looked away from his rival and continued studying the room.

  I sensed he was adding up the cost of all the paintings and sculptures as he continued entertaining the suspicion that the host of the party was really a South American drug lord disguised as an art dealer.

  “I’m glad you came, Eric,” I declared sweetly because now that he had actually shown up I was very happy to see him.

  He frowned and kept studying his surroundings in a determined way that suddenly made me realize what he was really doing was avoiding my eyes.

  I caught my breath when I noticed Manuel escorting the last of his guests out of the room.

  John was making his way toward us from across with room without any great hurry but with a look on his face I couldn’t read.

  When he reached us I said lightly, “Eric, I’d like you to meet John,” trying to sound as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. “John…this is Eric.”

  Manuel walked back into the room and closed the door behind him.

  Suddenly I had to remember how to breathe. I was alone with three men, all of whom had already fucked me at least once.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eric,” John said suavely. “I’m glad you could make it. Ariana would have been disappointed if you hadn’t come tonight.”

  “Looks like I missed the party.”

  “That was business,” Manuel explained. “Good evening, officer.” A little smile softened his hard mouth as he gave Eric an assessing stare. “If you’ll all please follow me…”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Manuel did not live in a stone castle but he did in fact own a dungeon. More accurately, it was a fully equipped torture room located above ground. Of course that’s not really what it was but it might as well have been, judging from the terror it inspired in my heart when I first saw it—I suddenly wanted to go home and go to bed and relegate rooms such as this to the safety of dreams and fantasies.

  I looked desperately at John but he didn’t notice. He was too busy admiring the objects looming in the shadows like sinister works of art that seemed frighteningly unfinished without a living body to mysteriously complete them. A woman’s body… My body…

  I was very glad there was a police officer present who would never let him or Manuel hurt me.

  When I realized what I was thinking I was totally dismayed. I loved John and yet I didn’t trust him? There was something much more wrong with this psychological portrait of myself than with the eccentric setting. I told myself I was behaving like a child confronted by scary toys I had never played with before. Because that’s all they were—enjoyable toys designed to enhance pleasure—and I forced myself to admit that a much braver, deeper part of me was dying to explore them.

  I glanced at Eric. His face was absolutely expressionless but I noticed that his hand was tensely gripping the butt of his gun i
nstead of just resting casually on it.

  Manuel was standing just behind me at the entrance to the room from where, I assumed, he could enjoy observing everyone’s reaction to it, especially mine. Then I heard him close the door as John at last returned to my side.

  “What do you think?” he asked, his eyes resting intently on my face.

  “I have no idea what to think. I’ve never…” I glanced around me helplessly.

  “And before last night you had never fucked two men at the same time yet you seemed to enjoy it,” Manuel pointed out reasonably as I felt him step up behind me.

  Suddenly finding myself pinned between him and John, I felt a flash of excitement burn through my nervous uncertainty for a hot second.

  “You won’t need your weapons in here, officer,” John remarked without breaking eye contact with me. “Take them off, please.”

  I glanced at Eric. I had been half expecting him to leave ever since he arrived. This was the moment of truth.

  He removed his belt and set it carefully at his feet on the smooth black carpet.

  I couldn’t believe it. He was staying! My breath caught when I realized what that meant for me.

  “Looks like you’re in for some serious fun tonight, Ariana.” John’s intense expression turned me on as much as a lighthearted smirk would have turned me off. “You have my permission to fuck Ariana again tonight, Eric, but Manuel and I are in charge. Understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Ariana, once again you will obey Manuel without question or hesitation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He cupped my face tenderly in both hands and kissed me firmly on the lips. “Have you ever been flogged before?”

  “No!” My heart sped up. “I’m frightened,” I confessed. “I’m not into pain at all!”

  “How do you know that if you’ve never experienced it?” Manuel asked in that seductively reasonable voice of his as his hands traced the gentle hourglass curves of my waist and hips in a reassuring caress.

  “Because I know!” Fear made me raise my voice as my Cuban temperament shot to the surface on my pounding pulse.

  “Ariana.” The firm, disapproving way John said my name had the sobering effect of a slap. “Do you love me?”

  “Yes, you know I love you…”

  “That means you trust me doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, more ashamed now than frightened.

  “I wouldn’t have brought you here if I wasn’t sure you really wanted to be here. Nothing will happen tonight that you don’t want to happen. Do you know what a safe word is?”

  “Yes, I think so…”

  “Would you like to choose your own safe word or would you like me to give you one?”

  “Please just give me one, sir.”

  “Very well. From now on your safe word is ‘violet’. That’s easy enough to remember but it has three syllables, which will force you to think about whether or not you really want to say it.”

  “And if I do say it?”

  “Whatever is happening comes to a dead stop. We won’t gag you tonight, although in the future, after we’ve explored your limits and you’re comfortable with them, you will at times be gagged.”

  Oh God, I thought. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Manuel stroked the hair back away from my face firmly with both hands. He gathered it into a tight ponytail with his fist and pulled on it, forcing my head back slightly. “Before we begin, do you have any questions?” He kissed one side of my exposed neck and then the other, patiently waiting for me to respond. My body did so wordlessly as my tension dissolved into a delicious languidness made three times as debilitating by the fact that three men were observing my reaction.

  “Why do you want to flog me?” I asked John softly, leaning helplessly back against Manuel.

  “That’s a conversation we can have over dinner and a glass of wine some other time.”

  “But why will flogging me give you pleasure?” I insisted.

  “Because it will give you pleasure. You’ll understand a lot of things much better tomorrow morning, trust me. Right now it’s time for your favorite cop to search, strip and restrain you.”

  He stepped aside like a dancer so another man could take up the choreography of my absolute submission.

  Eric didn’t hesitate. I was surprised until I realized he was accustomed to working with a partner who helped him restrain dangerous suspects all the time.

  As Manuel also moved aside, my knees threatened to give way as the erotic dance my body was starring in tonight, for God knew how many acts, got underway.

  Eric grasped both my wrists and bent my arms sharply at the elbows, pinning them uncomfortably against my back. “Where do you want her?”

  “The cross,” Manuel said.

  I moaned and bit my lip to stop myself from protesting. If I really wanted him to let go of me I had to say “violet” but even though his vise-like grip was painful, the truth was it also thrilled me because I couldn’t possibly escape it.

  The cross was actually a roughly six-foot-tall black X dominating an entire wall.

  Eric led me over to face it and released me. “Brace yourself,” he said coldly, “and spread your legs as wide as you can.”

  Lightning seemed to strike directly in the warm, wet space between my thighs. It made no sense how much his impersonal forcefulness turned me on but it definitely did. I carefully obeyed him, planting my hands on the cool black leather that, thankfully, covered the cross’s metal frame. I hung my head, glad of the way my hair fell forward and hid my face as shame and arousal battled in my pulse even though there was no question which was destined to win. My heart was beating so fast endorphins were contributing their almost magical sense of wellbeing to the sensual relaxation already imposed by the alcohol I had drunk.

  Eric’s hands began their rough exploration at my ankles and moved slowly up my legs, lingering on my ass before moving forward to squeeze and thoroughly examine my breasts. My breathing was ragged by the time he finished and I suffered a thrill of anticipation when he gripped my panties with both hands and easily tore them. He clutched damp silk and roughly caressed my sex as he peeled them off, bunching the fine material up in his hand so his knuckles dug into my labia as if deliberately tantalizing and terrorizing me with the possibility of being fist-fucked.

  He tossed my panties away and grabbed my arms and raised them straight up over my head to pull my dress off. I was naked now except for silver high heels decorated with a little diamond heart that caught the light as my living heart flashed the sharpness of fear and desire with every beat.

  God only knew what these three men might feel like doing to me tonight. Anything imaginable could happen and the thought was so unbelievably arousing I was grateful Eric kept my hands raised above my head while using the inexorable pressure of his body to press me against the cross, which leaned back at a slight angle so I was still standing but also resting comfortably against the soft leather. I was very glad the cuffs attached to the instrument were also padded when he efficiently secured both my wrists and then bent down to repeat the procedure with my ankles. My legs were spread open a little farther than was comfortable but it was a small price to pay for how absolutely vulnerable I felt.

  “She has the most exquisite ass,” Manuel commented in that dangerously purring voice I vividly remembered.

  “Have you fucked her in the ass, Eric?” John asked.

  “No, I haven’t had that pleasure yet.”

  “Good. At least I won’t be the last one to enjoy coming in my own girlfriend’s ass.”

  Oh God, I thought. Oh God help me!

  * * * * *

  It was a night of revelations—of dark discoveries that enlightened me in ways that all showed me one thing with shockingly beautiful clarity—in the hands of the right men I was submissive to the very core of my being.

  Lost in the painfully pleasurable throes of each new experience, I knew I would remember that night for t
he rest of my life, which would never be the same because I would never be the same. The uncertain, timid, doubtful Ariana was beaten to death by three dominant men in whose hands, and around whose relentless cocks, I was reborn to a new sense of myself. There was power in how beautiful and desirable I was, a power I mysteriously exercised by not fighting either mentally or physically what I desired and which I received tenfold. All I had to do was yield with a worshipful grace that came naturally to me in the company of men who were wise enough to realize that all I wanted was more—absolutely all their strength and lust focused on me. I began to see them as priests blessing me with one unholy sacrament after the other as my body and my soul merged as they never had before. My flesh became indistinguishable from my deepest feelings and that was the real magic and the true mystery.

  As John informed me, while lashing my back with flat leather strips that made loud smacking sounds against my skin, flogging was not painful. It was not like being beaten with a single-tail whip, for example. A flogging was purely pleasurable, he said, provided I relaxed and fully surrendered myself to the experience. The flogger didn’t draw blood or raise welts on my tender flesh and I was very glad about that even though I didn’t entirely agree that it wasn’t painful. Yet he was right—the burning sensation of each lash was stimulating in a way that grew more and more intense beneath his steady rhythm as it mysteriously took the place of my thoughts, which seemed to drown in the hot, wet depths of my sex. I was aware only of each strategically placed stroke and the part of my body it brought to burning life. The flogging made my pussy feel deliriously hungry for cock and impossibly bottomless, as if even three men would never be enough, as if I could take a whole room of men fucking me violently from behind and still be left wanting.

  To say that I enjoyed my first flogging is an understatement of cosmic proportions. I loved my first flogging, which was delivered first by John and then by Manuel, whose technique was slightly different. His strokes were a little more cruel and unpredictable and seemed to send me over the edge of normal consciousness. I slipped into a space where I remained aware and yet in which the ticking of every clock on the planet became one with the beating of my heart and the rush of blood through my body as time magically stopped. I didn’t realize this had happened until later, when John proudly told me I had gone into a trance. According to him my first flogging had lasted a full forty-five minutes and yet I felt as if only ten or fifteen minutes had passed.