Irene thought about that for a minute. “It was good. I was happier growing up than I was after I was married. There was a lot to do when I was young but married life was the same boring stuff every day.”
“So you sold yourself into slavery because you thought that would be more exciting?”
“It seemed so at the time.” Irene looked around the kitchen. “Of course, I thought that men would be using my sex a lot. And I thought that I’d get to serve in the manor and be sent on errands. It’s not so nice being stuck in a kennel all the time and being forced into celibacy. This wasn’t supposed to be the deal.”
“The deal is that an owner does whatever he wants with his property. Even a lady had to know that much. Surely you didn’t think that you were going to get to tell your owners what they could and couldn’t do with you.”
“No. But I didn’t think that they’d pay a fortune for a slave and then not use her.”
“Lord Snow uses you to organize his entertainments. He seems to think that he’s getting his money’s worth out of you.”
“If he doesn’t, then I’m going to starve in my cell for three days. That would be a misery.”
“If you do fuck up and get fasted, I hope they bring you out during meals and make you watch the rest of us eat.”
Irene thought that was an unnecessary sentiment. “If the entertainment failed because you didn’t follow instructions, you’ll be eating no dinners for me to watch because we’ll be fasting together.”
Peach stared hard at Irene. “You wouldn’t dare make us fast, too.”
“I’ll be absolutely fair. If it’s my fault, I’ll suck it up and fast alone. But any slave who fucks up and ruins my entertainment will be fasting along with me.”
Peach smiled. “Like Nickel did.”
“Nickel got what Nickel earned. No more and no less.”
“Oh, I think she earned quite a bit more than a three-day fast. If I had my way, I’d lock her in there until she ate her own hands off. Then she’d never tenderize another cunt.”
Irene shrugged.
“You, though? You’re in there every day, licking her cunt like a bitch in heat, giving her the best time of her life.”
“I do what I’m ordered. Slaves don’t get to choose their service. I don’t like it, but I signed up for slavery so I do the job.”
Peach bristled. “Don’t you lecture me about what a slave does, Lady Irene. I’ve lived through more slavery than you’ll ever know.”
“So tell me.”
“Tell you what? What it was like to go to a labor auction when I was nine years old and see my worn-out, broken-down mother get bought by a farmer? See her get taken away to pick lettuce for sixteen hours a day until she died of exhaustion? To see her so beaten down that she didn’t even look at me as they led her off? Hear about my owner telling me that he took me along to make sure that I understood what happened to slaves who weren’t useful any more. It was a lesson well-learned. I’ve made sure that I was useful ever since.
“Or do you want to know what it was like to watch my mother give birth to a baby boy when I was five and hear the owner tell her to get rid of it. She was ordered to kill her own baby because he didn’t feel like doing it himself. It was an unpleasant task and slaves are expected to take care of unpleasant tasks. I learned that lesson pretty well, too. Especially when it was repeated a year later when my mother was unlucky enough to have another boy. It’s just business. A boy isn’t worth the money it would cost to raise it for the labor market. Slaves are property so their issue is property. That’s the law. You must know about the law. It’s fine, noble people like you who run the government and make the laws.” Her voice dripped with bitter sarcasm.
“I didn’t know about those laws,” Irene said. “Ladies are never told about the laws that govern slavery. I don’t know if my husband or his friends are experts about all of it, either.”
“Ignorance is bliss. Sorry that I’m making you feel a little less blissful now.”
“I’m feeling a little less ignorant now. What else don’t I know about slavery?”
“How in hell would I know?”
“How old were you when you were first sold?”
“Fifteen. A slave can’t be sold until she’s fifteen. The law is a little squeamish about making children service gentlemen. It’s not squeamish about much, but it’s squeamish about that. It’s not because of the slaves. It’s because it would make the gentlemen look bad.”
“So the first man who bought you took your virginity?”
Peach looked shocked and angry. “Hell no. Don’t you know anything? It’s illegal to sell a virgin, even in a private sale. It would be barbaric to auction off someone’s virginity. When I was taken to the auction house, they tattooed me, vaccinated me, and deflowered me. One stop service, all needs satisfied. The doctor’s needs, especially. I think he got into the auction business because he really liked the deflowering part of his job.”
“So when you were sold… “
“I wasn’t a virgin. By about three hours.”
“I never dreamed that people could be treated that way.”
Peach snorted. “I’m not a person. I’m property. Always have been, always will be. I knew that as soon as I was old enough to know anything.”
“I don’t think that it’s right. If a person gets pressed into slavery or adjudicated, that’s fair enough. They did something wrong. Committed a crime or spent too much money. It’s their own fault. But not children. Not babies. Babies should be born free.”
Peach barked. “Yeah, how would that work? A piece of property giving birth to a person? The baby is a free soul but has to be suckled by a piece of property? And what happens when the five year old throws a tantrum and tells her mother to go jump of a cliff? Be a lot of dead breeders at the bottom of our cliffs because a slave has to obey a free person’s orders.”
Actually, that last wasn’t true. A slave has to obey only her owner’s orders. An owner orders his slaves to obey kennelmen, whiphands, and invited guests but he wouldn’t order a mother to obey her child. But Irene understood Peach’s point. It would be unnatural for a child to have a parent who was so much lower status than her. If an owner could give orders to the mother but not to the child, a number of unfortunate situations could arise.
Irene had heard enough for now. She could only take so much horror in one sitting.
But Peach wasn’t done, yet.
“I can tell you one thing for sure. Getting sold at that first auction was a big step up. Being a pleasure slave was is far superior to being the child of a breeding slave. Lord Snow can take his strap to my ass every morning before breakfast and I’ll still be happier than I was when I was growing up.”
Irene didn’t ask why. She changed the subject. “Do you think that Nickel is satisfied with making me eat her out on my knees every day or do you think that she’s going to try to do something else to me.”
Peach glanced toward the door to make sure that Nickel was nowhere in sight, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think that you better never take your eyes off that bitch. She’s never going to be satisfied as long as you’re Lord Snow’s favorite little suck-up. She was top bitch in the kennel before you arrived and now she’s second tier. She’s got to be careful. She can’t take you on, face-to-face because she can’t risk Lord Snow taking your side against her. But she’ll stab you in the back, first chance she gets – especially if she thinks that you won’t find out that it was her. Or if you do anything, and I mean any little thing, that she can claim is disobedience of a direct order then she’ll wale on your cunt so bad, you’ll be waddling like a duck for a month.”
“You think that she’d cause me permanent injury?”
“She’d sure as hell like to, but she can’t risk lowering your value at auction. If you can’t fuck a man any more, you’ll only be fit for labor. She might try to hurt you bad enough that you can still get fucked but so that it’ll hurt like hell every time you do
. I knew a slave once who had some kind of nerve damage down there and that was what it was like for her. Her owner got tired of hearing her scream her head off every time he fucked her so he sold her to a brothel to get fucked all day long, every day, for the rest of her life. She brought him a good price. There’s certain kind of man who enjoys feeling a slave suffer at the end of his cock and will pay a premium for that kind of fun.”
Another horror story. Peach was fountain of joy.
“I hope I never get sold to a brothel,” Irene said. “Even if the alternative is getting sold directly into labor.”
“A brothel’s not the worst. It’s bad, but it’s not as bad as the professor.”
“Someone else told me about the professor. They said that he’s a sadist who loves to torture slaves.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Why does everyone around here keep talking about him?”
“Don’t you know? He’s one of Lord Snow’s favorite guests. He gets invited over a couple of times a month.”
Irene was shocked. “You mean that we’ve been entertaining him?”
“Not you. He doesn’t come to the after-dinner entertainments. He comes over for private game nights. He loves games even more than Lord Snow. Cards. Dice. He’s a fiend about backgammon. Of all those gentlemen who spend so much time in that billiard room, I think he’s the only one who ever actually played billiards.”
“So you’ve seen him?”
“Often. I’ve never known him to want to be serviced by a slave, but he loves looking at us so Lord Snow brings us in for decoration. It makes your skin crawl when he looks at you. You know that he’s thinking about what you’d look like if you were suffering some terrible torture. Every time I’m in the room I’m terrified that he’s going to offer to buy me from Lord Snow. I heard that he gets all of his slaves in private transactions. He never goes to the auction house.”
Now Irene had something else to worry about. If the professor never took sexual services from Lord Snow’s slaves, then he could order her to attend their game nights without worrying about her celibacy.
“There’s another thing about the professor.”
“What’s that?”
“He sells his torture devices. We’re all scared that Lord Snow will see one that he likes and put it in the pleasure room.” Peach frowned. “Lord Hoffman bought one. It was a crucifixion frame. A slave is suspended with her arms stretched wide and only her toes touching the floor. It’s supposed to be one of the most painful punishments that a slave will ever feel.”
Irene nodded. “I believe it is. I was lent to the Hoffman’s for an entertainment once, and lost a game. The penalty was a half hour suspension in the frame. I still cringe every time I think about it. Every minute was a new kind of hell.”
Peach’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t thinking about borrowing it for one of your entertainment nights, are you?”
“I hadn’t thought about that, but I guess I could.”
Peach didn’t reply, just stared.
Irene laughed. “Don’t worry. I couldn’t bring myself to do that to you. Not when I know from experience how horrible it is.”
Peach brightened. “You know, we wouldn’t mind if you borrowed it as long as you fixed the game so that Nickel was the one who lost. The rest of us would like seeing that.”
“No. I wouldn’t crucify even Nickel.”
“Why not? She wouldn’t hesitate to crucify you if she could. And for a lot longer than half an hour.”
Irene knew that was true. And that was a good reason for never bringing the crucifixion frame within a mile of Nickel.
She retired to her cell to plan the next entertainment. It had to be something different. But also, something that would allow a couple of ladies to be smuggled in but still remain anonymous.
She didn’t want to do masks again. That was too obvious. She needed something subtle.
Maybe she could find a way to satisfy the gentlemen, the ladies, the slaves, and do something good for herself at the same time.
Slowly, bit-by-bit, an idea began to gel. If she could work out the bugs, it would be fantastic.
* * *
Fifteen men stared at Irene. She didn’t know all of them, but the handful of faces that she recognized were lords or earls; and she was pretty certain that the man with the goatee was Marquette Kelly. She doubted that there was a lowly knight or baronet in the crowd.
She looked splendid in a black catsuit. It looked like patent leather but was an elastic fabric that she could wriggle into without needing zippers or other closures. It helped that, like the previous gold catsuit, it had a scoop neck and low cut back.
Where the gold lamé outfit had camouflaged the gold collar that proclaimed her the slave with a lady’s name, the black outfit highlighted it. The gentlemen looking at her couldn’t tell if she was reveling in her humiliation or taking pride in rising above it.
The truth was that, because she couldn’t remove it, she had decided that there was no sense in letting it restrict her. She was resolved to ignore it and wear what she wanted.
Once that decision was made, it was a simple matter for her to submit a requisition for a second catsuit for Lord Snow’s approval.
And, judging by the way he was staring at her body now, he was silently approving her purchase all over again.
She wondered if he would like her to wear a different outfit for every entertainment.
She looked at the crowd for a long moment, letting anticipation build.
The room was empty but for the men. There was no furniture or fixtures on the walls. Even the billiard table had been removed. The expansive, empty floor was covered from wall to wall by thick mats – uncertain footing that forced the men keep shifting their balance. That contributed to their impatient appearance.
They knew that something extraordinary must be planned if such an extensive modification of the room were required.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “you are so esteemed that even the stars will drift down from the heavens to serve you.”
As she spoke, the room lights dimmed until only a single spotlight was focused on her.
“The stars come out only at night. So we must look for them in the dark.”
The spotlight contracted until only her face was illuminated.
“You have been given wristbands so that you, too will shine like the stars.”
The gentlemen had been fitted with gold bracelets when they entered the room. As their eyes adapted to the dark, they could see that a tiny light in each bracelet was glowing with a faint white light.
“This is a silent night. The stars have no voices. But soon you will be part of heavenly constellations.”
The spot on her face faded and the room was left in total darkness. The faint lights on the gentlemen’s wrists were not bright enough to illuminate anything.
Those lights danced as the men fidgeted in anticipation.
Then another, slightly brighter light appeared at the front of the room. This one was blue and bounced, at shoulder level towards the men. It was followed by a green light, then an orange, then purple, and more.
A gentleman near the front gasped softly and a female voice giggled.
The colored lights dispersed among the white ones and the room became agitated with flickering sparks. The effect was more like fireflies on a warm summer night than stars in the sky, but the gentlemen weren’t overly particular about the metaphor.
One of the men whispered in excitement, “Irene?”
Another man whispered back, “No, she’s with me.”
A third voice whispered, “Damn. I though this was her.”
The gentlemen were discovering that every slave in the room was wearing a collar. That is where their star-lights were located.
One of the men tried to illuminate a face with the light on his wristband, but it only threw enough light to cast a pale glow on a cheek. A cheek that was bulging from the cock that was filling the slave’
s mouth.
It didn’t take long for the gentlemen to stop caring if it was Irene who was servicing him or another slave. All cats look the same in the dark.
Irene had requisitioned additional slaves so that there would be almost one for every man. A dozen slaves for fifteen gentlemen was an extravagance but Lord Snow made it clear that he wanted the best for these guests. Once they were dispersed, it was hard to count them. Some gentlemen were being serviced by two slaves at once while other gentlemen were already resting in post-coital contentment.
The exceptionally high ratio of slaves to gentlemen meant that the slaves had time to relax and enjoy themselves, too. It wasn’t only the male throats that breathed orgasmic moans and gasps of ecstasy.
Everyone moved slowly. In the dark, no one wanted to step on the bodies that were writhing on the floor.
As soon as all the slaves were in the room, Irene stepped back into the tunnel to the slave kennels, closed the door, and lit a dim electric lantern. She rushed through the kennels and stepped out into the driveway. She waved the lantern and a car drove forward to stop beside her. It disgorged two excited and nervous ladies.
She took them into the kennel and prepared them in the pleasure room: stripping them naked, letting their hair down, and encircling their necks with collars that shone with pinpoint yellow lights. She was careful to check that they had both shaved their crotches bald.
She knew them, but no one felt like speaking. They just wanted to get on with the evening as quickly as possible.
When they passed her inspection, she led them into the pitch-black billiard room and watched while they found their way into the crowd. Then she stepped back into the tunnel and shed her catsuit. She clipped a pink light to her own collar.
Naked, Irene reentered the billiard room. She stood at the front and looked for one special light – the only red one. She didn’t see it. She wasn’t surprised, but she was annoyed.
She slowly walked around the perimeter of the room, keeping one hand brushing against the wall while she shuffled her feet to make sure that she didn’t step on anyone.
A Gentlemen's Agreement (Slave of the Aristocracy) Page 10