“I was in a position to arrange that marriage. I was the go-between who was ensuring that the daughter and the earl attended the same dinners and sat in adjacent seats. I was there to prop up the earl’s conversation and make him look like he was urbane and witty. At the same time, I was always quick to disparage the knight’s son. Not stage a direct assault – that would have raised the daughter’s hackles – but drop sly comments about other men who smelled of fish, who struggled to marry above their rank, who were so good-looking that they had to have male lovers. And then there were the frank talks with the daughter about the honor that a good marriage would bestow on her parents. I knew how to pile the guilt on in great heaps.
“I knew that I was condemning the poor girl to a long and loveless marriage. But you know why I was doing it? Because it enhanced the status of my own family. I was putting both my friend and the earl into my debt. I was ensuring that my husband and I would be frequent guests in both their houses.
“You have no idea what a huge favor I did for that unfortunate girl by selling myself into slavery before my plan was complete. If she’s smart, she’ll have married the young knight immediately, not waited until her mother found some other lady to do her dirty work for her.”
“So you sold yourself into slavery out of remorse,” Nickel said. “You let yourself be beaten and humiliated by me and others to relieve your guilt.”
Irene laughed lightly. “No. You don’t get it at all. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about arranging an unhappy marriage for that girl. That’s what ladies do. They scheme and manipulate and oppress each other mercilessly. At the same time that I was plotting to climb over the wreckage of that poor girl’s happiness, a dozen of my friends were plotting against me in various other ways.
“No. I sold myself into slavery because all that plotting was so easy. I’d been doing it since I was a little girl. I was good at it. I was the daughter of a knight and I rose two ranks when I married a lord. That’s how good I was. For me, those kinds of campaigns required barely more thought than breathing.
“I sold myself into slavery because I was bored beyond belief. My husband cared more for his slaves than for me. My friends cared more for their social schemes than for their happiness. My life as a lady offered nothing interesting any more.”
“So now you get down on your knees and eat my cunt every day and you like that better.” Nickel sounded sardonic.
“No. I detest that. And I detest you. But that is more emotion than I ever felt when I was a lady. As a lady, I detested my husband’s slaves and his entertainments, but that was from a distance. It wasn’t up close and personal. There’s nothing quite as personal as having your tongue jammed into another woman’s cunt as far as you can reach.”
“You’re making me horny with all this sex talk.”
“Tough. You’re not getting any relief from me until your punishment is over.”
Nickel sighed. “So you jumped from the frying pan into the fire. You couldn’t do anything about your husband’s slaves so you became a slave, yourself, and now you can’t do anything about anything.”
“You’re premise is wrong. I could have stopped my husband’s slaving any time I wanted. You think a lady doesn’t have enough power over her own husband to stop him from owning slaves or participating in gentlemen’s entertainments? You don’t have a clue about how powerful ladies are. Not a clue.”
“Then why didn’t you make your husband get rid of his slaves?”
“Status. What status would my husband have if he didn’t own slaves and couldn’t entertain other gentlemen? And if he had no status, then I would have no status. I didn’t spend my life climbing up to a valued place in the aristocracy to throw it away because I was jealous of my husband’s property.”
“Well, you sure threw your status away when you became property.”
“I though that there would be compensations. There are. Not as many as I hoped, but enough to make it worthwhile.” Irene’s stomach growled. “I only wish that you hadn’t fucked up my last entertainment.”
“I didn’t–”
Nickel was interrupted by the light. Both slaves shut their eyes against the sudden glare.
They only heard the door slam open again and Lord Snow say, “Nickel, grab that bucket and get into your own cell. Irene, lock her door and then get cleaned up. I’ll see you in the pleasure room in ten minutes.”
When Irene could open her eyes, Lord Snow was long gone.
She looked at Nickel and said, “He didn’t say to empty the bucket so I guess your cell is going to stink of my pee. You’ll have something to remember me by. Now grab that thing and get going. You don’t want to make me have to tell Lord Snow why I was late getting to the pleasure room. He could give you an extra three days of fasting for that.”
Nickel grabbed the bucket.
Irene turned Nickel’s lock closed on her way to the shower. And she didn’t forget to turn out the lights in her cell.
* * *
Irene was on her knees, waiting, when Lord Snow entered the pleasure room. “How can I serve you, sir?”
“Give me another entertainment that was as good as the last one. One week from Friday. That’s in nine days. Can you do that?”
“I can.”
There was a long pause while Irene and Lord Snow stared at each other, each wondering what the other was thinking.
Lord Snow broke the silence. “For God’s sake, get off you knees and sit in the damn chair.”
“Yes, sir.” Irene scrambled to obey.
After another silence, Irene said, “You said that you want an entertainment that was as good as the last one. I don’t understand. The last one failed. Four men voted against me. You were one of them. I’m still fasting because of my failure.” She was out of her cell, but Lord Snow’s last order still stood. She didn’t dare eat until breakfast on Saturday. Irene feared that it would be much harder to starve herself when everyone around her was eating. She couldn’t help but obsess about the food that would be served for dinner in a couple of hours. The smell alone might be enough to drive her mad. She would be better off in her cell.
“Don’t pretend to be ignorant. You know damn well that you weren’t being punished for giving a bad entertainment. It was marvelous. Striking for its erotic sensuality. Best sex those gentlemen had ever had. If not for that damned Marquette Kelly, everyone would be raving about it. He’s only in his early fifties but he’s as crotchety as an old woman. I think that he was angry because he can’t get it up as easily now as he could when he was thirty. He takes it out on slaves every chance he gets. And those other two, Beau Mira and Manuel Swales, the only reason that they went along was because they were trying to suck up to the marquette.”
“And you?”
“You know damn well why I punished you. If you ever deceive me like that again, I’ll have you caned bloody. You’re not a lady any more. You’re my property and you better damn well act like it.”
“Sir?”
“What?”
“I beg you to strap me now.”
“Why? Don’t you think that starving since last Saturday is punishment enough?”
“No, sir. That’s the punishment that was voted on. That was the punishment for failing to please your honored guest. He was right to feel shortchanged. I was careless and set Nickel to service him. I should have known better. She has no talent for servicing men. I have been corrected and will not make that mistake again.” She didn’t mention that Lord Snow had ordered her to put Nickel into service. She wondered if he remembered that. “But the deception that I perpetrated on you was a separate offence and it deserves a separate discipline. You should cane me bloody but that might damage your property. I can assure you that the strap alone will be enough to make me regret with all my heart that I betrayed you.”
“You’ve been caned before.” Lord Snow cocked his head. “The scars on your ass are still vivid. It looks like you were caned by your last owner about a month befo
re I acquired you.”
“Yes, sir. I’m not trying to mitigate my punishment. If you believe that I merit a severe caning, then you should add your marks to my body as well.” Irene felt lightheaded. Starvation had taken its toll and now, acute fear of an additional imminent punishment was draining her energy to the point that she could barely stay conscious. She tried to calm her treacherous body, stop from shivering in terror and slow her racing heart, but she failed. She did not have that kind of control.
“Very well,” Lord Snow said. “If you think you need it, you will feel the sting of my strap. Stretch yourself out on that table.”
Irene crawled up on the table. It resembled the massage table in a spa that she sometimes frequented but, unlike that one, this one was fitted with straps for restraint.
Lord Snow buckled the straps about her waist, upper thighs, and ankles. He crossed her arms above her head and buckled her wrists in place.
He was an artist with his strap and used the table to ensure that his canvas would not shift while he was applying a uniform coat of bruises.
Irene’s buttocks twitched and quivered with involuntary tics, fueled by her fear of the pain that was coming.
And the pain did come. Lord Snow’s strap cracked down on her buttocks again and again, each vicious stroke precisely overlapping with the previous.
Lord Snow’s punishments were not measured in strokes of the strap, but in square inches of skin painted deep purple. He progressed in steady rhythm across the width of each cheek from side to crack and up from the juncture of the thigh to the tip of the tailbone.
Irene wailed in agony, thrashing her head and twitching her feet. But her buttocks couldn’t retreat from the brutal strokes, only quake and ripple under the power of the blows.
His bruises penetrated her flesh almost to the bone.
Executing his masterpiece of overlapping contusions took more than five minutes, but it felt like five hours to the poor, tortured slave.
When he finally finished, his arm was aching and his face was dripping sweat, but he was satisfied that he had done the best job possible on Irene’s ass.
He loosened the straps and left her on the table to sob to her heart’s content.
The slave could never cry enough to wash the pain away.
Somewhere in the back of Irene’s mind, she was aware that she had not lost consciousness, even for a moment. She had felt the full intensity of every cruel stroke. It was the bitter victory of endurance over cowardice.
“Feel better now?”
She only sobbed.
“Feel like you’ve been well and properly punished?”
She nodded her head, dragging her tear-soaked hair across the wet sheet that covered the table.
“Good. If you ever deceive me again, I’ll apply the same treatment from your ankles to your neck, front and back, and then go over the inside and outside of both legs. I will make you regret that you were ever born. You understand me?”
She understood that the pain from a more extensive beating than this would be dire. And she understood that Lord Snow wouldn’t hesitate to administer such a beating if he thought that she deserved it.
She would never dare to deceive him again.
“You may attend dinner,” he said. “You may stand while you eat if you wish.”
Her fast was over.
“Thank you, so much, my lord,” she said through her tears. She felt gratitude for his mercy to the depth of her heart.
“One other thing,” he said before he left. “Twice you’ve lost these bullshit votes that you hold at the end of your entertainments. Don’t do that again. I own you. I alone decide if you succeed or fail and I alone will decide on your punishment for failure. It was an entertaining bit of drama before, but I’m tired of it. No more votes.”
* * *
“Gentlemen, welcome to Lord Snow’s sex games.”
Every gentleman’s eye was drawn to Irene’s crotch. The stainless steel chastity belt sparkled in the spotlight.
It was shocking to see a slave wearing such a device. Slaves were the polar opposite of chaste. They were always freely available to for sexual use. Always.
To emphasize her unavailability, stainless steel cups were locked over her generous breasts as well.
Prominent padlocks secured both halves of the stainless steel bikini. Solid steel bodies with thick, case-hardened shackles – ostentatiously functional, not decorative. Nobody was going to remove them unless they either had the key or employed serious cutting equipment.
Not one of the thirty-three gentlemen in this room had set foot in a machine shop. They could no more cut steel than fly to the stars.
Some thought about who might have the key; some considered that the only orifice that was available was Irene’s mouth; all could think about nothing but how to get access to her sex.
She tapped the steel plate that was secured across her crotch. “As you can see, I’m not able to participate. I am a referee. You and the slave of your choosing are the competitors.”
As she spoke, eight nude slaves filed into the room and lined up under spotlights along the wall next to her. Each slave held a placard with a number from one to eight over her head.
“You have been divided into eight teams,” Irene said to the gentlemen. “Your armbands indicate your team. I suggest that you find your team mates and stand together so that you can discuss choosing your slave.”
The men shuffled about, looking for armbands that had the same colors, logo, and team name as their own. The gentlemen had been assigned to teams such that each team had about the same variation in age and social status. Lord Snow had not assigned himself to a team. His armband was black and white striped to indicate that he, too, was a referee.
Irene gave the gentlemen a couple of minutes to organize themselves, and then said, “If you are ready, we will begin choosing your slaves. You are advised to choose the slave that you believe will be the most proficient at a variety of sexual competitions. The order of choosing will be determined by lot.” She reached into an opaque vase that was sitting on the table next to her and, without looking, drew a black and gold silk pennant from it. “Gentlemen, Team Buccaneer has the first pick of their slave.”
The four gentlemen who were wearing black armbands with a golden skull and crossbones embroidered on them, chatted with each other for a minute, and then said, “We choose Slave Four.”
Irene tied the pennant about Cherry’s neck like a bandana and sent her out to join the Buccaneers.
Following the same procedure, Team Paladin – white helm on a red field – chose one of the two borrowed slaves; Team Stallion – black horse rearing on a green field – chose Tamarind; and so forth.
Nickel was the last slave chosen and was assigned by default to Team Hawk – red hawk on a blue field.
Irene could tell that Nickel was trying to look enthusiastic, but she couldn’t feign the sincerity that infused the other slaves. They were genuinely excited about the impending competition, even though they had no idea what events might be planned.
“I wish you all the best of luck,” Irene said. “Without further delay, let the games begin. The first three events will be tests of physical prowess. We begin with the cunt pull.”
The two borrowed slaves looked puzzled. Lord Snow’s slaves grinned at each other.
“Teams, if you will retire to the walls to clear the center of the room, please.”
Two pennants were hanging from each wall. Though not instructed and not required, the teams automatically migrated to stand under their own pennants.
The billiard table had been removed from the room, again, but tonight, the floor was not padded.
A white circle, six feet in diameter, had been painted on the center of the floor. Irene carried a bundle of ropes to the center of that circle and began laying it out. When she was finished, eight ropes were lying like a large, skinny octopus. They were all connected in the center. A double plastic cone and anchor, identical to th
e cunt weights, was attached to the other end of each rope.
“Slaves, on your hands and knees, facing outward with your toes touching the edge of the circle.” She walked around, nudging the slaves into the proper position so that they were equally spaced and the little dildos were lying between their feet. When she was satisfied, she said, “Now insert the dildos into your cunts.”
The two borrowed slaves were at a serious disadvantage. They looked confused but they did as they were ordered.
Lord Snow’s slaves were already concentrating their energy on their now-filled cunts.
“On my mark, begin pulling. As soon as your dildo is pulled out, return to your team. The last slave to retain her dildo in her cunt wins. On your mark, get set, pull!”
The slaves all leaned away from the center of the circle to take the slack out of the ropes.
The two borrowed slaves lost their dildos immediately, crawled away from the circle and then walked to the wall. They knew better than to complain but their expressions indicated that they thought the competition stupid and unfair.
They couldn’t understand why all the other slaves hadn’t lost their dildos just as quickly.
The competition was more strategic than it appeared at first. By shifting their position to pull at a different angle – and there was nothing in the rules to prohibit that – two or three slaves could combine their efforts to pull the dildo out of a single slave on the other side of the ring.
Nickel lost her dildo to a joint effort by Lime, Cherry, and Peach.
Once the gentlemen realized that this weird game was going to be a hard-fought competition, they began placing wagers. The room filled with offers of bets, odds, and acceptances.
Apple and Tamarind conspired to pop Cherry’s dildo.
The gentlemen roared with approval and began cheering their favorites among the remaining competitors.
Apple and Tamarind popped Peach’s dildo next, to the dismay of the gentlemen who had money riding on her.
A Gentlemen's Agreement (Slave of the Aristocracy) Page 13