Beg Me

by Lisa Lawrence

  The robes, however, threw me.

  Everyone was in robes. Like at a monastery.

  They wore street clothes when they went into town or into Manhattan, they explained, never their robes in public. They looked like a lost sect of black Buddhists, only the Buddhist monks and nuns I saw in Thailand didn’t have getups like this. They weren’t what you’d exactly call the most deliberately modest. Somebody had specially designed these so they had a hint of spiritual formal wear. But only a hint.

  For the guys, there was a kind of over-one-shoulder toga thing happening, and for the women there were three variations. One was a kind of bikini top combined with a sarilike garment over the skirt, one was more of a summer dress that was backless, and the third was the daring Diana Greek goddess number that exposed one breast. The one I had seen Danielle wear in the photo.

  Cotton for everyone, guys in gray, women in a sand, deep brown, or blue shade.

  You get self-conscious with one or two people dolled up like this while you’re in your regular clothing. A whole mass of them and, yes, it’s a uniform. Plus I had to give credit: The girls’ ensembles all had high slits up the side, so when they walked, they glided with a show of leg that appeared and disappeared. Sexy and graceful.

  “Hello, I’m Danielle.”

  She gave me a smile of perfect white teeth, a look that was friendly but with a cool detachment, quietly assessing me. So this was Danielle, the lady who handled the fine details. Isaac’s kitten with a whip.

  The photo Oliver had showed me didn’t come close to justice. I’m talking stunning here. Not my type, mind you, but I could see how she made herself every guy’s. The same long black hair, but now I could see there was lots of it, same green eyes with black eyebrows that weren’t overly tweezed, and her lips were naturally full. The Persian background was especially in her nose and eyes, and the accent I heard sounded a fairly neutral New England. My bet was she grew up in the States, second generation.

  She was tall, taller than me at five nine, and no lanky anorexic model build for her. She had curves. She also had grace. She was the type of girl who would have infuriated the rest of us when they taught us how to walk “like a lady” at the school I went to.

  It figured that her robes weren’t like the others. She wore pastel green that went well with her skin tone and her eyes.

  “I’m Teresa,” I said, and I made the mistake of putting out my hand.

  “Oh, honey!” laughed Danielle. “This isn’t a job interview.” She took a step forward and kissed me on both cheeks, European style. “You’ll stay with us a few days, won’t you?”

  “Stay…?” I glanced at Trey. He hadn’t said anything about sleepovers. “I didn’t bring anything, not even a toothbrush.”

  “Don’t worry about that stuff,” answered Danielle. “We can get you a new toothbrush, easy. Everything you need is here. First thing we ought to do, though, is make you feel comfortable. Jimmy, take her to a guest room and help her dress.”

  I quickly learned that Jimmy’s—or Danielle’s—idea of “helping me dress” was to undress me. He looked like a boy of nineteen, and though he smiled shyly, there was nothing overtly sexual in what he did, more of a faint whisper, a promise of eroticism to come in his deft movements. Jimmy only said, “Please” each time he needed me to turn or to move. “Please…Please.”

  Somehow, perhaps from Trey’s report or through intuition, they knew I would make no protest as this young man unbuttoned my blouse and undid my jeans. I let him take off my underwear, thinking: Is this another test? I sat on the edge of the bed and watched in amazement as he slipped out of his robes in a matter of seconds and knelt in front of me. “Please.”

  He washed my feet with a soft cloth and soapy perfumed water in a bowl.

  Taking me by the hand, he urged me to stand up and then dressed me. Huh. The robes I saw on the girls out there were a little more opaque than this. He passed me my panties and slipped this thin garment of unbelievably soft cotton—Egyptian linen or something—over my body. It was the kind that offered a nice view of my back. Well, at least he hadn’t given me the Amazon number.

  “Thank you,” I said. I didn’t know what else to tell him. Strange experience.

  It was a hot summer. I could wear this thing.

  “You wear that well,” Danielle told me when I found my way back to the main hall. “Let’s give you the tour.”

  Nobody had bugged me so far for money, trying to convince me they did good works here. Yes, they grew food and gave it away, and that was all very nice. I hadn’t seen any brothers or sisters in these getups in Brooklyn or Morning-side Heights with begging bowls, so I had to take their word for that one.

  Just how, then, did the economics work? Heroin? Yet to be confirmed. Oliver had said it—it was a mystery how they paid for all this.

  As near as he could tell, there were ranks he never graduated to, ones where the whole truth was laid out and business got done. Okay, sure, you might say, that’s obvious. And I would fire right back to you: Yes, but show me the trail. Because whatever they were into, they were hiding it very well.

  For three days nothing happened. I felt like I was a guest at a hotel for a Thomas Cook holiday. Trey and a group of the others showed me around Staten Island. (Trey, it seemed, hadn’t been demoted in rank. I guess he wasn’t as forthcoming about his own orgasm during my test as Oliver claimed the princes had to be.) I had hours of free time to sunbathe, to go for walks, to do as I pleased. People came and went with no pattern I could easily decipher, and no one ever said don’t go here or there. But when you tried certain doors—yep, definitely locked. Well, better to wait on those until I was in, accepted.

  Besides the main foyer, I was impressed by two enormous rooms in the mansion. One was the kitchen, and every mid to late afternoon when I dropped by, there was a touching camaraderie among those preparing the meals. Music played on overhead speakers; girls chatted about everything from the news to fashions as they chopped vegetables and checked mutton cooking in the enormous pots. It had a real family atmosphere.

  “Princes supervise,” I was told, and, yeah, one of the guys sailed in wearing—I kid you not—chef gear, to take control and ask the women to fetch him ingredients. I don’t know why I was surprised. The doms in this closed culture were all guys, so it stood to reason they bought completely into the “men are the best cooks” line.

  One dom wasn’t a guy—Danielle. Mother superior to them all.

  And I still hadn’t seen Isaac.

  The second enormous spot was the reading room. Reading room? It looked like the inside of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, complete with green shaded lamps on tables and plenty of computer terminals. There were even magazine subscriptions in racks. From Vogue to The Atlantic Monthly. I went to the shelves, slipped out a volume, and saw on the inside cover that it had been purchased from Bindings. Oliver’s bookshop. Hmm, that one didn’t surprise me so much. But what did they need this huge library for? Don’t get me wrong, I’m thoroughly pro book—but this private collection implied a purpose.

  Maybe just to have things look impressive. And keep the ignorant busy.

  Very little fiction. Lots on anthropology, archaeology, African-American studies, about everything Kwame Anthony Appiah ever wrote, same for Molefi Kete Asante. No Patricia Hill Collins, no Fighting Words sitting on one of these shelves. There were books on gardening, cooking, painting…even an impressive set of shelves devoted to sciences—a lot on space physics, astronomy, futurist design. Interesting.

  On the third day I had reverted to my old clothes, thinking I should return for a brief spell to Manhattan, perhaps do some more research and contemplate my next move. Who knew? Maybe they were waiting for such restlessness.

  A whole group of them approached me as I stood in the main hall by a table, flipping through the yellow pages for a taxi that could get up here. Danielle was in the lead. Invitation or confrontation? I wasn’t sure which. I put down the phone rec
eiver and nodded politely to them.

  “How would you feel about staying indefinitely?” asked Danielle, her smile taking me by surprise with its warmth.

  I shrugged, trying to make it look good. “I don’t know. What would I do here?”

  “Be a student,” she answered. “A student of who you really are, of who women are supposed to be. You’ll learn—learn to become a princess.”

  “What do I need?”

  “You have everything any woman needs,” she answered, and I got the sense this was a speech learned by heart. “You have mind, body, soul. We’ll help you find your place. You’ll learn that you can only truly be empowered through surrender.”

  “Okay…”

  “Like any organization, you’ll have to start at the bottom. Are you prepared to do that, Teresa?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t agree to it lightly. It’ll be much harder than the initiation with Trey. That was nothing compared with the trials you must go through.”

  “I can do it.”

  Another warm smile. I couldn’t tell if it was honestly expressed or part of a carefully rehearsed routine. She touched my cheek in an almost maternal show of affection and then said, “I’m sure you can. I think you have the courage to be obedient. Very well, then. We’ll start right now.”

  I looked at the others. They were beaming at me, both men and women, with this vacuous expectant smile, as if they’d just presented me with a Christmas DVD player. I smiled back and nodded shyly to Danielle.

  Then things got serious.

  “First rank is pet,” said Danielle. “It’s to test obedience. This is not surrender but taking on what we call a ‘debt of will.’ When your debt is fulfilled, you will progress. You acknowledge your debt by acceptance of the collar.”

  She held it out for me. A leather collar, just like you’d put on a dog. There was a thin silver chain that hung in a loop, intended for any prince to take on a whim and give me a hard yank.

  I tried to breathe in through my nose, control my fluttering nerves.

  I was in a big house, far from safety.

  It occurred to me that Anna must have passed through all these steps.

  I reached out my hand to take the collar, and Danielle pulled it away. “No. We place it on you. We take it off. Your gesture is enough for acceptance. Your last words should be a response to my question: Do you grant permission for all that might be done to you?”

  “Y-yes.”

  She moved to put it on me, and I pushed my hair away from my neck. It was slightly heavier than I expected. I was starting to feel ridiculous, all of them standing there and treating this bizarre ceremony with such gravitas. I knew my lips held the threat of a mocking smile. Then all at once rough hands grabbed my wrists and pulled them behind my back.

  Danielle reached out and mauled open my top in a single efficient strike. One of the princes stepped forward with a pair of shears and began to cut away my bra. Other hands pulled down my trousers and then were tearing away my panties. I was nude within seconds, the others crowding around me all clothed.

  “She’s a beautiful pet!”

  “Exquisite!”

  “Teach her! Teach her now!”

  “On your knees, pet,” Danielle commanded, and as I slowly knelt, she explained, “For your time in this rank, you will not speak. You will do whatever you are commanded to do. You will eat and drink on the floor from the bowls provided. During this initiation, you have no name. You have no more rights than a dog or cat. You will be stroked for our pleasure, but like any pet, you do not stroke us back. You may not refuse the advance of any prince. For now, you are beneath all. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “You will be punished if you disobey or are exceptionally stupid. You will sleep on the floor in a designated area. You will relieve yourself outside the house in a separate washroom. You will move on all fours when you are within the house. You will not use chairs or couches unless a prince or princess allows you onto the furniture, and even then you will assume the proper posture of a pet. You exist at this time solely for our pleasure.”

  I took all this in, the enormity of it, and she added quickly, “There will be no questions. No speech. Bow again so that we know you fully understand.”

  I bowed.

  The princes closed in around me, and then I was overwhelmed by the sensations. They truly had reduced me to a creature, a pet. I felt a hand caress my face and touch my hair. Another guy knelt down and cupped my left breast, playing with the nipple, working it to a point. They were still talking at me, not to me—as if I were a dog. “She’s got great tits.” On all fours, surrounded by these crouched figures, and it was inevitable that two fingers began to rub my vulva, and I gasped. “Wait,” I said. “Wait—”

  A sudden sharp slap on the ass.

  “Pets don’t speak!”

  Danielle.

  My ass burned, and the fingers returned, stroking, gently easing into my pussy. I moaned. They didn’t mind me moaning. “Make her come,” said a voice. The fingers worked a rhythm, and it wasn’t this so much that lifted me as the other hands caressing my back and my ass, touching me, actually petting me. The guy who had cupped my breast now had his hands on both, kneading them gently, watching me pant.

  “Good pet,” murmured the guy behind me in a taunt. “Watch now.”

  They explained the rest of their rules. They could order me to go down on them, but it was a breach of etiquette if they came in my mouth. They could take me, but only from behind because I was a mere pet, not yet a princess. Like any animal, I was expected to masturbate openly, but if I did it with no one else around, this was a violation. I was to share the revelation of how I turned myself on, so that others could learn to pleasure me when I was a princess.

  “Watch, pet,” they told me. And one of them called, “Khandi!”

  The girl Khandi stepped forward and obediently shed her summer dress. The prince kissed her without an ounce of self-consciousness, his large hands fondling her small breasts and roaming over her shoulder blades. It was another girl who, as if recognizing a cue, took two steps forward to remove his robes and underwear. His cock was a spear pointing north. Khandi, eyes closed, still locked in her kiss, reached down blindly and began jerking him while cupping his balls.

  All the while, fingers were sliding in and out of me. Oh, God, those anonymous fingers.

  “Watch, pet, watch.” I did watch. I watched as he lifted the girl, and like a dancer, a gymnast, she tucked her knees up, and he impaled her, Khandi hanging on by her arms around his neck. I watched as she clung to him, her moans reaching feverish pitch. I looked back for a second and saw brown girlish fingertips briefly touch my hip in passing, and then a prince’s tongue licked my pussy in a long, teasing stroke.

  My knees were shaking.

  I had time with that collar around my neck to consider the psychology of my status. On the face of it, it would be humiliating for anybody. It wasn’t like an army “we’ll break you down and build you up again” discipline, and it didn’t have the obvious hallmarks of brainwashing you’d read about in articles about the famous nutcase groups. Being a pet for them forced you to play a role, and the role prompted a regression that became almost…comfortable.

  You remember being a child and your parents talking about you or about other things as if you weren’t within earshot, but this was something more and something less. Ultimate, liberating submission.

  The residents of the mansion fed me, they even bathed me, and I was free of responsibility. As I lost patience with this game, it spurred my desire to be included in the group, which is what they wanted in the end anyway. Forbidden to speak, I found myself acting less and behaving on instinct more, first to amuse myself and then…I crawled to the foot of a dining table and waited until one of the princes passed me something from his plate, gobbling it from his hand. And to my own astonishment, I acted out, looking for attention when bored, and they spanked me.

 
I loved it.

  After eight days of this feral devolution, I found myself getting incredibly horny. One of the princes was “assigned” to give me a bath. I was grinding myself against his hand for close to half an hour, sloshing in the foam and bubbles, and I still couldn’t get enough. There was an afternoon when I fell asleep on my mat and pillow on the floor, and I woke to the gentle stimulation of a penis teasing my nether lips. One of the princes entered me from behind, not giving a damn whether I was awake or not.

  I let him ride me, completely use me, and after he thickened and poured his cream into me with a vengeance, I crawled out to my separate washroom, cleaned up, and crawled back in. One of the guys I fancied was in the library, and I sat at his feet and masturbated. He watched me like I was a tasty meal advertised through glass but didn’t move to help.

  My whole being was shrieking: Fuck me! Fuck me right here and now! Whimpering for his hand, his cock. He merely touched my face and whispered, “Good pet. Good, good pet.”

  I nestled between his legs, letting my head fall back against his crotch as I kept playing with myself until I came.

  There were hours when I did next to nothing. It was mostly boring, with drastic interruptions of violent sensuality or whimsical humiliation.

  One guy expected me to fetch a ball for him, but he never laid a hand on me. Later, I found out he’d been disciplined for using the term “bitch” during scenes, even though he was repeatedly warned this was disrespectful to princesses and inexcusable.

  I lolled about and waited for an idle gesture of affection. I napped. It may sound demented, but my worst complaint wasn’t that I was crawling around on all fours in a doggy collar but that I wasn’t allowed to read!

  One night I lay half asleep on the floor in the dark when I heard slippers. Someone coming. I rose up on my elbow, on guard out of long habit. Instantly, I felt a shiver. The house was warm, but I was unaccustomed to sleeping without a sheet. I just felt better with a bit of cover. Now I was up and I was cold again, and I heard flip, flip, flip as the pair of slippers brushed the hardwood.