“Why go to such lengths?” Delila whispered, when the man moved away from them.
“No other way to get you out,” he said.
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have,” she replied.
“You don’t want to harp on this, my wanton wench. I won’t deal with more spite, unless of course you’d like to be chained to a wall for days and not fed.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” she continued whispering.
He turned to her, his hand reaching for her chin. “Don’t tempt me.”
They sat back in their seats in the shaking railroad car as it made its way through the mountain pass that separated New Victoria’s borders from the Nether Regions. Few citizens of the State traveled to these regions, and then only with official approval. In her subterfuge with Degas, supposedly Delila’s husband had been a spy, and been killed there. Buried as well. It was considered proper for the widow to mourn her husband at the grave for days following death—and for good reason. A woman’s life was over at such a point. Delila remembered an ancient history book telling of the ancient and exotic India where the wife was burned alive on the pyre with her husband. When it had been Armand that she’d worried was dead, she’d thought it might be better to go that way than to try living her life as a widowed bride in New Victoria. Strange how this fabrication of Degas’s was so much like her own life: husband dying in an alien territory—though Armand hadn’t really died. Had Degas deliberately planned their ruse to resemble her former predicament, suggesting that Delila might be better off not being rescued from her imprisonment in his beloved Outer Island?
She rested for a while, thinking of her anger, how she had spewed her wrath on her captor days after his announcement, until his threats had stunned her into silence. After days of letting the rage go unexpressed and unable to contain herself longer, she thundered into Degas’ office spewing epithets.
She remembered his response well, as unexpected as it was. He laughed, a good long hearty laugh.
“I should cane you myself,” he said, when he finally regained his composure. “But you’re so amusing, fair one.”
“Don’t you patronize me!” she roared at him.
“You should be glad I’m not going to punish you,” he replied. Such bitterness in his voice, she’d not heard before. That stunned her too. “Get out of here,” he ordered her, “and hope I don’t rethink my course of action.”
His eyes alone sent her scurrying from the room. The anger spent, she realized what risks she’d taken with him. Was she that comfortable with her imprisonment in Outer Island that she could be so brazen in Degas’s presence?
She should feel grateful that he didn’t flog her mercilessly, though she had a feeling that her new assignment required her body be rested and flawless. Sometimes it took weeks for the traces of her punishments to fade away completely. Indeed, it had been a long time since she was without some mark of submissiveness gracing her otherwise exquisite form.
The train came to a sudden jerking stop and Delila’s eyes flew open. Degas was staring out the window beyond her, looking at the sheer cliffs of a mountain.
“It seems strange doesn’t it?” she said.
“You’ve never seen these mountains, have you?”
“No,” she replied.
“There are many,” he said.
“You’ve traveled a lot beyond New Victoria?”
“Some.”
She turned away from the window and looked at him through the black veil. How it made him darker than he already was, though on this trip and at that moment, he was much less formidable than she’d ever known him to be.
“Why did you choose me?” she asked him.
“Choose you?” he said. “It’s very simple. You bear the proper requirements for my client’s needs.”
“I mean why did you choose me for Outer Island?”
He turned to her with a sincere expression, “I was looking for a challenge. I wondered if I could really pull it off.”
“But you’ve had Sex Crimes offenders before?”
“Yes, but it’s becoming more dangerous, and you are a plum in their system.”
“Am I?
“Your husband, your family, your high born status,” he reminded her. “I was lucky that they wanted to make such an example of you.”
“Then you must trust me,” she said.
He smirked with his lip rising slightly on one side. “I know you want to live,” he replied. “And the only way you could hurt me, would kill you.”
“You’ve never told me that. That I’d die if I rebelled against you,” she said.
“Did I have to?”
Delila shook her head ever so slightly and leaned her head against the lumpy backrest.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The train dropped out of the mountains and crossed a high prairie before it finally stopped. It was dusk, the air outside brisk. The dinginess of the northern lands of New Victoria seemed pristine and lush compared to the putrid quality of the air and the soiled remnants of buildings that made up the squalid train station.
There was an old motor car to take them from the station into the windy night and out into the desert. Beyond the desert appeared a city, rising gloomily from the plain, which never seemed to get closer the longer they drove. Yet sometime, after a least an hour, they were finally traversing the city’s grimy streets. It must have once been a grand town, Delila assumed, seeing the enormous buildings that rose above her on either side. In New Victoria, such buildings didn’t exist since the rumbling earth made them too dangerous. Perhaps the earth did not swoon so in the Nether Regions. There was an amber glow about the town, grim streetlights casting odd shadows over everything.
“I’d like to see it by day,” she said.
“It won’t change much, trust me,” he replied.
The motor car stopped in front of a hotel with a blinking neon light in an odd shade of green.
“We’ll sleep the night here. You must get rested,” he told her.
Delila was too exhausted to think much of anything but putting her head on a pillow and passing out. Even though there was no pillow on the simple bed, she passed out anyway, the black veil she’d worn for three days still covering her face as if it had become a part of her.
In the morning, Degas pulled her from bed and quickly removed her clothes while she stood for him in a half-awake stupor. He shoved her into a shower with cracked tiles and peeling paint above. “Shave your cunt clean of hair, no stubble,” he ordered, and he waited while Delila completed her bath. Even after her shower, her mind was not functioning well, and Degas pulled from his case clothes he wanted her to wear and began dressing her himself.
“I won’t be noticed?” she asked, seeing a pair of brown pants and a faded shirt.
“Not likely in these,” he said. “Though you’ll be noticed later.”
Dazed by the activity and an environment she was unused to, Delila was content to be led by Degas into the eerie morning light – although it wasn’t normal light at all, but a strange glowing haze. Along the gray street there were people walking, most of them expressionless. They reminded her of the people she’d seen about the train stations in the northern regions of New Victoria. In the South, there were always smiles on people’s faces.
Yet, when she and Degas slipped into a shop, they were both greeted by a clean looking, exquisitely dressed woman that appeared like a vision from an old school book.
“My charge here needs a dress.”
“A special occasion?” the woman asked. She had a harmonious voice that seemed appropriate for the harmonious surroundings. There was gentle music playing in the background, something as sweet as what Delila would hear on the radio when she and Armand made love.
“Very special,” Degas said, without elaborating. “Long in the skirt and tight fitting there, but loose above the waist.”
“Ah, and provocative, I suppose. This for a seduction, no doubt?” the woman said. In New Victoria, she’d
never dare make the remark, but it must all right here, since she said it so easily. “I think I have something that would look perfect with this one’s complexion, and that hair. How stunning!” The woman turned away from them, and returned a few minutes later with a silver gown, of material not unlike the fabrics Delila had seen the whores wearing in Outer Island.
“Ah, yes!” Degas purred as the woman held it front and back so that he could envision the effect. “She’ll try it on for size.”
Going from the plain clothes of a working woman to those of an elegant lady startled Delila, especially since this was not the brothel, but the real world. Such a garment would never be allowed in New Victoria, which was why the whores had so much fun cavorting in their scandalous frocks at Outer Island.
The dress was a perfect fit, the shimmering material clinging from her waist down to her ankles, fitting snugly against Delila’s hips and thighs. It was so tight that she wouldn’t have been able to move, except that there was a slit to her hips on one side so that when she walked her entire leg showed. The bodice was as Degas wanted, loose fitting, while the neckline in the front draped deep, being meant for seduction. Her breasts came into view and then disappeared again, depending on how she moved. There was a clasp at the neck that held it in place from behind, the material falling softly down her back, though unattached to the waist. A willing man could easily find a way to strip her bodice naked with a quick sweep of a hand.
“Perfect,” Degas said, when he saw her moving in it. “She’ll wear it.”
“An early tryst?” the woman suggested.
Again, Degas did not confirm or deny the woman’s suspicions.
***
“Now I do feel conspicuous,” Delila said, as she and Degas returned to the grim light of day and the dirty street.
“Not for long, love,” he said. “You’ll fit right into the clientele of our next stop.” He was almost smiling as he said it, almost happy to be showing Delila a world she’d never seen before. On another occasion, she might have been happy too, though there was too much suspicion and fear looming to make her first excursion outside the place of her birth a pleasant one.
Just a few blocks down the street, Degas pulled her inside another establishment, this one an eatery, though there was more than food served in this place.
“Spirits?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
An exquisite sensation suddenly took charge of her. The whores at Outer Island talked of such things, but no one could quite say why they held such fascination, and indeed, what would happen if one imbibed in their forbidden prize.
“I’ve wanted to smuggle them to the Island for years, but it’s too dangerous.”
In this place it seemed that anyone was allowed to come into the establishment and order as they would coffee or water. The spirits served in shiny clear glasses glowed amber, some pale in color, while others were dark and frothy served in large glass mugs. The drink Degas ordered for Delila burned her throat, but he made her down the small glass entirely, just as he drank his and then another.
“Only one for you, I’m not sure how you’ll react,” he informed her.
“But you’re used to this?”
“Unfortunately, not enough. I manage a bottle or two from a trip, but I dare not take too much. I couldn’t have the State closing me down now, could I?”
It intrigued Delila that Degas had limits too.
Moving away from the serving bar, the two found seats in the establishment where Degas could eye the entire place. He sat, looking as if he was waiting for someone to arrive.
Delila couldn’t be sure of the time, though it seemed like at least an hour passed, when at last a man approached their silent table and looked down at the stunning Delila with her long black hair falling about her shoulders.
“Is she the one?” he asked, directing his question to Degas.
“She is.”
The man sat.
He was as formidable looking as Degas, but not the same tall lanky stature or with quite the darkness. His medium build suggested broad imposing shoulders, a generous, though not fat girth. He was a heavily muscled man with a closely trimmed dark beard, his hair dark fuzz on top of his head.
“You have my money?” he asked, staring into Degas face intently.
Leaning into his jacket, Degas pulled a wad of papers from his hand, the currency of this place.
“It’s worth this much you know.”
“For a job done right,” Degas replied.
“You’ll watch?” he asked.
“I’ll wait here,” Degas replied. “There must be distinguishable marks sides, top and bottom. Exquisitely laid on. Take your time.”
“Will she scream?” the man asked.
Degas looked at her. Delila was shivering so they could see.
“It doesn’t matter,” the man interjected before Degas could reply. “I’ll take her to a back room where she won’t be heard.”
Rising from his seat, the man grasped Delila by her arm and led her from the table where Degas remained. Reaching a stairway in the back of the establishment, they climbed three flights until they were at their destination.
It was nothing but an ordinary hotel room where Delila found herself. Standing motionless in the center of the room, she watched in awe as the man removed several things from a bag he’d been carrying under his arm. Cuffs, a collar, ointment, and three implements: one lengthy cane, a thin baton, and a thong lash with at least a dozen lengths of foot long leather pieces tied into a heavy handle.
“You’re going to punish me?” she asked. “But why?”
“I’ve been paid well, miss. No offense to you, but this is a handsome price, and you’ll be well marked.”
“You know why?” she asked, even as a flutter of desire was turning her agitation into arousal.
“No. He doesn’t tell me these things,” the man said. “But we’d better get on to business. I want no complaints. Take off your dress.”
For an eternity of seconds, he looked at her; and as if he had infinite patience, he didn’t look away until the hesitant Delila finally began to remove her new dress. She was quaking inside standing naked before him. Though this was not a new experience for her, the circumstances of this event were so strange that she was frantic with fear unlike anything she ever experienced. There was fear, yes, though the desire was making it bearable.
“You’re going to rape me too?” she asked.
“That’s not my pleasure, miss,” he replied, and he went straight to work.
The man must have known that there was an eyehook in the ceiling, his first act to secure a rod and bar in place. Cuffing her wrists, Delila could hold on to the bar as her hands were attached to either end. Putting the collar snugly around her neck, he attached a chain to the front, drew it between her thighs, up the crack of her ass, and fastened it to the collar in the back. The chain was so tight she thought the thing would cut her in two pieces right through her opened cunt.
“You won’t like it, miss,” the man said, “but you’ll find moving more painful this way, and are less likely to cause problems writhing around. I can’t abide that.”
Cuffing her ankles, they too were attached to a bar, so that her legs and thighs were forced wide apart. The bar was movable and it might have been possible to wiggle around in place, though as he said, the chain was a ready deterrent.
The first lash struck her shoulders hard, with the feel of it driving her into a slavish place. She yielded, her head bowed submissively. She could take a good whipping on her upper body and it would always send her into a place of self-denial and reproach where the she could feel absolved from the guilt that was never far from her thoughts. It also made her desire burn intensely.
Delila: I died to anything but sensation from that point on. My odd benefactor, a thorough and exacting disciplinarian, began with my back, laying the whip on with increasingly harsh strokes until my flesh was whatever shade of red he desired. Then, pick
ing up the baton, he cracked it against the raw skin until I knew the marks Degas wanted were certainly there. I howled in a response, and though this reply would go unnoticed, it satisfied me.
After he finished with my back, the man rested a while. I could hear him creaking in a chair behind me, but I wasn’t thinking much. Allowing the pain to subside in me, I anticipated the worst next, though I had no idea what the worst could mean.
Coming to my front, I knew what he’d do next. The thin baton made a silent teasing journey over my breasts and then came cracking down on my flesh leaving a red mark on the top of my skin. He returned to the tease. I would have liked to study his methods. It was intriguing the way he gave me a minute’s worth of pleasure and then a second’s worth of biting horror. He repeated his designs a dozen times; and though not all the cuts left marks, there were at least eight, four on either bouncing orb when he finished there.
I noticed how each pause was bringing me back to an abiding arousal, an arousal I feared would know no release.
Returning to the chair again, he rested while I rested against the bonds that held me.
The man’s next venture was a full all out assault on my ass. Beginning with the whip, he laid a firestorm on my cheeks, his aim not particularly precise, he was flogging me just as the administrators at the State had done, but with even greater zeal. I cried loudly when the vile attack didn’t stop; and then too when he immediately took the cane in hand, and with quick sharp strokes laid the vicious weapon on my pained derriere. I howled from the pit of myself and then sobbed when he was done. Again, I felt a surge of sexual need that demanded release.
Again, my tormentor sat waiting for whatever span of time he thought best before he continued again. I hoped against hope that this last insult wouldn’t happen, but it was as predictable as the sun rising somewhere above our putrid atmosphere.
Returning to his place in front of me, he stood for some moments looking into my eyes. I wondered if there was lust there. He’d been so completely efficient and without emotion. I was a job for him, nothing more than money in his pocket. I had no identity, no soul; I was nothing but a body to be marked. I know I cried out silently to him to have some compassion in the middle of my distress, but none was there. I wished I could disconnect myself from the torment, but the reaction of my body—I often thought a burden to me—prevented me from ignoring the potential pleasure.
Outer Island Page 11