The chauffeur took her jacket off. She wore a white blouse underneath, through which Melinda could see a black bra straining to contain a voluptuous bosom.
Charles came to stand beside her. He put his hand on her back, then ran it down over the tight skirt that covered her buttocks.
'Too good an opportunity to miss,' he whispered.
'She'll tell him.'
'She won't say a word.'
'Really?' There was excitement in her voice.
'Trust me.' He pinched her bum hard and she squealed. His hand pushed on up under her skirt. As it reached its objective, she grabbed the lapels of his jacket and kissed him. Melinda watched as their tongues vied for position, their mouths open, their lips wet, squirming and nipping at each other. Charles's hand had rucked up her skirt at the back and Melinda could see his fingers worming their way under a pair of white panties. Pushing the silky material aside he managed to get first one finger, then two, into the folds of her sex.
The chauffeur reacted to his intrusion by violently writhing against his body. Though she was still kissing him, she moaned, the sound muffled in their mouths. Her navel pressed hard against his thighs, touching his growing erection.
Melinda felt her body throbbing. The frustration that had been forced on her over the last five days became suddenly acute, like a sharp pain emanating from her groin. She would have done anything to be in the chauffeur's shoes; to feel, touch, be kissed. It was too much to bear, watching them, so close, their bodies full of feeling she had been denied.
'No,' the chauffeuse said, breaking the kiss, 'I want her.' She bent over Melinda's chair and raised her hand to caress Melinda's cheek, a caress so soft, so tender it made her want to cry. For the first time, Melinda broke the rules. Spontaneously, she turned her head and kissed the hand that stroked her. The chauffeuse's response was immediate. She squeezed Melinda's cheeks in one hand and kissed her full on the mouth, her tongue thrusting between her lips. Melinda sucked on it like a vampire. She was a vampire; a vampire for sensation, for contact, for sex. Her body ached for it. She knew none of this was allowed; that neither Charles, nor the woman should be doing anything like this. She should have fought them, put up a struggle. That was what the Master would expect her to do. But she did nothing. They were not in a position to report her disobedience just as she could say nothing of theirs.
Disobedience. What was she doing? For a moment she fought to control her feelings. She lost.
The kiss was long and deep and rich. Melinda closed her eyes. She wallowed in the sensation, the warmth and touch. The chauffeuse ran her hand over her breast, feeling its weight, then teasing the nipple. It explored further, examining the leather straps at her wrists and thighs under the trousers. Suddenly, she plunged her hand down into Melinda's lap and Melinda moaned as she felt the material of the trousers forced against her sex.
'You want it so badly, don't you?'
Melinda did not reply. The chauffeuse dropped to her knees, her hand fumbling with the zip of the trousers. As soon as it was free she pulled them down, not realising that the way Melinda was bound through the pockets prevented the trousers being removed until her wrists were freed.
Melinda wanted to tell her. But she could not. She could pretend to herself - and it was true, at least in part - that what was happening to her was not her fault. She was, after all, at their mercy. But if she told them what to do, how to free her, it became an act of will, direct disobedience, and she could not pretend she had merely been used.
It did not take long for the chauffeur to work it out for herself. She unbuckled the strap on Melinda's left wrist. Charles bent to undo the right. As soon as they were free they both tugged down the trousers. This time, the seatbelt prevented the trousers' progress; Melinda needed to raise her hips but the seatbelt was too tight to allow it.
It would have taken a second for Melinda to snap off the seatbelt with her hand. She did nothing.
Charles opened the belt. They pulled the trousers off her bare legs.
'Oh, look at that,' the woman said as Melinda's hairless pubis came into view. 'They've shaved her.'
Melinda's thighs were banded by the thick black leather straps. The chauffeuse pulled off her cap, letting her long hair tumble over her shoulders, then hooked her arms under Melinda's legs. She pulled them open and up around her neck and dropped her head to Melinda's sex. Suddenly, Melinda felt the tip of her hot, wet tongue probing under the hood of her clitoris.
The chauffeuse's tongue was deliciously expert, wily and practised. It tapped, circled and stroked the hard bud of nerves, tasting Melinda's juices, feeling her response. The first time. The first time with a woman. Melinda squirmed, the leather under her buttocks instantly wet. She knew she was going to come, and quickly too. Days of frustration, days of being able to do nothing to relieve the feelings forced on her, concentrated in her mind. She knew this was not allowed, was wrong, was breaking her indenture. But she could not resist, she could not fight it. The chauffeuse's tongue lapped hungrily at her sex and she felt her orgasm begin to rise, the first hot throbbing pulse that would lead, inevitably, to her climax.
The brunette felt it too. Instantly, she plunged her mouth down onto the whole of Melinda's sex, enveloping it, sucking it all in. And that was it. Melinda moaned and melted; melted over the mouth that greedily devoured her body. Her orgasm rolled up and over her, almost painful in intensity, almost too much, taking her so high and so fast she thought she would never come down. Forbidden. The word echoed in her mind. Forbidden.
'Christ!' It was Charles's voice.
Melinda opened her eyes. Charles was kneeling behind the brunette. He had pulled her skirt up around her waist and had taken her from behind, pulling the crotch of her panties aside, fucking her while he watched her tonguing at Melinda. At least he had been. Now he was pulling his cock out of her and trying to stuff the wet, glistening shaft back into his trousers.
Melinda followed his eyes out of the window. The silver Rolls Royce was speeding across the tarmac towards the plane.
The chauffeuse saw it too. In panic she found the pinstriped trousers and pulled them up over Melinda's ankles. As she still had the brogues on it was not easy.
Charles started to rebuckle her wrists to the leather straps.
'No. Not until the trousers are on.'
They both struggled to get the trousers back up. They pulled Melinda to her feet. This made it easier. The chauffeuse zipped up her fly. Charles stuffed her left hand into her pocket.
'I'll do it. You'd better open the door.' The woman wiped her mouth. It was wet from Melinda's juices.
Melinda could have put her own hands back in her pockets, but she did nothing. Now her orgasm had subsided, the excitement passed, she felt uncomfortable. She felt guilty. Though she had done nothing to encourage them, she had done nothing to stop them either. She was filled with a flood of remorse. The Master had been so good to her today, so kind, so intimate. He had given her water. He had touched her. And this was how she'd repaid him.
The leather was buckled to her wrists and the chauffeuse pushed her back into the seat.
Just as she wrapped the seatbelt around Melinda's waist, the Master mounted the steps into the aircraft. The chauffeuse's skirt was still around her waist. She pulled it down just as he entered the cabin.
'What's been going on here?' he demanded, his voice like steel, his eyes looking from Charles to the brunette, with a gaze of pure ice.
'We were just taking her out, sir,' the chauffeuse volunteered. 'As instructed.'
'Charles, I want the truth.'
'Just obeying your instructions, sir,' Charles said disingenuously.
There was a silence. 'Do you think I am a fool?'
'No sir, we were—'
'Stand up.' The command was addressed to Melinda. She struggled to obey but without the use of her hands the angle of the seat was too steep to lever herself out. 'Help her.'
The chauffeuse pulled Melinda into a standing posit
ion. The Master raised the back of the suit jacket. The shirt hung down over the back of the trousers where they had not had time to tuck it in. It was not the only testament to their behaviour. The air in the cabin was thick with the musky aroma of sex.
'Now I want the truth.' The Master's voice was like thunder.
'We were just having some fun, sir,' Charles said, not looking directly into the Master's eyes. 'We thought...'
'You were both involved?' He was looking at the chauffeuse.
'Yes,' she said, a spark of defiance in her eyes. The Master took two steps towards her. He took her cheeks in his hand, exactly, had he but known it, as she had Melinda's a few minutes earlier. 'You do realise what you have done, don't you?'
'So fire me,' she said.
His fingers wiped her lips. He brought them to his nose and inhaled. 'Oh my dear woman, I'm afraid it is not quite as simple as that.' He smiled and licked his fingers. He closed his eyes momentarily to savour the taste.
'I forgot my briefcase you see,' he said to Melinda, tucking the shirt neatly back into the trousers. He picked up the briefcase from the side of the seat he had used. For a long moment, he looked from Charles to the chauffeuse as if deciding what he was going to do with them. Then, without another word, he took Melinda by the arm and led her along the cabin, out through the main door and down the steps of the plane. He guided her across the tarmac towards the waiting Rolls-Royce. Another chauffeur opened the rear passenger door as they approached.
'Excuse me a moment, my dear,' the Master said, indicating that she should get into the car.
From the back seat Melinda watched the Master talking to two men by the Ford. It was not a long conversation.
The Master got into the luxurious leather and walnut interior of the Rolls. As it pulled away, Melinda saw the two men mount the steps into the plane.
Chapter Nine
The big car rolled effortlessly through narrow and winding country lanes. Melinda had no idea where they were, except that the plane had headed north all the way from London, and from the style of some of the small cottages along the car's route she suspected they had landed in Scotland.
The area was very hilly, and the car wound its way up to the top of a large escarpment from which the view of the valley below, complete with a lake sparkling in the sun, was simply breathtaking.
They drove for almost an hour, according to the clock set in the walnut dashboard of the Rolls. In that time, the Master said not a single word to her, reading a set of papers from his briefcase. But he gave no impression of anger; she did not have the feeling he was blaming her for what had happened. That did not stop her blaming herself.
Eventually, the car slowed and turned into a long gravel track through a gap in a tall beech hedge. After at least two miles, the track led to a large Victorian house perched at the very top of the valley, with sumptuous views of the countryside on every side.
'Beautiful, isn't it?' the Master said, looking around.
'Yes, Master,' Melinda said.
The Master got out of the car. An elderly housekeeper, thin but with a ramrod-straight back and white hair, had opened the front door, and two Irish wolfhounds had bounded out to greet him. Behind her followed a man dressed for all the world like a Victorian gillie, a shotgun broken over the crook of his arm, a belt of ammunition thrown over his shoulder.
The housekeeper looked into the rear of the car and, seeing it occupied, helped Melinda out. The Master had walked off with the gillie, the two dogs bounding about after them. Melinda watched as they walked around the back of the house. The housekeeper's bony hand, covered with skin like parchment, clasped her shoulder like a claw digging into her soft flesh. She led her into the house.
Compared to the warmth outside, the house felt cold. The old woman led Melinda through a labyrinth of dark corridors. It appeared that no attempt had been made to modernise the house, as it still retained its air of gloomy Victorian splendour. A great deal of money had obviously been spent in restoring the house to make it resemble as closely as possible what it had once been: the manor house for some landowning Victorian gentry.
They arrived in a large dining room. Wooden shutters were closed over the box-type bay windows, so that light filtered into the room in bright golden shafts through the gaps in the wood. This gave the room a misty, gauzy appearance. A large oak dining table stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by spoon-backed chairs. The floor was old oak, polished to a sparkling shine.
Along the back wall, near a long sideboard used to serve food and the double doors leading to the kitchen, two columns had been set on either side of the room to support a decorative vault in the ceiling, separating the dining area from the serving area. The housekeeper took Melinda over to the nearest column and placed her against it, facing the smooth stone. Set on the opposite side of the column, at neck and waist height, were two metal rings through which were threaded thin but strong steel chains. With apparently practised ease, the housekeeper pulled the chains around the stone and then around Melinda, the neck first and then the waist, until she was held tightly, her stomach pressed against the convex stone. The chains were secured by two small padlocks.
The whole operation was performed so quickly, Melinda barely realised what had happened to her. It was only as she heard the housekeeper's footsteps fading into the distance and she tried to move, that she discovered how securely she was bound. The chain at her neck held her cheek against the column. She could not move her head back far enough to see the other side of the room. With her hands still bound to her thighs, Melinda was utterly helpless, her bondage total. True, she could move her ankles and legs a little, but the chain at her wrist was too tight to allow even this to be more than the smallest of movements.
The house was silent, apart from the ticking of a clock; heavy metallic ticks that echoed through the rooms. She remembered they had passed a grandfather clock in the passage outside. The ticks marked the passage of time. Every quarter hour the clock chimed a delicate arrangement of tiny bells and every hour a larger tone sounded. She could count the hours. It was the first time she had known the time for over a week. Being able to keep track of it made time seem to pass infinitely more slowly.
The discomfort of her bondage did not take long to establish itself in her body. The chain around her neck was the worst. The small links dug into her neck. She could ease it slightly by moving her head forward and pressing her cheek against the stone, but this too was a strain and she could only do it for short periods of time. The chain around her waist was tighter and permitted no movement, but at least it was padded by the material of the jacket and shirt.
Melinda tried to think. The episode on the plane had disturbed her. It had spoilt her concentration, her intent. Up until that moment she had been entirely focused on her submission, on being the pawn in the Master's game, a piece on the board he could play, to be moved and sacrificed as he desired. But, however briefly, she had escaped his control. Her orgasm had been spontaneous, unplanned, not part of his careful calculation. Everything else that had happened to her, been done to her, was as a result of his wishes and his will. Her orgasm had not been.
As much as she had craved for it, as much as she had not been able to control herself or her orgasm, she wished it hadn't happened. She wished she could wipe the whole thing from her mind.
But she couldn't. She couldn't forget the touch of those lips on her sex, or the wicked sensuality of that tongue. Did it feel so different because it had been a woman, or was it just the result of her incredible frustration? The more she wallowed in the memory, the more guilty she felt.
And what would happen to the chauffeur and Charles? The Master's imagination seemed to know no bounds. She would probably never know what fate befell them.
After the little quarter chimes had rung nine times, and the hour chimes rang out four sonorous notes, the blinds on the windows were concertinaed back into their frames and the room was flooded with light.
Melinda coul
d not see who had done this until they came round to the side of the column on which her cheek rested. It turned out to be a maid, stout and middle-aged. Almost at once, a stream of servants walked in and out of the room, preparing the table for the evening meal. As the table was behind her back she could not see how many people it was being set for.
None of the servants looked at her, spoke to her or acknowledged her presence in any way. She could have been a sculpture carved into the stone of the column.
The bustle of activity subsided and the room returned to the silence she had become used to, punctuated only by the monotonous ticking of the clock.
Slowly, Melinda's mood changed. The incident on the plane began to fade. Once again, the demands that her bondage made on her body made it impossible to think about anything but her physical being. She could no longer think of guilt and consequence, of what she should have done or might have done. Hour after hour of standing, of desperately trying to ease the aches and pains in her neck and back and wrists, of designing little movements that gave her relief, however temporary, from one area of discomfort, left her mind blank, erased like a cassette tape. She could only think of her body. She had no decisions to make, no choices. She had no will. She did not want to have a will.
As the big clock in the hall struck seven, another burst of activity erupted. Melinda could smell and hear food being prepared behind the double doors to the kitchen. At precisely seven-thirty, the Master walked into the dining room and sat at the head of the big dining table. Though Melinda could not see him and he said nothing, she knew it was him. She could feel the power of his eyes. She knew he was looking at her.
A waiter came out of the kitchen, carrying a tureen of soup on a silver tray lined with white linen. By straining around against the chains, Melinda could glimpse the soup being served to the Master. He was eating alone.
The Master ate but said nothing. Grilled fish, white wine, mineral water and bread were all ferried in past Melinda. She could hear the sound of knife and fork striking the plates, of wine being poured and bread broken.
Melinda and the Master Page 13