“Gawwwwwwwwwwwdd,” she gasped heavily.
He rode her no more than ten or twelve strokes, before he leaned back and growled, coming. Her mouth bit down on a wad of sheets—I wished I’d had something better, firmer to put in her mouth, but she suffered without that.
“A little too skinny for my taste,” he said as he withdrew, dripping the last of his come on her ass. “But she’s got a tight bum.”
“I suspect so. Young ones do.”
That night, I untied her one hand, and pushed Evie to one side of the bed, cuffing the free wrist so I was safe from any revenge she might have in mind for me. I waited until she’d fallen asleep and then crawled in beside her. This was normal procedure when I had so little bed space. I have made girls sleep on the floor so that I could have the entire bed—that is recommended. Sleeping with Evie would be different. Not only did my mind race with fantasies I should never have had, but in the middle of the night, I felt her nuzzle back into me.
I emerged from a drifting fog of dreams to hear her speak. “Will you hold me?”
Of course, I would hold her. I didn’t say so, but I gingerly placed my arm around her and snuggled in to her warm backside. I remained mindful of possible coups she might unleash, but that was not on her mind. I held her close until morning, finding myself kissing her back like a mother might tenderly kiss her child. This affection was all new to me, unwanted, wanted—I couldn’t decide. But I knew it was a detriment to my purposes. I came up cold and official, ignoring everything I felt.
For a time, she viewed me with interest, and that gave me chills.
“Why do you do it?” she asked.
“Pays well,” I said, lighting a cigarette.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all I’ll tell you.”
She was vulnerable. I was vulnerable. I almost lost it then. I could have spilled my guts if I hadn’t put a lid on the war inside me.
She was disappointed, but then laid back on the bed expanding the silence so big around us that I knew neither of us would try to breach it again with anything remotely human.
That night, Bruno and I put her on a train in custody of the intermediary who’d come to get her. From there, she’d feel her captivity like steel bonds tighten around her. It was the last time I saw her in the flesh. Though everyday, I see her in my mind’s eye and feel her in my body calling to me.
The Buyer
1 October – the new girl arrived. Slim, bony, the kind of eyes you have to watch for—intelligent, shifting, hypnotic. I’ll give her to Jacob for the training term. She’ll be a challenge, and we’ll see now if he’s up to the task. There are already bruises on her arms. I must talk to the Captain about those thugs who transport my wares to me.
He folds the journal at its spine, opens the bottom desk draw and carefully places the leather-bound book on top of the others. He shuts the draw, turns the lock and deposits the key behind a loose stone in the wall behind him. The chair beneath him creaks as he rises, not from the strain of his weight—he hardly weighs more than the fence posts that surround his ranch. It creaks because its old; the leather is cracked and the joints are dry.
He is an elegant graceful man, rising nearly six feet-two in his cowboy boots. His face is rugged, weathered from the life he lives, but tan and handsome for a man of his years. While he sports the features of a straight and narrow politician, beneath his dignity lies the soul of an immoral man. His scruples concern small matters of form and precision, what is required to run his peculiar ranch, efficiently, economically. It looks like any Western ranch of the time, but a bit more tidy and precise. Fences, paddocks, barns gleam. The landscape rolls for miles in all directions, fanning out from an odd and antique ranch house built of mortar, stone, and rough-hewn timbers sometime around the turn of the 20th century. A century later, the fort-like structure still stands as austere and formidable as it was the day the last stone, the last shingle, the last window was set in place.
The air contains the chill of winter prematurely, swirling leaves from miles away in dusty pools circle in the wind. He stalks the main floor of his house, appraising everything he sees, the polished surfaces of mahogany in which he sees his face, the freshly vacuumed carpets, the orderly array of couches, chairs and tables, sit to his liking. Nothing is out of place, and he smiles inwardly.
“And what are you preparing for dinner tonight?” he asks his cook, Marmy, a buxom, red-faced woman of nearly sixty years. She’s been at the ranch as long as he has, cured of her faults by the faultless discipline that turned the once shabby family enterprise into a profitable business. A cane and razor strop hang on the kitchen wall, tools he liberally uses on anyone who fails to keep his house in order, themselves immaculate, and their minds keenly focused on their duties.
On one occasion several years before, he had three woman on his staff, including Marmy, skirts drawn above their waists, buttocks bared, bending over the kitchen table. Side by side by side, he rebuked them for an indecorous lapse in behavior during a formal dinner party he was giving for the then state congressman, the congressman’s wife, and ten other local notables. His ire was so engaged when he heard the raucous commotion in the kitchen, that he excused himself from the table offering a gentle apology, “If you’ll excuse me, I believe a little discipline is in order,” and strode purposefully from the dining room to the back of house, where he immediately halted the rowdy scene. While his dinner party turned their attentions back to the conversation at hand, he took the cook and the maids to task. The three women were in such a flutter from having furtively imbibed in a forbidden bottle of wine, that as they followed his orders, bending over the table, their whole bodies jiggled madly while they sniggered to themselves and each other. Their round behinds wiggled and squirmed as though it was a grand joke, but only until the first strike of the razor strop hit their plump fannies. The wrath of their master came down on them with exhilarating speed, turning their white white flesh into sheets of alarming color. A shocking dark pink bloomed from all three struggling bottoms: the small tight one, the sumptuous round one, and Marmy’s generous dimpled orbs. He followed the thrashing with six cuts for each with the cane, producing welts that appeared out of the pink as inflamed and angry stripes. Their mirth was gone, not simply subdued.
“I should have you present you fannies to my company and apologize for your poor deportment,” he warned. If it hadn’t been a congressman with a starchy wife—who needed a good thrashing as much as his maids did—he would have shown off their sorry behinds. But in deference to his genteel guests, he refrained. “Be thankful I spared you the embarrassment. You’ve hardly spared mine.” He was so controlled when he was livid, but that control was dangerous. He became so calculating, cold and frightening that no one dared cross him.
Returning to his guests, he smiled deferentially, nodded to them. “Good discipline always pays off,” he explained.
His guests, who couldn’t help but hear the distance strains of the razor strop hitting skin, seemed to nod with approval. And as the congressman coughed under his breath, he leaned into his host, quietly saying, “Perhaps you could demonstrate for me some time.”
“I’d be more than happy to. Do you have someone in mind?”
The man smiled, but made no further comment. His eyes said it all, with a slight and insinuating expression only someone carefully attentive could see.
That was a long time ago. Three at a time only happens rarely.
Many girls, maids and women have come and gone from the ranch house. It remains as steady and certain as any place on earth. And the razor strop and the cane hang as they always have, motionless, passive and yet powerful reminders of what life beneath the success of this ponderous ranch requires, and what its master demands.
To fail in one’s duty, you fail the man himself. There will be no hesitation, no indecision, no lack of judgment in setting the situation right again.
“Roast beef and potatoes, sir,” M
army answers her master’s question.
“Good,” he nods perfunctorily. “And how are you faring today?”
Marmy blushes, her fingers, sticky with bread dough, stops kneading the hefty contents of the mixing bowl. She raises her arm to wipe her brow because she can’t use her hand, and leaves a trace of flour on her forehead. “I’m doing fine, sir, and thankful for the correction.”
“I’d like to see the remnants,” he says.
She blushes more profoundly. For as long as she’s been taking punishment from the man, she is still intensely uncomfortable with the experience, both in the administering and later references. She is in love, of course, in love since the first day she met him—unrequited though it may be. The little hellions, the tramps and sluts that come and go are normally the recipient of the master’s passions, but she remains with him, constant, serving him without quarrel, without restraint. She imagines herself more than she is to him, that some day he will open the constant reserve that keeps him apart from everyone, and pour out his intimate feelings on her, confessing his abiding love. As the years go by, the fantasy becomes rich with detail and more embedded in her psyche, so that at any hour of the day, she will welcome his confession graciously, without a hint of shock.
Her master must have understood this, or at the very least took advantage of his power over her. Occasionally, irregularly, sometimes monthly, sometimes not for months at a time, and always for reasons she can never anticipate, he will show up in her room late at night. These scenes are not the passionate confessionals of love she dreams about, and little affection follows, but she accepts the attention regardless, letting it fuel her dream. Ecstatic with joy, she offers herself to him. And though he remains distant and methodical, she treats the moments as an act of love, not use—which they certainly are.
Taking Marmy, he only has to nod at her, and she’ll climb to her hands and knees at the end of the bed, baring her bottom for him. Swathing her bumhole with juices he gathers from her wet sex below, he greases the path and then plunges himself inside her, forcefully banging this rod into the hole, while slapping his thighs against her plentiful cheeks. This is the only sound they make in the late night quiet of the cavernous ranch house. Yet, the noise bounces off the timbers and stone like a clanging bell. Anyone inside hears the smacking and cringes a little either from envy or fear. A few soft grunts end the scene. The master wipes his hands on his handkerchief and checks to see if his flaccid penis is soiled. If it is, he makes her clean it in a bowl of warm water—although this rarely happens. Otherwise, he restores himself to order and exits her room without having said a word. Once, as she gazed into his eyes hopefully, he stroked her cheeks afterwards as if to say, “I’m sorry, it will never be.”
Marmy lives in her world, one parallel to her master’s but not the same.
With her fingers still sticky from bread dough, she bends over. “If you don’t mind,” she says, referring to her useless hands.
He raises her skirt himself and inspects the damage. It is considerable, though especially augmented by Marmy’s tendency to bruise easily. He used a wooden paddle on her the evening before, for a half hour smacking her cheeks soundly until her skin could take no more. She would heal, no doubt, and be all the better for it. Marmy does try to obey him and usually does. She is often a good example for the others, but she can be headstrong and brusque, something she failed to avoid when her master spoke with her the morning before. She knew the minute she sassed him that she was in for a turn over his spanking bench.
After he finishes with his inspection, she returns to her breadmaking. “Did ya want me to feed the new one below, sir?”
“No, Marmy. I’ll handle her myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
He leaves her to her duties, likely unaware of the satisfaction she gained from that small exchange.
Half as high as the house, the cellar descends beneath the ground, stone, like the stones walls above. Beneath the dirt, however, the air is dank and thick with the smell of mold.
She sits in a chair, rather is tied to a chair, a straight-backed painted green, paint-chipped chair. Two rungs below between the legs are missing, but it’s still sturdy enough to hold the slight body of the new girl. Her reminds himself that Jacob needs to fatten her up a bit; she’s too skinny for her own good.
And where is Jacob? he wonders as he gazes around. This makes him uncomfortable, when he had his plans all made to turn over this one’s training to his protégé. The girl stares at him with large blue critical eyes. He handles this coldly, circling her.
“You know little about what is happening to you,” he finally says, taking her chin in his hand and giving back the chill she gives to him.
She shakes her head.
“You understand me?”
She shakes her head yes.
“Good.”
“When you speak, you refer to me as, Sir. When you speak to your trainer, Jacob, who you will shortly meet, you call him, Sir, as well. You speak only when you are asked. If you follow every demand made on you to the letter and you will live to experience the world outside of this crude habitat… outside this ranch,” he clarifies. She says she understands; he is uncertain how much. “This is my domain, my realm, my kingdom. I own every inch of this ground, all its structures and everyone who walks this place. Every breath you take pays homage to me, you’ll obey without question, without hesitation.
“I didn’t ask to be here,” she offers him her first complete thought. He is left a little stunned by the easy assurance that comes from this girl. She quavers little. Most new girls break down and cry. Although thick one-inch ropes bind her securely to the chair, she remains herself, undaunted, not exactly defiant. She might be too smart to put on a surly bravado. Something titters inside him that he hasn’t felt in some time. She bears watching, he thinks, but then a lot of girls bear watching only to disappoint. It’s far too early to tell with this one.
“You’re late,” he reprimands the youth who appears in the cellar doorway. He can see that Jacob’s out of breath. And striding forward out of the girl’s earshot, moving into a cellar hallway, he chides him, “I give you liberties and you abuse them?”
“My apologies, sir. I had the stallion giving me fits this morning. That brute’s a big tease.”
“Yes, but you’re trained to handle him.”
The young man nods. He’s unlike his older counterpart, a charming rogue in personality with a swift smile and russet-colored eyes that laugh like the sun at the new day. He has broad shoulders, a muscled, gym-built chest—looks like a stallion himself without his shirt—and the customary slim hips and tight ass of a cowboy. The master has raised him from his childhood, the son of his only real friend, dead now nearly fifteen years. He kept the boy sheltered from the darker elements of his own character and personal practices, until he discovered that Jacob’s inclinations for control and dominion over women mimicked his own. He saw the hint of sadism in the boy early on, but chose to ignore it until he was certain of his charge’s true character. Sure of the forcefulness and steel he witnessed in the young man, he took him under his wing, opening the doors to his private sanctuary of depravity for Jacob to relish—a decision he now often regrets when the young maverick assaults his sense of order and decorum.
“It is only by our attention to detail that we can train these girls properly. You let down, you destroy the foundation that serves us.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” he attempts to sound genuinely contrite.
“Perhaps you need a lesson in discipline yourself?”
“No, sir,” Jacob answers with a resolve defined by his years of experience with his benefactor. He knows this is a threat, and not particularly veiled. ‘Lesson in discipline’ almost surely refers to the physical kind, a thorough and determined act of punishment, which can take many forms, but is always noted for the pointed meaning behind it. Obedience. He has been whipped by the man, though, oddly, not until he was
eighteen. Before that he endured dozens of stern lectures, critical rebukes and the withdrawing of privileges. Generally, that system of discipline worked to mold his good behavior. But at eighteen, he should know better was the master’s thinking—so his bad behavior earned a more severe correction. Outlandish behavior, drunkenness, general lechery, disrespect, and a smart mouth were unbecoming, abhorred and would be answered with exacting punishment.
He was warned twice, then punished twice—first for being arrested in a drunken brawl and the second time for being caught with his pants down with a woman in the barns. Both times the boy swore like a sailor when he was apprehended. He was summarily hauled to the whipping post in the yard, most commonly used for the master’s girls, his backside bared and blistered with the stinging blows of a leather strap. The rough sessions sobered him quickly. The last one, just after he turned nineteen, also made him mad enough to leave the ranch. But as he was packing his things, fully intending to quit the cold, the cruelty, and the incessant requirement for perfection, his benefactor entered the room. He stated his case with his usual brevity. “You are, of course, free to live your life as you see fit—and anywhere you choose. But you’ll never find another haven as safe as this one is for your carnal demands. Think about it carefully before you leave. I ask only for what is decent, nothing more. You give me that, we will not quarrel again.”
Jacob chose to stay. Not three weeks prior, his benefactor had opened his eyes to a world of women he never believed existed. At nineteen, he was too intrigued, too aroused to leave it. He’s remained on the ranch seven years since.
“Well then,” the master continues on after his pointed reminder, “we need to begin with the girl before the ropes around her body cut her in two.”
The pair return to the cellar room and address the cool blue eyes, the lush blonde curls, the slight trim body together. She stares at them as if drilling holes in the layered surface of their defenses. Jacob’s is cut away by her fixed gaze, while the master lets her pointed darts bounce off of him like rubber bullets that fall uselessly to the floor.
The Seller, Buyer, Girl and Her Master Page 4