by H. A. Kotys
Ballerinatrix. An odd word and it repeated in Raven’s head. It didn’t take a genius to work out the implications. She had instinctively hated Natalia from the first moment she had seen her, with her ill-fitting and scruffy clothes, no comportment. The darkness the woman held inside, revealed as the days had crept past, only confirmed that hate.
Each woman stood looking at the other and each held the other in contempt. They were polar opposites, always destined to clash. Today was to be that day clearly, but also clear, even through the fog of Raven’s dimmed senses, was that she wouldn’t have been armed with her own bullwhip unless Natalia had something up her proverbial sleeve.
As small as Natalia was, Raven was certain that this would be her sternest challenge yet. She felt herself hardening as the Raven within her scrambled together all it had left. The game was set and if that is what they wanted, then bring it on. She was not going to go down to that spiteful little bitch.
Adjusting her grip on the bullwhip, the remnants of Raven shook out the curled leather braids to puddle them free on the sandy floor. Crouching slightly, she readied herself for what was to come as best she could.
Inside, she wished she could shake herself out as thoroughly as she did the whip but as a slow hand clap started in the crowd, it was clear she wouldn’t be allowed the time, even if she somehow found the ability.
Natalia adjusted in response. Placing her legs ‘en croise’, she also dipped slightly, ready. Thumbs pressed to middle fingers just as she had been doing since the age of two, her remaining fingers curled a little to further elongate the extension of her arms.
The two women gathered whatever they could of themselves, eyes never leaving the other as the slow hand clap gathered pace.
Inside Raven, hostility was rising. She needed it, fed on it. This was the woman who had planned her degradation all along. This was the woman who had interrupted the fuck of a lifetime and possibility shattered the dream hooked on it for ever. This was the woman who may have slammed the door to her future shut. This was a woman Raven hated more with every passing moment. God it felt good to hold a whip again.
Fuelled by the rage of feelings within, Raven was the first to move. Drawing back her arm, the long leather tail of the whip followed its arc and then snapped out as she threw her arm forward, ending with a flick of her wrist.
She had become accomplished with a bullwhip, some would say expert. She could precisely flay a nipple from ten feet away, but this time it wasn’t enough. On seeing the arm surge toward her, Natalia acquired elevation with a simple ‘temps levé’ and the end of the whip passed harmlessly beneath. A smile fixed on her lips in ‘epaulement’ as she had once been endlessly drilled to.
She had never missed before, and it had never mattered so much. Now it did matter, and hurriedly Raven gathered the whip back in.
“My turn.” Natalia’s statement was efficiently succinct, and her own assault began.
Usually a male move, Natalia didn’t hesitate in her ‘pirouette à la seconde’, spinning to her opponent’s left before Raven could react, then melding into ‘battement tendus’ to strike her already damaged shoulder.
The cry from Raven rang around the arena and told Natalia that she had lost none of her precision.
Watching her enemy stagger back, Natalia described a mocking ‘rond de jambe’ to display the foot that struck the woman so perfectly, the D shaped specifically to taunt the American woman’s decaying dominance.
== ~ ==
Never having been allowed to heal, it still nagged like a bitch but when Natalia kicked her shoulder, Raven barely managed to stay on her feet, staggering backwards to the peel of pain. The heels didn’t help. She loved her heels and what they offered her body by way of poise and shape, but with the sand on the arena floor it was a struggle to balance.
She would have to strike and strike quickly, and with that single thought in mind, Raven flailed out the bullwhip, only for it to again snap at air. The smaller woman melted away yet again, adopting a ‘batterie’ synchronised to the clapping of the crowd.
She was too quick, too athletic for the still groggy Raven. Stilettoes and natural elegance were tools of her trade but now they had been turned into weaknesses. She was all high heels and hurt in the face of flat-soled functionality and professional training. They were using all that she was against her and the realisation bore deep.
== ~ ==
Natalia had quickly realised how easy it would be. The larger American was too slow, too jaded and too clumsy to pose a threat. She would enjoy this. She would squeeze every last drop of satisfaction out of toying with her that she could. Alexei would see she was nothing. All that poise, all that elegance combined to a useless façade when set against classical training, Russian training.
Focussing on her ‘porte de bras’, Natalia concentrated hard. The Bolshoi had rejected her and she would show how wrong they had been. Her art demanded an audience and finally here she was, playing to a baying crowd. It was her destiny. They had tried to deny it and take it from her but nobody could do that, she was born to perform.
Her first ‘pirouette en dehors’ caused the crowd to gasp. She spotted Raven so she could watch her readiness to strike again. Natalia held her leg ‘in retire’ before a flick of the ankle saw her toes connect with Raven’s chin to send her reeling back again and delay her gathering of the whip. The second rotation returned ‘in retire’, before the third flicked out again and Natalia returned to ‘efface’ to check on the tall slender woman, who already sported a trickle of red from her lip.
She had never enjoyed ballet quite as much as she was doing now. She had largely abandoned her dream after the Bolshoi’s rejection but now, here, with her, it all came back and Natalia would have her vengeance over everything that had gone wrong before.
== ~ ==
Raven could taste the coppery hint of blood in her mouth. She was a claymore in a fight of rapiers, an ungainly giant pitched into a contest of speed and dexterity, yet she had to fight on.
She was being taken apart and had to find a way to hurt the bitch, to show her she still could but also to prove to herself that she wasn’t completely changed forever. If she could just catch her once, show the bitch, hurt the bitch.
It was so difficult though when all that she was seemed so out of place, so outdated. Statuesque elegance was being subjugated to pure functionality, while sexual confidence was giving way to hesitance and uncertainty. All that she was, was wrong.
At the far corner of the arena, the Jester cackled and jigged in devilish delight, pointing and waving his arms to whip up the crowd as one woman toiled, while the other one danced.
And so it continued - a balletic breaking of body and spirit. With each lunge of bullwhip into fresh air, the crowd laughed. With each perfectly described flick of foot or arm, the crowd cheered. All that is except the petite girl hidden under the burka, who winced as she watched.
An ‘assemble’ was followed by a ‘terre-à-terre’ movement to adjust Natalia’s angle of approach even as the bullwhip again whistled harmlessly past her head. A ‘cou-de-pied’ would form a pause while Natalia waited for the inspiration of her next move, interrupted by a ‘jete’ as she ducked away from the lash of the whip again before rising ‘en pointe’ and moving again in a ‘pas de bourrée’.
All so effortless, so graceful. All so different to the shabby-looking half-woman who had first stomped into Raven’s world. Raven could only look and lash out as each elevation resulted in another blow to both face and self-esteem.
‘Soubresaut’ followed ‘soubresaut’ and tears of pain merged with tears of humiliation and frustration. Raven was victim to a malicious echo of the national ballet. It had been set up as another tool of Moscow’s cultural assimilation program but now it was used as a tool to secure her final submission. Natalia’s strap-on bobbed to each movement in a dance of its own that even Noverre wouldn’t have been able to describe.
Raven’s right eye was swelling closed. Tea
rs blurred the other. She guessed her cheek already bore a deep bruise and the coppery taste in her mouth was showing no signs of abating. Her shoulder felt like it had been jabbed with a white hot poker. She was already a mess and she knew it. She also knew Natalia was enjoying herself far too much to simply stop, and only she would decide when enough was enough. Raven had neither the speed nor the skill and the thought that she was powerless squeezed out more tears, causing her hastily-applied makeup to start to run.
She was Jacqueline again. It was with that realisation that she took the only option that was left to her. It wasn’t worth fighting about anymore.
Dropping her bullwhip to the floor, Jacqueline sank heavily to her knees, lowering her head to hide behind the flop of her black hair. There was nothing left to do and she said the words to save herself. “Please, Mistress, please. Show mercy…”
The words were the sweetest music to Natalia’s ears. Plumping what there was of her chest out, she swept her arms wide before bending deeply into a graceful bow.
The first shout of “Bravo” rang out as a man stood at the back of the arena to applaud. A second joined immediately to be followed by others until the whole arena stood while Raven knelt. With Mela reluctantly joining in polite applause just one person remained seated but when he finally stood, the applause died down and the crowd as one looked at Alexei.
== ~ ==
“Enough!” bellowed Alexei. He looked down at the broken woman who knelt into the centre of his arena. “She’s had enough.”
Natalia stiffened. This was her moment, and she wanted more. She strode over and grabbed the hair of the kneeling woman. “Sit down, brother. I decide when this is over.”
It was a direct and public challenge. Around the arena, nobody dared make a sound. The stand-off stretched until, in a slow, slithering descent from primacy, Alexei sank back into his chair to the undiluted roars of the crowd. Natalia snatched up Raven’s bullwhip.
The horror of the transfer of power wasn’t lost on Raven and when she felt pressure on her split lip, she meekly opened her mouth to allow her whip to be pressed inside as a bit. As the tail was wrapped twice, three times, around the lower part of her face, Jacqueline’s deepest fears bit deeper still. The female was indeed the deadlier of the species.
“Encore!” shouted the same pushy voice that had called out before.
“More!” cried a second voice, this time female from the opposite side.
“Fuck her!” beseeched another, to be met with bellows of agreement.
“Take her ass!” urged another to howls of laughter and support.
And so, head pulled back by her own bullwhip, Raven experienced the ultimate humiliation. The small sinister woman threw Raven’s head forward as she let go.
Natalia pirouetted round her ‘en pointe’, strap-on extending out with the momentum she carried with her.
A hand gripped the coil of the whip again, drawing back the head of the woman she so despised and tearing at the zip between her legs, Natalia exposed her for all to see.
“Your ass is mine, Ki-Ki, and don’t you forget it,” she growled, positioning herself squarely behind, hips withdrawn ready for her final assault.
As the strap-on pushed home, two screams accompanied it, one of agony, one of triumph. The camera zoomed in on Raven’s tortured face to catch every wrinkle of her absolute shame.
Half a world away, a dark haired woman cringed and closed the lid of a laptop. She had the most cause to despise Raven, yet even she couldn’t watch the abomination anymore.
CHAPTER LXI – The Moaning After
The first night of her new reality didn’t pass well for Jacqueline Corbeau. Even in the darkest times she had found hope and a way, but now she had never felt so alone, so worthless or so utterly spent.
With Alexei there had been a way forward, hinted at by the growing thrill of seeing something grow, capped off with that deliciously frantic fuck. There was a chemistry between them, however perverse it was and within that there was an intoxication that carried her through, beyond the loss of Red, into his arms and onto his cock.
Alexei though had been thrust aside and Natalia wasn’t like anyone she had crossed before. There would be no luring her and eventually breaking her down. She was equally sure that as Natalia’s confidence in her newly taken position grew, it would mean nothing but suffering - pain without even a nodded hint toward future pleasure.
The absence of Yuri also concerned her. With him, she understood exactly what to expect. Brute though he was, he was a straightforward one who knew a good body and fucked it with all the subtlety of a herd of bulls in a china shop. She could only guess at what had become of him and that Natalia had played no small part.
The laughing, leering Jester was far less predictable with the wild bipolarisation of his character which lurched between simpleton and sadist, jester and judge. Plainly and simply, he was dangerous. Even if she did all he directed her to, she could never be sure he wasn’t just one crooked cackle away from killing her with his manic malevolence. She hadn’t seen him murder of course but he had it in him, Jacqueline just knew.
They had taken her apart and yet it had always been her darkest hour that had shown her the light. She had had things done to her in her life that were beyond those a person should have to endure. And yet in that blackest of nights, they had overlooked a single element that was the very essence of who she was, there at Raven’s genesis, something that would always be at the bedrock of her being.
Her survival instinct. Often spoken of and almost as often overlooked. Jacqueline took deep breath after deep breath. She had called Natalia ‘Mistress’ but she hadn’t felt it, not like when she had proclaimed herself as Alexei’s. It was expedience, nothing more. Say the words, save the day, screw the little bitch.
With her sense of self-preservation as the spur, resolve rose from Raven’s ashes. She mentally cleaned herself up as best she could and waited for what the morning would bring. She wasn’t quite done yet.
== ~ ==
It seemed that she didn’t sleep at all that night, though it was final clarity of thought that kept Raven awake rather than the nagging of her wounds. She was wired on an adrenalin high, laying there awake, waiting for the seconds to creep past.
Three of ten they had announced and even though her furtive imagination tried to peer around the corner in morbid curiosity to see what the next seven could be, she couldn’t let it get to Game Four, not if she was still to be in a fit enough state to try to get away.
They hadn’t let her take the catsuit off but had let her discard her boots, and they sat right by the bed she was chained to. Normally, everything was tidied away each evening but the Jester seemed to be her jailer now and he lacked both the insight and thoroughness the others had. He was careless and she would use that in whatever way she could. He would make another mistake, it was just a matter of when.
She wished she could take the parking brake off time, feeling her readiness rise with each annoyingly loud tick of that damned clock. She never saw it but the sound of it was fed into the room, probably to leech away a little more of her resilience, disturbing her sleep, reminding her that each second moved her further from who she once was.
The adrenalin was helping to dull the constant discomfort she felt from her injuries but Raven knew that she also needed them to smart to give her that edge. She also needed to be smart with whatever opportunity arose.
Yuri had given her none though if he had, he was three times her size even if he wasn’t even half as intelligent. She would have to be constantly ready. Whoever came through that door, she would have to seize whatever slip they made.
If it was the Jester, she would have to weather his mayhem, allowing it wings in the hope that it would create its own error.
Alexei? She couldn’t work him out. When Natalia had faced him down he had been trying to make the assault on her stop. Perhaps he was still the future for her. There was passion in the sex; hard, driven passion. Was
he really like that with everyone? Was she really just another whore to him as Natalia had said? The jury was out.
And what of Natalia? If it was her then the only way was to wait her out, take what she threw and hope enough of her scraped by to get through the day.
And so Raven lay there, senses back in tune with her brain, swollen eye as wide as she could bear it. Waiting, hoping the despised Jester would visit her again, reason winning over her anxiety of the indiscriminate man.
The eventual clanging of a key into the lock offered no clue to the person on the other side of the door. There had been no tell-tale heavy footfalls and from that she guessed Yuri wasn’t the visitor today. Raven narrowed her eyes. Natalia? She knew power trips enough to guess she would probably send someone else. The one called Tomas was dead so that left it down to two.
Alexei had only come once and that had been for sex. Sliding a little further up the bed Raven propped herself on her elbow, elongating her body, ready to be seen, just in case.