by Anneke Jacob
“Shadow."
A faint smile. "Yes."
Anders ran his eyes over the tense lines of her face. "I'm forcing you into the light now, aren't I?"
She shivered and nodded, shoulders hunched.
"And it's still going on? At work, maybe?"
She shook her head. "Not so much at work; I'm mostly on my own there. But teachers used to push me. Friends sometimes. Nikki. Val – you said yourself, dependency annoys her. And look at Pam! Everyone telling me I should be something I'm not."
"You do attract that sort of thing. Just from women, though? I take it men appreciate you more."
"I guess. Not my dad, obviously; he still seems to think I'm destined to 348
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be some corporate information management exec in a power suit. Though apart from that he tends to take me at face value. Characterological study isn't his strong suit."
"So, your dad aside – ?"
"Men – don't seem as – critical of me."
He smiled. "No, probably not. But women are, are they? And you actually get resentful and evasive and dig in your heels?"
"They've got no right! – " she blurted out, then stopped dead. "I'm sorry, master. They do if you say so."
"That's right; they do. And you know that." He jingled her chain a little, thoughtfully. "Val and Ria both know what you are, Maia. And they enjoy it.
I hardly think they want you to be more assertive."
She bit her lip. "I'm sorry, master. I'm just – expecting judgment, I guess." Her face took on a dejected look. "Critical looks, their voices – well, whatever sullen brat I've got, that fetches it."
Anders' eyes ran along the lines of her brow and jaw. He took her by the chin and searched her eyes, which attempted to evade his and then gave up and gazed back. He sat back. "Maia, I don't know anyone who needs to obey as much as you do. If I give them the power, why doesn't their power work on you?"
"Because – I don't know. They're not – big enough. Or strong enough."
She frowned, shook her head and gestured with her hands as if to negate the words. Then the hands reversed themselves; she took a deep breath and went on. "Their arms are too small. Their hips are too wide. They smell wrong."
She looked up at him, and her oppressed expression softened; a smile pulled at one corner of her mouth in response to his amused face.
"You flaming heterosexual, you.”
“Yes, master. 'Fraid so."
He pulled her by the head between his knees, and let her snuggle against his belly, stroking her hair.
"It makes no difference, you know. Whether you like it or not."
"I know, master."
"It's amusing either way." He tipped her head back and looked down into her face. "As long as you do exactly as you're told."
"Yes, master."
He snuggled her face back against him, and settled back. "I imagine 349
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you'll get used to it. Or not. Doesn't matter."
She relaxed against him. "As long as it – pleases you, master."
"Indeed. I need to be a good host; it's a Nordic tradition. All those long cold winters. You don't stint your guests." She looked up into his twinkling eyes, and he stroked her hair back.
"Best quality bed, board, story and song. All the facilities of the house.
So make sure you come up to standard."
She promised to try her hardest, then said, "Master?"
"Yes?"
"Nikki – Nikki's mad at me, I think."
"Why?"
She detailed their conversation. "She sounded – really annoyed. At me.
She's been – you know, frustrated, but never – angry."
"Mm. Maybe she's been attracted to you and was pissed off that you weren't going to reciprocate."
"Oh, lord. Do you think so?"
"Or did she think your little rebellion was directed at her? She's been pretty directive with you, or tried to be."
Maia thought back. "Could be."
Anders ran his eyes over the hunched shoulders. "You've made someone angry. A friend."
She lowered her head. "You're feeling bad about it, aren't you?"
She nodded.
"And it took you, let's see, about ten days to tell me this."
She flinched and tried to recoil within herself, like a turtle in retreat.
The thrusting breasts and nipples made this self-protective impulse an absurdity.
"Yes, master," she whispered. "I'm sorry. If I'd told you, I would have had to explain what it was about, and – it would have sounded like –
complaining."
"Telling me how you feel is not complaining. We've been over that.
That's not the point. The point is that you needed punishment and didn't tell me so."
He observed her cringing attempts at apology and considered. Already she was somewhat marked, and more was to come by evening. Not a beating this time.
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"All right," he said, fingers deftly removing the nipple stretchers and their leash along with them. "Bad girl box for you. Somewhere to think about lies of omission, and deceit, and to try to remember what's expected of you. And the branks. We'll teach that tongue to behave."
***
Cold concrete beneath me, heavy head drooping, I sat in an enclosure less than half the size of my cage. Anders had created this little lock-up in the basement, with steel where there wasn't concrete. I'd only been in there twice before, but then it hadn't been in existence very long.
My head was caged in Anders' version of a scold's bridle, and nodded under its several pounds in weight. The thing fitted me exactly. It wasn't quite the torture device of the branks of old; the intrusions that forced my mouth open were padded, one on either side. Another, dead centre, clamped my tongue.
Having my head locked up in metal wasn't so much more difficult than the leather bridles I wore almost daily. But that tongue clamp was truly unpleasant. It wasn't painful – not much, anyway – but my god! I hated it.
Anders had modified and adjusted and readjusted it in the course of manufacture, to ensure that my tongue would have no hope of wriggling free. The top part of the clamp went way deep and on either side, pressing tightly. The whole thing was so snugly fitted that even if my hands had been available and not locked behind me, I wouldn't have been able to get the slightest relief. In fact, I had done chores locked in the branks; not fun. In my one visit to the Science Centre years before, I'd seen a bizarre plaster statue depicting the human body as it would look if each body part was proportional to the number of its nerve endings. The tongue had been huge, of course, protruding from its mouth, too large to be contained. That was my body in the branks.
My master had snapped the two thick padlocks and looked me over carefully, pinched the end of my trapped tongue and grinned.
"Comfortable?"
I shook my heavy head.
"Good. Safe?"
Reluctantly I nodded.
"Fine." Down the stairs we went. His grip on my arm didn't change as he bent to unbolt the metal door, didn't relax until he'd pushed me down and 351
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in, firmly tucking in stray shoulders and knees, like a Tokyo subway pusher minus the white gloves. "Now. You think about how you're going to be a better girl. And incidentally, how not to annoy the ladies." Then he'd shut the heavy door on me and shot the bolt.
The darkness was relieved only by thin glowing lines at the door vents, which went a faint grey almost immediately. He'd turned the basement lights off. Cold sheet metal pressed against my arms. The concrete felt dank and chill beneath my ass. My tongue tried in vain to wriggle in its prison. I groaned.
I'm not at all claustrophobic, quite the contrary. More of a claustrophiliac, if there is such a thing. I knew my master wasn't far away; that this discomfort would end eventually, that I
was safe. I knew I deserved to be punished. I'd endure it all right. When you have no choice, endurance is what you do. And I've never been scared of the dark.
But I'd rather have been caned than left alone this way. Being stored away in the narrow trailer wardrobe had been a miracle of human warmth compared to incarceration in this cold hard dungeon. Only a very bad girl deserved a punishment like this. Tears slid and tickled along the metal bands beneath my eyes.
Bridles and close confinement were the stuff of my daily life; they kept me secure, like a bauble safe in its fitted case. You'd think I would have been happy that my master had upped the ante. But just as the cane took me well beyond the point of pleasure into real punishment, so did this. I swallowed with difficulty, and whimpered. Recollection of my master's words, tinged with the dreaded accent, added weight to the steel round my sinking head: 'Deceit.' 'Lies.' I felt awful. He wasn't pleased. Oh, god. I must tell him everything in future. Like it or not, no excuses.
Why hadn't I told him? Had I really just been avoiding punishment?
That absolutely was not allowed. I hadn't wanted to be the one to raise my discomfort with women. But why? For fear he'd feel obligated to change his plans? I knew him better by this time, surely.
In fact, the discussion with him had been a relief. There would be no accommodation to my preferences; that was a given. I could trust my master by now not to bend to any whim of mine. His expectations remained perfectly clear: absolute obedience, no matter what sturm und drang was going on inside my skull. But at least my reactions were on the table. If a 352
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female guest got off on reluctance and a bit of distress, she was in luck. If not, she could find her pleasure elsewhere. I rather think Val had liked it. Ria I was sure didn't care one way or the other. My hidden resistance was out now, and the fact that my master had been accepting took the wind out of my sullen, bratty little sails. Reaction was setting in. What kind of excuse for a slave was I, anyway? Some born slave I was, all turned on by being shared out and used without consent – as long as the users were male. As long as my preferences were honoured. Awful. I broke into a sweat just thinking about it. Who the hell did I think I was?
And yet – and yet the thought of those women's hands still turned me cold.
What had Nikki been angry about? I'd have to call her. Anders' ideas had been insightful, but my guess was that she had simply given up on me, at least for the moment. Despite all her warnings, I had given over all control and now was paying the price. She was fed up. There had been a 'fine, you made your bed now go lie in it' tone in that flat voice.
Would she even want to talk to me? She'd imagined she was talking to a human being, after all, or at least she'd tried to maintain that pretense, as had I for her benefit. But maybe now she was beginning to see what I really was.
Still a person, of a kind. But not a human one. The animal rights people talk about animals as non-human persons. I was a slave person. The usual assumptions associated with homosapiens didn't apply.
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Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Gods' Next Whim
My punishment felt days long: a minute for every one of the ten thousand nerve endings in my tongue. But I was out and forgiven, relieved of weights both outward and inward, by the time they all came back.
They towered, tall and self-assured, and sat down to a talkative and convivial dinner. The conversation was mostly in Danish, with random English sentences thrown in. I couldn't follow these odd scraps, which were mostly about people I didn't know. Karl and Ria's English originated in the U.K. rather than America by the vowel sounds: half Copenhagen, half BBC.
Karl seemed to have the more extensive vocabulary, but Ria had the English word order down, which he didn't, quite.
The occasional glance my way was ominous; something told me it was going to be a long night. Apprehension in my belly crowded out all appetite as I knelt over my bowl, dutifully forcing the food down.
Coffee finished, they got up, chatted some more, went out. Drawer and cupboard sounds that I knew well. Before I knew it I was teetering spreadeagled beneath the track light beam, balancing on my toes up on the coffee table, ankles parted by a spreader bar. Heart thumping, I watched as they sorted through and discussed Anders' collection of striking implements.
Then they blindfolded me and tried things out one by one, making me name each one, giving me additional samples to go by until I got it right. Along the way they paused to confer on the results both visual and aural, now speaking a mixture of Danish and English.
"What a lot of ways to put marks on a beautiful butt," Svend commented. "I'm starting to see why you need a house. Somewhere to put it all. Can I try?"
Half a blow ensued, and some mild cursing in Danish. Svend complained that the chastity belt caught too much of the impact.
"Aim better," said his brother unsympathetically. "You're up too high."
Leather strands lashed hard, right across the lower curve of my ass and a dozen previous stripes, and a small scream escaped me.
"That's better."
Ria's smooth high tones jarred down my spine. "He just wants to see 354
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more of your little doll. Isn't that so, Svend?"
Svend laughed. "So do you, Madame Ria. Can't that thing come off?
She's not in any position to play with herself."
"Oh, it can come off," said my master. "As long as it's understood. No contact without my supervision. One careless grab could take her over the edge. She doesn't come without my say so."
The discussion that followed was solely in Danish. Apparently their agreement was sufficient to convince him; the belt came away, and open air caressed the swollen leaves of my vagina, which I could feeling pouting nakedly for that one careless grab.
More incomprehensible discussion. Fingers lightly tracing the shape of my public bone, making me shudder. Other fingers. They made me guess whose. Anders and Ria were easy, the one through utter familiarity, the other by way of fingernails. Svend and Karl were harder to distinguish. They got to punish me when I got it wrong.
My arms and calves were aching by the time they let me down. I blinked into the light beyond the blindfold, focusing on the beautiful, complex planes of my master's face, the tree root muscles of his neck as he lifted me down, the denim blue of his shirt.
"All right, hunhund, since our guests want to be able to see your needy snatch, we'll just make sure you contain yourself." He attached a handle he used sometimes when he wanted especially tight control of me. This was of heavy-duty metal, riveted to a long metal plate along my backbone that he belted over the corset, around my ribs. The effect was of a solid handle along my spine, with which he could move me around like luggage. Then he crossed my arms up high behind my back on either side of the handle and fastened them there, so tightly that I couldn't mistake the pre-emptive, punitive warning.
I was shifted down the stairs and kept in a close grip as he showed off his workshop. It may have been a longish tour, or it may have been cursory for Ria's sake; I was too preoccupied with my state as a slab being shoved around to know for sure. I was a thing, so controlled that the leeway at the end of a leash would have been freedom in comparison. There was almost an illusion of his grip being inside my body and round my spine, as if my backbone itself was the handle. Not painful, just – luggage.
Language was filling the space around me, crisscrossing the air above 355
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my head, a network of meaning that overlooked me completely; none of the verbal lines had me as their anchor. The only communication for me was the push and pull at my spine, forcing my legs to move to stay under the rest of me. My head felt denser and denser, a Pinocchio turning back into wood.
Then suddenly words chimed high, the meaning clanging like a church bell air raid warning. "Can we tease he
r?" I knew the English had been used on purpose. No, no, no! Not in front of her; please not…
I found myself propped on the work table, the handle fastened to something behind me, ankles tied wide but loose. Whimpering at the sight of these tall pillars, capricious gods converging between my legs. Svend was arranging lights. Karl helped my master tie back my labia, rings to thighs, and suddenly there were four sets of light eyes staring. I tried to look anywhere but at those eyes. I saw them anyway. Then there were three pairs, and footsteps on the stairs. Then four again, and a slippery slide into my gaping vagina. Vibrator on low, forcing a moan from my throat in a matching frequency. Nipples clamped painfully, tied by cords to ankles.
Two floggers taking turns on my inner thighs, one harsher than the other, making me kick painfully. My helpless hands writhing behind shoulder blades; tears starting. The vibrator's hum, turning my flesh only semi-solid, ready to liquefy at the touch of the catalyst.
There was a stroke along saturated inner tissues. And then gone.
Another touch; gone again. I ground my ass against the table and wailed.
Long fingernails scraped down, perpendicular to the sore stripes on an inner thighs, circling lightly over pubic bone and up the other side. Hard pinches and pulls on stretched outer labia.
Anders and Karl conferred, heads together. Now Karl was standing over me, his voice caressing. "You want more, girl, don't you?"
I blinked to clear the blur, stared up, breath coming hard. Whispered the truth. "Yes, please, sir."
"But all this is not enough, is it? Your clit is very rude, you know; it thrusts itself forward. It is red and shiny, and displays itself shamelessly. As if it was entitled to some attention."
Unbearable words. Beyond assimilation. Words that would lash me, far into the foreseeable future. I turned my face away, and my body writhed, trying to disappear from view. Silence, and the ring of eyes pressing in on me, my master's among them, insisting on a response. I squeezed my own 356