The Pleasure Palace

by Caroline Swift

  “What’s this, my dear?” The discovery made her voice husky. “Bend over. Let me see. Get down, girl. And open yourself up. Wide open, please.”

  Verena leaned forward and spread the cheeks apart with her hands. “Mikhail, I mean Mishka, wants me stretched so it won’t hurt so much when... when..”

  “When what?”

  “When he takes me there. He’s very solid, Claudia.”

  “And how long have you been plugged up like this?” She tested the tight retention and girth of the immersed plunger. She had seen and used on girls many similar ones but this rubber stopper was larger than any she could recall offhand.

  “About two weeks, I think. Gemma removes it when I need... when I need...”

  “I understand. And tell me, how often have you been getting the whip? Your behind is in a fine mess, my love.”

  Claudia eased the girl erect, turning her round to face her.

  “Twice or three times a week.”

  “I see,” Claudia hesitated to press her enquiry too far. “Now, you will tell Mishka, if the question arises, I saw your bottom while you were dressing. Do you understand? Otherwise I’m afraid I’ll have to see to it that you get the whip far more often than twice a week.”

  “It’s not a whip. It’s Mishka’s crop, the one he goes riding with at Chantilly.”

  “Verenka, a whip, a crop, a quirt, a lash: they’re all the same, they’re all things to be used on difficult young girls. Like you, Verenka. Now go and get dressed.”

  Verena gathered up her sole garment. “Thank you for the lunch, Claudia. I enjoyed it,” she lied, avoiding Claudia’s sharp blue stare. The woman was more honest: “So did 1, Verenka. It revealed a lot to me.” After a pause, Claudia sat down. “Something tells me you don’t object to being beaten,” she said, as if it were an afterthought.

  Verena lowered her head. “I have to do what I’m told. Sometimes it hurts more than at other times but I’m getting used to it. In fact, Claudia, to be truthful, there are moments when I look forward to it. It excites me terribly and...”

  The woman listened with her instincts alive. “And what?” she insisted.

  “Well, after the whipping, Mishka always takes me in one way or another. And that I look forward to. Very much.” A short silence followed, Claudia finding herself unable to summon up anything readily after the admission that had come so naturally.

  Claudia began to feel well-disposed towards the female. She liked her frankness. But she chose not to answer.

  When Gemma had escorted her back to her room, leaving the coffee before Claudia, a strange restlessness disturbed the beautiful hostess, not only mentally but between her thighs. Her dominant longings exacerbated in her a need for a sexual fulfilment she had been deprived of for several months; now there was promise, very real promise, if she played her cards astutely. Claudia recalled the instant when she had touched the girl’s scorched bottom, the sudden shudder and clenching... Yes, it was within her grasp.

  Her throat was parched but her thighs were very wet. She went to change her sopping panties. As she peeled off the minute triangle of clammy black silk and dropped it on the bedroom floor, she thought the lunch had been more than intoxicating; it seemed to constitute an integral part of her efforts to regain her legitimate sexual role in life. Beside being the spoiled, adored mistress of an admirable - and unspeakably wealthy - lover, she needed a submissive slave, as in the past, someone, preferably a female, whom she could dominate totally and unscrupulously and rely upon to give her wild, uninhibited delight.

  She passed her finger between the wet labia; her sex was on fire. A shy slut of a girl had ignited her; not only had she displayed her scourged buttocks with ingenuous unconcern but admitted to anticipating the crop with pleasure. Claudia knew from experience that often it took months of judicious and discerning training to bring a body slave even to that stage. Verena was already submitting with good grace and, it appeared, with fortitude - for the lash marks were not those of a beginner.

  Claudia’s spirits rose; she was certain Mikhail could be convinced to go further - or rather let her go further - with the girl. To own one’s own slave under one’s own roof without so much as exerting oneself was almost too good to be real. The girl seemed potentially perfect, abject material and the cavernous apartment on the Quai d’Anjou a suitable site, for the maintenance of a sex slave in residence. She swore not to fail herself.

  Turning matters over excitedly in her mind, Claudia wandered down the dark corridor lined with Mikhail’s polo and tennis trophies. Her stop before the library door was unpremeditated but she let her instinct always guide her; she entered the darkened place with its distinctive smell of must and old books.

  No one used the room much with its shelves of books mounting to the ceiling, but Claudia had taken a particular liking to the soft atmosphere, the stillness and intimacy, enhanced by the rich carpets and green-shaded lamps. Rarely were the blinds drawn up; Mikhail, who had inherited the library along with the rest, maintained that sunlight was deleterious for the spines of first editions which should show but not necessarily be read.

  Claudia settled comfortably in a leather armchair and surveyed the long beamed room.

  On the far side of the cumbersome reading table, covered with racing magazines and newspapers, opposite the fireplace, Claudia stared at the gallery above, a mezzanine reached by a curved oaken stairway. Up there were the rare books, the precious first editions and, Claudia had already discovered, a vast collection of erotic and pornographic literature devoted, for the most part and apart from the usual de Sade classics, to incredibly explicit accounts and scenes of female and male flagellation, incarceration, sexual torture and bondage of naked bodies. Claudia admitted being out of her depth as she studied some of the works; but she often climbed the stairs, always ready to learn.

  But !t was not the books and revues that tempted Claudia this time. Her attention was suddenly drawn to the four oak columns supporting the gallery. How was it she had never really observed them before? Probably because she had had no real use for them? With florid, carved capitals, the two pairs of pillars formed a concave semicircle, each smooth column a couple of paces apart from the next. Claudia’s mind began to work rapidly and constructively.

  She rose from her chair to walk round the columns, feeling their firm girth, gazing up at the summits and gauging the distance between them. It was as if the eighteenth century architect had anticipated the strange thoughts and desires of a beautiful, blonde woman two centuries later, a woman who saw that the space between any two of the pillars could well accommodate the stretched naked body of a slave... Claudia smiled and patted one of the columns with her delicate ringed fingers. Flawless! Nothing could be more perfect for what had suddenly entered her mind.

  She was enchanted; she considered Mikhail could do with more space and, moreover, the room was far from the main body of the apartment, lined with books and tapestries, and thus, she whispered to herself, it must be relatively soundproof. Very promising!

  Claudia examined the columns once again; a body standing on tiptoe on the plinth, arms upstretched would, she saw, reach to just below the carved capital while a body extended between two of the pillars could easily be attached by the four limbs.Claudia thought of Mikhail’s Louis XV piece of furniture. So far she had given its contents only a cursory glance but now their relevance became important to the scenario sketching itself out in her imagination.

  Hurrying to the bedroom, she unlocked the cabinet. Compared with the equipment and appendages she had learnt to use and enjoy in the two or three prestigious institutions in Hamburg and Brussels, where she had worked for a short time as a dominant mistress, Claudia found the array meagre. Yet there was a pleasing selection of whips, canes and leather paddles and other items, including gags, hoods and harnesses, some of which she had worn to please her lover. To the si
de, she found coils of rope - some of red silk - and the thongs she sought. Deliberately selecting the longest and testing them for strength, she tied the leathers securely to the head and base of each library column, concealing the loose ends by winding them about the oak.

  The fact that her crotch was bare was recalled to her by a steady oozing between the lips; she sat down in one of the leather armchairs and looked at her handiwork. The cords were practically invisible. It was now for her to convince her devoted Cossack that firmer methods were required if Verena was to benefit. She knew it would not be hard to tempt the man for she, as his mistress, obviously did not satisfy his whims; but she would see to it that Verena did, and not only Mikhail’s needs but her own. For her part, Claudia envisaged clearly what she aimed at: a sex slave.

  Staring at the four vertical shafts rearing to the gallery, Claudia snatched her Dior skirt back from over her hips. She spread her labia and started to circle her fingers over the clit; closing her eyes, she imagined Verena’s rich, delicious body, bathed in sweat, writhing between the pillars... Then, suddenly, the dark head was crushing her clit, then dragging it outwards with gleaming teeth... The images converged and overlapped, for there was Verena bucking under Claudia’s thin lash - the one she adored, the one whose handle she used often up herself, the one she... The alcoves of the library suddenly filled with the muted cry of ecstasy as the woman climaxed, the liquid soaking into the morocco beneath her thighs.

  Her whimpers had died away but she was still sprawled in her chair when Gemma, tapping gently but not awaiting an answer, entered with hushed steps. She advanced to the chair, took stock of Claudia’s circumstances and the wide-open, wet crotch gaping before her, and announced that the Master was on the line. She handed Claudia the portable with a soft, Calabrian smile of intrigue. Apart from the cloying discharge over the leather, Gemma had also caught sight of the dark thongs at the base of one of the columns; very little in life missed her peregrine eye.

  Languidly, Claudia heard her Mishka’s voice. She was glad to have company.

  “I’ve just frigged myself off, darling. I came voraciously. I’ll tell you why tonight. Oh, such a surprise I have for you, Mishka. Now, tell me, What’s new at Roland Garros or wherever you bash those yellow balls of yours.”

  Claudia was amused at her Cossack’s fabricated fury at having lost his match in what had been the last tie-break. As in everything, he had been determined to win.

  “I’m sending Antoine for you, my beautiful woman, at seven. He’ll drive you to that pleasant restaurant in the Bois that you like so much - you know, where one takes the ferry across the lake. Wear that pale blue dress with the wide black sash, Claudia darling. And gloves, of course. Look your best. I want to introduce you to someone special, an old and dear friend.”

  Claudia somehow she guessed it was a woman. Mikhail knew a great many women.

  Chapter Two

  As Claudia stepped out of the ferry, she saw Mikhail, tall and precisely groomed, his short beard neatly pointed. He was very handsome in his white suit. She caught sight of the raised glass he held high in greeting. Then he was kissing her extravagantly near the Cartier diamond in her ear, not to spoil her lips that shone sensuously in the restaurant lanterns. He led her by the waist to the reserved table by the water’s edge under the fairy lights. Claudia was already glowing under the sheen of candlelight; she knew just how attractive she appeared and looked forward to the evening.

  “When you stepped off the ferry, my darling witch, you were in profile.” The man held Claudia’s hands across the table. “You have the most delicious and desirable bottom in all Paris. Only Africans could compete. It’s perfect!”

  After the aperitifs had been served Claudia seized the chance offered.

  “Talking of behinds, Mishka, I happened to catch sight of Verena’s when Gemma was helping her to dry off after her bath this morning,” she lied with aplomb. “It was terribly marked and welted. She had been flagellated, Mishka.” She pretended to look pained.

  The man hesitated a second. “To tell you the truth, darling, I didn’t want you to be disturbed and worried by the girl. It is a fact that I have to beat her. It’s the only way to deal with her. She is my ward not yours and there’s no reason to make her a burden on you.”

  “But I should like to have known this was going on, Mishka. And share your concern, my dearest. I’m sure I could be helpful, supportive and even share the burden.”

  “Well, now you know, sweet love. I just didn’t want to upset you.”

  Claudia was on the point of proceeding further and even of stressing again and more directly her interest in the punishments, when Mikhail suddenly rose, looking across at the landing stage through the roses.

  “Ah, here she is, Claudia. At last. Always late. But worth waiting for.”

  Claudia watched the woman approach through the muted colouring of the garden lights. She was more than handsome; she was splendid. Her somewhat masculine slenderness gave her a beauty that Claudia recognized as close to her own but different. Probably a few years older than the fair-haired mistress she was so anxious to meet, the Comtesse de Frejaviole knew how to handle herself. She flashed a friendly smile at Claudia. Juliette was, to Claudia’s mind, exactly what a manifestly dominant female in the rich, exclusive society of Paris - and its sister cities of enjoyment - should look like: sparsely built and lithe like an animal one should beware of, the woman seemed to know her strength of character and power of attraction. The dark hair, drawn tightly back from the high brow, lay neatly across the nape of a fine neck and was secured, as was Claudia’s, with a broad velvet ribbon caressing the bare shoulders.

  When they had ordered, the woman leaned back in her chair to survey Mikhail’s new mistress. Claudia enjoyed the scrutiny and instinctively sensed that Juliette was - and probably still remained - one of Mikhail’s mistresses.

  “So here you are at last.” Juliette’s voice, deeper than her own, pleased Claudia just as did the sensuous lips that uttered the words. The woman had truly something very special about her.

  Suddenly and to Claudia’s surprise, Mikhail returned to the subject they had been discussing before the guest’s appearance. “Claudia here is all upset to discover that I’ve been giving that lazy little ward of mine a taste of the whip...”

  “I’m not upset, Mishka. Just a trifle hurt you haven’t let me in on the secret and invited me to participate.”

  There was a silence before Juliette opined that Mishka had probably only been trying to spare her feelings.

  “Spare my feelings!” Claudia laughed. She decided to affirm her predilections openly.

  “You know well enough, Mishka - since I’ve told you often already - how I relish a whip over a young pair of female buttocks. Fancy keeping it to yourself, you selfish darling!” The waiter served the meal, a little surprised.

  “Surely you’ve gathered by now I can be very versatile with or without a whip. In fact, I’d welcome a moment with this ward of yours, or can I say, ours? The chance glimpse of her incredible rump and what you’d done to it yesterday stimulated me you can’t guess how completely, how profoundly.” She sipped calmly at her Chateau Margaux, admiring its bouquet.

  “Claudia darling I have absolutely no objection to your taking a hand in the correction Verenka has to receive.” He cradled Claudia’s hand in his own, raised it adoringly to his lips and kissed the fingertips. “in fact, I would welcome it.”

  Juliette watched the younger woman’s smile of pleasure; to her mind it confirmed that the new mistress was astute enough to handle her man with consummate control.

  The restaurant lights scrawled their coloured graffiti on the rippling water and a few moths endangered themselves around the candles on the tables. The meal had by then become a source of jubilation to Claudia: Mikhail had accepted her discovery with elegance; moreover, she saw that she was makin
g progress. The conversation was just provocative enough to excite her. But, above all, it was undoubtedly this Frejaviole woman who lent significance to the evening. Despite her having been Mikhail’s mistress - the fact was obvious really from the start of the meal - Juliette seemed to share with Claudia something else. Something thrillingly secret.

  As the coffee and liqueurs were served, Juliette decided it was her turn to be frank How gratifying it was, she declared, to discover the dominant also in Claudia. Who would have expected it?

  “A slut like this Verena needs proper, serious flagellation if she is to be disciplined and brought to heel.” Claudia said, taking her chance and added: “The girl should be reduced to sex slavery. She should be used violently, even cruelly, in order to train her up. There’s nothing better for a body slave than to be given vehement, naked strappings from neck to knees from the start. The bitch should be reduced to total whip-slavery, to be used entirely as we wish and to service us sexually under the continuous threat of punishment, meted out to her stark naked.” Still impassive, she turned to her lover: “I presume you fuck the girl or make use of her somehow, Mishka, each time you put her to the whip?”

  “Of course, Claudia. It’s only natural, as part of, let’s say, the flagellator’s compensation.”

  “Mishka, darling, you’re right.” Claudia said. “You deserve to be compensated for all the trouble this girl is causing. And what’s the objection to using her? After all, she’s just flesh and there for the taking. But I’d like to go a step further and break her down into a pliant, unmurmuring body slave-in-residence.”

  Juliette attempted to make her offering. “Then surely, Mishka, Claudia should have her sessions too with the girl, as I do with my Tansu. And get the slave to service her just as you force the slut to service your rigid cock, and that’s no sinecure for anyone’s mouth.”