Marketplace

by Laura Antoniou

  “Your wants vanished after the first week, Sharon,” Chris said, pushing her head away. “And you disobeyed a direct instruction. Grendel will be very displeased. Go back to your room, and we’ll deal with this in the morning.”

  “But wait!” Sharon protested. “Please! Please, Chris, I’ll make you happy! I know how, I swear! And I’ll never tell anyone!” She threw herself forward, folding her arms around his legs. “Please, don’t send me back! Give me a chance to please you, you’ll see, I mean what I say!”

  “Sharon, you haven’t made any sense since you came in here!” Chris pried her off him again. “What is this big secret you think you know about me?”

  “That you’re really a woman!” Sharon blurted out.

  “Oh?” Chris sounded amused. “How interesting. Someone will have to tell my mother.”

  “But you are!” Sharon said, frustrated. “You don’t have... I mean, everyone knows that you’ve got... and you’re short, and you don’t...” her arguments vanished away, the most telling one an account by a man who admitted that it could have all been a hoax. She slumped forward and put her head down to the floor. “Oh God, oh God, I just know!” she wailed.

  Chris reached out and grasped a handful of her hair and twisted her head up.

  “You just know,” he savagely mocked. “You just know. So you break rules, you sneak into my rooms, you babble your pitiful stories to me, and you place your entire future on the line in the hopes that I’ll be so overwhelmed by your charity that I’ll treat you kinder and make your way easier!”

  “No!” she gasped.

  “Oh yes,” Chris insisted. “Well, you just might get more than you bargained for, little Sharon.” He pulled up, and she followed his hand, wailing. He pushed her face first over the edge of the bed and jerked her wrists together up in the small of her back. Standing up behind her, he reached into his crotch and moved in close. His legs pushed hers apart as his hands pushed her body onto the bed.

  “So you think I’m a woman,” he said, resting against her. “You think I’ll like what you have to offer me. Well, here’s a taste of what I like, Sharon. Open wide for me. Get your butt up! Higher!”

  His fingers thrust into her, three at first, and then four. She groaned and cried into the bed as he rammed them in and out of her brutally, spreading her open and working her until it hurt, it hurt, it hurt!

  “Have you ever been fisted, Sharon? I like fisting.”

  “No!” Sharon howled. “Please, please, no, please!”

  “No? Then I guess you wouldn’t be too good at making me happy, would you?” The fingers were jerked out, and he let go of her arms. She pulled them to her sides, tried to put them under her to brace herself, but he was on top of her in a second. She felt two things nudging into her. A heavy bulge near her leg that could only be the cock that Brian described, and the cold steel edge of the knife Chris had brought with him. It was against the back of her neck.

  “I also like knives,” Chris hissed into her ear. “I like to cut people a little bit, watch them bleed, let them taste their own blood off the blade when I’m through. I cut pretty designs into their bodies, and they love it. They come back for my special designs, and some of them actually beg to serve me so that they can have the honor of being marked. Shall I do that to you, Sharon?”

  “No,” she whimpered. “Please, I don’t want to be marked, I can’t, please, I’ll do... I’ll go...”

  “Then that’s another way we can’t have fun, Sharon!” Chris pulled the knife away. “It looks like you’re only good for one thing that I like, girl.” There was the familiar rustle of a small package being torn open. “And that’s fucking. But I don’t like it the way you probably do. And that’s too fucking bad, because I need it now, and you’re handy.“

  He tore into her asshole with one savage thrust that made her scream. He pushed her face down into the bed, muffling her cries, and began to mercilessly saw back and forth. The small amount of lube on the rubber wasn’t nearly enough, and Sharon wailed a continuous stream of promises, pleading, and inarticulate sounds of pain. Finally, he pulled out and dragged her off the bed.

  “Aren’t you happy to be pleasing me?” he asked, throwing her down on the floor.

  “Yes!” she cried. “Yes, anything!”

  “Put your head down! Get your ass up! Crawl back to the bathroom, you moron, and put your face to the floor! Let’s finish this where you started it!” He dragged her there, her arms and legs trembling, and as she laid her cheek on the cool tiles, she could hear him opening the medicine chest. She was so grateful for the snapping sound of the bottle of lube opening that she kissed his bare foot near her.

  “I didn’t say you could do that!” he snapped. “Put those lips on the floor! That’s it, kiss it! Lick it! And stay there!”

  His re-entry was smoother, but not that much less painful. Under his steady, harsh pounding, she kept her tongue to the floor, washing the same space of tile with her tongue, dripping tears and spit on it, making incoherent cries. Finally, with several long, swift strokes that made her feel like he was going to burst through her body in another second, he shuddered against her, and she could swear that she could feel the heat of his cock as his throat made a series of deep growls. He ground his hips into her, and then jerked the cock out all at once, before it... softened?

  Sharon cried. She was exhausted, humiliated, afraid and confused. When he got up and walked away, she just slumped down on the floor and shivered and moaned until he came back. He bent down to examine her, and then stood back. He watched her sob for a while.

  “Get up,” he finally said, nudging her. She needed his help, and he escorted her through the halls and back to her room. Brian was awake, his eyes open when Chris walked in, and he didn’t even try to pretend he had been asleep. Chris put Sharon in her bed and walked out without saying a word. Brian listened to the sobs for a while, and then rolled over and put his arm over his ear. He didn’t want to know.

  In another wing of the house, Alex slept, with one slave on either side of her, their bodies curled toward her. It was the first time any of them had actually shared a bed with an owner.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When the servants came back, the slaves were so used to doing almost everything that it took a day or two to get used to the revised schedules. They had a little help in adjusting—they had all officially entered the last phases of their basic training, and now came the specific lessons in formal behavior and in all the knowledge a slave has to have before entering the Marketplace. It wasn’t all about how and when to bow, either. They had to learn the hierarchy of the system, and how to deal with it, how to make contact with it if they were lost, how to treat people from the Marketplace in mixed situations, and which rules must be obeyed in which circumstances. Their questions rapidly became used on items of history and fact about the system they were (hopefully) about to enter. And they learned what happens when someone betrays that system.

  “To be shunned by the Marketplace is to be sure that the rest of your life is spent doing the very things you four are all escaping from,” Chris explained one afternoon. “Little organizations of dilettantes, shallow displays of crude imitations of the real thing, purveyors of pornography for idiots, and casual players who have no concept that people actually live this life. To be shunned is to be forever barred from our meetings, our conferences, and our social events, from the sales and the trades, the parties and the resorts...”

  “The resorts are real?” Sharon had asked, eagerly.

  “Oh yes,” Chris assured her. “Not exactly as portrayed in those trashy novels you like so much, but they exist. Mr. Elliott and Ms. Selador often like to spend a winter vacation at the one in the Caribbean.”

  “Wait,” Brian said with a laugh. “Why should they want to go? They’ve got it right here!”

  “They go to get away from stupid novices,” Chris replied smoothly.

  Then there were the intensified lessons in anything that h
adn’t caught on in the early training. Sharon spent more and more time talking to herself, trying out words and phrases and learning little mental tricks to slow down her speaking rhythms so that she could get words such as “like” and phrases such as “I mean” and “you know?” out of her vocabulary. It was a slow process, combined with her ongoing education about all things that could be called “fun.”

  “Bridge!” she complained one day, drying dishes while Robert washed. “I, uh... who plays bridge anyway, except for middle class ladies with nothing else to do?” She caught that “I mean,” and was pleased.

  “Millionaires play bridge,” Robert told her. “They bet on it, or they pay off in points. Some of them actually become professional bridge players.”

  “No shit,” Sharon said without thinking. “I mean... uh... no kidding?”

  Claudia began an intense study of the art of managing a household. Between Chris and Rachel, she got advice and details on everything from building additions to contracting outside labor, from planning weekly schedules to writing out a yearly budget, from researching the soup to buying bulk nuts.

  “You keep the file like this, making notes on everyone your owners have on their guests lists. You mark down important things like what you know they’re allergic to, what their favorite brandy is, and whether they like cigars after the meal. Make sure to remember to put down their religion!” Rachel showed the slave the space for it on their customized guest cards.

  “Religion? Why?”

  “Because, among lots of other details, you can’t serve pork to Jews and Muslims, that’s why. You can ruin an entire evening just by serving the wrong appetizer.” Rachel grinned. “The stories I could tell you! But just be sure to know your guests. That’s one headache you can take away from your mistress. If she can trust you to plan it and not to offend anyone or send them puking out the door, you’ll have another feather in your cap.”

  “Thank you, Miss,” Claudia said sincerely. Her eyes shone whenever she looked at Rachel these days. She was very happy to have her back.

  Guests appeared regularly, and the slaves were often examined under less than optimum circumstances. Interrupting them during workouts in the gym was common, as was finding them at some messy or difficult task. But each time, they were expected to pull themselves together and present themselves with grace and style, ready to answer questions, perform movements, or submit to pain or arousal at the guests’ whim. Robert’s skill as a masseur, Sharon’s skills in raw sensuality, Claudia’s quick mind, clever tongue, wonderful manners, and her ability to take a very nice beating, and even Brian’s eagerness to please, were all becoming strong points for them. They were coached to emphasize these points, and worked harder on the subjects they fell behind in. They could all see the end of the training period approaching, and as their dreams and nightmares melded and mixed, they worked themselves as hard as Chris drove them. None of them could afford to fail.

  * * * *

  Brian continued to be the least used and least worked slave of the four. He had plenty of work to do, and spent plenty of time suffering for the same kinds of mistakes and flaws his fellow slaves suffered for, but even Robert got to spend a night with Grendel, and Brian never had. After her major faux pas, Sharon wasn’t invited back either, but that was different.

  I never did anything wrong! Brian thought. And no matter how he searched his heart, he couldn’t see when he possibly could have. If the matter about Chris was of any weight, he surely suffered no more or less after Sharon’s ill-advised late night visit to the majordomo. So maybe Chris was right, and it had nothing to do with anything. Sharon certainly never shed any light on the subject, and Brian didn’t pursue it.

  Brian was the first to see Grendel’s workshop. Unlike Alex’s studio, which everyone now referred to as her playroom, Grendel’s space never changed its name. It was still a workshop, and when Brian was taken there to be worked, it was only to be used as an adjunct to someone else’s session. He was central, as a matter of fact, to teaching Robert how to suck cock, something the man had only done once to a real live one. But when Grendel was ready to test Robert’s skill, Brian was dismissed. Brian never even got to see his master’s cock. He began to dream about it.

  As the other slaves seemed guided to certain ends and goals, Brian fell further and further into a gray area of no clear definition. It became clear, for example, that Robert, with his football-trained body, his sharp sense of balance and instinct, and his elegant manners, was being set up as a kind of body-guard/companion. He practiced driving a lot, learned to handle a stretch limo, and learned basic self-defense and several cute disarming tricks from Sensei Chen. He studied with Chris in matters of deportment, and started escorting Alexandra when she went on little trips. He looked very good in the sharply tailored suit Alex chose for him, his chest filling out the jacket nicely. With a cap on, he looked the very image of a wealthy person’s loyal chauffeur, handsome, polite, slightly scholarly, and slightly formidable. Brian had to admit that it suited the man perfectly. Robert had gained new confidence that showed in his firm, slow voice, honed by sessions of dramatic and humorous reading of everything from children’s poems to famous speeches of Martin Luther King. And when the clothing was off, his firm, trim body was covered with a tangle of fine hairs, nicely masculine and not overpowering.

  Then he turned into an accomplished masseur, and a skillful body slave, happy to serve in any way commanded, honored to sleep across the threshold when night fell.

  Not bad for a six-foot French maid who lisped and whined.

  And Claudia, who wanted nothing more than to go back home, was slowly turning into a manager in her own right. Deeply concerned with appearances, she used that concern and transferred it to caring for how mistress appeared, and found that planning and managing weren’t as hard as they seemed three weeks ago. Once afraid to raise her voice at all, Brian overheard her yelling at the butcher who sent a less-than-acceptable quality of beef. Her indignation was fierce, her determination amazing, and her ability to demand proper action—and get it!—was nothing short of miraculous. And if her blushes meant anything, her ability to be fun in bed had increased tenfold in the few weeks she had been here. Brian regretted that he couldn’t see the night she and Robert did their thing in front of Alex and Gren. He still didn’t understand everything that night was about, but he knew that it was something special by the way the two of them still exchanged glances when it was mentioned. He also knew that Grendel had now spent several nights with Claudia, and the way she avoided talking about it suggested that they did more than talk.

  Even Sharon was turning into something better. Her attention to improving her language skills was starting to pay off, and she seemed to be able to grasp the essentials of the many entertainment activities she was introduced to. Guests picked her most often to try out, and her looks were definitely going to be an asset for her potential sale. Brian knew she wasn’t going to be voice-trained, no way, but still, she was a hot babe with a long list of fun things she could do. And thanks to her many lessons with Robert, she had gained a very limited but better-than-usual appreciation for things like opera and serious theatre. She may never be able to engage a master in a game of chess, but she could be counted on to know how to behave in a theatre and when to cry at the opera. And she could dance. Who knows? For the right man, she might be perfect.

  But I’m going nowhere, Brian realized. And the more he thought about it, the more it scraped away his nerves and his confidence. He had no way of knowing what was going to happen to him, either as a slave in this house, or even as Brian Cohen, the man who gave up his life to live a fantasy. Each night, noticing who was with him and who was kept by one of the owners, he curled into a neat fetal position and cradled his aching stomach, knowing that the pain was really in his head. Each morning, he woke up with a hard-on so bad it hurt, and each indignity or punishment seemed to magnify it until he thought he was going to burst. And each evening, he prayed that his name wou
ld be announced by Chris, and he died a little when he didn’t hear it.

  It wasn’t exactly a conscious act when he watched Claudia cheerfully follow Alex into the house one night, and he found himself on his belly in front of Grendel, begging for a touch. And surely, it wasn’t him who continued to beg, sincerely, tearfully, and steadily, even while Chris laid the strap on. It wasn’t any Brian he knew who begged, not for mercy, but for Sir to please, please, just watch, please favor him with a glance. And when the beating stopped, he knew it wasn’t him who begged for it to continue, if Sir so desired, and then begged to be allowed to thank his tormenter. And it wasn’t him who kissed the strap with such passion, and bowed his head to the ground by Grendel’s feet, begging forgiveness in words that didn’t sound at all like he had gotten them out of a book.

  “Well,” Grendel said to Chris, who was putting the strap back in its place. “It looks like we’ve found Brian. Bring him to the workshop.” Chris grinned when he bent down to pull the broken man to his feet.

  * * * *

  The other three almost needed introductions to the new Brian, a person Chris called “the real Brian” with some measure of satisfaction. The new Brian had lost a great deal of his sarcastic edge, and some of his cynicism. He was tearfully, almost embarrassingly eager to serve, and the difference between the way he managed himself then and now defied the language when they tried to explain it. Yes, he was willing and eager before. But it always seemed that he was doing things because he wanted something in return—they were all means to an end.

  Now, he seemed to take joy in doing anything from clearing the table to sitting on the floor studying while Alex wrote, or taking a message to Jack from Grendel.