Mind Guest (Diana Santee Book 1)

by Sharon Green

  I was made to bend over on my knees so that my bottom could be taken care of, and it was all I could do to follow instructions with the trust of innocence. Bellna wouldn't have known what the salve was doing so I couldn't know; I just had to bend over and take it. After that my hair was brushed out, and then I was told I could rest until the masters came for me. I lay down on the spot indicated and closed my eyes, but the woman knew damned well I wouldn't rest. I'd been faintly aroused again, but all I could do about it was wait for the man who could choose to make it go away - if he was pleased enough to do so.

  A good twenty or twenty-five minutes passed before anyone showed up, during which time the salve took my faint arousal and slowly increased it to squirming level. Every minute that passed made Bellna more and more anxious, a clear indication of what my own actions had to be. I was being forced to think of nothing but the arrival of the masters, and also what I could do to please them enough to ease me.

  Everything done in that place was an aspect of conditioning, a conditioning that would probably have broken down even my defenses if it had been kept up long enough. Some people, like me, are trained to take high levels of pain, but no one, trained or not, can avoid being affected by constant positive and negative reinforcement of the pleasure reflex. The human mind is made to resist pain whenever it can, but pleasure? Hell, that's what we're built to try for!

  When my golden-shirt finally showed up, the woman went to her knees to him and I wasn't far behind her. I made a real production out of it, sitting up fast in relief, ready to blurt out my need, suddenly seeing what my "mother" was doing, then quickly doing the same. My eagerness to please had been increased as much as they'd wanted it to be, and the indulgent smile on my golden-shirt's face was covering a good deal of satisfaction.

  "How refreshed and lovely you look, little slave," he said, stopping a few steps into the room. "Rise to your feet so that I might see all of you."

  The blush covering me as I stood up made him chuckle, and that naturally increased Bellna's blush output. Having her there was becoming handier and handier; I can blush on demand, but not from head to foot. I turned slowly at his gesture, making an inexperienced stab at moving as gracefully as the woman had, and when I turned to face him again there was real amusement in his expression.

  "Your eagerness pleases me, slave," he said, and so help me my body reacted to that verbal stroking in a way that was horrifying. "Go and fetch your device now, and I will reinsert it."

  Morale dropped down to the floor at that, but I felt no urge to argue him out of his decision. Instead I hurried over to where the woman had put the device and quickly brought it to him, desperate to do everything he asked and please him again. If he wasn't pleased I wouldn't be rewarded, so I had to do all I could to please him. The reactions and straight-line logic were all Bellna's, who would have been three-quarters of the way into full slavery if she'd really been here. I handed over the device with a small and fear-filled pout, and my golden-shirt chuckled even more.

  "You dislike this device and yet you obey," he said with such obvious approval that Bellna nearly purred. "Your obedience will be remembered. Down to your knees now and brow to the floor."

  I knelt and bent over as ordered, trembling with anticipation at the thought of being touched by him. The situation was as frightening as it was infuriating, but I couldn't do anything about either emotion except thrust them away. I was being conditioned more than I wanted to be, and that was the danger; my only edge was that I was aware of it and therefore in a position to negate the worst parts of the condition. Or I'd damned well better be able to negate most of it. I intended to go for the break as soon as it got dark; I'd find out then how good a job I was doing.

  The golden-shirt took his time putting the device back in, playing around until I'd moaned and squirmed enough to suit him. The Bellna part of my mind found the torture highly arousing; it had come to her that the man was getting pleasure from what he was doing, and she very much wanted to give him pleasure. She was sure he would decide to reward her after that, but once the device had been inched in as deep as it could go and had been tied in back, I was ordered to my feet again.

  "Your lessons will continue immediately," golden-shirt said as he tied the leather in front, somewhat tighter than it had originally been. "I feel certain that you wish to achieve the highest level of obedience and skill as soon as you possibly may."

  "Oh, yes!" I breathed, looking into his face with all the ardor I could muster. "I feel a - a need to obey that I have never before felt."

  "Excellent." He nodded, showing only a small smile of satisfaction. "You will be given ample opportunity for obedience. Your slave-shift may be left here, for you will not require the use of it for a time. Precede me out of the room."

  I gave my poncho one agonizing glance, then turned immediately toward the room's exit. Bellna was mortified at the thought of walking around naked, but she didn't want to disobey. After all, there were very few people in the tent complex, so it shouldn't be too embarrassing…

  No one was in the small room-corridor or in the between-rooms corridor, but when I followed directions into the room directly across the way, Bellna's shock stopped me short with a gasp two steps through the doorway. There were more than a dozen green-clad slave females, all in their twenties, three dark-gold-shirted men with swords and whips, and a naked, staked-down male slave. The slave females giggled when they saw me even as they got to their knees to the golden-shirt behind me, and all Bellna wanted to do was run and hide. She was absolutely crushed at being the only naked female in the room, but when I took one involuntary step backward, I bumped into my golden-shirt.

  "You must move forward, not backward, little slave," he said, putting his hand to me. I gasped again and found myself doing as I'd been told to do, but I couldn't escape his hand guiding me across the floor. The female slaves were giggling almost nonstop, and Bellna would have been happy to curl up and die.

  "You will use this slave to show me the extent of what you have learned," golden-shirt told me when we'd reached the staked-down male slave. "Should your obedience and learning prove sufficient, you may be rewarded."

  "I am to do this before them?" I whispered back, indicating the female slaves with a desperate glance. "And what of those others who were with me? Are we not to await their arrival?"

  "You will no longer be training with those others," he said, again highly amused. "Their progress will be slower, and need not hold you back in yours. Also is your training to be somewhat different from theirs. Are you prepared to begin?"

  I opened my mouth to answer him, but nothing came out. I was being ordered to arouse the male slave, a strange male slave, in front of an audience that was horribly and embarrassingly intimidating for the Bellna presence. She was an awkward little girl being commanded to perform naked in front of other females older than she, commanded to an act she had never even conceived of before that morning.

  The agony of wanting to obey but fearing failure and ridicule was terrible for her, but thanks to our link-up it was almost as bad for me. The tears formed in my eyes as I began to tremble, but my golden-shirt didn't let me go all the way to hysteria.

  "It seems you will require a small amount of encouragement before you begin," he drawled, then pointed to the floor and snapped, "Kneel!"

  His tone stopped Bellna short in her misery and sent her cringing back, giving me enough breathing room to kneel before I was accused of disobedience. I had enough time to notice that the floor mat in this room was a good deal softer than the one in the first room, and then golden-shirt had me by the hair. The encouragement he gave was of the expected sort, the key word "serve" being used at the same time to reinforce it, and it wasn't long before I was writhing and begging to obey the orders I'd been given.

  He let me beg for some time before he magnanimously allowed it, and then he stayed close and started up the encouragement again any time he thought I needed it. I was able to stay just unrattled enough
to remember what I was and wasn't supposed to know, but it was a close thing.

  When I had the male slave shouting and cursing, I was finally allowed to stop. I was trembling and covered with sweat and had my teeth clenched against Bellna's screaming in my skull, but some cooler, more rational part of me had decided that my reward would for some reason be put off again. I didn't want to hear that any more than Bellna did, but I was very much afraid it would turn out to be true.

  When my golden-shirt announced that I'd earned my reward after all, I felt a relief and gratitude that was sickening. I was disgusted with myself for reacting that way, but there was nothing I could do to stop it - and then the kicker came. I could have my reward here and now, in front of everyone including all those very amused female slaves, or I could wait and have it later, at some unspecified time, but in private.

  The choice was given to me to make; I was almost too strung out to be suspicious, but suspicion is a disease I've had a lot of years, and it's saved me pain and kept me alive more often than sweet trust ever could. Bellna wanted to wait, and so did I, but for some vague reason that choice didn't feel right. The last thing I wanted was to be humiliated in front of a totally unsympathetic audience, but that was the way I would have to go. I hesitated no more than an instant, then looked up at golden-shirt.

  "I - beg that you choose to reward me now," I whispered, blushing furiously but still squirming where I knelt. "I - feel great discomfort - and - and cannot wait."

  "You cannot wait," he repeated in a voice loud enough to reach everyone in the room, satisfaction shining from his eyes to keep his chuckle company. "As you cannot wait, I shall give you the reward you have earned upon the moment."

  Again Bellna was shattered by the announcement and following laughter, but there was no longer any way out of the mess. Golden-shirt sat down next to me, took me in his lap and bent me backward, then began to give me my reward. I was so deeply lost to the sensations that every other consideration faded away - including the fact that the fingers of his free hand closed even more tightly on one of my nipples as he worked me. The pain was there but so was release, and once again I was thrown to the floor mat to recover.

  I don't know when the dirty suspicion came to me, but after an uncounted time of lying in a heap, I suddenly knew another facet of the conditioning I was being put through - and the difference between my training and that of the others. All the hints and unexplained happenings… The bastards were building a link between pain and sexual arousal and satisfaction.

  Taken one way to its ultimate conclusion, the infliction of pain would bring immediate, uncontrollable arousal; taken the other way, the infliction of that same pain would bring orgasmic release - or make release impossible without it. The set-up was right out of a sadist's wet dreams, and I couldn't help wondering what I'd bought myself with the response my golden-shirt had been looking for. His satisfaction at the choice I'd made had certainly been clear enough, as clear as the retrospectively seen fact that the deck had been stacked against that choice.

  A girl Bellna's age and with her background should have been mortified at the thought of being done in front of so many snickering strangers, especially as most of them were women older than herself - unless she had been made so uncontrollably sensual that she couldn't help herself. They'd wanted Bellna to react that way, and the next step could very well be what that solitary girl on the furs had been given. I'd noticed that she'd been beaten, but I'd also noticed that she was more worked up sexually than hurting from the beating.

  I lay on the floor mat of the room feeling physically exhausted, but my mind was darting around at light speed. I'd made the right choice but it had turned out wrong for me, which was the way the game went sometimes. If I wanted to avoid what the girl on the furs had gotten, I'd have to backpedal a little.

  Sometimes making a decision doesn't mean you'll get to put it into practice, but this time I got lucky. When my rest time was over and I was ordered to my feet, it was to be taken to another, smaller room which contained all males. There were half a dozen slave males and two armed guards, the slaves only lightly chained and the guards casual and unconcerned. The slaves were obviously no worry, which told me that the training given the girls was also used to train the men.

  Male slaves who gave trouble were punished by being used as subjects for the girls to work on; those who cooperated were rewarded by being allowed to help in the training, probably also being allowed the use of ordinary slave females afterward. I was pushed into the middle of them, had one pointed out as my subject, and was told to serve that one no matter what the others did to me.

  Use of the key word affected me less strongly than it was supposed to, but it still affected me. The reward I'd been given was largely negated, and the men around me laughed softly when I closed my eyes and squeezed my thighs together with a gasp. They all wore the faded green of slaves while I stood naked among them, and they obviously enjoyed the sight of me.

  Their hungry reactions were very unsettling, and then I was told to undress my subject in the proper way, the way I'd been taught to do earlier. A well-trained slave kissed her master's body when she undressed him, and the slave who had been appointed my master licked his lips in anticipation, eager to get on with it.

  I'd decided to make it very clear right from the start that being among all those men made me nervous. I used an anxious expression when I reached out a tentative hand to my "master," then jumped with a loud squeal when I was touched from behind by someone else. I whirled in the direction of the touch, gasped when two more of the slaves touched me, then began to cry.

  "You fail to serve your master, slave," my golden-shirt admonished, punishing me lightly by using the key word again. "Were you not told to ignore all others and attend him alone?"

  "I cannot!" I blubbered, looking at him piteously over the shoulders of two of the slaves. "I have never been alone among so many men, not to speak of being unclothed among them! And they all - oh! - touch me! I b-beg to be allowed to attend him in private."

  "You have already learned to attend a master in private," he said with a frown, a lot less satisfied than he'd been till then. His brown eyes studied me in silence for a moment, and then he nodded his head. "This was, perhaps, to be expected. The distraction of the highly unusual is enough to overcome the recently learned. You must clearly be first accustomed to that which is strange to you, and then we may proceed. You all may toy with her a short time."

  The last was for the male slaves, of course, and they entered the game with a zeal I would have found commendable -under other circumstances. After throwing me to the wolves, my golden-shirt turned and left the tent room, but the three armed guards were still there to laugh their heads off while I screamed and tried uselessly to protect myself.

  The six slaves moved in as close as they could and began to touch me all over, having no trouble getting past my flailing arms, driving me crazy and enjoying my near-hysteria. After a couple of minutes someone took my arms from behind and held them out and away from my sides, forcing the front of my body forward. So many hands touched me in so many places that I nearly lost control and defended myself, which would have scattered and smeared those six like so much firewood or so many rag dolls.

  I panted more with the effort to hold myself back than with what was being done to me, but that doesn't mean I wasn't suffering. Bellna blubbered in the back of my mind and screamed for permission to obey, but I couldn't allow that any more than I could allow what I wanted to do. Now that I'd broken the pattern of training, I had to keep it broken.

  When my golden-shirt finally came back, I was down on my knees with my forehead pressed to the mat, one of the slaves kneeling on my hair. I was screaming almost nonstop from the way they were stabbing at me with their bodies without having removed their loincloths, teasing me with what they'd made me want so desperately. Hands fondled my breasts and toyed with the device, different hands taking turns doing different things while I was poked at and stroked
and denied what I ached for.

  I screamed and struggled, trying to get loose to reach one of them - and then all of them were gone, out of reach and through with the game. I pushed myself up on all fours and raised my head, the tears streaming down my cheeks and my body flaming, just in time to see the gesture from my golden-shirt that I was to get to my feet. It was something of a struggle but I managed it, and once I was erect the golden-shirt stepped closer to me, took my wrist chain between my left wrist and the belt loop, turned, and dragged me behind him out of the room.

  To be entirely accurate, I was dragged down to the end of the corridor, through a room that looked just like all the others, but one which led outside. It was an hour or so past noon of another pretty day, but neither Bellna nor I were in any condition to appreciate it. Bellna was having hysterics over the number of people stopping or turning around to stare at my naked, sweat-covered body, and I was mewling helplessly at the pace the golden-shirt was forcing me to.

  When I could force myself to speak I begged mindlessly to be touched, but rewarding wasn't what I'd set myself up for. The thin grass and stones and dirt I minced over barely entered my awareness, no more than the wide city of tents stretching in all directions throughout the large forest clearing. We crossed an open space, circled a dark green tent, then made for a large brown, yellow, and white tent with flaps thrown back.

  The large tent was too well lit with lamps for it to be dim even after the brightness of the day. It was filled with row after row and aisle after aisle of what had to be display platforms, five inches high for male slaves, three or four feet high for female slaves. The male slaves stood with wrists shackled to either side of their heads, their ankles held tight by manacles set in the platform floors, three platforms of females and one of males, then another three of females and another one of males. There was an open space on the female platform directly opposite the tent entrance, and that was where my golden-shirt dragged me.