The Fine Art of Torture (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 3)

by Ashley Zacharias

  “If you will straddle the horse, we will proceed.”

  Irene took care to keep her balance as she lifted her leg over the wedge. She didn’t want to fall on her face with her hands cuffed behind her back.

  That would hurt.

  The wedge was a foot wide at the base, forcing her thighs apart. For no reason but to entice Carl and Moe, she tilted her hips to thrust her mons pubis as far upward as she could. They stared at her naked, open vulva like pilgrims gazing at the Holy Grail.

  Shackles were bolted by short chains to base of the device. The professor closed one steel ring about each ankle and fastened them with wing nuts.

  He said nothing as he began cranking the wedge up into Irene’s crotch.

  She relaxed into an easy posture.

  The increasing pressure on her vulva was uncomfortable. Her left labium was trapped by the edge of the wedge. Before the wedge was raised too high, she rose on her toes and adjusted her position to ensure that her labia fell to the sides of the rounded edge and were not crushed directly. The professor kept cranking and the pressure soon became acutely painful. Again she rose on her toes, this time to relieve the pressure on her perineum, but the professor kept cranking the wedge upward.

  The mechanical advantage of the jack allowed him to lift her entire body weight, raising her feet clear of the floor, without significant effort.

  He stopped when the slack was taken out of the chains that shackled her ankles to the floor.

  Most of her body weight was resting on her perineum, but a significant amount was distributed along her vulva. The pain was severe and she couldn’t stop herself from whimpering softly.

  She tried rocking backward to relieve the pressure on her vulva but she couldn’t take the entire weight of her body on her anus. Then she tried rocking forward to relieve the weight on her perineum, but that put too much weight on her genitalia.

  She tried to squeeze the wedge with her thighs, but she couldn’t lift her weight that way.

  There was no way to escape the pain that was increasing in severity with every passing minute.

  The professor said that this torture was used in the Spanish Inquisition. She believed that it was probably effective. Within a quarter hour, she was ready to confess to heresy, to being a witch, or to anything else that her inquisitors might suggest.

  But the professor and his two friends had no interest in hearing confessions, true or false. They wanted to hear only her weeping.

  She obliged them. Tears were soon running down her face and dripping onto the cruel wedge which felt like it was splitting her in two.

  The professor smiled. “How does that feel?”

  She gritted her teeth and grinned through the pain. “It feels terrific. After having chastity enforced on me, I look forward to any stimulation in my cunt.”

  The professor frowned.

  “Why do you think I chose this device to stimulate me?” she asked.

  Carl looked fascinated.

  “Yup,” she said to him. “These are tears of joy.” She wriggled on the edge of the wedge in a simulacrum of masturbation. It hurt like hell, but she moaned softly and said, “I think I’m going to come in a few minutes.”

  She looked at Moe. “I admit that it’s not as good as having a man inside me, but it’s the best that I can get right now.”

  The professor laughed. “You’re an amazing woman. I’ve forced many slaves to ride this horse. You’re the first equestrian who managed to make a joke about it.” He turned to Moe and Carl. “I’ve got some single-cask bourbon that needs drinking. We’ll retire to the study and give Irene an hour or so to think up a few more jokes.”

  They left her to endure her agonizing ordeal alone.

  She could do nothing to reduce her pain. Her feet were shackled to the floor on either side of the wooden horse. There was no slack in the chains. Any movement her legs pulled against the shackles and pressed her harder against the wedge.

  Her best strategy was to remain as motionless as possible.

  The only thing in the studio that provided distraction were the other instruments of torture spaced around the floor.

  Contemplating those did little to relieve her distress. She knew that she would suffer as much pain in any one of those as she was suffering on the wooden horse.

  Every minute seemed like an eternity. Life in the hands of a sadist was very long, indeed.

  But time did pass and, after an hour or so – Irene had no way to know the exact amount of time – the professor returned to the studio, his friends in tow.

  “How are we doing, dear? Crotch rather tender, I expect.”

  “I’d rather have a man between my legs than a wooden horse.”

  Carl grinned at the thought of fucking her.

  Moe was almost drooling.

  Both men were visibly aroused inside their pants. Though they were not suffering the same pain as her, they were not entirely comfortable. Carl tried to adjust his trousers discreetly. Moe, who was standing behind the others, quickly reached inside and fixed his problem manually.

  “Oh, dear. We still have sex on our mind, do we?” The professor was talking to her, unaware that his comment would be most appropriately directed toward his friends.

  They blushed but had the wit to keep silent.

  “It’s pretty hard to forget about my sex when it’s hurting like all hell.” She was pleased that she was able to engage in coherent conversation when the pain in her crotch was almost killing her.

  “I intend to keep you astride your mount for another hour.”

  She groaned.

  “But, to make life interesting, I’ll give you an opportunity to escape early. Are you game?”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Carl, pick a category.”

  Carl thought for a minute and then said, “Famous murderers.”

  “Okay with you?” the professor asked her.

  “Sure.” She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she was hurting too badly to want to waste any time objecting.

  “The first one of us who can’t name a famous murderer within ten seconds loses. It has to be someone that Carl or Moe has heard of. I’ll begin. Gustav Shultz.”

  Shultz had been convicted of drowning his fourth wife in their backyard swimming pool two years ago. His first three wives had also drowned in the same pool, but the police had become suspicious only after the fourth wife had suffered the same fate. The Shultz case was not an example of the local sheriff’s department’s keenest investigative minds.

  “Karen Kliestermann,” she said. Kliestermann had poisoned her mother by infusing her gin with oleander juice after a dispute about their summer vacation plans.

  And so it went, the two contestants mining their memories for newspaper headlines, historical figures, and old legends.

  The professor had an advantage on historical figures but Irene’s father had been High Sheriff of Calam Shire. That was not an empty title; he was head of the Shire’s police force. He often discussed famous criminals with his children over dinner.

  When the professor offered the pirate, Dread Roberts, Irene challenged him on the grounds that, though he had been hung for piracy, there was no evidence offered that Roberts had killed anyone personally. The professor offered another pirate, Captain Jack Skull, in his place. Skull had been convicted of decapitating the captains of several merchant vessels.

  After several minutes of rapid-fire exchange, both of them were finding it hard to offer another name and were coming perilously close to the ten-second time limit. Carl was watching the second hand on his watch to ensure that the rule was enforced.

  The game helped distract Irene from the terrible ache in her crotch but the pain was so severe that it made it hard for her to think.

  In the end, she hit a blank wall. She could think of nothing. Sweat was pouring down her body. Carl was watching his watch. The professor was grinning. She couldn’t stand this pain for another hour, so in desperation, she shouted “P
inky Cerveau.”

  The professor shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

  That was no surprise. She had invented the name on the spot. She followed up by inventing a crime. “Her. Pinky was a woman. She was a medical student before I was born. She was invited on rounds at the hospital in Calam Shire and was horrified when she saw a baby with severe birth defects suffering from a painful, terminal disease. She came back later and suffocated it. The story was a sensation for a while because she did it for no motive but pure compassion. They hung her anyway.”

  “You ever hear of that, Carl?”

  Carl shook his head.

  Moe looked at Irene and grinned. “I have. We tell that story to medical students before we take them on rounds. It’s a cautionary tale warning them not to get personally involved with patients.”

  The professor stared at his friend but Moe didn’t blanch, just grinned back at him.

  “Your turn, professor,” Carl said.

  The professor didn’t bother replying. He knew that he couldn’t win a rigged game. He cranked the wooden wedge down until Irene was standing on the floor and the wedge was no longer touching her crotch.

  She wept in relief.

  Carl unlocked her handcuffs, and then Moe offered a hand to steady her while she stepped over the wedge.

  She put a hand between her legs and gingerly massaged her aching cunt.

  Carl and Moe watched in unabashed fascination.

  When she took her hand away, she looked at it, half expecting to see it covered in blood, but nothing had burst. She was intact, only bruised.

  “It seems, my dear, that you have the rest of the afternoon off. I’ll fetch you when dinner is ready.”

  The three men watched in silence as she waddled slowly and painfully across the studio.

  She had cheated them of a second hour of martyrdom, but had given them a satisfying show, nonetheless.

  * * *

  The professor had given her a proper slave’s housedress, along with supplies so that she could keep her crotch hairless. He seldom sent her on errands outside the building, but she sometimes put the housedress on and took short walks around the neighborhood to get some air while he was at the university.

  She had never asked him if she could leave the building. With any other owner, she would not have dared ask permission, much less leave a kennel without an explicit order.

  The professor didn’t treat her like a slave, though. Apart from torturing her and ordering her to write essays about her experiences, he treated her like a roommate. He made it clear that she was to find ways to fill her own time.

  She took that as license for her excursions. But she suspected that he would punish her if he found out so she never told him that she was going for walks by herself and she only left the building when he was lecturing at the university.

  On this day, her back was aching from having to spend two hours bent over in a low pillory the previous day.

  Once again, he had forced her to choose the device for her torture.

  She had picked the pillory because it had seemed the most innocuous. But the pedestal was adjustable. Rather than letting her stand more or less upright, he had lowered it so that, once her head and hands were trapped, she was bent at the waist with her torso parallel to the floor. That put severe strain on her back, buttocks, and dorsal thigh muscles.

  She had seen the light cane that was propped against the supporting pillar so she knew that part of the torture of the pillory was to be caned.

  The professor had once told her that he never broke the skin with a cane and never left scars. But, in the same breath, he had bragged that his subtle technique caused more pain than most men who applied it more brutally.

  He proved his boast to her dissatisfaction. His touch was light enough that he never broke her skin or even raised large welts, but the caning lasted for more than half an hour and the pain of the accumulation of strokes was excruciating.

  She suspected that the professor only stopped caning her when his arm was too fatigued to continue. She hoped, wistfully, that his arm might be as sore as her ass today.

  It was a lovely spring day and she extended her walk a few blocks further than usual, exploring parts of the neighborhood that she didn’t know. The houses here were small and poorly maintained. Cracker-boxes were clad in shingles that were supposed to look like brick, but failed to look like anything except exactly what they were. Post-card-sized front yards were overgrown with weeds. Cars that long ago had been expensive on the lot were now aging dinosaurs parked on gravel driveways. Some rested on blocks rather than tires, others were restored to near show-room perfection.

  These were the working poor who could not afford to rent expensive homes but could afford to give themselves a veneer of status by buying an older used luxury car.

  She rounded a corner and saw two familiar faces. The black-haired and ginger-haired young men who had threatened to rape her a couple weeks earlier were sitting idle on a front stoop.

  She almost turned and retreated but reconsidered. What the hell? she thought. She walked boldly toward them. They weren’t going to do anything to her in broad daylight. Not now when she was wearing the proper slave’s housedress instead of a lady’s full skirt and bodice.

  “Well, lookee who we got here,” the ginger said. “It’s the high and mighty slave with the gold dog collar.”

  “What-cha doing on our street?” the youth with greasy black hair asked.

  “Your street?” Irene glanced at the sign on the corner. “Are you Mister Twenty-Third Avenue?”

  “Just call me Mr. Avenue,” the youth replied.

  “So you must be Mr. Street,” she said to the ginger.

  “Mr. Boulevard, if you please.”

  “Maybe I’ll just shorten it to Mr. A and Mr. B.”

  “Whatever makes your ass happy.”

  After weeks of chastity interspersed with torture sessions every few days, the only thing that would make her ass happy was sex. Lots of sex.

  She looked at the two young men and thought, What the hell?

  “You live here?” she asked.

  Mr. A, the black-haired youth nodded. “Yeah. Home sweet home. Until I can afford my own place.”

  Which would take a long time for a young man who was lounging around on his front stoop in the middle of a workday. “Anybody else home?”

  “Nah. Mom’s at work down at the Shady Lane.” That was the local food market.

  “Your father?”

  “Who the hell knows where he is. He hasn’t been home since I was a kid.”

  “Why you want to know?” Mr. B asked.

  “I thought your friend might like to show me around his room.”

  The two youths stared at her in astonishment. Their cool, sardonic air evaporated. Their expressions were borrowed from newborn puppies.

  “You’re invited, too.” She looked at Mr. A “As long as your friend doesn’t mind.”

  “He don’t mind,” Mr. B said.

  Mr. A was shaking his head slowly. “Come on.” He jumped to his feet and opened the front door gesturing for her to enter. His manner would suit a gentleman escorting a lady into a grand manor, but he was sincere. He was too shocked at his good fortune to recognize the irony.

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him along as she crossed the threshold.

  He left the door open for Mr. B to scramble after them.

  The house was cool and dim. It was appointed with consignment shop furniture that could best be described as serviceable. It was out of style and had prominent wear patterns on the varnish and upholstery.

  The house looked clean. Not just neat, but dusted and scrubbed. A full staff of maids couldn’t keep a lord’s manor any cleaner.

  She followed Mr. A up a narrow stairway to the bedrooms. Mr. B followed close behind. She knew that he was looking up her skirt. She wondered if he could see far enough up to tell that she was wearing no panties.

  Just to be certain, she grabb
ed her skirt at the thighs and hiked it up to her waist as she climbed.

  She heard an audible gasp from below. She didn’t know if he was shocked by the sight of her cunt or the terrible bruising on her ass. Probably both.

  Mr. A, in the front, had no idea what was going on behind him.

  This was going to be fun. Her cunt was practically dripping in anticipation.

  She dropped her skirt back into place at the top of the stairs.

  Mr. A’s bedroom door was closed. He opened it onto an unholy mess. “My bedroom, my lady.” He gestured for her to step inside and told Mr. B “You can stay out here until I’ve finished with her.”

  She stood in the hallway. “A slave is no lady, as you will soon appreciate. I’m a lot more fun than that. But there’s no fun to be had in that mess. I’ll wait out here with Mr. B and give you a chance to clean it up.”

  His face fell. “What the hell?”

  Mr. B took her hand. “You heard the lady. No fun until the room is clean.” He pulled her close. “We’ll be waiting out here together.”

  Mr. A’s eyes darted back and forth between the two, his anger evident. But he knew that fighting with them would do nothing to relieve the throbbing in his pants. He stepped inside and slammed the door.

  Irene laughed and turned to Mr. B. “I’m sure that you keep your room as neat as a pin.”

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  She kissed his lips while his lie still lingered on them.

  He kissed her back, eagerly, shoving his tongue into her mouth without preamble. What youth lacked in subtlety, it compensated with vigor. And that’s exactly what Irene wanted. A truly vigorous fucking, preceded by equally vigorous foreplay.

  She matched his enthusiasm. She forced her tongue back into his mouth, grabbing him and clutching his body to hers with all her strength, ignoring her aching back.

  He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and used the other hand to maul a tit through the thin cloth of her housedress.

  She responded by dropping her right hand to his crotch and massaging his cock through his jeans.

  His moan sounded as heartfelt as hers when she’d been aching in the pillory. The line between torture and tease was a fine one, indeed.