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

by Ashley Zacharias

  He grabbed her hair and pulled her to her knees. This time, when she screamed it was in real pain.

  He wiped his cock off with her hair and then dropped her again.

  She would have licked him clean – all part of the service – but a wise rapist doesn’t put his cock anywhere near his victim’s teeth. A man can lose his dick that way. Many have.

  He left.

  She stayed curled up on the carpet until she heard the front door slam.

  She was thankful that she had prepared for this. It hadn’t been any worse, physically, than her treatment at the hands of some of her former owners’ guests.

  But it was worse psychologically. She tried to tell herself that this had been no different than servicing any other man when she was a slave. Some men liked their sex rough, but she failed. This was entirely different. This wasn’t part of the normal variation in enthusiasm among men who were availing themselves of a slave’s service. Moe didn’t treat her like property. He was treating her like a woman that he was abusing. This was a concerted attempt to degrade her as a human being.

  To Irene, it felt like he was on the edge of losing control of himself. Like he didn’t feel that he had any reason to limit on his behavior.

  No matter how rough an owner’s guest liked to play, they would never damage a slave.

  Moe would.

  It was funny. At first she had been afraid of the professor. But he had turned out to be a pussycat. He caused her terrible pain, suffering beyond endurance, but she was never in danger from him. Then she had been afraid of Carl, for good reason. He was a sociopath who could mutilate her and murder her without a qualm. Except that he understood rules and would respect the professor’s property because that was in his own best interests.

  She had never feared the doctor. He was a healer. He watched over her during the professor’s tortures to make sure that her health was not at risk. She understood that he was a sexual sadist, but assumed that he would limit himself to fantasizing about her.

  She had been wrong.

  Now she knew why Moe had become a doctor. Behind his smiles and pleasant bedside manner, he was an egomaniac who took pleasure in using his position to dominate and control. A doctor could tell any patient what to do, even if they were a lord or business tycoon or celebrity. As long as he retained his professional demeanor, Moe was a little god in his own clinic.

  It was no accident that the one time that she had been to his clinic, he had made her sit his waiting room for two hours.

  That had been his way of dumping a measure of humiliation on the aristocrats and wealthy commoners who were the bulk of his patients.

  She had to escape from him somehow, but she had no idea what she could do to force him to stay away.

  * * *

  The following week, Moe visited twice more to rape Irene anally. Both times he’d caught her upstairs in the study. He seemed to like the show that she put on for him.

  The day after her fourth rape, the professor tortured her for an hour on the Spanish horse. Moe and Carl attended as usual. Moe gave no indication that he had been coming to the building when the professor was out. No hint that his relationships with Irene had changed dramatically. Carl didn’t seem to realize it, either.

  When Irene was mounted on the horse, sobbing in pain, Moe barely glanced at her. Before he had been drooling at the sight of the naked slave, but he had moved beyond that now.

  The day after the Spanish horse, Moe took the violence of her rape a giant step farther.

  After the success of my balance scale torture, the professor had asked Irene if there were any other torture devices that she might build before his big show. There was and she had begun to work on the new device immediately.

  Now it was only two weeks before the show and she was racing to get it completed and tested in time, spending as much time in the shop as she could.

  The professor was lecturing so she left the front door unlocked. She figured that Moe would come into the shop, drag her into the studio, rape her, and then leave quickly. Then she would get back to work.

  She was wrong.

  She was ripping a piece of plywood on the table saw and didn’t hear the door open. She finished the cut when Moe came up behind her and grabbed her bun. She was surprised. Instinctively, she jerked her hands away from the whirling blade and let the two halves of the plywood fall to the floor.

  He didn’t drag her back to the studio. He yelled over the roar of the saw for her to drop her overalls.

  Obediently, she slipped the straps off her shoulders and let them fall to her ankles, leaving only her tee shirt covering her above the waist.

  He loosed her hair from its bun so that he could grab a handful more easily.

  Then he pushed her head down toward the rattling blade.

  Irene was terrified that he was going to cut her head in half. She braced herself with her hands on the table but she couldn’t hold his weight. He kept forcing her face down, closer to the blade.

  When she was bent double, her face was less than two inches from the racing teeth.

  The breeze was blowing her hair, which was draped on both sides of the blade. If a stray lock got caught, it would tangle and pull her head down into the teeth.

  She was screaming in terror but she could barely hear herself over roar of the saw.

  Her overalls were tangled around her boots. Moe kicked her feet as far apart as they would go with and then he jammed his cock into her cunt.

  Every time he thrust his hips against her, her face rocked close to the vicious blade.

  Irene was out of my mind in terror and braced herself on her elbows as firmly as her strength would allow.

  Moe roared in triumph when he came.

  He finally released Irene’s hair. She didn’t spring upright, but remained in position, face-to-face with that terrible spinning, roaring blade, until he left the room. She was afraid that if she relaxed her arms, he might jump back behind her and jam her head down on the saw, finishing her off.

  Only when she was certain that he was gone, did she rise, first being careful to hold her hair away from the blade with her hands lest it sway into the blade and drag her to bloody doom.

  Her legs couldn’t hold her weight. She collapsed to the sawdust-covered floor and leaned against the vibrating leg of the table saw, sobbing in relief, barely able to believe that she was still alive.

  Moe could have pushed her head into the saw without any danger to him. He could have tangled her hair into the axle around the blade. It would have looked like an accident that she’d caused herself by not putting her hair up out of the way. The police wouldn’t investigate the death of a slave. It’s just a loss of property of no more importance than a car totaled in a single-vehicle accident.

  Moe was escalating fast and he was going to kill Irene soon. Maybe the next time that he came to rape her would be the last time.

  “What happened?”

  Irene looked up to see Mr. A – Avery – standing over her.

  She was sitting, bare-assed, in sawdust, her overalls bunched around her ankles, the table saw roaring at full speed. Her hair was a tangled mess, her eyes red, and her wood-dust-covered face streaked with tears.

  “What are you doing in here?” she asked.

  “The front door was open. When that guy left, he didn’t bother pulling it closed, just raced to his car. It looked like something was wrong. I was afraid for you. I knocked and yelled but you didn’t answer.” They were almost shouting over the roar of the table saw.

  “I thought you had a job.” She struggled to regain her composure.

  “There was a power failure at the site. We got the day off. I came by here to see if … Well, you know.”

  “I’m not … I can’t … “ Irene drew a breath. The boy looked so concerned for her that she wanted to do something for him. “I could give you a blow job if you want.”

  “Not when you’re like this. Some other time. Right now, I just want to know what happ
ened to you.” He looked at the end of the table, located the power switch, and turned the saw off.

  The sudden silence was shocking.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Bullshit. What happened here? What did that man do to you?”

  “What man?”

  “The man that I saw leaving. The old, fat guy.”

  “Forget about him.”

  “Not when he left you like this. Is that the professor that you keep talking about? The one who tortures you?”

  “No. That’s his friend, Moe. He’s a doctor. He … He watches when the professor tortures me. He makes sure that I don’t get hurt.” Irene began sobbing anew. It was so hypocritical. The doctor pretended to care for her when the professor was watching, but he was going to kill her in the end. She was sure of that.

  Avery sat beside her in the sawdust and pulled her head into his lap. He stroked her hair gently. “He raped you, didn’t he?”

  It was obvious. Her overalls were bunched around her ankles and she was sobbing out of control

  She nodded. Then she rethought and shook her head. “No. A slave can’t be raped.”

  “Sure she can. You might be a slave, but you’re still a woman.”

  “The professor owns me. Moe isn’t raping me. At worst, he’s borrowing his friend’s property without permission.”

  “So tell the professor.”

  “I can’t.” She wiped her tears away and told him the story about how the doctor was blackmailing her. Avery deserved to know because he was in Moe’s photos, too.

  “What a bastard,” Avery said when she was finished.

  She nodded in his lap.

  “So you can’t say anything because you have more to lose than he does.”

  “That’s right.” Except she was going to lose her life to Moe anyway. “Even if the professor believed me, the most that he’d do is stop being friends with Moe.” Irene thought that he probably wouldn’t even do that much. Carl had deliberately injured her by sitting on her lap when she was in the torture chair. The professor hadn’t sent him away; he’d merely modified the chair so that Carl couldn’t do it again.

  The professor didn’t have many friends who shared his interest in sadism. He had to keep the few that he had.

  “Then all we have to do is make sure that the doctor has more to lose than you do and he’ll go away.” Avery continued to stroke her hair.

  “Nobody will believe a slave,” she said.

  “I’m not a slave,” Avery answered. “And neither are my friends.”

  “What can you do?” Irene didn’t want to point out the obvious. The doctor was not only a university lecturer, he was a physician who ran a clinic for the rich and powerful.

  “The first thing that I can do is get you cleaned up a little.” He helped Irene to her feet and slapped the sawdust off her ass. Then he pulled her overalls back up.

  “You better get out of here,” she said. “If the professor comes back early and finds you here, then we’ll both be in real trouble.”

  “You could run away with me,” he said. “I have a job now. I’m going to get my own place soon.”

  She shook her head. “Runaway slaves always get captured and nailed to the courthouse wall.” She pushed her hair aside to bare the nape of her neck. “There’s no way to hide the tattoo except by wearing my hair like a slave.”

  He looked down at his feet. “I want to marry you. I love you.” His voice was soft. Embarrassed.

  She stroked his hair. “Dear Avery. You don’t know me. All you know is that I’m a great pleasure slave. But I wouldn’t be a good wife. I was married before I became a slave and it didn’t work. You’re going to find a much better wife than a slave. Especially a slave who’s eight years older than you. But you’re so sweet. You really make me want to fuck you. But I can’t. You work during the day and I have to stay home when the professor is lecturing and leave the door unlocked so that Moe can come back and rape me some more.” And murder me, soon enough, she thought. “He comes around every time the professor is out.”

  “When is the professor lecturing again?”

  “He has two lectures, back-to-back, on Wednesday. He’ll be gone by eleven and won’t be back until five.” She kissed him. “Now you have to get out of here and I have to shower. The professor is going to be back any minute. His lecture is only ninety minutes today.” She released him. “Would you mind closing the door on your way out?”

  He turned and left without saying any more.

  * * *

  “Is your new device going to be ready in time for the show?” the professor asked.

  “It should be ready for testing next week,” Irene replied.

  “Is it really going to torture you?” The professor had no idea what she was building. She mostly worked on it only when he not around. When he was home, he had strict instructions that he was not to come into the shop if she was working in there. He obeyed. It was novel that a slave would dare give an instruction to her owner and even more shocking that he would obey rather than caning her half to death.

  The professor had peculiar ideas about slave ownership. That was for sure.

  “It’s going to be the worst torture that you have on display,” she said. “I’m sure that I’d trade crucifixion for this one.”

  “But it won’t injure you?”

  “Not permanently.” Unless it killed her. The device was going to require careful adjustment.

  “I can hardly wait to see it.”

  “Next week.” Unless Moe killed her first.

  “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to work on it today,” he said. “I won’t be back until supper.”

  She already knew that. Every Wednesday he had to deliver two lectures. And she had to stay inside and wait to be raped by Moe. And maybe, today, murdered.

  She had a sudden premonition that, after Moe murdered her, he would offer to perform the autopsy if the professor wanted to know how she died. The answer would be “natural causes due to a weak heart.” Any injuries to her body would be caused by falling down the stairs when she collapsed.

  Not that the professor was likely to bother wanting an autopsy on a dead slave. The city accepted slave corpses without question and dumped them in the nearest landfill along with the rest of the garbage. After she was dead, the professor would have no way to recover her value. Like any other owner, he would accept the loss of his property and move on.

  He spent several evenings a month going to various aristocrat’s homes and playing cards and dice. It would be no problem for him to win another slave in another poker game. Lords had too much faith in their own untouchable status to suspect that the professor would slip a stacked deck into the deal when the stakes were right.

  After the professor left, Irene was afraid to go into the shop. There were too many ways to get maimed or killed in there.

  Instead, she sat nude in the studio on the whipping bench and waited for him. She figured that she might as well make it easy for him to rape her. The less violent the rape, the greater chance that she would survive.

  Except that he loved the violence. Her passivity was likely to stimulate him to greater violence rather than mollify him. It was a conundrum that had no solution.

  She shivered in terror as she waited for the inevitable.

  It didn’t take long. The doctor usually arrived shortly after the professor left. She watched him come through the unlocked door.

  He looked momentarily disappointed then grinned broadly. “Waiting for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not doing much of a job of it. Do it right. Get some cuffs out of the cabinet and lock your hands behind your back. If you’re going to be vulnerable, then you have to be vulnerable all the way.”

  She obeyed.

  When she returned a minute later with her hands cuffed behind her back, he crooked his finger. “Come here.”

  As soon as she was within reach, he grabbed her hair and pulled her face close to his. �
�That’s how a proper bitch waits to get raped,” he said.

  He dragged her across the studio and up the stairs.

  This was new. Before he’d raped her where he found her – once in the studio, three times in the study, and once in the shop.

  This was the first time that he’d moved her to a different room.

  “Where does he sleep?” Moe asked.

  She’d never been in the professor’s bedroom but she knew that it was at the end of the hall and told Moe so.

  He dragged her down the hall by her hair like a cartoon caveman.

  The professor’s bedroom was large but plainly appointed. He had a large bed with a firm mattress, a wardrobe, and chest of drawers. There was a small stack of books and a reading lamp on the bedside table. Another door, open, led to an ensuite bath.

  Raping her in the professor’s bedroom was an act of pure hostility. Moe only pretended to be the professor’s friend so that he could watch beautiful naked slaves being tortured. He was a bastard to the core.

  The doctor took a clear plastic bag out of his hip pocket and shook it open. “We’re going to play a game, bitch. We’re going to see if I come before you expire. The doctor recommends that, for your continued good health, you do everything you can to make me come quickly because, if your air runs out, you will lose the privilege of ever breathing again.”

  He pulled the bag over her head. When she tried to breathe, the flimsy plastic sucked against her mouth and nose.

  He pulled a cord out of another pocket and wrapped it around her neck above her golden collar, securing the bag. He didn’t bother tying it off. With her hands pinned behind her back, she couldn’t remove the cord or bag.

  She was already struggling for air and he hadn’t started raping her yet. She was going to die in this room.

  The only consolation was that suffocation was quicker and less painful than crucifixion.

  He threw her on her back on the bed and then pulled his pants and underwear off.

  She was desperate to breathe, but couldn’t. When she blew out, the bag puffed away but as soon as she tried to suck air back in, the bag conformed to her gaping mouth and blocked her nose.