The punishment room was full of people. Andrew wasn't there but Paul and Mick were, and six of the former slaves. As at the trial all were semi-dressed, two of the men again in Stephanie's panties, their faces, this time, crudely made-up with eye-liner and lipstick. Both men's cocks were being stroked by females. One of the women, naked but for a black bra and high heels, was sitting in the lap of one of the men with his cock buried in her sex. Bottles of booze abounded. The finest clarets and Napoleon brandy were being swigged like soft drinks.
Devlin stood naked in the middle of the room. His hands had been strapped into padded leather cuffs suspended from a rope over a pulley set in the ceiling, and were stretched above his head. His nipples were clamped into a pair of nipple-clips, little springs like bulldog clips but with serrated edges and joined together by a chain plated with chrome. His feet were spread apart about two feet, ankle-cuffs strapped around his ankles and chained to metal rings in the floor.
It was no surprise to Stephanie that Devlin's massive and ugly cock was at full erection. She had discovered Devlin's sexual tastes, unlocked his private fantasies. She had made him her slave. For the last however many days, he had been performing the same role for Amanda: it would not have been something he had to suffer. Devlin's submission was absolute. It was what he craved. The greater his subservience, the more he was excited. That was clear now as his erection throbbed visibly in front of his tormentors.
'Come over here,' Amanda said to Stephanie.
Stephanie obeyed. She looked into Devlin's eyes. For a moment the world stopped. She had had no human contact for so many days, no exchange of emotion, apart from sex, no kindness or concern, that the look of love she could see in Devlin's eyes, a look that spoke of his worry for her, of his despair that all this had happened, a look that told her this was all his fault and that he was so, so sorry, hit her like the headlights of a car on a dark night. She felt a wave of emotion flood through her. She hadn't quite realised before what Devlin, this ugly, misshapen man, meant to her.
'Take this,' Amanda commanded. She handed Stephanie the riding crop. 'He is to have twelve strokes...' The audience cheered at this news, '...and you will administer the punishment. Do you understand?'
'Yes.' It was the last thing Stephanie felt like doing to him even though, in the past, she had whipped him many times and knew it was no punishment at all. As if to confirm her thoughts a little tear of fluid formed on the slit of his urethra.
'Yes what?' Amanda said, slapping Stephanie's buttock hard with her gloved hand.
'Yes, mistress,' Stephanie intoned.
Amanda took Devlin's cheeks between the fingers and thumb of her hand, squeezing his mouth into a distorted pout. His cock brushed against the hem her short skirt and the fluid leaked onto the brown leather. 'And you count each stroke, out loud.'
Devlin nodded.
With studied calculation Amanda picked up the chain of the nipple clips and pulled it up towards his chin. The serrated edges bit deeper into the corrugated flesh. His cock twitched so much against the leather skirt that for a moment Stephanie thought he was going to come.
'Get on with it,' the man with the woman on his lap called impatiently.
'Yes, come on...' one of the women agreed.
Amanda stepped back. 'Begin,' she said, standing behind Devlin's back.
Stephanie spread her legs slightly and raised the whip. Without hesitation she stroked it down on Devlin's arse, her long black hair streaming out over her shoulders, her naked breasts trembling with the effort. She saw Devlin react, saw the pain turned to profound pleasure as it always did. There was still sorrow in his eyes, but it was sorrow not for what was being done to him, but because they were not doing it under their own volition, that this was a circus where, for once, it was not Stephanie who was the ringmaster, but someone else.
After the fifth stroke Stephanie began to sweat. It was hot in the windowless room with so many people. She tried to concentrate on what she was doing but out of the corner of her eye saw Andrew slip into the room. Venetia, tall and elegant, was standing next to the door. Andrew, in a shirt and slacks, stood beside her.
Stephanie turned back to Devlin's buttocks. The red welts from the riding crop lined his white flesh; there were darker red marks there too, from previous days. She slashed the whip down again, his flesh trembling in response.
'Six,' he cried, his teeth gritted.
When Stephanie looked back towards Andrew she could hardly believe what she saw. Venetia had put her arm around Andrew's neck and was pushing her tongue into his ear. At the same time her hand was massaging the crotch of his trousers, gripping the bulge that was growing there.
In all the time Stephanie had known Venetia she had never seen her touch or kiss a man, except on the one occasion she had been forced. She was so astonished that the next stroke of the crop missed the target and landed with no real force on Devlin's thigh.
'Seven,' Devlin grunted.
'No,' Amanda said at once. 'Do that again.'
Stephanie tried to put her mind back on what she was doing. What did it matter anyway? But as she landed the next blow full across Devlin's ample rump she had a feeling it mattered very much indeed.
'Harder,' Amanda complained.
By the tenth blow most of the room had lost interest in the proceedings and when Stephanie looked round Venetia and Andrew had slipped away. The others were all engaged in some form of sex, coupled together by hand or mouth or genitals. Apart from Amanda no one was watching Devlin's punishment any more.
Stephanie delivered the final two cuts in quick succession, sweat running freely down her naked body.
If Amanda had thought this public display would humiliate Devlin, if she thought having Stephanie beat him would make it worse, she had not learnt yet what Devlin was like. His enormous cock was on the point of orgasm. Stephanie felt her own body moisten as she looked at it, her memory of all the times it had reamed into her with such devastating effect, making the process almost inevitable.
The rope that held Devlin's arms above his head was curled around a pulley and tied off on a cleat fixed to the stone wall. Amanda unwound the rope from the cleat and let it fall. Devlin's arms dropped and he moaned with relief.
'Unstrap his ankles,' Amanda ordered.
Stephanie dropped to her knees and obeyed at once. With the tip of his fingers, out of Amanda's line of vision, Devlin touched her long black hair affectionately. Stephanie almost swooned at such tenderness.
'Stop that,' Amanda said, seeing what he was doing as she moved forward. She slapped his cuffed hands. 'I want to be fucked.'
She wriggled the short leather skirt up over her hips. She wore a pair of bright red lace panties that covered the triangle of her belly and the tight curls of her black pubic hair, though the shadow of it could be clearly seen under the material.
Amanda bent over one of the wooden punishment frames, presenting her long plump arse to Devlin, the red silk a slash of colour between her legs.
'Come on,' she said impatiently, 'and make it good.'
But Devlin was too far gone. He moved to stand behind her and poked the tip of his cock forward but the hot pleasure the beating had created in his arse had made his body boil with need. His spunk was heavy in his balls. He knew he could never hold out.
It didn't help that everywhere he looked was sexual provocation. Paul, his cock as hard as a bone, was lying on the frame. Amanda was bending over with two women astride his thighs and facing each other. They clung together and bounced back and forward so his cock alternated from one sex to another. Their mouths were locked in a kiss, their breasts pressed together. Or there was Mick enthusiastically tonguing a former slave who had seated herself on a wooden upright chair, normally used to hold its occupant immobile by means of straps on its arms and legs, and had hooked her thighs over his shoulders.
Everywhere there was sex. And there was Stephanie, naked, her body glistening with sweat.
He pushed his cock against
the red panties as Amanda reached behind her to pull them aside. He felt her hand brush his cock, and then the heat of her labia and the brush of her tight curls. That was too much. As Amanda wriggled her arse back at him, to get him between her labia, his cock exploded and spunk, white hot spunk, splattered over the panties and the wet flesh of her outer sex.
'You bastard!' Amanda screamed at once. 'How dare you?'
She swung round, bumping against his cock with her hip. 'You're going to have to be punished all over again.'
Stephanie smiled to herself inwardly for the first time in days. There was one thing she knew: there was no punishment Amanda could devise that would give Devlin anything but the extremes of pleasure.
Chapter Ten
Everything was still and quiet. Stephanie had been returned to her cell after being allowed to shower. She had fallen asleep almost immediately and had slept deeply, the best sleep she had had for days on the cold stone floor. But she had been started awake.
Her heart was pounding, pumped with adrenalin from whatever shock her subconscious had perceived. She listened, trying to hear any noise. The little strip of light under the cell door was still there, as it had been every night. No one had ever turned off the corridor lights. But she could hear no reason for her sudden alertness. Everything was as it had been and, as far as she could tell, ever would be.
Shifting her position on the stone floor, Stephanie closed her eyes again. She yearned for the comfort of one of the mattresses that lay abandoned in the corridor outside. However she arranged herself on the floor, after ten or twelve minutes the cold, hard stone was making her body ache anew.
Some minutes later she must have drifted back to sleep because she woke again with a start, but this time recognised the noise that had woken her. The light in the corridor outside had been switched off. She heard footsteps too, which was even stranger. Why would someone turn off the lights and then walk down the corridor?
Almost immediately she heard the bolt on the cell door being drawn back. The noise sounded like a bullet being shot from a gun in the silence of the cellars. The door creaked open and Stephanie was dazzled by the beam of a torch shining right into her face. It swung away and down onto the floor as the cell door swung closed again and the footsteps walked over to her. She recognised the strong smell of perfume.
'Venetia?'
'Yes.' Venetia knelt on the floor in front of her and shone the torch into her own face. 'Are you all right?'
'What are you doing here?' Stephanie said. There could be only one answer she hoped, her heart suddenly thumping against her ribs, unless this was some cruel game devised by Andrew.
'I couldn't come any sooner.'
'What do you mean?'
'They watched me like a hawk. For the first week they kept me chained up in my bedroom. 'It's only the last three days that I've had my freedom. I didn't come right away in case it was a trap, but I think they trust me now. Oh Stephanie, I'm so sorry...'
'They trust you now?'
'I mean Andrew does.'
'Why?' Stephanie saw a shadow of emotion pass over Venetia's face in the torchlight. She already knew the answer to her question.
'Why, Venetia?'
'Because I agreed to go to bed with him. It was the only way. He kept asking me. Over and over. I knew he'd never trust me unless I did.'
'Did he hurt you?'
'No, no. It wasn't so bad. And now he's stopped watching me all the time. They even let me go to the mainland on my own.'
'Oh, I really thought you were on their side.' For the first time since the rebellion began Stephanie felt her eyes prick with tears: they were tears of relief.
'I know. I'm sorry. I had to pretend. I saw that on the plane. If they'd brought me here and locked me up I'd have been no use. At least this way I had a chance.'
Stephanie reached out and hugged Venetia in her arms. For a moment they did nothing, Stephanie completely overcome with several strong emotions at the same time; the resurgence of hope which she had suppressed for so long, her gratitude that Venetia had not deserted her, and the feeling of actually being held by someone again, the human contact she had missed so much.
'Listen,' Venetia said eventually. 'I've got to get back before I'm missed. Tomorrow night, when you're taken up to Andrew, you've got to trick him somehow.'
'Trick him?'
'You should be alone. You've got to find a way to overpower him.'
'Why tomorrow?'
'Amanda's going over to the mainland for the day to get provisions. I've got to go and pick her up in the evening. If I can overpower her on the journey back and you can do the same with Andrew, I can release Devlin and we're free. We can take the boat and go.'
'How can I overpower him?'
'You'll think of something. But you've got to do it. If I come back here with Amanda trussed up like a chicken and Andrew's still free, they'll put me down here with you and that's our last chance gone.'
'I'll think of something. Oh Venetia, I'm so glad... all those things you said. The ways I treated you in London I should never have done that...'
'Forget it.'
'You wouldn't even look at me.'
'I daren't. I couldn't. I knew if I did I might give something away.'
'I understand.'
'Getting them to trust me was the only chance we had.'
'I know, I know. You knew about the security code for the files then, for the hard copies...'
'Yes. I knew they wouldn't be destroyed.'
'I couldn't remember if Devlin had told you.'
'Oh yes. If we ever get out of here, the files are all intact. A nasty little surprise for Andrew Harlock. I've got to go.'
'Don't worry, I'll think of something.'
Stephanie embraced Venetia again briefly. She wanted to kiss her, she wanted to pull her down onto the stone floor and press herself into her magnificent body, to feel her warmth again, her breasts and her long powerful legs twining around hers. But there would be time for that later. If the plan succeeded.
Almost as quickly as she had come, Venetia was gone and Stephanie heard the bolt sliding home on the cell door. The sound momentarily provoked a chill of depression in Stephanie's body. She seemed so cold now by contrast to the warmth of Venetia's embrace.
But the chill dissipated rapidly. Now there was hope. Now there was something she could do. She stood up and paced the cell, the chain attached to her ankle dragging against the stone. She tried to remember everything she could about Andrew, everything that had happened when he was at the castle and everything that had happened since. His arrival coincided with a visit of two newcomers to the castle, a married couple called Clarke, and his display of insolence had been rewarded by the wife, Jacqui, who had teased him incessantly until he had literally begged to be allowed to come - naturally without success. It had been the first of the lessons he had had to be taught. The first, Stephanie now knew, of the humiliation he had harboured and cultivated brooded upon and that he was out to revenge.
But then she remembered something that had happened that same night, after his experience with the Clarkes. It was something that might be very helpful. Stephanie smiled broadly to herself.
By the time the light came on in the morning - at least Stephanie assumed it was morning - and food was pushed in on a tray, Stephanie had a plan. It might not work but at least it was a plan.
She tried not to let her new optimism show. She wanted to appear just as weary as she had been on the other days, and trudged to the shower with her head down and a general air of depression. But it was difficult and she was delighted when the cell door was closed again and she was left to her own devices.
Whether it was the thought of the possibility of escape or the fact that Venetia had not betrayed her that made her most happy, it was difficult to say. She wished she could have talked to Devlin. She couldn't wait for the time to pass before she was called up to see Andrew. Time had always dragged in the cell but today it went by as though in s
low motion.
She tried to remember exactly what Venetia had said in their few moments together. Presumably Amanda had gone to the mainland to order supplies. She must be going alone or Venetia wouldn't be so confident about overpowering her. Venetia would drop her off at the jetty and she'd take the Mercedes into town, arranging to be picked up again that evening. Stephanie had done the same thing herself many times. Perhaps she even intended to drive to Perugia. It was not more than an hour's drive and had a good selection of shops.
A sudden depression struck her at the thought that tonight Andrew might not call her to his room. So far he had done so every night. They hadn't always had sex. Some nights he had merely made her stand, watching him eating or fucking Amanda or one or two of the other women. Other times he'd made her masturbate for him or dress in her finest lingerie while he merely watched. But so far, every night, she had been called to his room to perform some service. Venetia had seemed certain he would do so again.
Stephanie knew what a sacrifice it must have been for Venetia, not only to allow herself to be used by Andrew but to pretend to enjoy it. She had never liked men, never had a man before Devlin had allowed a man to take her at Gianni's behest. She had sacrificed herself for Stephanie's sake, and for Devlin's. The first thing they would do in return was to see that Venetia's file, with all the details of her elaborate computer embezzlement scheme, was destroyed. What happened to the other files, the files on Andrew and Amanda and all the other slaves currently in the castle, the files they had thought destroyed, was an entirely different matter.
At the moment Stephanie wanted only to think about escape and how it was to be accomplished. She saw herself sitting at the back of the speedboat next to Devlin with Venetia at the controls, heading away from the castle at high speed in a foaming white wake. They'd take the Mercedes and drive, far and fast.
Stephanie's Trial Page 19