by Anne Rice
“Yeah, I think so,” I said. My voice sounded as strange as hers. I was steaming.
“You like it?” she said. No irony. It was like she’d forgotten who we both were.
“Yeah, I like it,” I said. I got a powerful, secret satisfaction from the innocence of her face and voice. And when she looked up at me I winked at her. I could almost swear she blushed as she looked off.
It occurred to me, why not grab her and bend her over my arm, kissing her madly, like Rudy Valentino in The Sheik? I mean in the middle of all this exotic sex it would be a scream, at least to me. I didn’t have the nerve.
I was going to die if she got pushed out of shape with me. Which meant playing one of these alluring little games if she said to do it, right?
As we started to walk again, I watched her out of the corner of my eye, her jutting breasts under that elegant layer of lace, the vest that made her into a little hourglass. This was heaven and hell.
And as she directed me towards one of the small clearings, I realized she might show me all of the diversions before choosing the one that had affected me the most.
But when I saw the game in the clearing, I couldn’t too well cover up what I felt.
There was a race in progress here, men all around the four-sided fenced enclosure with feet on the rail as they might be at a rodeo, cheering on the naked slaves who ran in neat tracks on their hands and knees.
But the slaves weren’t simply racing each other for the distance. They were retrieving in their teeth black rubber balls thrown down the tracks by the guests at the railing who would not release a second ball until the first one had been retrieved. And the spectators were whipping them on with leather straps.
It seemed some five balls made up the race, because a winner was pulled up by both arms right after he laid a fifth ball at his master’s feet. His face was red, dripping wet, as he was applauded, patted, caressed. He was at once taken out of the clearing, a white towel wrapped around him, but the others, panting and shuddering, were whipped into place for the next race.
I saw the punishment. You raced until you won.
And just as I figured, the slaves were glorying in it, really competing with one another. They knelt poised and desperately ready to begin again, eyeing each other, jaws set.
Again, I backed away, trying to appear casual about it. Weren’t we going on to the next clearing, the next booth? I mean, come on, there’s lots of stuff to see, right? I think I’ll go home and read the New York Times now. The noise was like a buzzing in my head.
“It’s really tough for you, isn’t it?” she said, big brown eyes looking up again. Everything melted in me except what never melts, of course. I thought of a lot of little nasty things to say, but I didn’t say them. I felt lusciously subject to her. And defiantly I kissed her cheek.
She backed up and snapped her fingers and made a little gesture for me to get moving. “Don’t do that again,” she said. She was really flustered. Her face was pink.
She led the way down the crowded avenue without glancing back. I told myself I didn’t want to look at the clearings on either side, but I couldn’t resist. More races. Different lengths of races, variations. But it was more fun watching her beautiful little bottom moving under her skirt, the sweep of her hair that came down almost that far, the little seams of flesh behind her naked knees.
The avenue branched to left and right as we neared a thick crowd before a low, lighted stage. Some eight or ten slaves were on the stage, each naked except for a white towel draped over one shoulder.
Lots of tousled hair and polished muscles and smiles, amazingly provocative smiles, as the slaves apparently taunted the crowd with little gestures and “come on” motions of the head.
I soon saw what was happening. The handlers were selling the slaves for the races or games, and the slaves were lapping it up, vying for the high spenders. Two were sold off while I watched, the result of a little informal auctioning among three bidders, and immediately another pair were led up the steps out of a pen, and started the same preening and good-humored taunting. Hoots, shouts from the guests, and occasional threats like, “I’ll work that smile off your face,” and “You think you want to run for me?” strengthened the convivial tension.
Lisa put her arm around me and pulled me close to her, the feel of her fingers against me pretty maddening. I stole a couple of glances at her breasts beneath the low-collared blouse. I could almost see her nipples.
“Which one is the most attractive, the most sensuous?” she asked, inclining her head as if we were just a couple at a pedigreed dog show. The feeling of being utterly subjugated by her was getting worse. “Think about your answer, and answer me truthfully,” she said. “It will teach me things about you.”
“I don’t know,” I said kind of testily under my breath. The thought that she’d buy one of these brutes and start paying attention to him infuriated me.
“Get your mind on exactly what I’m telling you to do,” she said coldly. She reached up and brushed the hair back from my forehead, but her expression was flinty, threatening. “Pick the one you really think is the most handsome, the one you’d like to fuck if I let you do it. And don’t lie to me. Don’t even consider it.”
I was pretty miserable. All I felt was jealousy. But I looked at the men, and things inside me were scrambled. My senses took over and shifting gears this fast felt entirely new. They were all very young, obviously athletic, and they were as proud of their stripes, their welts, the pink blush on their butts as they were of their genitals, the muscles in their legs and arms.
“I think the one on this end, the blond, is terrific,” she said.
“No.” I shook my head as if this wasn’t even discussable. “There’s no one on the stage who can equal that guy in the back of the pen, the dark one.” He was something special even in a place full of people who were special, a young, black-haired, smooth-chested faun, right out of the forest primeval. He should have had pointed ears. His curly hair was short though full on the sides, and only a little long in back; and his neck and shoulders were particularly well shaped, powerful. His partially erect cock was on the way to being as big around as a beer bottle. He looked part demon, especially when he stared directly at me, his lip curling a little, his sleek dark eyebrows coming together for an instant in a playful frown.
“That would be your choice, you’d like to have him?” she asked, appraising him. He was being moved to the front of the pen, his hands behind his neck, his eyes fixed on us as his cock hardened.
I imagined it, screwing him while she watched, and my mind split in half. That had been hard for me at Martin’s, very hard, screwing in front of others. Easier to be whipped, humiliated in a dozen ways than to let them see that. There was a sense in me of something being released. He was making my temperature rise.
Lisa made some little gesture to the handler, like the subtle hand bids made at art auctions. Immediately, he motioned for the slave to come up on the little stage, and then down the steps through the crowd towards us.
On close inspection, he was damn near overwhelming. His olive skin had been darkened by a tan, and every inch of him was hard. He dropped his eyes with perfect courtesy as he approached, his hands still behind his neck as he went down on one knee to kiss Lisa’s boot with a grace that was slightly surprising. Even the back of his neck was enticing. He threw me a quick up-and-down look. I looked at her, half wanting him, half hating him, unable to detect what she really thought of him.
She took the towel off his shoulder as he rose, and threw it to the handler. Then she motioned for us to follow her.
We came right away to a very noisy clearing, a large open ring where the loose crowd was roughly three deep right up to a half circle of jammed-packed bleachers.
Lisa pushed her way forward, motioning for us to follow until we were at the railing, the crowd closing around us instantly.
Two obviously fresh and sexually primed slaves on hands and knees were just entering the
ring, and the spectators began counting in a low chant, one, two, three, four, five . . . as the pair squared off from one another like fighters. Warily, the slaves peered at each other through tousled hair, their bodies glistening under a thick coating of oil, one a dark-skinned, brown-haired slave, the other a silver blond, with a long mop veiling his face.
But what exactly was the game? Just pin the other guy down for the count or rape?
The brown-haired slave sprang with a hiss at the blond one, trying to mount him. Yeah, it was rape. The thick oil allowed the blond to slide free easily, and as he did so he turned and sprang at the darker one, failing to catch hold in the same way. A real scuffle followed, with oily hands slipping desperately off oily limbs. The chanting count continued now past one hundred, and the struggle intensified, the brown-haired slave getting on top of the other, his arm locked around his throat. But he was shorter than the blond slave and no matter how he jabbed, he couldn’t pull it off. The blond rolled over on him trying to force him off, and finally got free just as the count ended with 120.
No winners. Both were booed by the crowd.
Lisa turned to me. “Need I tell you what to do?” she asked. She gestured for the handler. The olive-skinned faun gave me another curling smile as I glared at her.
“Pretty damned old-fashioned stuff, if you ask me,” I said. The top of my head was coming off.
“Nobody did ask you,” she said. “And you picked a champ, by the way. You better be good.”
There was a lot of racket from the crowd as the handler pulled us aside for the oiling. The evil little faun was studying me, sizing me up, his lips curling in that same maddening fashion. He was ready to go. I could hear bets being placed, see men arguing and talking in the crowded bleachers.
And my anger gave way to another more savage emotion. Get him. Fuck him, the bastard. I was ready, too.
Champion, she called him. Probably done it hundreds of times. A goddamned gladiator, that’s what he was, and I was right off the bus. Okay. I was getting more and more exhilarated, crazy. It was sublimely brutal and it was galvanizing me, yet another doorway opening on something that had always been locked up.
“Remember,” the handler said pushing me towards the ring. “On your hands and knees always, and no hitting. And don’t waste any time defending yourself. Get him. Now go to it.” And he shoved me down and under the rail.
With a loud clack, the count began.
I saw him moving in front of me, glowering at me from under his dark brows, the oil beaded on his hands and his cheeks. Stockier than I am, just a little muscle-bound, not good for him. The count was up to thirty, thirty-one. . .
Suddenly, he lunged at me as if he’d go over my head, and I spun around sharply to the right just in time to see him land in the dust clumsily. But the secret was to mount him now, without a second’s hesitation, and I sprang at him before he could recover, making in effect a complete circle from the time he had rushed for me. I got on top of him, and locked my left arm around his throat, reinforcing it with my right. But it was madness trying to hang on, his body slipping and sliding under me as he bucked in fury, his greased fingers scratching uselessly at my hands. I could hear him snarling.
But he wasn’t getting away, not from me. It was the gutter fights I’d never had, the alley rapes I’d never committed, nor ever even truly imagined. And he had it coming, the son of a bitch, he would have done it to me. It was divine. I humped him as if I were already in, clamping down on him like a vise. It was working. He couldn’t throw me off and he was weakening. His fingers slipped as they grasped at my arms, and my hands. The crowd was roaring. I rammed him hard. He shook his head savagely and tried to roll over, but I was too heavy for him, too mad and determined for him, and I was in. I had him, and I had both arms around his neck again, and he didn’t have a chance now.
The crowd broke its counting—110, 111—to scream and applaud. And his frantic bucking only made it better, the friction gorgeous as he tried to get free. I came, spewing into the heat inside him, shoving his head down in the dirt.
They let me rest for a little while after the shower and scrubbing. I sat on a little patch of soft grass with my arms folded on my knees and my head on my arms. I wasn’t really tired or worn out.
I was thinking. Why had she chosen that particular game for me? It had been the very opposite of a humiliation, yet the exposure had been dazzling. And the lessons unique. Rape without guilt. Should every man experience that once in his lifetime, his capacity to use another like that, but in a situation where no real moral or physical damage is done?
I could have gotten addicted to that little game. Except that I was already getting addicted to her. It nagged at me, why had she chosen it? It was too tricky, giving me a chance to master the other one. Was she building me up for a real fall?
When I finally looked up, I saw her leaning against one of the fig trees watching me with her head to one side and her thumbs hooked in the side pockets of her suede skirt. She had the strangest expression on her face, her eyes large, her lower lip very kissable, her face girlish and soft.
I had that odd desire to speak to her, explain something to her, the same urge that had come over me in the bedroom, and again the anguish: what the hell would she care? She didn’t want to know me, this woman. She wanted only to use me and that was why I was here.
Yet we were looking at each other over the distance of the little bathing place, oblivious to the racket from the ring where the same drama was being reenacted, and I was scared of her again, just as I’d been scared for hours, scared of what was going to happen next.
When she beckoned to me, there was a stirring in my loins that I could almost hear. I had a real premonition, that it wouldn’t be any more macho antics right now.
I rose and walked over to her, the anxiety getting worse.
“You’re very good at wrestling,” she said calmly. “You can do things that a lot of new slaves can’t. But it’s just about time to whip you again, don’t you think?”
I stared at her boots, the tight fit around her ankles. Back to her room, please, I thought. I could take anything if we were alone there again. Just thinking about it . . . I knew I was supposed to answer her, but I could not make the proper words come out.
“Blond slaves give everything away with their faces,” she said, her curled finger stroking my cheek. “Ever been whipped at a real whipping post?” she asked. “For a nice large and appreciative crowd to watch?”
So here it comes.
“Well?”
“No, Madam,” I said dryly with a little cold smile. Not ever for any crowd. And God, not for this crowd, not in this place! I had to think of something, something that wasn’t an out and out entreaty. But again, nothing came out.
A handler appeared behind her, flash of hairy wrist, the de rigueur strap.
She said: “Take him to the whipping post. Let him walk with his hands at his sides. I like the way he looks that way, better than the other ways. And fully shackle him for the whipping. The works.”
Total absence of discernible pulse. And the cold realization that if I said no and refused to move, the son of a bitch would whistle up his assistants and probably drag me to it all the same.
Well, that wouldn’t happen.
“Lisa . . .” I whispered, shaking my head just a little.
Her hand came towards me again with a distinct whiff of perfume—flashes of the bedroom, the sheets, her naked under me—and closed warmly on the back of my neck.
“Shhhh. Come on, Elliott,” she said, her fingers massaging my neck muscles. “You can take it, and you will, for me.”
“Merciless,” I whispered, clenching my teeth and looking away from her.
“Yes, exactly,” she said.
LISA
Chapter 15
The Whipping Post
He was getting a little scared for the first time now. All the good humor had drained out of his face. And the anger wasn’t there either, the way
it had been right before the wrestling match. No, something was really working finally. He didn’t like the idea of being shackled, whipped in front of spectators. The nerve had at last been touched.
And what a laugh it would be if he knew how scared I was of disappointing him, how damned panicky I was that I just wasn’t giving him his money’s worth.
I mean all this bull about the slaves existing purely to please the masters and mistresses was just that: bull. We had to give everybody in this place what he or she bargained for, and we knew it. The system absolutely depended on satisfaction all around. What the hell was wrong with me that I couldn’t really grind him under, give him what he came here to get?
But now with the whipping we had something. Okay.
I told the handler to lead him in front of me because I didn’t want, for just a minute or two, to see his face. I had to break away from him. I had to get myself under command again.
When you train slaves you learn to watch everything, the slightest change in expression or respiration, all the little signals of distress that vary enormously from punishment to punishment, motif to motif. Ideally, you are also involved. Impassioned. But you learn to do it so well that you don’t need to be burning anymore. And sometimes the burn is so steady and so continuous that you’re not aware how powerful it is until you start to bring it to a close.
But something else was going on here. I wasn’t just watching him; I was magnetized by him. It was an agony for me not to look at him every second, not to touch his skin, his hair. I wanted to provoke his rebelliousness again, his absolutely surprising insolence, his sense of his being right there.
What I couldn’t stand was the idea of conquering him and that was what he had every right to expect me to do.
I let them get several yards ahead of me, just a little amazed by the way that he was looking around. The handler jerked his arm once or twice but it didn’t have much of an effect. I could tell just watching his posture, the stiffness of his shoulders, that he was tense as a wire.