A Gentlemen's Agreement (2 page)

“Yours is coming,” Peach said.
“Lord Snow doesn’t keep a new slave waiting for long. He likes to test her
mettle and take the measure of his new acquisition as soon as he has a spare
moment. I’m looking forward to seeing you sing an aria to the beat of his
strap. It’s high entertainment in the kennel.”

Irene was startled. “Do the other
slaves watch?”

“Lord Snow considers it instructive.
A slave who sees what happens to another who has transgressed is going to vow
not to transgress herself. It saves wear and tear on the strap.”

“But what if the slave who’s being
beaten hasn’t done anything wrong?”

“Same lesson. Gets us thinking. If
that’s what happens when we haven’t done anything wrong, then we better be damn
careful not to do something that would merit a worse beating.”

“What about when Nickel whips
you?”

“She makes you wish it was Lord
Snow at your backside. She whips a slave in a way that a man would never think
of. Terrible cruel.”

Irene didn’t ask. With luck she
would never know. And if she did have to find out, then she could wait for it.
No sense torturing
herself
with the anticipation of
something that might never happen.

Suddenly, every slave at the table
snapped to look toward the door.

Nickel, the
whiphand
,
was standing in the doorway. She pointed to Irene. “You’re up. Get to the
pleasure room now and wait for Lord Snow on your knees.” She pointed to a door
in the hallway behind her. “The rest of you aren’t invited. The Lord wants a
private party this time.”

The other slaves looked relieved.
Except for Peach. She looked deeply disappointed.

Irene’s heart was pounding like a
bass drum as she walked resolutely toward the pleasure room.

* * *

Irene was kneeling on the carpet, hands on her thighs and
head bowed, when Lord Snow entered the room.

She was the picture of
submissiveness.

He sat in a chair and looked at
her for a long moment.

She waited, passively.

“What in hell am I going to do
with you?” he asked at last.

She decided to answer the
question. “Whatever you want. You own me.”

She heard his breathing quicken.

“You’re my best friend’s wife,” he
said.

“Not any more. Now I’m just a
slave in your kennel.”

“You know that it’s more
complicated than that.”

She shrugged and looked up at him.
“I expect that you want to bend me over and fuck the shit out of me.”

He grinned. “That’s pretty much a
given. I’ve wanted to do that since the first time that James brought you over
to dinner. You were hot then and you’re hot now.”

“I was engaged to James then. I’m
your slave now. That makes everything different.”

“That makes everything
complicated. I like James.”

“He doesn’t like me.”

He raised an eyebrow but didn’t
reply.

“Tell me what to do and I’ll obey
you,” she said.

He thought about that.

“You were at the entertainment
last week,” she said. “You know that I’m not a virgin. And I’m not saving
myself in the hope of being married to James again. If you want me, take me.
That’s your right. Even James can’t argue with that.”

“Why did you do it? Why in hell
did you climb up on that auction block and sell yourself to a stranger?” A
flush of anger surfaced in his cheeks.

“I can’t explain it. Everybody
asks and I try but nobody understands. Maybe I don’t really understand myself.
It was an impulse.
Maybe a self-destructive impulse.
Have you ever looked down from a high bridge and felt an impulse to jump? I
jumped. I jumped up onto that stage and I jumped out of the aristocracy.”

“And now you regret it.” His voice
was flat.

“No. I didn’t say that. I haven’t
regretted it for a minute. I don’t mean that I don’t regret some things. You
saw me be crucified for half an hour at the end of last week’s entertainment.
Believe me, I regretted a lot of things when I was hanging in that frame,
suffering like you can’t believe. But I never regretted the big jump. I don’t
regret that I left the life of a lady.”

He looked curious. “No? You had
the best clothes.
The best food.
Servants to do
whatever you wanted.
The company of some of the finest wits
in the county.
What was not to like about being a lady? Didn’t you have
a fine husband? Was James cruel to you? Was he secretly a terrible person?”

“No. James was a fine man. He is a
fine man. He never treated me with anything but perfect respect. He tried to
give me whatever I wanted.
But I wanted a life and he didn’t
know how to give me that.
My fine
clothes
were
a burial shroud
. His manor was a mausoleum. The fine food
couldn’t nourish the kind of life that I needed. The company – your
company – was the best part of that life. But I have your company now. I
didn’t give that up.” She smiled at him. “I just see a different side of you when
I’m a slave. Now, I see the lusty side of gentlemen and I like that more than
their refined wit. I’d rather have your cock shoved into me right up to the
root and hear your screams of passion than sit across the table from you and
hear your clever literary allusions.” She laughed. “Now if you could toss out a
few clever allusions to Shakespeare and Moliere while you were buggering me,
I’d have the best of both worlds.”

He laughed. “I don’t think that I
could do that. Buggery has a way of diminishing a man’s intellect. It’s like
that trick picture where you can see either the old hag or the young beauty but
never both at the same time. I can be either a sodomite or a sophisticate but
not both at the same time.”

“And I always thought that sodomy
was the epitome of sophistication.”

“After all the sodomy that I saw
you endure last weekend, you must be the most sophisticated woman in the
county.”

“My asshole is certainly the most
sophisticated part of me, now.”

He grinned. “There’s not another
lady on the continent who can say that.”

“There’s not another lady on the
continent who would want to.”

He sobered. “You don’t think there
are any others like you?”

“No. But a bit of that kind of
sophistication would do some of them a world of good. It did for me.”

“Your slavery gives James a world
of pain. You know what you did to him.”

“I gave him an opportunity. He
rejected it.”

“What opportunity? You were his
wife and you rejected him.” Anger was rising again in Snow’s cheeks.

She didn’t care about mollifying
him. She would have preferred to hash this out directly with James but she’d
settle for Lord Snow. “I rejected him? Like hell! I gave him an opportunity to
buy me. I gave him an opportunity to put me in his kennel. I gave him an
opportunity to do anything he wanted to me any time he wanted for the rest of
his life. And he turned his back on me. He didn’t even bid on me. He walked out
of the auction. He didn’t even wait to see who bought me. You want to know
about rejection? Well, that was the cruelest rejection any woman ever
experienced. I offered myself to him in the most complete, most humiliating way
possible and he walked out on me.”

Lord Snow’s jaw hung slack.
“Seriously?” He was almost sputtering. “Seriously? You expected him to buy his
own wife? Seriously? You expected that he would raise his hand and offer money
for you? After you humiliated him in public. After you told everyone in the
world that he was an inadequate husband. You put yourself on the block because
you would rather sell yourself to a stranger than go home with your husband and
you expected him to just shrug it off and compete against the other bidders?”

“I was only saying that I loved
him so much that I was willing to be his slave.” A bitter tear dropped from her
eye. “And he said that he didn’t love me enough to place even a single bid on
me.” She looked at him. “You did. I was told that you traded a knighthood for
me. You wanted me and you’ve got me, here, naked, kneeling in front of you in
your pleasure room. I’m ready to give you your money’s worth. Today and
tomorrow and every day, any way you want me, for as long as you want me.” She
raised her chin. “I was blindfolded so I don’t know if you were one of the
gentlemen who used me at the entertainment last week, but if you weren’t, I can
assure you that I have developed some considerable skill. And my enthusiasm is
unflagging. However you want me to serve you, I won’t disappoint.”

“I want…” His voice broke. He
recomposed himself and said, “I want you to get the hell out of here. And tell Apple
to get the hell in here, right now. And Lime, too. Both of them.”

* * *

“That didn’t take long.” Nickel’s tone expressed her
suspicion.

“He wants to see Apple and Lime
right now,” Irene said.

The two slaves scrambled toward
the pleasure room. It was a foolish slave who kept her owner waiting even a
second longer than necessary and neither of them were foolish. Not after having
suffered under Lord Snow’s talented strap.

“What happened in there?” Nickel
asked.

Peach, Cherry, and Tamarind sat
silently and waited to hear Irene’s answer.

“Nothing much. We talked.”

“About what?”

“About why I sold myself at
auction.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him that the life of a
lady wasn’t exciting enough.”

Nickel rested her hand on the
strap clipped to her corset and waited for more explanation.

Irene didn’t volunteer anything
more.

“You better tell me exactly what
happened in there or I’ll make your life exciting enough for both of us. And,
believe me, it takes a hell of a lot of screaming to make my life exciting.”

The other slaves looked at Irene
with eager fascination.

Irene shrugged. “I offered to do
whatever he wanted. He wanted to talk. We talked. He was at the auction where I
sold myself. He asked why I did it. I told him that it was an impulse. He said
that my husband was upset when I put myself on the block–”

“No shit,” Peach said.

Nickel swiveled to glare at her
and Peach wilted.

“–
and
I said that I was upset that my husband didn’t want to buy me. That’s all.”

Nickel turned her attention back
to Irene. “Did you service him?”

“Like I said, I offered. He wasn’t
interested.”

“Did he whip you?”

“No.”

Nickel frowned. “What was his mood
when you left?”

“I don’t know. His mood was
swinging back and forth. Sometimes he looked happy and sometimes he looked
unhappy.”

A muffled scream slipped through
the door to the pleasure room.

All the slaves’ heads swiveled to
look in that direction.

Nickel looked back at Irene with
an accusatory frown. “I’d say that he wasn’t in a happy mood when you left
him.”

Another high-pitched scream
penetrated the closed door.

Irene cringed. She would have
liked to say that it wasn’t her fault that Apple and Lime were being punished,
but everyone including her, was pretty sure that it was.

“You say that he didn’t do
anything to you?” Nickel asked.

“He didn’t touch me.”

“Pity,” Nickel said. “It’s high
time that someone did. Go to your cell.”

Irene walked out of the kitchen,
not hurrying, but not dawdling, either. Nickel scared her but she suspected
that she scared Nickel, too. She was getting special treatment from Lord Snow.
At best, that created uncertainty and, at worst, Nickel could be replaced.
Either way, special treatment for one couldn’t be good for the rest of the
kennel.

She didn’t think that Nickel would
dare do anything too drastic to her.

The day would come when she would
have to revisit that assessment.

As soon as she entered her cell,
Nickel stepped in with her and closed the door.

The cell was so small that her
breasts were almost touching Nickel’s black leather corset.

“Do you like getting your cunt
licked?” Nickel asked.

Irene shook her head. “Not much.”

“I do. A lot. And you know what
happens when I like something a lot?”

“No,” Irene said, but she was
pretty sure that she could guess.

“If one of my slaves can give me
what I want, then I get it. I get it a lot,” Nickel said. “What do you think
about that?”

Irene’s stomach churned. She had no
interest in women. Once she had to partner with another slave and give a sex
show for a group of gentlemen. She had no choice but to lick the other slave’s
cunt so she had done it – slaves did what slaves were told to do –
but she had not liked it.

This, though, was not part of a
sex show. This was an intimate service. It felt more real. Irene hated to think
that she was going to have to satisfy Nickel with her lips and tongue, but
slaves did what they were told to do. Their feelings were irrelevant.

“I think that your cunt is going
to get an excellent licking,” Irene said.

“Damn right, it is.” Nickel sat on
the edge of Irene’s cot, leaned back until her shoulders and head were braced
against the wall, and spread her legs wide. Her corset did not extend below her
hips. Her bald crotch was naked and her nether lips spread wide to reveal the
moist pink tenderness within.

Irene didn’t need instructions.
She lowered herself to her knees and bent her head over Nickel’s sex and drew
her wet tongue along the pink slit, from the bottom end to the top.

Nickel tasted stronger than the
other slave that Irene had licked. She was muskier. Saltier.

Irene licked at the hooded clit
softly, gently, and then kissed the area with relaxed, open lips.