Bound and Initiated (26 page)

Sarah looked at Grace. Grace said quietly, “That’s what they’re saying about you.”

“Oh,” Sarah said. “But…”
But I don’t
want
to be a domina. And I don’t even want to be friends, because the more friends I have, the more people I have to betray.

A smile flashed on Alexandra’s face then, and to Sarah’s dismay she realized she did like Alexandra very much. “Let’s just stick with the party, for now. I know you’re nervous, Sarah,” she said warmly. “Don’t worry. It’s really fun.”

It
was
fun, too, at least at the start. The nuptae’s cloaks were taken from them in the grand foyer of the colonial mansion in front of which the limos pulled up, and leashes were attached to their collars. Naked but for their leathers, they were led by Renata and the bellatrices, one superior girl for each nupta, into a vast living room full of elegantly dressed men and women.

Renata had Sarah’s leash. At their entrance, a ripple of applause spread through the room, and the guests parted like water before the prow of a ship to let the Ostia girls pass through to the far wall, where four wooden Xs had been set up, lit from above by spotlights that showed very clearly the black metal fixtures set into the wood for the chaining of girls, and would illuminate their naked bodies brightly once they were attached there.

Sarah trembled at the sight, but yes, it was fun, though it took her a little while to figure out why, as Renata clipped her wrist cuffs to the upper arms of the cross and her ankle cuffs to the lower ones. She finally realized that the fun lay in being able to enjoy the debauched scene in the knowledge that her organization—and with a smile she saw that the idea applied both to the Ostia Agency and to the CIA—had told her she must. If Sarah James, private citizen, had done what Sarah James, nupta, did now—walked naked into a society party, had herself chained to a wooden cross, waited for men and women in designer clothing to come and enjoy her as they liked—if she had even confessed that she might enjoy something so depraved… Well, it wouldn’t have been fun.

But this strange new life meant undergoing such things, while never having to admit that she liked them.
That
was fun—and also, it appeared, extremely arousing.

“You’re very wet, aren’t you, nupta?” Renata purred into Sarah’s ear after she had fastened the ankle cuffs.

“Yes, agna,” Sarah whispered.

“Well, you should hope one of these gentlemen wants to see his wife kneel before a slave girl and eat her out.”

When Sarah gave a little gasp at the shamefully arousing mental picture the beautiful red-haired girl in the flaming red dress had just created in her mind, Renata stepped back, chuckling. She put her hand out and toyed with Sarah’s left nipple, looking in her eyes all the while. On Sarah’s left, Grace seemed to be having a similar conversation with the bellatrix who had finished securing her wrists and ankles. On Sarah’s right, Alexandra was just being fastened to her cross, and Sarah saw with another thrill of arousal that she was being bound in the opposite direction, her face to the wall and her backside to the living room. Heather, too, on the cross past Alexandra, offered her back and her bottom.

“It happened to me once,” she said. “It was lovely. The little thing was so obedient, and only another woman really knows how to pleasure you that way.” She smiled, leaned in, and kissed Sarah.

Sarah’s whole body seemed to respond, writhing against the wooden cross at the incredible sensation of her first kiss from another girl. Renata leaned back again. “You’ll certainly come many times tonight, Sarah,” she said. “Don’t worry about that. But men… well, you know.” She smiled again in a knowing way that made Sarah suddenly think of Claudia and her coffee table. She blushed.

Renata touched her cheek. “Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t mind being the first woman to taste you, nupta, but duty calls.” Sarah saw then that a crowd had gathered around the Ostia girls on their crosses. Men by themselves, in elegant shirts open at the collar to show deep tans. A few women on their own as well, in beautiful cocktail dresses. Couples, some of the women with bright pink cheeks as if embarrassed to see naked girls bound to wooden crosses. All of them looking at Sarah and her Ostia sisters, and apparently unable to turn away.

Renata turned around to look at the audience for the lascivious show she had brought to the party. A man in a dark suit, with no tie—a man whom Sarah instantly recognized as one of the world’s wealthiest men, Edgar Furley—stepped forward to stand at Renata’s side. The other nuptae had all been fastened to their crosses, and Sarah saw that the bellatrices had now begun to mingle among the guests. A hush fell as the man turned to his assembled guests.

“Please help me welcome these lovely girls,” Furley said, and began a round of applause, smiling at each nupta in turn as he held his hands up to clap for them individually. Whether because she knew how powerful the man was, or because of some personal quality he had that must have been responsible for his acquiring that power, Sarah’s heart beat terribly fast, and her pussy clenched at that smile.

“I’m honored,” he continued after the applause had died away, “to have you here, Renata. Would you please tell us the rules?”

Renata smiled at the guests. Sarah thought there must be at least a hundred of them. “These girls are here for your enjoyment,” she said. “You may explore them, pleasure them, and punish them as you choose. There is a wide selection of toys behind the bar for you to borrow.”

“I ask only that you be considerate of your fellow guests!” Furley said. Laughter filled the room.

What about the bellatrices?
Sarah wondered, but as the question formed in her mind she saw that each bellatrix had found a particular man—or, in one case, a particular couple—by whom she now stood, clearly the property, for the night, of those who had, Sarah guessed, reserved her services in advance.

If Robert married her, would they someday reserve a bellatrix for the night? Sarah wondered, looking at the elegant couple who had dark-skinned Alta by their side, the sparklingly gowned wife holding the hand of the Ostia girl. Of course not—for they would simply summon a girl from the Mithraeum, wouldn’t they? Sarah would kiss the girl’s bare pussy while Robert fucked his young wife’s bottom. Then the girl would have to kiss Sarah’s pussy while Robert fucked her, exclaiming to Sarah about how nice and tight the other girl’s pussy was.

Sarah felt her face grow hot when she caught herself thinking along those lines. What kind of marriage would it be, to be loaned to other men? To watch her husband fuck other women?

Not the
Forever Girl
kind.

But…
she pushed back desperately, and yet the thought leaked through.
But for you, Sarah James, maybe the right kind.

Furley extended his hand to Renata, and she took it. The assembly parted for them as they walked through the middle of the living room and out the arch at its far end that led back to the foyer—and the staircase. Furley invested massively in oil futures, didn’t he? Sarah felt sure that Renata didn’t even need to hear him say a single thing about his portfolio to learn everything she might want to know about the way his investments would affect the energy markets for the next six months. Her time reading the material the order put before her—chosen by Renata herself, perhaps, as the agna in charge—had already made Sarah hyper-conscious of how the behavior especially of celebrities reflected and enhanced enormous trends in culture. Destructive trends, wasteful of resources and indicative of eventual collapse: the trends that Robert Bennet and David Chilton regulated, harnessed, and even furthered because they could not be stopped.

To Sarah’s left, a couple had approached Grace, apparently to get a closer look; to her right, a man was spanking Heather lightly, asking her if she liked it, and Heather was responding, “Yes, sir.” Sarah grew conscious, suddenly, that a man had stepped very close to her, too, and she turned her head to see him: tall and blond, he had stepped only a few inches away. She watched his left hand come casually toward her, down low, its middle fingers outstretched for her pussy.

At the same moment those fingers found her, pushed inside her so that she gasped, and the man said directly and confidentially into Sarah’s ear, “Do you need extraction?”

“No, sir… please… No.” She made a show of writhing on the cross, as the rough caress continued, finding her clit and then moving down and in until he touched her anus.

“How long until I can reserve you, the way those other girls get reserved?” he said. His voice was clinical, but the working of his fingers made her moan.

“Oh, God…” Sarah said, not having to make a show of her writhing now at all. “A month, sir?” Grace had told her that when a girl was destined for promotion, it happened quickly; one of the bellatrices here tonight, Grace had said, was a columba two months ago.

He stepped back, leaving her terribly aroused and confused. He put his fingers to his mouth and licked them, looking deep into her eyes. “I’ll look forward to that, you tasty young thing. What’s your name, girl?”

“Sarah, sir,” she whispered.

“Thank you, Sarah,” he said. He turned and walked away.

She had no time to think about what had just happened, because she had a couple of her own and yes, the man had told his wife, or his girlfriend, to kneel before Sarah’s bare pussy. While he spoke lewdly about how he would soon make sure the woman’s cunt was as bare as Sarah’s, she received the first head she had ever experienced from another woman. The man played with her breasts, pinching the nipples and even taking them in his own mouth. Sarah came, and came, and came.

It went on like that. What surprised Sarah most, she thought, was how many little tidbits relevant to her work in the Mithraeum she picked up.

“Mark Weaver…” said one guest, a tall man standing only a few feet away.

“The representative? Los Angeles?” replied another, shorter one.

“Mm-hmm,” replied the first. “He was here in New York last week, up from DC. He’s on the House Energy and Commerce committee, and he thinks cheap oil plus efficiency plus solar just won’t get us where we need to go.”

“So what’s he backing?” The shorter man sounded interested.

“Anything that will take us off oil, he says.”

That was the best piece of intelligence she gathered, but there were also plenty of references to air-conditioning and the price of gasoline, all of which Sarah filed away in her memory. By the time, at around 2 a.m., Renata released them and sent them to have some of the party’s leftovers, along with a little alcohol and a lot of water, Sarah felt she had truly become part of the Order of Ostia. She laughed easily with the nuptae and the bellatrices about what the various guests had done to them—the bellatrix reserved by the couple had apparently been made to fuck them both in their asses with a strap-on, while they held hands, and Heather had been ordered to pee into a basin held between her spread knees while three men watched and commented rapturously.

They all fell asleep in the limo on the way home to the Mithraeum. Sarah’s last waking thought was of telling Robert all about the party. He must have carried her from the limo to the penthouse because the next thing she remembered was his face, in his enormous bed, smiling at her, and his lips kissing her. Then she fell asleep again, and did not wake until the sun had risen high above the Manhattan skyline.

“I think it’s time for you to progress, Sarah,” Robert said one night two weeks later. He had just returned from a three-day trip. Sarah didn’t have the slightest idea where he had gone because she continued to be terribly wary of appearing too inquisitive. Renata had told her at supper, though, that her pater had returned, and wanted to see her in his apartment.

As she rode up in the elevator, Sarah’s knees shook as she thought about how Robert would use her tonight, after three days away from her leather-bound body. She blushed as she realized that her mouth had begun to water, imagining kneeling before him and sucking his hard cock.

But instead of ordering her into the bedroom, Robert took Sarah in his arms and held her for a long moment. Then he said the thing about progressing.

“What, pater?” she asked, her heart beating wildly. He held her at arms’ length and looked into her eyes, and she noticed that he seemed troubled.

She had been to two more parties since that first one, but her handler—the blond man—had not reappeared. She had gathered more bits of intelligence, but nothing as important as the item about the representative on the Energy and Commerce committee. In her daily work in the study rooms, though, she had noticed that she was being given more material that had to do with what seemed serious matters: the
New Yorker,
for example, as opposed to
People,
and the social media updates of government officials.

“We’re coming to what the guard calls an
inflection point,
” Robert said, “and we’re not sure why.”

“What’s an inflection point, pater?” Sarah asked, because clearly she would be expected to be inquisitive now—plus, it was something in which the CIA working group would probably take a great interest.
Progression means becoming a bellatrix, and being a bellatrix will mean being alone with my handler.
Her heart sank. Could she do it, in the end? Sarah couldn’t claim to understand what the guard really intended, but she could not be more firmly convinced that Robert, at least, meant to save civilization.

He led her into his living room and sat with her on the twill-covered couch that always tickled her naked backside. They had fastened Sarah with her bottom out at the party two nights before, and one of the guests had given her a severe paddling with a wooden paddle. She winced as she sat, and Robert saw it.

“Let me see,” he said. “Stand up and bend over in front of me. Hands on your knees.”

She obeyed, unable to keep the smile from her face. Robert ran his hands over the lingering welts. “So pretty,” he said, and kissed them. Then he put his hands between her knees and gently tugged them apart, so that he could give her a long, long kiss on her pussy.