Bound and Initiated (28 page)

Sarah knew she should have felt like she was losing her mind, but instead she felt a kind of perfect clarity. The way of Mithras might be bullshit, in the end, but it was a kind of bullshit that made much more sense than what the side of
law and order—
of the preservation of capital flows and secret deals to prop up unjust governments—had to offer.

I will tell Robert, as soon as this is over.

The guardsmen were all at their places. The naked girls stood behind them. Claudia had stopped ten feet from the bench, between the columns, and Sarah stood behind her. Silence fell.

“Why comes this nupta to our banquet?” said Chilton, the pater who stood in the center of the head table, just to the left of Robert. Sarah looked into Robert’s eyes, trying to find a smile there. She saw none. Suddenly her heart began to beat very, very fast.

“I am her pater,” Robert said, looking at Sarah seriously. “I have brought her so that she be made a bellatrix.” His voice sounded solemn.
Ceremony
.
Don’t worry.

“Let her be bound, then, for the pleasure of the true men to whom you will award her,” said the white-haired man.

Claudia led Sarah forward. Sarah suddenly had the urge to try to flee. Something about the scene had started to seem very wrong. She looked at Grace, and saw that her friend wore a confused expression, as if the ceremony were going somehow a little differently than she had expected.

The tug of her leash pulled her forward, and then Sarah stood at the end of the bench, and Claudia was bending her over it and attaching her belt and cuffs to the fixtures in the wood. Sarah raised her head awkwardly toward the patres’ table, hoping at last to see some sign of favor from Robert.

His face was stony.

Claudia spoke next. “She is bound, pater,” she said.

Grace’s confusion seemed to grow.
Something is very wrong.

Robert opened his mouth, but Sarah cried, before he could speak again, “Pater!”

“Silence, nupta!” Claudia said.

“Pater, please!” Sarah said. “I must say something to you! Before… before it happens!”

Robert turned to Chilton and murmured something to him. The older man nodded. Quickly, the look on his face now much more mobile and perhaps even receptive, Robert strode around the table and approached. In a few moments, he stooped in front of her. The stony look had returned, as if he felt he needed to wear it.

Yes, very wrong.

“Pater,” Sarah said quietly and urgently, hoping that perhaps Claudia wouldn’t hear her words. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?” Claudia said from behind her.

Sarah craned her neck to look into Robert’s eyes, pleading with him. But he said, “If it is important, your domina should hear it, too.”

Sarah felt tears come to her eyes. They wouldn’t… kill her, surely? But… they would most certainly
punish
her.
Claudia
would punish her.

“I’m the mole,” she whispered. “I’m… spying… for a CIA working group.”

Robert smiled then, and Sarah saw, with a relief that nearly overwhelmed her, that she had done the right thing. He looked up, over Sarah, and said, “See?”

“She must be disciplined,” Claudia said, but Sarah thought she could hear in the domina’s voice that she had conceded an argument.

“Pater?” she asked.

Robert returned his gaze to hers. “We knew, Sarah. We’ve known for three days—since David Chilton’s techs managed to get into the working group’s database. Claudia wanted to expel you and put you under lifelong monitoring, but you’re much too valuable for that.”

He smiled, a little sadly it seemed to Sarah. She felt herself starting to cry.

“I’m sorry, pater,” she said. “I… I just didn’t know. Thank you—”

“Don’t thank me yet, Sarah,” he said, and now his voice had sadness in it, too. “You’ll be punished very severely now. And when you have recovered, you will have to prove yourself by turning your coat for us.”

Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. She became suddenly and terribly aware of the growing uneasiness of the silence of a hundred people all around her. She swallowed hard.

“Yes, pater,” she said.

Then, to her amazement, he brought his mouth right up against her ear. “I love you, Sarah. I promise to see you through, so that we can be together. But you must be a good girl for me now.”

“Yes, pater,” Sarah sobbed, hanging her head. She would do it all, undergo it all. She would beg for it all, because she
needed
it all. To become so ultimately submissive to Robert and to his cause—to have that submission marked upon her flesh—would dedicate her to him, and right now to be dedicated that way seemed to her the only reasonable decision, just as joining the CIA and accepting this mission had seemed the only correct choice.

Robert stood up abruptly. Sarah could hardly crane her neck enough to see his face now.

“True men of the Pretorian Guard, and girls of the Order of Ostia,” he said in a ringing voice, “hear my words. I find this nupta of mine very pleasing!”

To Sarah’s surprise, applause broke out at that. She whipped her head around to find Grace’s face, and saw that her friend seemed to have lost the anxious expression she had worn. Robert must have put the initiation back on track. The other guardsmen and girls, too, seemed to find the ceremony worthy of their favor.

“As her pater, it is my right,” Robert continued, “to arrange her progression as I see fit. As her work for the salvation of civilization is extraordinary, and our need is great, Nupta Sarah will tonight become not just a bellatrix but also an agna.”

Sarah felt herself frown in puzzlement. What did it mean? She looked again at Grace, who was staring back at her, wide-eyed. A murmur went through the assembly, but Robert held up his hand for silence.

“To receive this honor, and to be rendered thoroughly civilized and humble, however, Nupta Sarah must receive thorough punishment. While you eat and fuck, my brothers, you will watch her receive her discipline, bound here before you. Nymphobus Kevin and Nymphobus Alex will cane her, for her own good, before they fuck her. Then Domina Claudia and I will whip her with the strap and the mastix before I have her anus and her domina has her mouth. Nupta Grace will attend us, to prepare and strengthen our delights.”

“Let it be done,” said David Chilton. Sarah turned from Robert to look at Chilton—her real boss now, she supposed, as he had been before. She remembered the way he had looked in the video from Italy; how incongruously grave he had seemed. She remembered trying to get Seth Goldberg and Joe Harkins to consider why the organization they called the League of Mithras held their erotic rituals, and she realized suddenly that it had been that expression on Chilton’s face—the same one he wore now.
Dominance and submission. An unlikely way to save the world, but for true men, and girls like me, something to take very seriously indeed.

Chilton looked into Sarah’s eyes and translated his last words into Latin: “
Fiat
.”

“
Fiat!
” replied all the guardsmen, and then another round of applause went through the whole assembly.

Then things started to happen very quickly. Claudia was saying into her ear, while with her right hand she stroked Sarah’s bottom, dipping her middle fingers down to press against her anus so that Sarah whimpered, “If you hadn’t confessed, Sarah, we were about to make a very important example of you. You would have been hooded, and this pretty backside would have been taken by every man here. Then we would have locked you away for a good long while and interrogated you. We would have whipped you severely, whether or not you told us anything interesting. As it is, we’ll still whip you until you’ll need to eat and work standing up for a good long time, but we won’t punish this poor little anus so very terribly.” She pushed two fingers inside, and Sarah cried out at the impalement.

“I’m sorry, domina,” Sarah said, crying in fear at the image. “I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know. They… they don’t understand about the guard.”

“Of course they don’t,” Claudia said. “And that’s why I’m prepared to forgive you, just as your pater is. But as I have said, you must be punished, for your own good and the good of the order.”

Sarah had been hanging her head to the floor as Claudia spoke with her and she replied, but now suddenly she felt her head jerked back and there was an enormous cock in front of her face, framed in a red robe.

“And here’s Alex,” Claudia said, “to begin to feed you your own special banquet.”

Behind her came a whistling sound, and then a crack, and strangely Sarah screamed with the pain from the cane that Kevin must wield before her mind formed the thought,
I’m going to be caned now.

Alex muffled the scream very effectively, though, by shoving his cock into her mouth. He held Sarah’s head firmly by her hair, and began to fuck her face very rapidly. The cane came down again, and suddenly Sarah seemed to travel out of herself, the way she often did with Robert, but which had never happened so abruptly.

How many times did Kevin cane her? For how many minutes did Alex enjoy her mouth? When they changed places, did they give one another the same length of turn at the two ways they civilized her? Sarah didn’t know: the caning and the irrumation, the lines of fire across her bottom-cheeks and the filling, over and over, of her mouth with the hardness of two strong men who knew how to use a girl for their pleasure, pushing to the back of her throat and not caring that they made her gag, seemed simply to be Sarah’s existence—the one she had earned by seeking to betray the man she loved and the order that had finally taught her who she was.

Really, something inside her said, as she floated above the scene, aware on some level of all the laughter and eating and fucking that went on at the three tables as everyone also watched the nymphobi give Sarah what she deserved, she had simply delayed the confession a little too long. But without that moment of gut-wrenching fear, when she had suddenly realized that they must know—and without the thought of the way they must be about to punish her that had arisen when Claudia had bound her to the bench—would she have confessed at all?

Most of the nuptae and bellatrices were under the tables, sucking the cocks of the guardsmen who watched Sarah punished and initiated. A few men seemed less interested in their victuals than in the charms of the girls; one of the patres had Renata face down over the head table and was vigorously thrusting into her from behind; a corvus was spanking Heather across his lap.

Sarah couldn’t have said how she noticed all that; perhaps it was in the moments that the loins of one of her nymphobi left her vision for a brief moment, while they changed places. After Alex had his turn caning her, while she screamed around Kevin’s cock, they switched again, and the fucking began in earnest: Alex in her mouth again while Kevin made the arousal flow terribly, first with his hand and then with his massive cock, rubbing it up and down along her pussy-lips until Sarah sobbed with desire. She would have begged, if her mouth weren’t being used by another cock.

Kevin took hold of her belt, though, and gave a powerful thrust. Sarah had two cocks in her at the same time; the second degree at last. The cock in her mouth came and went, bulking big on her tongue and making her jaw ache. The cock in her pussy now began its own different and terribly pleasurable rhythm, as the hips of its owner sent the pain of the cane welts surging through her nervous system alongside the pleasure. The nymphobi fucked, and fucked, and fucked. Sometimes they spoke to her, to ask rhetorically if she liked it or to call her a good girl. Mostly, when they spoke, though, they spoke to each other, across Sarah’s back, or—and this was what made Sarah faint with shame and arousal—to Robert.

“So nice and tight, pater,” Kevin said. “You have fun in here, I bet.”

“Definitely,” Sarah heard Robert say from behind her. “I can’t wait to get into the ass in a little while. You gentlemen are certainly getting it nice and ready for me. Those cane stripes are very pretty.”

Soon enough it was time for them to unbind Sarah from the bench and secure her to the crossties on the columns, so that Alex could lie on the bench, on his back, and Sarah could be made to ride his cock, bouncing up and down freely until she felt Kevin’s hands on her backside, stilling her so he could lube her anus. She cried out loud as he entered her there, closing her eyes at the incredibly intensity of the sensation; pleasure and discomfort now so mingled that she thought it might rob her of her wits.

She opened them when she felt a hand stroking her hair, and she saw Robert standing there above her, to the left of Alex, a hungry look on his face. As the cocks inside her began to move more forcefully, Kevin’s hands on her waist guiding her firmly up and down so that if felt like her insides were being pressed into her ribcage and she sobbed at the feeling of fullness, he leaned down and said, “Good girl,” into her ear.

“Thank you, pater,” Sarah managed to moan. “Thank you.”

From her perch atop Alex, Sarah could see what was happening at the tables. Claudia, it seemed, had told the girls to bring the special chair with the knee stirrups that Sarah recognized from the video: the chair, Sarah realized with a flush, in which Claudia would soon sit when Sarah had to pleasure the domina with her mouth. Claudia sat in it five feet in front of Sarah, watching the fucking by the nymphobi and masturbating, her fingers moving rapidly in the crisp hair between her thighs: right hand above, caressing her clit; left hand below, gently penetrating the pink depths of her pussy.

The domina’s mouth hung slightly open as her eyes seemed fixed on the sight of Sarah’s crouching impalement on Alex’s cock. Then her eyes met Sarah’s. Claudia smiled, and brought her right hand to her mouth to wet the fingers. Then Sarah watched, her own pussy and bottom full of erect manhood, as the domina moved her hand down again, then used both her hands, with a sort of flourish, to spread her pussy so that Sarah could see all of it, from Claudia’s clit to the coral openness below. Her own eyes wide, she looked back into Claudia’s face, and saw in the smile there that Sarah must expect to be made to please her mistress’ pussy at great length and with great rigor. It didn’t matter to Claudia that Sarah had never kissed a pussy—that would make the pleasure even more piquant: Sarah had earned the shameful duty by her intent to betray the order, and soon her young face would be buried there, between another woman’s thighs, struggling to please her.