Carrie's Story: An Erotic S/M Novel (18 page)

The deal was that they gave you some three to five days
of trials-you wouldn't know they were done until they told
you. They were sitting behind a large, inlaid table in this absolutely incredible apartment in an eighteenth-century building.
After the spacey, abstract-seeming twenty-four hours that
had just passed, it was like leaving black-and-white Kansas
for Technicolor Oz. French antique furniture, mirrors, paintings, parquet floor, where, zzattzrelleznezzt, I would spend most
of my time, while Jonathan sat on one of the silk-upholstered
chairs, watching and smoking. I felt like a puppy again (Toto,
I guess), all my earlier fantasies about being the way coolest thing they'd ever seen seeming like a million years ago. It
was like the pony farm, I told myself-just pay attention, pay
attention so hard that you will lose yourself in all the sensations. And I relaxed into it, realizing that I could hold back the tears only so long, concentrating on their marvelously
controlled voices and careful cruelty. They found me crude
and somewhat trivial, I thought, and I found myself rather
adoring them.

Day one had begun with the very chic fortyish woman
holding me tightly by the nipple and telling me, "We will all
want to use you during these trials, but first, we will want
to know how obedient you are, how much self-discipline you
have. You are accustomed to being in restraints?"

"Yes, Madame Roget," I said.

They all laughed a little at this, and she told me that
they didn't believe in that sort of thing for these trials. "We
would not mar the woodwork of this pretty room with any of
those little hooks and eyes, I think you call them. You will do
everything we command, and you will be beaten, and bear it
beautifully, without any collars or cuffs, without being tied or
held in any way."

I gulped. "Yes, Madame Roget," I agreed, though I was
terrified at the thought of not being tied down while being
beaten. Too bad we couldn't rig up something using all the
hardware hanging off the jacket of her Chanel suit.

Quel, jour. I had no idea if I could really do it, and I wasn't
perfect by any means. Twice, that I can remember, and
maybe more times than that, my hands flew up to my breasts
to protect them. This was at least one of the "technical" things
Jonathan hadn't thought of. He, of course, loved to think of
crafty ways to embed hooks and eyes all over his house and
so, stupidly, hadn't realized that the rest of the world might
not. I think what got me through it was that I was so pissed
at him for not considering that this might happen, and so
determined to best the situation in spite of him. Thanks a lot, coach, I remember thinking, seeing him out of the corner of
my eye, over there on his delicate little chair. I thought of that
creep who brought those terrified little four-foot-eight-inch
American gymnasts to the Olympics, to be entirely outclassed
by the Russians and Romanians.

That day ended very abruptly, or at least I thought so.
I was on my knees in the center of the room, having just
thanked the board, one by one, and very sweetly and clearly,
though in a bit of a choked voice, for a brisk beating they'd
just administered to my breasts and thighs. (Oh, and in
French -we switched to French for the afternoons.) And, no,
they didn't hold up any cards with little numbers on them to
rate my performance. They hardly acknowledged me at all, in
fact, but Madame Roget turned to Jonathan and curtly said,
"Bring her around tomorrow at ten, and we'll continue."

"Thank you, Madame," Jonathan replied, getting to his
feet and hurrying to help me up. I will. Thank you all." He
spoke like the well-brought-up little boy he must have been
once. And I realized that part of the entertainment, for him,
and maybe for me as well, was that he was on trial too.

When we got back to the hotel room, he grabbed me, and,
very uncharacteristically, pushed me onto the bed practically
into a backward somersault, pulled up my skirt, and started
fucking me. My shoes went flying, and I felt a garter unsnap
painfully against my thigh. Against my cunt, my belly, my legs,
I felt his pants zipper and a million buttons and buckles digging
into me. It was silly, clumsy, uncomfortable, but I understood. It was what I needed, too. The long, horny, ritualistic
day of trials, subtleties, pain, performing, and politesse had
gotten to both of us, and what we both wanted was mindless,
exhausting, low-tech vanilla fucking. In and out. Bang bang bang. Friction. I closed my eyes and came a lot, moving however I pleased and making lots of noise and trying to forget that
there were such things as rules or form or sensibility.

Still, you don't forget a year of slave training just like
that, so a long while after, when I had recovered enough, I
crawled to the foot of the bed and knelt there at attention
(although I was unsure what to do about the skirt that was
still up around my waist and the stockings down around my
ankles). Jonathan looked at me for a while. Then he frowned,
sighed, and finally said, "Oh hell, Carrie, I don't think I can
maintain any rules tonight, not after watching those pros do it
all day. Let's j ust take showers and zone out. Are you hungry?
Want to do room service?"

Which was how we passed the next three evenings. We'd
come back from the trials, pull off our clothes, fuck real hard,
and then eat. During some break in the second day trials,
Jonathan had gone out, found an English-language bookstore,
and scooped up a shopping bag full of mysteries and sci fi. We
weren't following rules anymore, which meant we could say
anything we wanted. But we were afraid of saying wrong or
embarrassing things to each other. At least I was. So the books
kept us busy during those weird, wired, exhausted, polite, and
oddly companionable evenings. We'd dive into them, every so
often one or the other of us finishing one, maybe briefly recommending it, or tossing it across the room, proclaiming it a
"turkey, guessed it halfway through, don't bother."

On the fourth evening, the rock 'n' roll/cyberpunk story
I was racing through reminded me of thrash music and I
thought of my Primus T-shirt, packed up with my stuff at
Stuart's. I decided that if I passed the trials I'd tell Jonathan
he could have it as a good-bye present. Thanks for the memo ries, I guess, and for the strange intimacy, even if we'd only
had about four real conversations in the space of a year and
a half. Good-bye, and thanks, also, for finding me a job that
was not just a job but an adventure. So long, accomplice,
collaborator, coconspirator.

Just then, there was a knock at the door. Jonathan went
to get it. There were two European guys in suits and short
squared-off haircuts, looking like the cops in La Feinine Nikita.
They were from the auction committee, though, and they
were here to tell us-well, Jonathan, really-that I'd passed
the trials. I could hear that much anyway, though the one
of them who was doing the talking, the only one who knew
English I think, was speaking very softly. I heard Jonathan
tell him, "I'll fax them the papers within an hour. And I'll get
her for you now."

I hadn't known they came for you in the middle of the
night. And I don't know if Jonathan had either. He walked
over to me -I was sprawled on the bed in a hotel bathrobe
and a pair of his socks-and pulled me to my feet. "You're
in," he said, "and you're not allowed to speak anymore." So
much for the T-shirt idea. Or for even a so long. "Take off
your clothes," he continued in an expressionless voice. "You'll
go with these gentlemen."

They were standing by the door watching without much
interest. I felt a little sorry for them; this had to be the dullest
master/slave scene they'd ever barged in on. I pulled off the
socks and robe, folded my glasses on top of the open book, and
walked over to them. They produced a pair of high heels and
a trench coat and helped me into them. Then, silently, they
hustled me out of the room and shut the door behind them.

They led me down the long aseptic hotel hall-this was a
hotel people stayed in for business, not pleasure-to the
elevator and through the lobby. One of them-not the one
who had spoken-had his hand on my arm, which he held
very tightly. I was pretty scared. After all, I was in a foreign
country, without money or passport, being taken god knew
where by two neatly dressed thugs. Still, I had to ask myself,
what was I afraid of? A white slave ring? Uh, Carrie, hate to
break it to you at this late date, but that's exactly what you're
in the middle of. Unless this was really some kind of bizarre
Interpol spy story like one of the books I'd read. But that was
even less likely. Maybe, I considered, all the sex stuff is true,
but the money angle is a big scam. Now that was a frightening
thought. And thinking of the money angle reminded me that
what we really looked like -what the people in the lobby probably thought was happening if they happened to notice us at
all-was two plainclothes cops with a prostitute they'd busted
and were escorting out of a classy hotel.

The black car was parked on the street near the hotel,
with another thug in the driver's seat. We got into the back
and-dumb as it sounds I found this mildly comforting-they
pushed me to the floor and had me suck their cocks. Maybe
they had found the situation reasonably interesting after all,
or, more likely, I thought, this was just their routine. Afterward, they) oked among themselves, smoked Gauloises, and gave me
a few drags. I didn't understand the language they were speaking, but they seemed to like my haircut, stroking my head,
tugging at my pubic hair. I guess the joke-I mean, I don't
think these guys were any too swift or subtle-was that my
pubic hair was longer. They were also interested in the marks
on my ass, examining them clinically. I think they saw lots
of beat-up asses and just liked to keep tabs to keep a running
score. After a while, it seemed like they were losing interest
in me, although they still stroked and grabbed in an absentminded way. But I think they were talking about sports or
taxes or something. They seemed like pleasant enough goons,
probably with wives and kids. Their ordinariness calmed me
down a little.

The car stopped in front of a large, low, old, officiallooking building with a semicircular driveway in front of it.
I couldn't help wondering if it was some kind of a police
station, because that's really what it looked like. Maybe it was
a sting operation, maybe the thugs were really double agents.
Maybe they were finally onto the slave thing, maybe somebody had really gotten hurt. It was, after all, pretty amazing
that nobody had up until now, I thought, though in fact I had
never felt like I was in that kind of danger at all.

We walked up a few low steps. It was very quiet. The
building seemed to front on some sort of park, and I realized
that we were no longer in the center of the city. The night
was foggy and the streetlights were very bright, diffusing into
a layered, pale gray glow. One of the thugs rang a buzzer,
and a guy who looked like a security guard opened the door
and let us into an anteroom. Marble-tiled floor, desk, a few
other pieces of furniture, some dark, anonymous paintings on the wall. The thug who could speak English parked me in a
corner and told me to take off the coat and shoes and give
them back to him. The security guard had a small, thonged
whip hanging from his belt. Nope, not the police station after
all. He went to a fax machine, took out a piece of paper, compared it to the papers the thugs were shoving at him, and
signed his name a lot of times. The thugs signed a few times as
well, seemed satisfied, and trooped out.

The security guard, or whatever he was, came over to
where I was standing and pinched and slapped me a few
times. He flicked his whip idly over my breasts and poked
its handle lightly at the opening of my vagina. I stayed pretty
still, just trembling a little. The marble floor was cold under
my feet and it was very quiet. Then he sighed, walked over
to the desk, stapled all his papers together, and filed them in
a folder on the desk. He picked up the desk phone, dialed
an extension, spoke softly into it, and hung up. He was very
young, I realized, not much more than eighteen, dark, broadshouldered, beetle-browed, a bit stocky, just past pimply.

He sat on the edge of the desk, one leg dangling, and
motioned me to come over, nodding at the floor in front of
him. I knelt, watching him uncertainly. Then he took a small
rubber ball out of his pocket and tossed it at the opposite
corner of the room. I figured I knew what he wanted, but I
waited for the light flick of his whip against my ass before
I set off, on hands and knees, to fetch the ball with my mouth.
When he took it back from me, he slapped my face and tossed
the ball again, and I understood that I had not been fast
enough. It took me about six or seven tries to get it right, and
then he raised the ante. From one of the many pockets of his
fatigue-type khaki pants, he took out a string of five or six small metal balls, looking like those plastic pop-bead necklaces I used to wear when I was a little girl. The balls were
about the size of Ping-Pong balls. He inserted one into my
asshole. Then I felt another swipe of the whip, and we continued the game. I tried to be as fast as I could and not drop the
ball out of my asshole, while the rest of them flapped behind
me like a crazy, horrible little tail. He seemed to enjoy this and
had just graduated to pushing the second ball up me, when,
thank goodness, a woman walked into the room. He quickly
stood at attention, jerking me up, too, and quickly and rather
painfully retrieving the string of balls as well.