Judgment (20 page)

Wooded landscapes became pastures for livestock.

Businesses came and went. Clothing fashions and hairstyles changed. So did cars. The outsides of planes didn't change nearly as much as the insides, but I noticed that Judgment's private plane almost never had the same pilot and attendants twice.

Our last trip was no exception. As I was climbing the last few steps into the aircraft, I glanced up to meet the eyes of the lovely blonde stewardess standing at the door to greet us.

As far back as I could remember, there had never been a female attendant aboard the plane before and I was a little surprised to see her there. I think my Master was as well, for he stopped in the doorway and just looked at her for the longest time. He lifted her left hand and looked at her ringless fingers. Then he tilted her chin and looked at her face, though she drew from his grasp rather quickly and gave him a strange look.

He glanced down at the name tag over her breast. He smiled. "Hello, Gloria."

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I had no time to become jealous. From behind me, I heard a sudden shout and turned to see three men in airline uniforms and a paunchy man in a suit and tie running to reach our plane. They pushed past me. Two of the three men took her place, while the man in the suit hustled her quickly back down the steps and my Master called after them, "I look forward to seeing you again, Gloria."

He took my hand and led me to our seats, placing me at the window and sitting down next to me at the aisle. As soon as we were airborne, the male stewards brought us food and drink, and must have thought us either loving or odd since he fed me every bite from his own hand. And when I was done eating, he requested a pillow and blanket, lay my chair back and tucked me in.

"We are going to California today. It will be a long flight and an even longer day. So get some sleep."

California. The name of it stirred some vague tendrils of memory that never quite manifested themselves. It just sounded ... familiar. Like I place I'd been to before.

While I found sleeping on a moving plane almost impossible, I obediently closed my eyes and maybe dozed now and then throughout the flight.

There is no comparing the tranquility of Judgment's halls to the hustle and bustle of big city life. Because my master was beside me, the unfamiliarity of the constant activity around me, honking horns, foul air, the shouting and talking, and moving swarms of people, did not upset me too much.

But I was truly grateful when my Master checked us in to the 180

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Mark Hopkins Hotel and we stayed in our rooms that first night.

The penthouse was nice, though nowhere near as nice as my Master's quarters back home, but they did allow for privacy. And first thing upon opening the door, even before the bellhop had carried our luggage into the living room, my Master removed my coat. I liked the look that young Outside man gave me, his mouth dropping open, his eyes widening as his gaze fell to my bare breasts.

"Present for the nice man," my Master told me, a wicked humor glittering in his eyes and turning up the corners of his mouth.

The bellhop swallowed loudly as I dropped gracefully to my knees and bent over backwards, raising my hips and parting the folds of my sex for his furiously blushing perusal.

"Would you like a tip?" my Master asked, and laughed when the young man fled our suite.

For the next few days, I accompanied my Master from one meeting to another. It didn't take long to realize that he was visiting past clients, checking up on the progress of their purchased Lessers, some of which had been sold long before I ever arrived at Judgment's door. I saw the way these females lived, some two to three to a single master, and I pitied them. Many had forgotten their Judgment training. They constantly squabbled with one another, and the welts on their buttocks sometimes extended up their backs or down their legs. They fidgeted, adjusted their own hair and clothing, and in one meeting, while my Master was inspecting three females 181

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owned by a San Francisco lawyer, I saw one sigh in boredom, right there in front of her master and mine!

I was shocked. My Master's expression turned unreadable but for a slight tightening of his jaw, and I could tell he wasn't at all pleased.

"Excuse me," he told the lawyer, "but do you have any rope?"

While the lawyer watched on, my Master tied all three over his dining table. He cut their clothes from their bodies, baring them entirely.

"Do not clothe them again until they have earned the right," Tane said, and took off his coat. There were a special series of loops sewn on the inside for the specific purpose of discretely holding and concealing a Judgment cane. And though I rarely saw him wield it during these meetings, he brandished it now. "This has been a disgraceful display. Were they mine, they would be getting a sound dose of this each morning and night for a month."

For a long time the whir and whup of a cane on bare flesh sang in that room, mingling with the shrieks and screams of each Lesser in turn. My Master was pure poetry in motion, strong and graceful, not sparing those females so much as a shred of mercy. I know it was spiteful, but I believe they deserved every bit of what they got. And it was a long time before that cane laid its last stripe into the swollen, welted flesh of those three unfortunates. Their lawyer master looked weak and pale, and he stared at my master with absolute fascination and more than a little awe.

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"You have been remiss in your control of them," my Master growled, stroking the length of that cane through his hand.

"They have grown sloven and sullen. A disrespectful female does not compliment her master. Mischief, come here!"

I went and quickly.

With a sweep of his cane, he directed me to the head of the table. "Over!"

I obeyed, snapped across it with the other girls so quickly that my hardened corset rapped the table. I braced my legs stiffly, pushing my hips out and back and grabbing hold of the edge of the table with both hands. I would show these Lessers how well a real Personal could take her discipline.

In deference to my position, my Master did not bare me as he would have done in Judgment, though my gossamer skirt afford me very little in the way of protection. He gave me two dozen strokes, and from first to last I clutched the table with a death grip, fighting as hard as I knew how to keep my face as impassive as possible. I lost composure only once to a tortured, strangled groan, but I think Desire would have been proud of such ability.

"That," my Master said, "is how they should behave. I suggest you take up your responsibilities by them with full enthusiasm, Master Gray, or I will revoke your contract and have them removed to a household where they can be bettered attended to!"

Panting with pain and working to hold back tears, as I waited for permission to rise, I felt a trembling hand smooth lightly over the welts my Master had given me. The lawyer, examining my marks with awe.

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Later that day, my Master rewarded my stoicism under the rod with a chocolate truffle and he took me to a pet shop. I was allowed to hold the puppies and kittens for almost half an hour. I wanted so much to take one home with me.

"Absolutely not," my Master laughed when I cuddled a siamese kitten to my cheek and gave him such a pleading look. "There isn't a female alive capable of being good enough for that kind of reward."

Because the day was nice, and since it was only a few blocks to his next meeting, my Master decided that we should walk. A little warm in my overcoat, I nevertheless fell into step two paces behind him.

"Stay close to me," he said, as we crossed the street into a veritable strip mall of sidewalk venders. Some of them were selling the most fascinating items, and I found my head turning often as I looked at tourist-trap displays of sunglasses, spoons, and maps to the stars. There were little wooden nutcrackers of all types and designs. Toy monkeys that danced and clapped their hands. My Master paused at a jewelry kiosk to buy several hair pieces and necklaces of seashells and polished stones, and I took the opportunity to watch a food vender place a steaming-hot, oblong stretch of meat into a fold of bread and then decorate it with red and yellow paste and sprinkle chopped pickles and onions on top.

I don't know what it was, but it smelled very good.

From the corner of my eye, I saw my Master's coat move on and I hurried after him, while keeping a wistful eye on some of the wondrous displays we were passing. I don't know how far I might have followed him before that honking car 184

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startled me into grabbing my Master's arm for comfort. But when I raised my eyes to his, the man dressed in that coat that was so much like my Master's, gave me the oddest look before shaking his hand free of my grip and walking on.

I spun on my heel, running all the way back to the food vender, but there was no sign of my Master. I turned in a full circle, the crowd swelling around me and choking my view.

Panic surged inside me. I was lost!

I knocked over a table of necklaces in my panic and stumbled into the street, turning in circles, desperately searching for that familiar coat and black hair and the cross, angry eyes of my Master. It was a wonder I wasn't killed as traffic came to a screeching halt and two cars collided, one into the back of the other. I fell to my knees, clutching my stomach, rocking and crying harder than I ever had until a car with flashing lights arrived on the scene.

I was arrested for loitering, vandalism, and causing an accident. A man in a blue uniform took me to the police station where my fingerprints and picture were taken. But when they took my coat from me and saw the marks my Master's cane had left upon me, I was taken from the processing unit to a private room. When the Detective came for me a short time later, he found me huddled in one corner, sobbing, so frightened that I could not stop shaking.

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By the time we again reached Italy, what drugs had been
given were almost entirely out of my system. But my master
did not speak to me until we again reached the seclusion of
Judgment's private walls. He took me straight to his
chambers.

* * * *

"No, Master."

"Then bring me the number three cane. You've never been whipped the way you're going to be right now."

As I went to the display rack on the wall, my Master set up a tall tripod in the middle of the room. When I brought the cane to him, he took my hand in a lovers' clasp and led me to the crux of it. My wrists were tied behind me and hoisted so far up my back that I could do nothing but bend over to relieve the pain in my shoulders. I spread my legs very wide apart so that my ankles could be cuffed to the bottom of the tripod stand. A stock bar at about waist level pushed my hips out and back and kept my weight from dislocating my arms.

This was an awkward position that made moving painful and my bottom an easy target for the cane.

My Master took his time setting up the room, pulling back the furniture to give himself plenty of empty space for magnificent swinging strokes. He even brought out smelling salts and a cloth to bathe my face, as well as a bucket of cool 186

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water and dipper. Standing a pace or two behind me, he rolled his sleeves up past his elbows before lifting the long cane and slashing a single, sharp practice arc through the air.

"What did I tell you when we crossed the street?" he said gently.

"The Master told this one to stay close," I answered softly.

"What did you do?"

"This one got lost."

"You are aptly named, my dear." Without another word, he gagged me and doused my thrust out buttocks with a fine sheen of water from the bucket. Then it came.

ONE!

I gasped, tossing back my head as pain laved through me.

It was worse than I had expected. My Master struck me low, laying that first cut directly across the crease that separates bottom from thighs, and the hurt of it fanned all through me.

I wrenched in my bonds, flopping in the tripod like a trout on a fisherman's line.

I felt more than heard him draw back his arm, and my thighs quivered as the cane bit in just under the previous stroke. It raised a second welt so close to the first that the two seemed to meld together and throb as one.

I grunted, gasping through my gag, tears filling my eyes and spilling freely down my cheeks.

"I have missed you terribly," my Master said softly, and the next five strokes bit in without mercy. Each seemed that much harder than the last, the whuck of the rod working down my thighs until he reached halfway to my knees. Then 187

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the cane raised and lightly measured along the crease again.

"I don't think I can bear to be without you."

I screamed through my gag when he struck me there again, this time working up and over the curve of my bottom, laying stroke after stroke so close together than the welts overlapped, until he reached a point a half inch lower than the top of my bottom crack. I gasped, writhing in inexpressible agony, causing the tripod to creak and groan with my contortions. Again, the cane measured lightly upon the welted crease, and I sobbed long and low.

Another five, back down my thighs, midway to my knees, and I felt a liquid trickling sensation winding down my right leg. Was it sweat or blood? I whined, hoarse and breathless whimpers torn from a throat screamed raw, and fainted for the first time three strokes later. He patiently revived me with a touch of the smelling salts beneath my nose and caressed my face with a cold cloth before continuing.