It was just a quick break for protein and caffeine. There wasn't much talking. From time to time, one of the women would summon Roxanne, and she would go to her on her knees and be fed. The chain made an awful racket when she dragged it along the rail. Tyre noticed soy sauce dripping down her chin, and blotted it off with a napkin. The thimbleful of saki Tyre poured into Roxanne's mouth was so hot, it made her eyes water.
Roxanne could not help but wonder which of them individually, or in combination, would have her next. She did a brief examination of her conscience and found no resentment in her heart for the way these women passed her around. She felt herself to be Alex's property. This proved it. But she doubted that the evidence had piled high enough to tilt the scales in her favor, in Alex's eyes. She wondered if there were enough women here, or if any of them could be cruel enough, to persuade Alex that nothing would drive her away from her side.
Would Alex pick the next dominant, or would someone volunteer? Joy laid a piece of salmon on her tongue, and Roxanne let it melt down her throat. Chris held out a slice of ginger. While she nibbled on it, staring at the swirling tattoos and the throwing stars, she got her answer. Chris took the bullwhip off her belt and wound it around Roxanne's body, cinching it tight through her crotch. Thank God she had already fed well. All appetite fled. Chris sent her back to the rail, and she assumed position without prompting from Alex.
She was faithless, faithlessâalready assessing this new maîtresse, wondering what her weaknesses and her skills were, endeavoring to please her by twisting within the embrace of the bullwhip, shivering at the thought of being punished by her. Kay and the ways to pleasure Kay, the things she feared and loved to receive from EZ, were already fading from her mind. The women who, half an hour ago, had her impaled on their arms, were once again mere shadows that circled with the rest of the pack.
Roxanne realized, however, that as each member of the pack worked her over, the pack itselfâas an entityâbecame a more powerful force in her imagination. The women seemed to loom nearer and taller, their voices more forceful and resonant. She knelt, small and helpless, in an amphitheater of cruel feminine presences. There were long moments when it seemed to her that only they existed, and her life force had flowed into them. She was like a vessel being emptied into the sea, or a shadow melting into evening. But she was also a current of energy that held the pack togetherâthe point at which they crossed and focused. She was the medium through which they communicated with one another. Her body was a palpable message, a bond, a live wire strung between eight strong women. As long as they used her, needed her, or displayed even casual interest in her, she was vibrant and vivid and real. Without their attention and close supervision, she feared she would vanish.
She did not want to be whipped. It was the worst thing that could happen to her. She did not love pain. She hated and feared it, and she fiercely resisted being subjected to it. It was a rare occasion when she would beg to be beaten. When Alex bullied her into committing some error that she knew meant a whipping, she would scream with anger each time the whip landed on her thighs or ass or shoulders.
But it was clear, from this token Chris had twined about her body, that she wanted her for a living target. Nothing would obviate the threat of the whip between her legs. She whimpered for herself, just a poor girl, all wet, chained to a rail, so well trained she did not even dare touch herself. The whip bit deeper between the folds of her cunt, and she spread her legs another notch to make it hurt even more.
The other side of the story was that despite her fear and even loathing of the whip, she felt a reluctant sort of love for it. When she was alone in her bed, caressing herself, she would think about being beaten, and long for it, and dwell lovingly on each detail of the ritual. If only if didn't hurt so much. It was one of those ceremonies that she could not initiate and found extremely difficult to endure. It was, nevertheless, an experience she required. She was always grateful to Alex for having the strength to ignore her pleas and rage and proceed with the beating. After a prolonged session with the whip, she found her center. It made her tranquil for days. As long as the marks lasted, she cherished them as tokens of her own courage and Alex's love.
Chris put her boot against the daydreaming girl's chest and pushed her to the floor. The neck chain was not quite long enough to allow her head to touch the ground. Roxanne rolled over onto all fours. Joyous Day and Chris were standing at either side of her. A barbaric pair of leggings and the cold hilt of a throwing knife pressed against her cheeks. Staring up, she could see the leather (latigo and deerhide) that cupped their genitals, the fur-framed swell of Joy's cleavage, the multicolored pictures and shuriken harness that camouflaged Chris's breasts. She tried to turn her head and lick and kiss boots and feet, but Joy had a fist in her hair and held her head upright.
She forgot that there was such a word as pride ⦠or fear. She pleaded to be allowed to worship Chris's boots, to kneel and kiss Joy's feet. Chris spit on her. She cried out, then begged again. Joyous Day spit on her. She writhed at their feet, imprisoned between their thighs. “Open your mouth,” Chris said. She froze and opened her lips. A gob of spit landed on her lower lip. Then another, on her tongue.
She swallowed and wallowed in every drop of it, and her hips began to lift and sink in a rhythm that could only lead to further arousal and release, especially with the help of the bullwhip sawing into her slit. Before she could come, Joyous Day unfastened the chain from the rail and ordered her to crawl to Chris. She covered the boot with long strokes of her tongue, rubbed her face into the wet leather, and cried out with pleasure when Chris shoved her over to Joyous Day. She lavished ever more love and spit all over those lean brown feet, the slender curling toes. No one here would stop her or misunderstand. Why shouldn't she indulge herself, grovel and crawl? It was safe hereâsafe to abase herself, give herself away. She worshipped and adored these women who forced her to yield, these women who saw through her lies and evasions and took her captive and brought her to her knees. Her gratitude could never equal the value of what they had done for her. They made her beautiful because her beauty did not scare them away.
Joy chased her back to Chris's boots. “Take the polish off,” Chris growled at her. “Get it down to the bare leather, girl. I want those boots as wet as you are. Work out on 'em, show us what a good little boot-licker you are. Love 'em up. Show me how much you want to belong to me.”
Before she could begin to fill that order, Joy took her crawling, with the leash and with a handful of her hair, to the far end of the dungeon. She protested, and Joyous Day lifted her and threw her up against the cross. She was still gaping with amazement at the strength in that slender frame when Joy began to lace her to its arms. “We keep you face out t'face the music, my lovely girl,” Joy purred.
Chris was in front of Roxanne, pressing up against her, rubbing her leather pants and the cold shuriken (their edges barely perceptible) into Roxanne's naked flesh. She worked her tits hard, grabbing and twisting them, massaging them, and flicking and pinching the nipples. Each contact with her hands made a little explosion go off between Roxanne's legs. Her thighs were slippery. She glanced down at her arm and caught a glimpse of Joy threading rope through an eye bolt, binding her securely, then Chris took her chin in her hand and shoved a tongue that tasted of saki into her mouth. “Kiss me like you mean it,” she whispered. “Kiss me good and maybe I won't whip you.”
She tried, but Chris disengaged as Joy brought two long pieces of rope over her shoulders. Chris dragged the bullwhip off of Roxanne's body, coiled it and snapped it onto her belt, then buckled Roxanne's waist to the cross. “Let's leave this corset on her, it'll keep her from getting slivers,” she suggested to Joy.
“You don' want to give her the porcupine treatment, it's all the same to me, mon,” Joy said. “She gonna look like a porcupine herself soon enough. You and I seen somethin' go in the autoclave over there, look sharper than a serpent's tooth t'me.”
It took at least half an hour for Joy to lace the first set of ropes in diamonds around Roxanne's arms, torso, thighs, and calves. She stood, legs apart, on a narrow shelf at the foot of the cross. Chris checked the bindings and her circulation. She warned Roxanne to keep her knees relaxed and not locked into one position. After getting a thumbs-up from Chris, Joy took four short lengths of rope and vanished behind the cross.
Chris was murmuring words of love and damnation, keeping Roxanne firmly under their spell, playing with her clit and nipples. She gasped as Joyous Day looped more rope around the binding that was already in place, and cinched the web around one arm a little tighter. She could barely move anything except her fingers, toes, and head. Yet she was completely comfortable. Joyous Day cinched up the ropes on her other arm, then each of her legs. Wellâalmost comfortable. Chris's fingers on her clit were sheer heaven. Roxanne wished she would hurt her tits a little more. She wished Chris could reach her ass.
But Chris moved away, and Joyous Day took her place. “Say hello to me proper,” she said, and kissed her, growling. The cicatrices on her face looked like lion-whiskers.
“Hello,” Roxanne gasped when she could finally breathe.
Joy laughed, and slapped her hard. She cried out, and found she could not get away. “Are you sufferin'?” Joy asked sympathetically, and hit her again. Once again, she tried to jerk away, and could not escape. “Relax, Goldilocks. I and I ain't goin'
any
where,” Joy said with grim satisfaction, and turned toward the cart where she had sorted out her equipment.
Roxanne could see the gleam of metal, but no details. Her imagination conjured up scalpels, electrodes, forceps, thumb-screws, retractorsâall the instruments of a surgeon or a torturer. But what Joyous Day held up for her too see was nothing so terrible. It was a mundane wooden clothespin, not even painted black. She could not quite stifle a laugh at its appearance.
For a few seconds, Joyous Day joined her in mirth. Then she slapped her again. “You got a thing or three to learn about me, girl. Just wait around. You'll laugh out of the other side of that smart mouth.”
She began to place the clothespins on Roxanne's breasts. She worked slowly, methodically, grasping the flesh between her thumb and forefinger and working it for several seconds before closing the clip upon it. She stepped back to view her work several times, and occasionally repositioned a clip. “I wanna be mos' symmetrical,” she told Roxanne. “Mos' artistical.” Before long, both of Roxanne's breasts bristled with clothespins, and she was definitely feeling their cumulative effect.
Joy smiled at her and turned once more to the tray. She returned with a wicked-looking pair of alligator clips, connected by a heavy chain. “Tell me, you want to wear these for me?” she asked her.
Roxanne stared into those black eyes. Was her will strong enough to require this much of her? Joy's gaze never wavered. The answer was not in doubt. She sighed and shivered and gave her consent.
“Let the pain build up,” Joyous Day whispered to her. “Let the pain overtake you an' overwhelm you. Don't fight with her, because I want your pain.” She grasped Roxanne's left nipple and began to knead and twist it. “Give me your pain. Let it build until you cannot stand it without screamin', then give it back to me. Give it to me out of your open mouth. Sing to me. I will transform it into pleasure and feed it back to you. We will share in your pain, like a bottle of wine, and the more pain you take for me, the closer You and I will become. We will become. One.” The steel teeth closed on Roxanne's nipple, and she sobbed in agony. “Yeah, I know,” Joy soothed her. “Look at me. You make hurtin' look so pretty. I want your pain. Accept it for me, take it for me, and I will take you someplace you never ever been before. Trust me, Roxie, trust me.”
Joy's fingers worked on her other nipple, drew it into a hard wrinkled erection. Roxanne tried to move, to express her pleasure and pain by writhing on the cross, but the ropes silenced her dance. Joy allowed the other clamp to close slowly, hissing her satisfaction as it gripped Roxanne's flesh. She carefully lowered the heavy chain until it swung below Roxanne's breasts.
The pain was turning into a dull ache, the ache into a throb, and the throb in her nipples was timed to the throb in her cunt, so that it all became one pulse of ⦠pleasure? She tried to explain this to Joy, who nodded and lowered her hands to the clips. She began to play the clothespins like a keyboard. Most of the flesh caught in them had gone numb by now, and at the return of feeling, Roxanne moaned.
“Open your eyes, girl,” Joy insisted. “You got to do this wit' your eyes wide open. Look at me.” African eyes bored into hers. “Bright bird, sing for me,” Joy said, plucking at the wooden birds that bit her breasts. “Let me make you come while I set your breasts on fire. Hurt, baby? Yeah, I know it hurts. Hurts so good. Ride it out and feed the pain to me wit' your mouth wide open. Open it like your thighs. That's the way. Oh, honey, you'd be shakin' your sweet ass if you weren't tied down so good. Uh-huh. More? More? More, baby, always more for you where that come from. Oh, yes! Yes!”
Roxanne bit her lips. The orgasm was a shudder that ran over her skin. Her breasts trembled and the blush of her arousal spread across them, red as shame. Only here there was no shame, only a playful facsimile that was a spice to heighten her excitement. Joy let her rest for a few minutes, then began to work on her again.
âHow many of those goddamn things does she have over there?' Roxanne wondered. The supply seemed inexhaustible. Joy ran a line of clothespins up her breasts, on either side of her neck, and outlined her ears with them. Then she strung a line of them along her jaw, down the front of her throat under her chin. She ran more along Roxanne's armpits and down her sides, on the inside of her thighs, and across her belly. Wherever she could find enough loose flesh to give the clothespins purchase, she fastened them on.