Roxanne began to strain against the ropes. Joy had gotten so absorbed in positioning the clamps that she had forgotten to talk to her, keep her involved and excited. Only the force of her training and the look in Joy's eye kept Roxanne from saying the words that would release her from bondage.
Chris saw that her energy was flagging and moved in on them. She knelt by the foot of the cross and began to massage Roxanne's clit. Joy stepped back and called for a beer. One of the pack supplied her. She stood in silence, surveying her handiwork and Chris, patiently working Roxanne back up into a state of arousal and need. “Her feet are cold,” Chris said.
Joy moved behind the cross and loosened the secondary ropes that kept Roxanne cinched extra-tight to it. The tightly-trussed girl sighed with gratitude and moved a little, easing blood back into her cramped limbs. Chris's fingers moved between her lips, around her clit, confident and careful. “Shall I let her come?” Chris asked Joy, acknowledging her preeminence. Joy thought a minute, carefully assessing Roxanne's mindset and the degree of her fatigue.
“A little, yeah, that would be good,” she agreed.
Chris quickened her manipulations, rendered them a little more forceful, a little more demanding. Roxanne was possessed by a wave of indignation. Let her come “a little!” She wanted to come a
lot!
She wanted to have one final gigantic orgasm that would be so dramatic and beautiful that they would stop this whole thing and take her down. But Chris would not give her the strokes she needed to achieve complete release. Instead, she felt a flicker of pleasure run briefly through her body. It was over too soon, and left her wanting more. She told them both so, in no uncertain terms. They laughed at her indignation, and returned to drink beer and consider her future. She spat her frustration at them, and they did not even deign to slap her.
“She looks good,” Alex complimented Joy. “I don't see a single bald spot.”
Joy grinned. “In another minute, she'll start thinkin' about getting them off. And for her, to think a thing is to say it mos' loudly. She been played with clamps much?”
“Enough to know that they hurt worse when they come off than they do on.”
Joyous Day laughed until she coughed. Alex patted her gently on the back, then hugged her tight. “Hey, I think she's getting antsy.”
“Too bad,” Joy chuckled. “Never hurts to let them simmer. Makes those tough cuts get so tender they just fall apart in dere own gravy. Chrissie, you ready, Snake-Charmin' Woman?”
Chris uncoiled the bullwhip and playfully snapped the end of it at Joyous Day's feet. “Willing and able,” she replied. “Just waiting for you to get your jollies so I can get down to some serious sadism.”
“White Devil Girl, you think you know serious sadism, you ought to let me do you up in my transcendental clamps sometime. Those clothespins are nothing, honey, they are strictly Ted Mack's Amateur Hour. I got devices that would have you screaming for mercy in no time. Get you talking to the stars and walkin' on the moon.”
Chris laughed. “Oh, I'm sure you do. Didn't mean to cast aspersions on your technique. Listen, I'm such a chickenshit, I
have
to be a top.”
Joy nodded, laughed, and took a hit of beer. She handed the bottle back to Alex and walked over to Roxanne. “Hello, stranger,” she said.
Roxanne raised her head, smiled a little, and softly said, “Hello.”
Once more, Joy handled the pins as if they were the keys of some bizarre musical instrument. Roxanne cried out. Her head fell forward. “I can't take much more of this,” she warned.
“Oh, I think you can,” Joy replied. “I think you got no choice, workin' girl. We got to get a little music out of you now. You are a dancer. Surely you got music in your soul.” Roxanne cursed her. Joy hit her across the face. The slaps echoed in the black chamber. Finally she gave her the “music” she wanted. The high-pitched screams brought the pack running to witness her pain.
“No more,” Roxanne gasped. “Please. I'm sorry, I won't talk back to you. Please. No more.”
“That's a better attitude,” Joy said. “Do you much better, considerin' your true situation.” She tweaked at one or two of the clips. “So you want these off, I hear?”
Roxanne nodded, eyes closed tightly, her teeth gritted.
Joy put her lips close to her ear. While she talked, she touched the clips around Roxanne's face. They were only gentle taps, punctuating the speech she made.
“Roxie, listen here to me. You already have a lotta knowledge. I'm seein' that you sat in school long enough to know they wasn't going to tell you what you needed to survive. What is in books is ver' precious, but you cannot write down everything that you discover. There is all sorts of knowledge. The whole world speaks to us, constantly, but we mus' listen, not look with the eye that reads, but listen. You and I be not alone, the wise and powerful walk among us, the elder of days, an' if they want you to know their names, they ain't gonna write it down. They whisper it in your ear. An' they say, follow me. Follow me to freedom.
“Walk after me.” The clothespin at the top of Roxanne's left ear was removed. “The flesh itself cannot hold you. It is like a book, while you readin' it you think it be the whole wide world, but when you close it and turn aroun' that world disappear and another one open up all about you.
“Walk after me.” Joy continued to chant, but Roxanne lost the thread of what she was saying. She could see her mouth move and feel the sense of her speech, but it was as if her hearing had been turned off. As each pin was removed, she became lighter, giddy. She felt as if Joy's hand could pass straight through her. Then her hearing came on again, blaring, as Joy said, “I have placed you at the gate of truth, with pain and bondage. Now I say, shed the flesh and
see
yourself
.”
She was looking over Joy's shoulder. Joy was holding her fingertips half an inch from the temples of a girl who seemed to be asleep. A girl who was herself. Then the girl's eyes opened, and she spun around three times, like a leaf caught in the wind, and looked back into Joy's laughing mouth. It was a soundless laugh, a secret between the two of them. “Nex' time You an' I gonna walk a little further, Roxie,” Joy nodded. “Now you begin to see what can be done.” Her hands made the remaining clips on Roxanne's breasts ripple.
“Do you want these off, I hear?'
Roxanne nodded, still in a daze. She had to shut her eyes.
“Chrissie, my love,” Joy called without turning around, “she's all yours. She is ready t'be charmed by your pythons and cobras.”
When Roxanne lifted her head and opened her eyes, Chris was standing below her in a pool of colored light, waiting to be recognized. Her throwing stars and knives gleamed, and a dull sheen lay upon her leathers as well. She was utterly still, except for one hand, which trailed the whip. It coiled and uncoiled at her feet like the evil tail of a restless jungle cat.
“The light from the stained-glass window is falling on your body,” Chris told her. “It falls in patterns of pure color. You are elevated there for our adoration. The scapegoat, the scared victim. In you we find forgiveness, resurrection.”
Once again, Roxanne felt the pack draw together and summon its energy, its presence both protecting and imprisoning her. Chris stood before her as their emissary, the lens through which they would observe and ignite her. She began to pray that she would not fail them. Let it not be too much, let her endure ⦠and above all, let it begin quickly! For under her thin shell of resolve was a raging flood of panic that threatened to crack her self-control and leave her sniveling and disowning them all so that Alex would set her free.
Chris took a step back, scuffed the floor with her toe, squinted at her victim, and centered on herselfâher balance, her judgment, her skill. The whip sailed toward Roxanne. The tip of it coiled around a clothespin, plucked it off, and deposited it at Chris's feet. Roxanne was too astonished by her skill to complain about the pain it gave her.
Chris blew the air out of her lungs, shook tension out of her shoulders, and started to swing the bullwhip in a steady rhythm. Roxanne found her voice again, and began to grunt and shriek as the clips came off in rapid succession. The floor at Chris's feet was littered with pins, many of them broken. The room was completely silent except for the crack of the whip and the cries of the victim suspended on the cross. Roxanne
felt
the pack absorb her cries and her aborted attempts to struggle. The assembled dominatrices fed on her pain, her violent disordered breathing, the patches of red that were springing out on her skin, the sweat that dampened her scalp until her hair clung in wet strands to her skull. They were nourished and awed by the sight of her. Her helplessness was so voluptuous that it infuriated them. She trembled for herself, victim-without-end.
Roxanne abruptly became aware that Chris had stopped. There was no reason to scream. Shamefaced, she fell silent. Were they all gone? Was it over?
“Easy,” Chris said to her. “Ssh. Relax. Easy, now.”
Roxanne felt her muscles flow into relaxation. She had not realized how tense she was.
The whip was too quick to see. Another series of stabbing pains invaded her flesh.
There was another pause. She glared suspiciously at Chris, determined to anticipate the resumption of the game. Chris mimicked her pout. “You trying to scare me?” she demanded. “Maybe make me feel sorry for you? Boo-hoo, you poor little thing you. That was nothing. Clothespins come off in a second. But those alligator clips on your nipples ⦠those are tricky. Sometimes takes me two or three tries.”
Roxanne choked on her own tongue. “You can'tâ” she managed.
Chris began to swing the whip.
Roxanne had never screamed so hard in her whole life. It rang and echoed in her ears, like the roar that follows an explosion of a battery of cannon.
“No?” Chris said, pretending mild surprise. The whip was back on her belt. “No? Then make me an offer I can't refuse.”
Roxanne began to shake her head so hard that saliva flew from her lips and hit the arms of the cross. She was incapable of speech or thought.
“Pull it together, babe,” Chris threatened her. Roxanne heard the muted laughter of the pack. Her silence, her inability to piece one word to another, shamed her and drove her further into panic. She finally fell back on the ineffectual offer of a desperate bottom.
“Anything but that,” she whispered. “Do anything to me but that.” Then she hung her head, insofar as her rigid bonds permitted even that gesture, and absorbed the silence that greeted her as just punishment for her lack of originality, her lack of fire, her admission of failure and fear. She despised herself utterlyâfirst of all because her offer was a bluff. She had not meant it. It was completely insincere. Chris could (she was sure) come up with a dozen other things she would hate and fear just as much.
There was also the inescapable fact that she was in a bondage too complete, too carefully constructed, to allow escape. Therefore, the packâor Chris, as their delegateâcould literally do anything they wished to her. Any mercy they showed her was a gift. She had no position to bargain from. Chris knew this, and had decoyed her into a game that only Chris could win. Either the sentence would be carried out anywayâthus demonstrating Roxanne's lack of power and complete helplessnessâor another, more terrible one would be enforced in its place.
Finally, Roxanne knew that the ropes and clips were there only to save her face, to give her an illusion of dignity that would make her more pliant beneath the pack's will. Should any of them choose to do so, she could be loosed from all physical restraints, and still she would not be able to move from the spot without permission.
But Chris appeared to have taken her seriously. Chris seemed to think that she did, indeed, have something left of sufficient value to buy herself a little time. Joyous Day walked over to Chris and offered her “a funny cigarette, mon.” They contemplated their victim together, turning over her offer, finding something in it that terrified Roxanne.
“Since you don't want me to whip you on top of the clips, I'll whip you without them,” Chris said. “Joy, take them off.”
Joy did not hurt her. It was the return of her own blood to the nipples that caused the pain. A white-hot needle seemed to pierce the tip of each breast. Her cunt had not troubled her for some time, but it began to ache now, demanding some attention, some reassurance that it still existed. Joy stroked her as if she were a pet that needed soothing. Roxanne moaned in gratitude, and made useless attempts to rotate her pelvis against the knowing hand.
Her thighs were wet, and Joy ran her fingers over the slick surface. Most dominants are fond of confronting their victims with their response to punishment and insult. There is no defense and no denial possible when one tastes the liquid evidence of lust that is flowing unhampered between one's legs. Roxanne told herself she did not care, it did not matter, and she tried to lure Joy's hand back up onto that sensitive point. But the more needy she became, the lighter the touch became, and the further it wandered from the place that cried out to be caressed. Finally, Joy withdrew her hand and withdrew herself and left Roxanne alone with Chris and her signal whip.
This one was a third of the length of the bullwhip. Roxanne admired the sleight of hand that had distracted her from this important alteration in the pieces of the game. She would have covered her face, would have turned away, tried to shield herselfâbut her arms and legs were immobile, pinned, of no use. So she adopted the best defense availableâshe began to erase herself. She began to give up the idea that she had anything to hide or any right to demand pleasure instead of pain. She began to crumble herself at the edges, fade into the air, render herself will-less and invisible.