Marketplace (35 page)

“Yes, yes, Chris,” she
answered quickly. “I understand!”

“Then you may
go.”

She backed away from him,
and with one last glance at Brian, she left the room. Chris waited
until the door was closed, and then turned to Brian, who crouched
in the corner, four good stripes on his ass and two already getting
faint. The majordomo walked slowly back to his desk and put things
away for a while, shuffling papers and shutting the computer down.
Brian remained where he was, in silence.

“You know,” Chris said,
leaning back in his chair, “you’re probably the worst one here. You
really think that we’re fooled by your ‘successful slave’ attitude,
and that all the things you once heard about ‘bottom pride’ and
‘top’s disease’ applies here. You and Sharon have read far too
much, both fiction and theory, and you’ve never really
lived
any of
it.”

Brian bit his lip, but
didn’t move.

“Go to bed, Brian,” Chris
sighed. “Claudia will explain to the others why you can’t join them
in their usual sarcastic, antagonistic, or mindless remarks. And if
she doesn’t, you’ll just have to endure their questions about why
you’ve curled up on the floor next to your bed. Sleep well, little
pet.”

Chapter
Seventeen

Claudia did indeed explain
Brian’s silence and his strange sleeping habit to the other slaves
when they met at lights out, and his predicament sobered them all.
The morning was even worse, as he crawled to the bathroom as they
walked, crawled to the dining room where they took breakfast, and
ate on the floor, from a round bowl that Cook had prepared for
him.

Of course, there wasn’t a
lot of time to give him sympathy. Breakfast had to be served to the
owners, and the dishes cleared away, and by the time he crawled out
of the back door to head for the stables, everyone was too busy
with work or assignments of their own to give him much thought. And
besides, the cane that Claudia suddenly carried around was far more
mysterious and disconcerting. She had refused to say anything about
it. And just as new but slightly less frightening was Robert’s cock
ring, which made him look bigger and more impressive. He too,
refused to elaborate on where it came from.

When Sharon went through
her half-hearted invitations for oral sex, both Robert and Claudia
demurred as usual, and Chris didn’t push the issue for a change.
The only thing he did was give one short glance in Robert’s
direction, which for some reason made the big man blush. But then,
he just shrugged and dismissed them to their chores and
assignments.

By early afternoon, Brian’s
silence seemed to fall on all of them. His presence back in the
house was a constant reminder of the kind of behavior any one of
them could be ordered to emulate, or worse, live by. When Chris put
little yellow ribbons in Brian’s hair, situated to as to be
approximately where one would decorate a poodle or other show dog,
the other three blushed for him. And when Claudia was ordered to
give Brian her first six stripes, for failing to empty bedroom
trash bins fast enough, she cried even as she swung the rattan.
Chris wasn’t satisfied, and had her give Brian another
six.

On the second day of his
sentence, a dance instructor arrived, and Sharon started formal
training in several different styles of dance. She was paired with
Robert for practice, and was told that she would be expected to be
excellent at following leads and mastering the art of looking like
it was all effortless. One pair of heels was returned to her to
dance in, plus a pair of boots to practice C&W styles. When she
asked why, without thinking, Chris smiled and told her that the
Marketplace had a lot of buyers from the American southwest, and
that was her question for the day.

Brian didn’t get any
questions this week. But on his second afternoon of being a pet, he
got a long, cigar-shaped plug inserted into his rear, with a
profusion of ribbons extending from the other end, suggesting a
curly, metallic, purple tail. It matched the little purple bells
that Chris had hung from his nipple rings, which tinkled and rang
with every breath. They shook like hell, giving off a constant
jingling sound when Claudia screwed up her courage and placed six
“real” stripes on his ass while Chris watched. She had missed with
one of them and cut him terribly across the soft part of the leg
where the thigh touches the bottom of the ass, but Chris shrugged
and told her to just do that one again. When she was finished,
Chris told her to re-insert the “tail,” which she did with much
reluctance and more than a little distaste.

The bad stripe, the lowest
one, hurt the most. It was also the first one that showed blood. As
Claudia cleaned the cane, she cried again, but softly, so no one
would hear.

* * * *

“Actually, I’m enjoying
this,” Sharon said cruelly, looking directly at Brian, who was
already curled up in his blanket on the floor. “It’s a lot quieter
in here with the fairy motor mouth being a good little puppy dog.”
She made little barking noises at him and he pulled the blanket
tighter around his shoulders.

“Aww, the little puppy
doesn’t have any wise-ass stuff to say,” she mocked. “Isn’t it just
too bad, he can’t tell us all what to do!”

“Why don’t you leave him
alone?” Robert asked, annoyed. “Don’t you think he has a hard
enough time as it is?”

“Oh, shut up, sissy boy,”
she snapped back at him. “I don’t have to listen to you. Just
because you’re licking Chris’s butt hole so deep your, like, nose
is as brown as dirt doesn’t mean a thing to me, OK? You’re nothing
but a big, fat wimp, even Claudia can whip your ass, and see if she
doesn’t start to next week!”

Robert glared back at her.
“You know, I’m tired of your insults,” he said. His voice was so
strong that Brian poked his head out of the blanket to watch.
“You’re not exactly the best of show here, you know. You work out
in the damn
stable,
for crying out loud! Even Brian didn’t start out there his
first week! And they’ve never bothered to rotate you inside, like
the rest of us. And Master Grendel and Mistress Alexandra don’t
even see you privately except to test you on how much you’re
learning or to lend you to someone else! I even have to teach you
how to talk like a normal human being! So I don’t know where you
get off insulting any of us!” He swept his arm around the
room.

Sharon stared at him in
partial amazement. She wasn’t the only one. Claudia, who was tying
the cane to the steel frame of the bed (lacking anywhere else to
put it at night), silently cheered him.

But Sharon recovered
quickly. “Don’t try to pull this bullshit with me, you, you,
eunuch!
”
She spat out the word triumphantly. “That’s what
you are, you know. That’s all you’re good for, because no one needs
straight guy slaves, OK? No one! So you’re looking at a life of
being big and stupid and, and you’ll be lucky if they cut your dick
off, because it doesn’t work anyway!”

He glared at her for
another moment, and then dropped his head and turned away. He shot
a glance of sympathy in Brian’s direction, only to see Brian give
him a thumbs-up sign and a wink, and then they both drew covers
around themselves.

I don’t need this, Robert
thought, snuggling down. I was so thrown by what happened to Brian
I was a mess tonight, even though it was only Mistress Alexandra
who could hear me. Maybe I need to have people to laugh at before I
can say anything right. He snickered a little at the thought of
trotting out his fellow slaves in assorted costumes just so he
could release some tension before performing. Then, he sighed and
rubbed his bearded cheek against the pillow.

Funny, he thought, as he
got comfortable, I feel a lot better now that I’ve told her off.
Maybe she’ll leave me alone now. Oh, no such luck, I’ll have to
deal with her in the morning, when she... when she...

* * * *

“Please let me lick your
big, fat balls and nibble on your cock,” Sharon begged, her eyes
lost in a sea of boredom. Chris stood by noting down her exact
words for Grendel to review.

“Hmm,” Robert said,
spreading his legs. He was still seated at the breakfast table.
Since it had been his time to serve the owners, he was eating last.
He peeled an orange and took a slice to eat, and then looked down
at his lap. Then he looked down at Sharon, who had issued her
offer/request from a kneeling position. “Well, since you asked so
nicely, how can I refuse?”

Sharon nodded and started
to rise before what he said got through to her. She stared at him,
her mouth opening in shock.

“Good,” Chris murmured.
“Sharon, go to it.”

Sharon drew in one hissing
breath and let it out in a hot rush over Robert’s cock. It felt
great! He slid down further in the seat and spread his legs wider.
As he watched the beautiful woman bend her neck and begin to lick
at him, the tendrils of pleasure ran all the way through his body,
down to his toes! Now tell me what a sissy I am, he thought,
relaxing as she washed the flat of her tongue over his shaft. Now
tell me anything, you selfish little harridan!

She licked around the
bulbous head, and then took it into her mouth, opening wide to
receive it, and he lifted his hips to stuff more in. He hadn’t felt
anything like this since the early months of his marriage, when he
and his wife were trying so hard to fulfill each other’s perceived
fantasies. He sighed as she pushed herself forward as far as she
could and her throat contracted around the head. Now say anything,
my little spoiled slave girl, he thought vindictively. Where the
hell did you get off acting like you were my mistress? I don’t have
to listen to you any more!

And then, his thoughts of
mean-spiritedness faded away under the onslaught of her lips and
tongue. She was so good! How did he not appreciate this before? As
she pulled away and stuck her tongue up, between his balls and his
cock, making them press around the constricting band of the leather
cock ring, he swelled almost painfully, and moaned his
pleasure.

Brian, from his vantage
place on the floor, was staring in open- mouthed amazement.
Robert’s cock, engorged and bound by the cock ring, was all of his
wet dreams come true. Fat and limp, it had held promise. In its
glory, it was nothing less than art. Brian’s mouth watered, and he
had to look away.

Sharon returned to the cock
and took it back in her mouth and began to suck in earnest. She was
having a little difficulty, which Chris seemed to be amused by, but
she kept with it, wetting her lips down with kittenish licks from
her pink tongue, and then diving in again for another taste. The
cock-ring became genuinely uncomfortable, but its pressure provided
a kind of pain that Robert enjoyed, and he gasped, throwing his
head back.

“On her!” Chris
warned.

And Robert heard and
reached out to grasp Sharon’s bobbing head. As his orgasm gathered
up in him, he pulled her back away from him and grabbed his cock
with the other hand. His come came in heavy, fast spurts which shot
directly into Sharon’s face, against her cheeks and mouth, and then
against her chin and down her throat. She grimaced, but couldn’t
pull away from him as he milked his cock of its last fluids and
shook it at her, sending a few more drops to land on her breasts
and belly.

Brian felt like applauding.
Instead, he barked, feeling foolish and silly but suddenly full of
energy. Claudia didn’t know whether to be horrified or amused. And
Sharon dragged a napkin down from the table to wipe herself
off.

Chris calmly turned his
attention back to the schedule, and the day began. And although she
was hostile and glared at him all through her lesson, Sharon didn’t
say a cross word to Robert all day. Unfortunately, his euphoria was
not as long-lived as he would have liked. In the late afternoon,
Alexandra called upon him to report to her and Grendel about how
the lessons with Sharon were going. Robert was reluctant to tell
them that he thought Sharon was a lost cause, so he hesitated and
stammered, and lost track of what he was saying, and made a fool of
himself. Worst of all, his voice scaled up and he called Alexandra
“mistress.” Grendel stepped into the hall and grabbed Brian, who
was crawling by on his way to see if the towels in the laundry were
dry, and kicked him into the library, where he took a very nasty
beating that Robert had to watch.

And the only sounds that
Brian could make were animal-like whines and whimpers. Robert
fought back tears, and wanted to crawl out of the room himself, but
he left with only a warning to do better.

* * * *

That evening, Brian arrived
on his hands and knees at the kitchen, where he was told Chris was
waiting for him. Chris was alone, and it was late. The smell of
fresh-brewed coffee competed with the scent of the night-blooming
flowers planted in the rear gardens. Chris had the back door open,
and there was a newspaper on the kitchen work table. He beckoned to
Brian and pointed at the floor beside him, and Brian moved to the
correct spot and waited.

Chris finished turning the
pages and casually dropped one hand to rub Brian on the side of his
head, near his ear. Brian shook at the caress, and a whimper came
from his throat.