Safe Word: An Erotic S/M Novel (12 page)

She gave me about five minutes, and then she kicked me to a
standing position so that she could take the tail out, tossing it
into a basket, I guessed for an assistant to deal with. She took
my leash out of her pocket, reattaching it to my collar.

"You'll get down on your knees when we go into the
house," she said.

The good news, she told Mr. Constant, was that I had some
talent as a pony. It had taken me a while to find my stride, she
added, but she knew how to get to it now, and we could work
on that. Yes, maybe even train me to race.

He nodded, pleased, from behind a big, scarred, old
wooden desk. It was a small, surprisingly plain office, adjoining a bigger workroom. I'd seen Stefan in the other room,
behind a computer, as well as some other youngish people,
also at computers, or at phones and faxes. A dark, slender
woman with big almond eyes had looked up curiously from
her screen for a moment, before Mr. Constant closed the door
between the rooms. The only luxurious thing about the office
was the French windows behind me, leading to a long deck.
We were on the cliff side of the house, Mr. Constant peering
down at me against a wide expanse of darkening, late afternoon sky over the sea.

But the bad news, she continued, was that except when I
was harnessed up as a pony, I was horribly spoiled.

"I'll show you," she said, and commanded me through
the series of presentations I'd done before lunch, but this time
with a running commentary to Mr. Constant. I was slow here, she pointed out, self-indulgent there. "And look at this, will
you," she continued, "she seems to think she's being touched
and examined for her own pleasure." I stopped listening
about halfway through, completing the exercise in a haze
of shame and a shimmer of tears, kneeling up and hanging
my head miserably.

"She practically expects you to say please and thank
you," Annie concluded. So any training she could give me
would be a waste, on top of those bad habits.

Mr. Constant looked disappointed. "You're not going to
let me have her tonight, are you?" he asked.

"Well, you're the boss," she said.

"But you're the professional," he answered. "I rely on
your judgment. What do you want to do with her?"

"Lend her out for a week to all the people who work
around here. The stables, the garage, the kitchen. She doesn't
understand any Greek, which is good. Let her figure out what
they want from body language, gestures, snaps of the finger.
They'll let her know if she gets it right. And if she gets it
wrong....

She picked up a basket from a low shelf, retrieving some
hardware from it. I felt her attaching something to the ring
at my neck. A slender chain, two chains. And at the end of
each, an implement of punishment. From one, a cat-o'-nine-
tails, and from the other, a switch made of a bunch of twigs
bundled together. The chains were long, perhaps four feet.
The whips would dangle on the floor, even if I were standing.

"I want them to be able to get a good swing," she
explained to Mr. Constant. She put a leather belt around my
waist and tucked the doubled-up chains in it. She nudged me to my feet, so that he could see how well the arrangement
worked. The cold, jingling chains wouldn't get in the way of
my walking or crawling. And if someone wanted to punish
me, the whips were easily accessible, the chains easy to pull
out from the belt. She demonstrated, once, with the bunch of
twigs against my ass. And yes, she could definitely get a good,
painful, stinging swing.

Mr. Constant looked thoughtful.

"You're obviously right," he said. He turned for a
moment, looking silently toward the door behind him. "But
let's compromise, what do you say?" he continued, turning
back to us. "Before I send her away for a week, I'd like to see
her thoroughly whipped."

Annie shrugged. "That's cool. Out on the deck? Come
on, Carrie."

And I've always wondered if Mr. Constant had actually wanted Stefan to do that whipping, and not Annie. And
whether Annie suspected the same thing, dragging me out
to the deck as quickly as she did. And whether Mr. Constant
was surprised by how eager I seemed to be, since-as he'd
observed-I wasn't one of those pain slaves. But I knew that if
I had to bear it, I wanted it to be from Annie and not Stefan.

Not that it wasn't completely awful-the most workmanlike whipping I'd ever received, utterly devoid of rancor, or of
any emotion, really: pure technique, based on her knowledge
of what her boss liked, and her professional sense of how to
make me weep and writhe and scream out over the silent,
late afternoon sea. And she'd only get better at it, I thought,
as she came to understand me better, after I was purged of
my bad habits, and she could begin training me in earnest. I
thanked her profusely, through my sobs, after she'd detached the rings in my cuffs from a hook thoughtfully mounted in a
beam above the deck's railing.

"The stables first, I think," Mr. Constant was saying.

Which was where I began. On my knees that afternoon, in
the dirty straw of a real stable, one that held horses. Two men
worked there, an older one, in a tweed cap, and a younger
one, with curly black hair and stone-washed jeans. They kept
me with them on a leash as they fed and watered the horses,
and when they got really busy, they'd loop the leash over
some nail or hook.

It's a pretty labor-intensive business, taking care of
thoroughbred horses, and a very matter-of-fact one. They
worked quietly, the older guy whistling tunelessly, the younger
one breaking in with a comment or question from time to
time. And every once in a while, one of them would break off
from his work, and decide he needed to fuck my mouth or
my ass. And, no, I couldn't tell very well which they wanted,
so I often got pushed or slapped or whipped-they'd usually
use a riding crop or something that was hanging around for
the horses, but they also liked the bundle of twigs that Annie
had provided for them.

They left at dinner time, when a woman in a black dress
and kerchief came by with some food in a pail for me. I'd been
tethered next to a pile of straw, with a rough blanket on it, and
I figured that I was finished for the day. But they each came
back after dinner-in fact the younger guy brought a friend,
and the older guy a bottle of wine. They laughed to see that
they'd both had the same idea, which, I guess, was to try out
what they hadn't had time for during the workday. To experiment with how I could be trussed up in the horses' leather harnesses. To take turns fucking my mouth while I raised and
lowered my cunt over the pommel of a western saddle. To rig
up odd and original ways of suspending me so that both of
them could fuck me at the same time. They played until late
into the night, finally leaving me exhausted on my blanket,
and coming back early the next morning, to get as much out of
me as they could, before passing me along to the goatherds.

Well, I guess anybody would have appreciated a quick
release from the rigors of the workday. Mr. Constant seemed
to be a tough boss; I had to hustle to be available for the quick
breaks they allowed themselves between chores. But there'd
be sudden bursts of whimsy and humor, ingenuity and inspiration as well. I developed a new view of the world of objects:
Big barrels or troughs were good for upending me over; long
tools could be thrust up into me, for comic effect. Anything
that tied or buckled would, of course, be used to bind me
into clumsy and painful positions. It was all simple physics, I
thought: gravity, friction, the collision of bodies in space, the
primitive technologies regulating the expenditure of energy.
I learned to move quickly, and to be alert for signals-who'd
want what next, and how I could keep from getting punished
for being too slow on the uptake.

They'd wash out my cunt or mouth or asshole when it
was too cruddy for anybody to want to fuck, but otherwise,
at least in the stables and goatpens and the garage, I crawled
around smeared with shit and motor oil. But of course I had to
be scrubbed down when I got to the laundry room (which was
a sweaty treasure house of cunning bondage apparatus). At
which point I was also passed from men to black-clad women,
who were a lot more difficult, with their disapproving looks,
and, as it turned out, very exacting standards. They'd spank or fuck me with just about anything, too: mops, brooms, wooden
spoons, those wide paddles you use for taking pizza out of the
oven. Well, that was in the kitchen, which is where the week
ended up, and where there were also a few younger women,
in denim skirts and striped T-shirts, who laughed a lot when I
made them come, and made the older ladies very angry.

"Let's go back to the hotel," Jonathan said, putting down his
coffee cup abruptly and stubbing out his cigarette. Gotcha, she
thought.

They'd walked a block or two when he stopped in front of a
hardware store. "Wait a minute," he said thoughtfully, studying
the window display. "I need to buy something."

"But I thought we agreed.... "

He laughed. "Trust me on this one."

And when he came back out, I couldn't tell what was in the
small white plastic bag tucked into the pocket of his jacket.

"What is it?" I demanded.

"Dessert," he said. "A second dessert. Wipe that speck of
whipped cream off the tip of your nose. And come on, hurry
up, don't dawdle." He took my hand and set off at a rapid clip,
leading me the couple of blocks to our hotel and up the stairs.

Well, I thought, I'd been right-it had definitely been
his kind of story. He slammed the door behind him, and we
tried to pull our clothes off, as quickly as we could. Which
meant, of course, that we kept fumbling, tripping, cursing to
ourselves. Finally, though, he stood behind me, running his hands down my front. I leaned back against him and he whispered in my ear, "Tell me again. I like to hear you say it. He
lent you to people in the..."

"Stables," I breathed, "the stables." I arched my back so
that I could feel his cock against my ass. He had one hand
on my cunt, while the other moved up, over my belly, my
breasts, my neck, my face. I kissed the palm of his hand.

"And they dragged you through filthy straw," he said,
"dragged you after them on a leash and when they snapped
their fingers..."

I reached behind me and pulled his hips forward, while
I pushed against him as hard as I could. "When they snapped
their fingers," I said, "I had to figure out whether they wanted
to fuck my mouth or my ass."

"Oh, your ass," he said, kissing my ears and the back of my
neck, "no question about it-definitely your ass this afternoon."

He nudged me over to the bed, and I lay down across
it, on my belly. He kissed my neck again, and then he moved
his mouth down, tracing my spine, kissing as he went. "Keep
talking," he said.

"But it wasn't just the stables," I said, softly, happily.
His mouth traveled lower, following the curve of my ass. "It
was also the garage, you know, on the greasy concrete floor,
my face almost in the oil pan...."

"And the goatpens and gardeners' sheds, and the laundry,
and the kitchen," he whispered, "Don't forget the kitchen."
He bent his head again, planting kisses on the backs of both
my thighs.

"Yes," I said quickly. I figured I'd better talk quickly, to
keep him quiet-to keep his mouth where it belonged. "Yes,
they were very strict in the kitchen, but, you know, it was in the goat shed where they really fucked my ass a lot...." He
was licking the backs of my knees. "And they used to like to
whip me with that little bundle of sticks," I continued, "the
one that was hanging down from my collar by a chain." He
spread my legs apart and kissed the insides of my thighs. And
then he got up on his knees behind me.

He snapped his fingers.

I scrambled to my knees, arching my back, my breasts
crushed against the bed, my arms in front of me, my hands
anchoring me, gripping the edge of the mattress.

He slapped my ass sharply. Each side.

"Oh, yes," he repeated, "most definitely your ass."

And then he bent over me, and oh yes no question most
definitely fucked my ass.

We were both pretty comatose afterward, lying sprawled
across the bed for quite a while. And then just kissing, idly
and luxuriously, for quite a while longer. Our clothes, which
we'd pulled off so clumsily, were lying everywhere around
the room. Lascivious disarray-the phrase slipped into my
head, probably from something I'd read in my early teens.
I liked the way it sounded. I drifted contentedly in and out
of sleep on it, ignoring Jonathan's increasing fidgetiness.
The messiness was making him crazy. He sighed unhappily,
ostentatiously, while I pretended not to notice-and finally
he gave up, sighed one last huge pitiful sigh, and pulled himself out of bed to hang up our stuff in the armoire.

And when he came back to bed he was holding that
package from the hardware store. I'd forgotten about it. What
had he said back there? Something about dessert....

He took a little metal whisk out of the bag. Like something you'd use to made an omelet. Did we have a hotplate in
the room? I wondered dimwittedly. Were there eggs, milk?

But he was holding it wrong, I thought, my sex-benumbed
mind struggling for coherence. He was holding it upside down.
That was odd. He held it delicately, his long fingers around the
slender loops of wire, his eyes mischievous in his deadpan face.
I was still too tired to move, lying stretched out on my back,
too dazed and astonished to do anything at all as he moved the
handle up my cunt, rested the edge gently against my clit. And
then, well, I guess he started hitting the loops of wire with the
finger of his other hand. And the whisk's cool, smooth aluminum handle began to vibrate against me, in my cunt, gently
and beautifully, playing its music of the spheres, turning me
into a glass harp, a tuning fork, for that long, long, timeless
instant he kept jingling the wires. Ahhh....-