The Business of Pleasure (24 page)

Bryant took her chin and angled it up – at last, she was permitted to look at her newly-minted masters. She essayed a tentative smile, and then gasped with shock as Collins took a firm grip of one breast and applied a silver clover clamp to the nipple. Charlotte had never quite understood the appeal of these devices; her breasts were sensitive and the spring-loaded jaws of the clamps caused her to suck in her breath and use all her powers of mental displacement to pretend they weren’t there. Both Collins and Bryant loved the fierce, eye-rolling cast of concentration this gave to her face, and used them all the more for it, naturally. The first one fixed, its twin was pincered into place, causing Charlotte to vent an involuntary whimper of pain. She disappeared to the place inside her head that denied the sharp pressure and embraced the submission, letting her swimming eyes fixate on Bryant and his eternal indulgent smile.

He kept his finger beneath her chin when Collins placed a hand beneath her armpit and hauled her to her feet.

‘Let’s show you off,’ he said under his breath, spinning her round to face the crowd. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Miss Charlotte Steele, the possession and plaything of Mr Jeremy Bryant and Mr Collins.’ Charlotte, despite the burning heat that was now seeping into every fibre of her being, suppressed a grin at Collins’s avoidance of pronouncing his full name.

Bryant left her briefly, only to return with the velvet hassock under one arm and a solid wooden block under the other. He placed the block in front of Charlotte, and then set the hassock to its right hand side, indicating that she was to kneel and rest her stomach on the block, presenting a profile view of her upthrust bottom and dangling breasts to the appreciative crowd.

Charlotte did not need her wealth of experience to tell her what was coming next. The only thing she could not predict now was the duration and intensity of the whipping – and which of her masters would be first to flex his whip hand.

Collins opened the batting with a strap; a good, supple, well-oiled specimen that laid thick red stripes across the broadest section of her bottom, one after the other, sometimes overlaying each other, engendering a slow and inescapable burn that had her twitching rather more than she wanted to be, given the unpleasant consequences sudden movement had for her nipples.

As always when experiencing public chastisement, Charlotte gave herself up to it, gorging her psyche on the spectacle she must be making, opening herself up to the shame and humiliation, wishing that everybody in the whole world could be here to witness her reddening bottom and the telltale glisten between her thighs. She sometimes thought she would not be satisfied until her spread legs and roasted rump were advertised on billboards across the world, until she could not walk down the street without sly glances and pointed remarks about how much she needed everything she got. Charlotte let herself sink deeper and deeper into fantasy, imagining queues of people called upon to spank her and penetrate her with sex toys, imagining satellite broadcasts of her having her well-whipped bottom fucked by anyone who cared to pass by, while Collins plied the strap over and over again, its satisfying slap cracking out through the ancient crypt.

She was given a minute to catch her breath before Bryant stepped up with a French martinet. The effect was of a different type and magnitude; where the strap had been a relentless juggernaut of fire, the knotted ends of the flogger sent a multiplicity of stinging sparks across her skin in a way she found strikingly pleasant. She sighed and relaxed her muscles, pushing her bottom out, inviting a stronger swing, a faster swish, more and more of the little firework pops that lit her up.

The lashes stopped earlier than Charlotte had expected them to, and she felt Bryant’s hand swiping itself up between her legs, finding the sweet swell of her clit amongst the heat and wetness that surrounded it and giving it a shocking little pinch.

‘She’s so wet!’ he proclaimed to the crowd. ‘She’s loving it! Just as well – we aren’t done yet. But before we continue … an interlude.’ Bryant’s hand was replaced with a length of something cold and rubbery that stroked the inner side of her thighs, gathering up the dew from her skin. When it reached her ripe snatch, it began to vibrate with a low purr, sending its radiations through her, shockwaves and aftershocks, flowing from skin to nerve until her epicentre was pulsing in time with it.

She was moaning and gyrating on the instrument, the pain in her nipples and the fire on her backside forgotten now in the face of this deeper craving.

‘Oh, she wants it,’ chuckled Bryant, and he drew lazy circles around the opening of her cunt, watching it contract and spasm, trying to suck the rounded end of the vibrator inside. ‘She wants it badly. Should I let her have it? What do you think?’

To Charlotte, the echoing laughter and chatter of the crowd came from afar, like waves crashing on a beach, indistinct and fragmented outside the enormity of her lust.

The audience must have been on her side, for the next thing Charlotte was aware of was the thick round-ended baton travelling tantalisingly up inside her, sometimes stopping for a slow revolution, sometimes teasingly pulled out a fraction, until it was inside her, vrooming away, causing her walls to quake prior to the grand tumbling-down that would come soon, and then again, and again. ‘Hold it in, Charlotte,’ Bryant instructed, and she clamped her muscles down on the shaft, knowing that there would be a penalty if it slipped out of her. The vibrator ensconced, Bryant then fitted a moulded buzzer to her clit. Within seconds of its activation, she was begging to be allowed release.

‘No, permission is not granted,’ said Bryant and a sound of animal frustration howled from her mouth. Pain would be welcome now, and she tried to concentrate on her nipples, although they were almost numb from the ferocious grip of the clamps. Perhaps her bottom, but the heat soon subsided when she wasn’t being actively dealt with. No, she had nothing to think about but the maddening invasion of her cunt and clit, driving her to certain disobedience unless she could … unless she could …

Ah. Oh. Yes. Mercy. Collins had had mercy on her. An unusual definition of mercy, perhaps, for the form it took was a cane stroke. Its swift lightning strike almost caused her to lose the vibrator from within her, but she managed to keep suitably clenched even as she hissed out her surprise, tensing in preparation for that intense afterglow that made caning so memorable, and such a favourite recreation of hers. The little clit stimulator buzzed away merrily, but it was no match for the searing majesty of the rattan, and it was with warped gratitude that Charlotte breathed out the first count.

‘One, sir. Thank you, sir.’

The mob was closing in now, curious eyes feasting on her ritual humiliation. She kept her eyes closed and thought about breathing, about the patterns of breathing, about the way it filled her lungs and made her chest rise and fall. She visualised it every way she could, every trick in the book to take her mind off her constant bubbling-under of orgasm. Even the cane strokes weren’t taking the edge off now, but she was past the pain, flying towards the pleasure through the starry, foggy void of subspace. She belonged to Collins, belonged to Bryant, belonged to everybody, took this flogging and this exposure and this manipulation of her sex for everyone, for her own good, for the pleasure of anyone. She submitted.

‘I submit,’ she whispered under her breath before calling out, ‘Six! Six, sir! Thank you, sir,’ and then the permission was granted and she screamed, bucking and jingling, threatening to collapse on her side with the flogging block clutched to her middle while the climax continued to shred her body to ribbons.

Afterwards, she was so flaccid and drained she could have slept, but she knew there was more to come. She was glad of the respite afforded by her display: still bent over the flogging block with her thighs spread wide, she lay calm and still while every member of the audience paraded past her, allowed to lay a hand on her hotly striped rear and her still-drenched quim in tribute to her and her masters. This took a long time – Lady Markham had not exaggerated the guest numbers – so she had time to recover a little of her breath and a lot of her shame, sparking her arousal back into life as she contemplated her position, with the help of Collins and Bryant, who sat in her line of vision, sipping urbanely at glasses of champagne.

The finale of this section of the ceremony was provided by Charlotte, knees to the hassock once again, accepting Collins’s favourite plug into her stretched arse and having her wrists tied behind her back. Thus incapacitated, she was to drain first Bryant and then Collins of the masterful essences contained within them by sucking their cocks dry. This was difficult, as she knew, without the use of her hands, and she used every ounce of the suction skills she had learned under their tutelage, lapping at their balls and taking their shafts deep down beyond her mouth until they spurted the hot jets of salty liquid into her hardworking mouth.

She was spent now, jaw aching, eyes wet, nipples sore, bottom throbbing, cunt slick and vibrated into numbness, and her masters showed her to the crowd, who applauded her heartily while Collins and Bryant propped her up beneath her armpits in case she slid to the floor. They laid her tenderly on a low leather mattress while Lady Markham addressed some words about food and wine to the still-hooting crowd. Charlotte felt her nipples blaze back into life as the clips were removed, then submitted to the ever-hateful removal of the butt plug before her clit and cunt were also freed of their impositions. She was taken. She was owned. And there were witnesses. Perhaps even more than those here tonight, she thought, watching Dimitri’s camera zooming down for a close-up of her depleted body.

Collins cradled her head in his arm and kissed her, a long, slow smooch that only ended when Bryant rather querulously demanded his turn.

‘I think you need to eat,’ he observed once he too had sucked the nectar from her lips. ‘You’ve had quite a test there.’

‘Did I pass?’ she asked sleepily.

‘With flying colours,’ Collins chimed in. ‘Now, shall we?’ Taking one of her arms by the elbow, he yanked her to her feet, leaving her other arm to Bryant. Thus sandwiched between her two dark knights, Charlotte was escorted through the well-wishing sea to the distant shores of the dining tables, where she was to be toasted all night long.

T
HE MORNING RITUAL
was almost always the same. The alarm woke Charlotte at 6 a.m., and her first task of the day was to check her bedfellow – which could be Collins or Bryant or, as it was today, both – for signs that attention was required.

On this morning, one month after the Collaring had been performed, Charlotte faced the eternal dilemma of
Who first?
Collins, at her right hand side, and Bryant, at her left, both exhibited the telltale stiffness and, as she yawned and rubbed sleep’s residue from her eyes, she found herself straining to remember whose turn it was.

Collins helped her out by raising one eyelid, releasing a shaft of gimlet stare that made her mind up for her.

‘About time too,’ he muttered, once she had drained the glass of water by the bed and slid her soft wet lips along the rigid shaft, settling in on her knees for a long, slow suck.

Her first breakfast swallowed and digested, she watched Collins depart for the shower, then she turned her attention to Bryant, who had awoken by now and watched the final portion of the fellatio interlude with keen interest.

‘Oh, you’re the best, Charlotte, the best,’ Bryant, always more vocally demonstrative than Collins, avowed, shooting jets of warm saline liquid into the depths of Charlotte’s deep throat.

Collins emerged from the en suite bathroom to dress, while Bryant took his turn in the shower. Charlotte was permitted a ten minute respite during this period, which she made the most of, leaning back against the pillows, breathing in the man smell of the linen and watching Collins dress. Watching Collins dress was one of her favourite activities; in fact, she often pondered secretly filming him so she could watch it while he was away on his periodic work-related trips. He had so many interesting accessories for a start – clippy things to stop his socks falling down, cufflinks, often a waistcoat with a gold fob watch. She drank in the faultless crispness of his shirts – Charlotte was forbidden to iron them, as her technique did not meet his high standards – and admired the perfect crease of his trousers. She quivered when he slipped his flexible leather belt through the loops of his waistband, pulling it taut and buckling it. She wanted to touch herself, but she knew it was not permitted, so she swallowed hard and focused grimly on his long slim fingers working on the cufflinks, then the waistcoat, button, button, button, then the jacket, handkerchief placed at such a precise angle in the top pocket. Hair dealt with next, briskly and efficiently, then spectacles on, then the shiny, shiny shoes. Sometimes, if they weren’t shiny enough, Charlotte was called over to kneel, naked, and give them a brief buff-up, but this time they passed muster, it seemed, and now the fully-formed, 100% suited, booted and deadly J. Collins Esq was ready to unleash himself on an unsuspecting world.

‘I’ll start breakfast,’ he said, unnecessarily, because he always did. Collins was the best cook of the three, and was visibly tense when either of the others tried their hand in his kitchen.

As the delicious cooking scents began to fill the air, Bryant strolled out in a towel, leaving the shower free for Charlotte. She performed her ablutions unaccompanied – which was not always the case, especially when she was alone with one or other of her masters – and stepped into the shower. This was a difficult time for Charlotte – she so often wanted to pleasure herself beneath the warm spray, but she had to wait, had to obey, had to be trustworthy. So she would content herself with folding the fragrant gel into her intimate places and lathering it up, allowing the tingle to build and the juices to flow, but bidding herself wait. She would be seen to soon enough. Patience, Charlotte, patience.

But patience was a virtue, and she wasn’t big on those, so she whizzed through the wash as quickly as she possibly could and dried her hair with vigorous urgency before making her way to the kitchen, clad only in the sheer babydoll nightdress and high-heeled marabou-trimmed mules that constituted her morning uniform.

‘Good morning, Charlotte,’ her masters formally greeted her, Bryant smiling over the top of his newspaper while Collins put the cafetière on the table and slid eggs out of the frying pan. Charlotte stood by the door, waiting for Collins to finish all the fussing with grilled tomatoes and sprigs of parsley and sit down, then she took the plates and served the breakfasts, bending over to pour coffee and offer cream or sugar. Neither of them ever had sugar in their coffee, yet the offer must always be made before Charlotte was allowed to sit down and eat.

‘No thank you, you may sit now,’ said Collins, pouncing on his own newspaper and reading as he ate, leaving Charlotte to watch the pair of them, absorbed in the stock market figures and details of grisly crimes as they masticated bacon and tiny triangles of toast. It was a peaceful time, but Charlotte could never see it as such, for she knew what was to come, and her thighs were tense and shiny-damp with the thought of it.

The last traces of egg yolk wiped up by bread, the dregs of the coffee consumed so the caffeine could start its diabolical work in all of their bodies, the papers laid flat on the table and the dishes transferred to the sink, there was nowhere else to look, nowhere to run.

‘Well, Charlotte, I think it’s time,’ said Bryant lightly. ‘And you have the pleasure of us both this morning. Goodness. Did you sleep well?’

‘Yes, sir’ she said meekly, beginning to make the arrangements, pulling the high kitchen stool out from underneath a counter top, climbing on to the low rung and resting her stomach across the padded seat.

‘What do we think, Collins? What are you in the mood for this morning? Hands? Kitchen spatula? Belt? Hairbrush?’

The morning spanking was always a DIY affair; the masters did not like to bring out their dedicated implements unless there was a proper scene to be played, or punishment to be administered.

‘I’m intrigued by that rubber spatula Charlotte picked out at John Lewis last weekend. We still haven’t tried that, have we? And I’m told rubber has a uniquely painful characteristic.’

Charlotte winced in advance, cursing herself for buying the brightly-coloured set of baking spatulas, even though she had always known they would be used for this purpose. But they were so
pretty
. She had the feeling that the prettiness might conceal something vicious, though, like a toxic jellyfish or sea anemone.

‘Ah,’ Bryant said. ‘I suspect the rubber spatula will challenge Charlotte’s tolerance at this time of the morning. So I’m minded to be generous and use my hand for a little warm-up. Shall we?’

The men stepped closer to Charlotte. Collins placed his hand at the back of her neck, holding her in position in a way that always created a spasm of needy joy in her pussy. The gossamer-thin fabric of the nightdress was hoisted up over her bottom, which was snowy white and unmarked this morning, because Charlotte had been on her best behaviour since the collaring. This morning routine was designed to remind Charlotte of her place rather than to create any lasting effect – she was left with a sore, red bottom for the next hour or so, and then the evidence faded, to be replaced the next day or – more likely – later on.

Bryant applied his hand weightily but without real malice, watching and revelling in the slow colour change wrought on Charlotte’s rear. She squirmed and squeaked, but she was a long way from her limits and she settled into the spanking, keeping her bottom pushed out, rolling her hips occasionally and clamping her thighs in an attempt to steal some naughty pleasure from her abasement. But Bryant saw what she was doing, and ordered her legs apart, feet at either end of their supporting rung.

‘You’re in a hurry, Charlotte,’ he reproved. ‘You know you have to wait. But my goodness, aren’t you wet? I can see why you don’t want to. Getting nice and red now … lovely …’ He smacked on, slowly and harder now, while Charlotte was made to listen to a lecture on the evils of importunate haste and impatience. By the time he finished, she was glowing and panting, her thighs sticky-wet and her clit feeling as if it had ballooned to the edges of her lips. But nobody was going to put her out of her aroused misery yet.

Collins and Bryant switched places, Bryant’s gentler hand on her neck now while Collins took the largest of the rubber spatulas – a shocking pink – off its hook and weighed it in his palm.

‘How many strokes do you think, Bryant?’ he pondered. ‘I think this will be more painful than the wooden one we broke on her last week. So perhaps not so many … perhaps ten.’

‘Ten sounds good.’

The rubber splatted against the curve of her bottom and Charlotte howled. Collins was not wrong – the rubber was fiendishly painful, with a lasting burn, outdoing its wooden counterpart by a factor of about five.

‘It really does hurt,’ mused Collins, rubbing a hand over the patch of skin that had been inflamed. ‘Ten light strokes, or five heavy? I’m going to ask you, Charlotte. Which would you prefer?’

Oh, the quandary! Five would get it over with, but heavy strokes with that thing would probably have her squirming at the desk all day long. And besides, she didn’t entirely trust that Collins’s definition of ‘light’ strokes would coincide with her own.

‘I think five,’ she said, and a sudden hot blaze fell directly over the first.

‘Five,
sir.
That one is extra.’

Charlotte would have kicked herself, if she had been allowed to bring her legs together, for her elementary error, but she gritted her teeth and told herself it would soon be over.

‘Five, sir. Please, sir.’

Collins laid each one of the four swats at the sit spot, where bottom cheek and thigh overlap, ensuring that she was quite correct to think that her wooden desk chair was not going to be the most comfortable of billets that day. The heat seemed to permeate the pores of her skin, pouring inside to burn her very core.

‘That’s a serious implement,’ said Collins with surprised respect. ‘I shall certainly be using it more often.’ Charlotte, from the corner of her eye, could see the deep crimson patch at the lower end of her generally red bum in the shining surface of the chrome and steel oven. It was almost purple.

‘Will it leave a mark, sir?’ she wondered, hoping that she hadn’t bruised. They wouldn’t spank her for a day or so if she was bruised.

‘I don’t think so,’ Collins replied. ‘I think rubber is my new favourite substance. Bryant, let us invest in a rubber plant. The Goodyear Brothers were on to something, I feel.’

Bryant chuckled, releasing his grip on Charlotte’s neck.

‘Who’s going to do the honours?’

‘Why don’t you? I’m afraid I’ve an early meeting with a client and I’m going to have to leave soon. Tell me which vibrator you want to use and I’ll find it for you.’

‘The one with the clit stimulator. The black one,’ Bryant added, recalling that there were so many variations in their collection that specificity was required.

Collins fetched the sex toy and placed it on the kitchen table before dropping down to his haunches to deposit a fierce goodbye kiss on Charlotte’s lips.

‘Be good,’ he whispered, then he put a finger to her cheek. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ she whispered back.

‘I’ll be back around eight. Behave yourself. Goodbye.’

As the door of the apartment clicked shut, Bryant fired up the vibrator, putting it on its maximum setting and pressing it to Charlotte’s damp thighs as if in warning.

‘Would you like this?’ he murmured, teasing her, pressing it deep into the skin of her inner thigh, letting its tip touch her clit for a microsecond before whipping it back down.

‘Oh, yes please, sir,’ she moaned. ‘Yes please.’

‘Dirty girl, bad girl, getting wet during a spanking. You need it, don’t you? Tell me.’

‘Yes, sir. I need it, sir.’

‘Badly. So badly.’ The vibrator was pushing at the sides of her lips, circling the entrance.

‘Really badly, sir.’

‘If I let you have it, you must promise me your arse tonight.’

‘Yes, sir, I promise.’

‘Good.’ The vibrator disappeared inside her, throbbing mightily, its clitoral attachment snug against the rich, fat nexus of nerve endings. Bryant barely needed to move the instrument before Charlotte was coming over the kitchen stool, thrashing so wildly that Bryant had to place a hand on her back to prevent the whole structure toppling over.

‘That’s all it takes, isn’t it, Charlotte, to control you? You’re not a slave to anything but your own rampant wantonness. That’s what rules you. Your cunt. Am I right or am I right?’

‘You’re right, sir,’ she sighed, defeated, red-faced, floppy, spent.

‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’ He kissed her ear, nipping the lobe. ‘Go and wash and dress before the housekeeper arrives.’

Charlotte washed the proof of her orgasm out from between her legs, then she dressed, as yesterday’s memo had instructed. No knickers, no bra, short but classy black silk shift dress that outlined her every curve, sheer seamed hold-ups, high-heeled strappy sandals – this was her typical working wardrobe on a day when she wouldn’t be expected to leave the apartment unless it was to meet one or both of her masters for lunch. The thought that she might be called out to cross the city in this outfit that so blatantly advertised her underwear-free state made her toes curl and her treacherous pussy begin to dampen anew – she both dreaded and hoped for a summons later on.

By the time she was dressed, Bryant had left, and she thought she might as well make a start on some work. The new housekeeper, a Polish woman, was due at nine and would keep her company for the morning, in her unique way. Charlotte brewed herself some more coffee and drank it by the picture window, looking out over the vast spread of the city while she waited.

‘Good morning, Krysztyna,’ she sang, hearing the key in the lock.

‘Good morning, Charlotte.’ The housekeeper peeked in, smiling brightly. ‘How are you today?’

‘Fine, thanks. A bit sore, actually.’

‘Oh, they were hard on you this morning. May I see?’

Charlotte flipped up the back of her skirt, displaying the remnants of the rubber’s worst work, eliciting a low whistle from the new member of staff.