The Slave (11 page)

Tears came soon; the day had been long and
confusing, and she had no idea that she had been watched for these
seemingly petty errors in behavior.

But Chris ignored the tears and the sobs
that soon followed, and continued going through his mental list and
his almost mechanical beating.

When the force of one blow sent her
stumbling forward, Chris came in close, and clenched the hair at
the back of her neck in one fist, holding her pressed down and
forward.

The blows were steady, of an
even force and crack, but as they built up redness and then
bruising, they landed again and again on sore spots and over past
stripes, and Robin’s sobs were interrupted with gasps of pain and
shock. Each time a blow landed, heat rushed up to the skin and then
burned intensely until the next one came. Before too long, Robin’s
mind was completely taken over by a desperate bargain:
only these few
more! I can take just three more! And then I’ll beg for mercy, just
two more, or three!

And each time, she found some inner strength
to keep holding on, even though she was dizzy from the position,
stiff from being on her knees most of the day, even sore from her
beating that morning. And through it all, still agonizingly wet,
still as hot as she had been a few minutes ago.

“
And that is all for now,” Chris said,
letting her go. The strap hit the table.

Robin hit the floor at once and sought out
his boot-tops. She kissed one and then the other as gracefully as
she could manage. “Thank you, sir, thank you!”

“
Good girl. You remembered.” She could
feel the sting of his tone, which only drove her back down to press
her lips against the polished leather again. When he made no move
away and failed to raise her, she continued her adoring thanks,
covering the boots with her kisses, and feeling the intense heat
that spread over her ass and the backs of her thighs.

And then the doorbell chimed again.

“
Get that,” Chris said, nudging
her.

Robin pulled herself up, and wiped at the
tears and the slight sheen of sweat on her face and stumbled
slightly on her way out of the room. She was still dizzy. What a
state to answer the door in! But it had to be Leon, with dinner,
although it seemed a little early. She ran her fingers through her
hair, pulling it back a little and wiped at her eyes again, and
opened the door.

It wasn’t Leon.

Standing in front of her was a woman, taller
than she was, with thick, long, curling hair, and beautifully
arched eyebrows. She had fine, prominent cheekbones, and dark,
glittering eyes, and her cheeks were flushed with wind. She was
wearing a rich, long woolen coat, and beautiful, high-heeled boots,
and carrying what looked like a leather architects’ blueprint case
slung over one shoulder and a garment bag hanging from her
outstretched hand.

“
You’d better take it if you don’t
want another pitiless beating,” she said. “I’m Rachel.”

* * * *

“
I don’t believe that you’re giving up
your vacation for a mere woman,” Rachel said, once she had been
properly welcomed and settled into a chair, a cup of tea at hand.
Robin, after putting things away and taking her coat and making the
tea, had been positioned on her elbows and knees on the coffee
table, so that Rachel could see the evidence of Chris’s
discipline.

“
I have no prejudices,” Chris
answered. He was going through a stack of papers and envelopes
Rachel had handed to him, placing them in different
piles.

“
Humph,” Rachel made the sound as
though it were a declaration in itself. “She doesn’t look like
much.” Robin’s ears turned bright red. Why was it always so much
more affecting when women criticized her? Why did it matter so much
more?

“
I will show you her folder later, if
you like. She would not be refused at our house.”

“
Yes, well, we take everything!”
Rachel laughed. “And, we spend more time with them. What do you
have, two weeks?”

“
Exactly.”

“
Impossible!”

“
We shall see.”

There didn’t seem to be any
annoyance from Chris at Rachel’s skepticism. In fact, he was
remarkably calm
. I wish he would be more angry
, Robin thought, furiously.
He chose to do
this! He knows it can work out!

“
Well, thank you for bringing these,”
Chris said after a long silence. “You could have sent it all by
some messenger, you know.”

“
No, I wanted to see this paragon of
yours, maybe try her out. And I’ve been wanting to spend a night
out of the house for a while, too. Besides, there was some bad
news, too; I figured I’d better bring it myself.” She reached into
a pocket and withdrew a fat envelope addressed in an ornate hand.
“I spoke to the bosses today. They said that you should go.” She
passed it over to him, and on her way back, trailed her fingernails
along the insides of Robin’s thighs. “Such lovely bruises. I don’t
think she’ll want to sit down for days.” Robin shivered, and Rachel
smiled.

Chris took the contents out of the envelope
and sighed heavily.

“
Yes, I know,” Rachel said soothingly.
“But it’s only one night. And it’s close by. I brought your winter
tux.”

“
Wouldn’t you care to
attend?”

“
I might, sure. But they said that you
should. I even told them that you, well, that you found a new
project. But Alex said that this should teach you to take your
vacations like everyone else does.”

Robin stiffened in confusion, despite the
scratching pleasure of Rachel’s stroking fingernails. Every new
sentence seemed to raise new questions, and her curiosity seemed
ready to strangle her.

“
Then I shall handle it,” Chris
finally responded. He put the envelope on the side, with the
others. “But now, you’re here. And, I do have a new toy, at least
for a while. Of course you are welcome to stay the night, and to
make use of her. However, according to my schedule, this little
chit should be giving me some more of her personal history, and
Leon will be arriving within an hour or so with dinner. So I
suggest that you sit back and enjoy your tea while she continues
her tale, and then we can have a civilized dinner
together.”

“
Leon! Oh, I haven’t seen that boy in
ages! Well, maybe I was too harsh in judging your vacations.” Her
laugh was low and slightly sultry. “OK, boss, it’s in your hands.”
She pulled her own hands away from Robin, who moaned in their
absence.

“
Get up, Robin,” Chris directed. “You
may sit there while you speak.” He pointed to a spot on the carpet.
And when Robin was in position, Chris prompted her.

“
You were in college. You had not yet
managed to find a partner with whom to practice or even discuss
your sensual desires, but had accumulated a collection of
sadomasochistic literature and a few toys to use when
masturbating.”

“
How sweet!” Rachel mocked.

“
You may continue from there,” Chris
ordered.

“
Yes, sir,” Robin whispered back. The
wetness between her legs was maddening. How often had she dreamed
something just like this, submitting to a strong man and a strong
woman at the same time? How many times had she pulled out her box
of toys to exactly that image?

Her box of toys...

Robin’s Story: The Soloist

I have become a connoisseur of
coming
, she
wrote one night, after an enormously good session of solo
sex.
I am a
master masturbator. And good thing, too. Because that’s going to be
the sum total of my sex life forever and ever.

Months later, dating seemed as hopeless a
pastime as it was during the night she gave her unmourned virginity
to the unaware Greg. There had been two more boyfriends since then,
one she gave blowjobs to, then another one she never let get past
making out. Neither one seemed to have a clue about what she was
really into, and she never managed to be as direct as she now knew
she would have to be in order to get through to them.

Even Marty, the guy who taught her how to
suck cock (if you could call his insistently pushing her head
toward it any form of teaching), seemed utterly unaware of the
slightest possibility that she might like something a little more
than “Oh, baby, you’re the best!” in the way of encouragement. And
he was so passive, just lying or sitting back and not even touching
her, except to stroke her hair absently once in a while.

She had tried a little harder with him,
maybe because he was an English major and she figured that words
might have more of a trigger effect for him. “I love being your
personal cocksucker,” she had whispered to him one night.

“
Oh, I hate that word,” he responded,
looking vaguely shocked. “It’s so dirty. I mean, you say
cocksucker, and I think faggot. You’re my lover, baby, my sweet
lover.”

And I thought that sucking cock
would make me gag
, she recorded in her journal that night. She wandered into
the lesbian and gay student association on campus, but found
herself not fitting in there, either. For one, the president of the
association also played on the basketball team, and he knew that
she had dated Greg. That branded her as a bisexual, and she was
immediately viewed with suspicion. And although she was willing to
get involved in on-campus feminist activities, one day she found
herself at a meeting planning a protest in front of the bookstore
for selling
Penthouse
and
Playboy
.

She thought guiltily about her
stash of porn under her bed, and didn’t return to the next meeting.
Hell, if these women didn’t like
Playboy
, which had the lamest, softest smut she
had even seen, they would just heave at the sight of one of her
newspapers.

But one thing that she did get from the
association was a list of gay publishers and bookstores. She wrote
away for more catalogs, and discovered the world of gay and lesbian
SM. She loved it all, even the male/male stuff, and bought as much
as she could afford. The box under her bed filled, and she started
throwing out things that didn’t work for her any more. And she was
very, very careful about when and where she tossed her rejects.

So she turned her attention sharply onto
school, taking extra classes when she could. She started running
again, to work off any excess energy, and pretended to be going out
on dates so Donna wouldn’t try to set her up with someone. And she
jerked off, whenever she could, getting better and better all the
time.

It was a Saturday night in late winter, and
Robin had such a session in mind as she returned to her dorm after
working on a special cataloging project she had volunteered for. It
was guaranteed to get her into a special class with the professor
who headed up the arts department, and it was giving her the skills
she would need when she left. It wasn’t enough to be able to
appreciate art in order to work with it. You had to be an artist, a
critic, or a business person. And business seemed the way to
go.

But the work was hard and tedious, and
crammed into an already crowded schedule, so she needed the release
of orgasm more than ever. Luckily, Donna was home for the weekend,
not due back until Sunday night. There would be plenty of privacy
for a deluxe session. Maybe she would come twice, or three times.
She had two new newspapers to read through, that she had been
saving for a night just like this.

So within minutes of getting in, she was
stripped, collared, and lying on the floor, the short, rough carpet
abrading her nipples. With sighs of pleasure, she read through the
letter columns, full of patently false personal adventure stories,
and then continued on to the features, some of which were
illustrated. They were, without an exception, awfully written. She
could usually ignore much of the clumsy, ham-handedness of the
writers. But for some reason, tonight of all nights, the stark
vacancy of the words made the images behind them ludicrous. Robin
flipped pages in frustration, trying to get the proper frame of
mind back, and ended up tossing the cheap newsprint onto the floor
in front of her.

I’ll just switch to the
books
, she
thought, feeling the pang of more money wasted on this trash. But
as she reached for the box, her eye fell on an advertisement on the
back page of one of the newspapers.

It read:

“
Find the mistress or
master of your dreams tonight!”

She pulled it over and read. Under a drawing
of a physically impossible woman wearing boots that could earn a
mention in the Amnesty International annual, was a series of phone
numbers. Some were in different area codes, some were 800 numbers.
In fine print below each one was a description. She read, “Hot
Masters and their Rough Boys for Wild Masculine Encounters,” and
“Large and Lovely Ladies for Mounds of Pleasure!” and “Threesomes,
Foursomes and Moresomes; the Swingers Line,” and then, finally,
“The Dial-In-Dungeon, Masters, Mistresses and their Willing
Slaves.”

All this, the ad promised, for 10 cents a
minute.

Ten cents a minute?
Robin
thought.
That’s not much. If it’s just a stupid recording, it’ll
still cost less than calling home to say “hi.”
She dug her toes into the
carpet while she considered. What could it possibly be? What would
she say if someone actually answered? Could they trace her
number?