As She's Told (65 page)

The rain continued its steady drumming in the eaves. Anders decided it was time to shift the slave to the butcher block he'd found in the shed. It stood solidly on four sturdy legs, and with some rounding and considerable sanding, now fitted her well. She lay over it face down with her arms and legs fastened, handy for whatever came to mind. They read, cooked and kept themselves amused one way and another.

But by dinnertime cabin fever had set in. The slave got locked in her stall and the four of them went into town, ready to see whatever movie was playing at the Regent, no matter how terrible.

***

The sun was hot against my hips; my back was sweating under the weight of the baskets. A whistle brought my head up; I crawled along the edge of the garden plot, along the long line to which my tether was linked, toward the towering figure of my master. He had long, bright-yellow objects depending from between his fingers, and some thicker green ones cradled in the other arm. More squash.

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Mud-coated kneepads and mitts rather clogged my progress. The rain from yesterday still lingered in the low places. I reached my master's dusty jeans and felt the vegetable weight on my back increase. The squash was going into the large basket resting on my spine. Two smaller panniers hung against my ribs. My master's long legs moved back into the rows, and I stared between my mitts at the mud, past the narrow chain that swung from my nose ring; my link to the long horizontal line at my side.

The click of a tongue came from behind me. Carefully I turned toward my tether and around, back the way I had come. Another towering figure, Svend this time, with a lumpy, dusty bag in his hand, which he emptied into the pannier nearest him. I caught the cellar smell of potatoes.

Ria was picking her way along a row toward me, holding a basket with bright orange peppers, and broccoli in deep green. She wore gardening gloves and looked immaculate. I dropped my eyes, painfully conscious of the nose chain, of mud to my elbows and bridle-induce drool. The spotless legs appeared in my peripheral vision on my other side, and the weight on that side gently increased. I felt a touch along my temple. A strand of hair that had escaped and been worrying at my face was drawn back and tucked into its band. There was a sound of water in a bottle, and then a spout pushed past my bit. I gulped at it. The hand, gloveless, appeared stationary before my mouth, commanding an animal's grateful lick, and my tongue meekly obeyed.

Ria straightened, and there was a sudden swish and a slice across my rear; a cry blurted from my mouth at the unexpected blare of anguish. The hand appeared again, blurry through a thick and instant screen of tears, and I licked it far more fervently than before. She squatted down, swung my head round hard by the ear to face her, and spoke quietly to me in a sing-song tone of casual, cruel mockery. Then she walked away.

My ear throbbed, my ass throbbed far worse. And I had a sudden vision of how eager and abject I might be, given another chance. By Ria. That cold, judgmental bitch whose touch for weeks had turned me to stone had metamorphosed into something else. Something with power; a hard, hurricane-force wind peeling the roof off my hidden resentment.

***

It was twilight Friday night by the time Val parked her pickup round the back and came in through the kitchen door. She followed the voices into the 411

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living room and walked in to a chorus of greeting. Then she did a double take, and snorted.

"Thought you'd be here soon," Anders said. "Beer's in the fridge. Or there's schnapps. Still some dinner, too."

"Beer's fine; I'll get it." She dumped her bag down on a chair by the door. "I see you finished your coffee table."

"Yup."

Val took in the thing from different angles. The slab's edges had been cut down and jigsawed to more or less follow the outlines of the slave on whose back it rested. The weight still must have been considerable; the slave's arms and legs had the look of bracing beneath the burden. Tight straps bound the polished wood to the little body, holding that body firmly horizontal. The bridled head was pulled back into an inward curve behind the neck; the head's weight forced the bit gag deep into the mouth. On the table were three beer steins, a wineglass, a wine bottle, a bowl of mixed nuts, a small pile of change, some playing cards and a riding crop.

Val ran an assessing hand over the top and edges. "That's an okay grain.

And a nice finish," she said. "Not so sure about the legs; they might get wobbly."

"Ve haf vays of keeping zem s-s-steady," said Svend, waving the crop.

"Five card stud, eh?"

"Come, Val, join us," said Ria. "What shall we give her to keep her change in? All our hooks are occupied."

Val bent to see. A little basket hung from the collar ring, and two from nipple clips. She laughed. There was a different arrangement at the other end; a cylindrical magnet hung from a clip on one of the naked labia, with coins stuck to it like barnacles. This was Anders' cache; he had established himself in that position as guardian to keep the stimulation within bounds.

Generously he offered Val another clip and magnet to hang on the other side. Beer in front of her, cards in hand, Val rapidly checked out the competition. Svend's face was an open book, and he only took a hand seriously when he had decent cards; a dead giveaway. Ria was a complete tyro, still asking the respective value of straight and flush, and showing her cards to Karl for advice. Karl had the false confidence that came from cleaning up in undergrad games; him she marked as a fish. Anders was her only competition. A head like ice and no tells.

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Karl managed to rake in a few small pots, and Svend had a wild but lucky hand or two, but inexorably the weights of the caches shifted toward the rear. Every ante up led to serious shudders in the table legs, and it took increasing effort with the crop to subdue them. Those who folded found other games to play beneath the table while they waited for the next hand.

The atmosphere was becoming increasingly rowdy, like something out of a bawdy old Hogarth print.

"Would you guys focus, for Christ's sake?" said Val. "Svend, are you in or not?"

"I wish."

Ria elbowed him. "Behave. Val takes poker very seriously."

"This is serious. We could buy several bags of chips for what she's got there."

"She has taken my laundry money, the shark!"

"No, that was Anders."

"Anyone got change of a quarter?"

"The table's moving again. This could be a séance."

"Ooh, what a good idea!"

"Earthquake! Someone make it stop; the pot is rolling away."

Instead of the crop, Val reached down into the basket beside the couch, brought out a narrow paddle and gave the squirming butt before her several loud and resounding smacks. The resulting quiet had everyone except Val silently grinning; the game resumed.

When Val and Anders had split the available silver between them, Ria pressed for the séance idea. Lights lowered, they held hands and called on the spirit of Pauline Réage. Pauline made her presence known via a good many ghostly squeals and whimpers, apparently channelling O for them. The number of mediums with their feet under the table was probably a record.

When it came to the Marquis de Sade, however, Anders baulked; the man was a psychopathic child molester and murderer, unwelcome in his house, by whatever means he might enter. So they drew cards for what to do next with the coffee table, and Karl won.

***

I was losing it. My body would not keep still.

I could have handled being a table; an interesting function, actually. I could have done well enough, even with all the tugs and torments, had it not 413

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been for the nakedness of my cunt, which was driving me out of my tiny mind.

His hands there. Adjusting, tugging, pinching. So close. I could feel the air currents every time he or Val picked up their cards. The aching weights seemed to open me wider and wider. A train tunnel, abandoned by the railroad, all traffic diverted.

The layer of containment was gone. I was exposed, my body reacting without leave from any remaining brain function. Punishment hardly stilled me. Pain was just taking me further out of my mind, away from the most basic obedience.

Then came the séance, and all the feet nudging, toes pinching, weights swaying. One foot curved for a moment beneath my hip and over my pubic bone; I almost howled.

There was a long, noisy pause after the lights came up. Gradually the confusion resolved into two deep voices in the corner in discussion: Karl and my master. Val was still sitting at my rear, shuffling cards above my hips; I could hear the ruffle and snap, feel the slight pressure as she gathered them up. The others were up and moving around, taking glasses and bottles off to the kitchen. I heard popcorn popping, and then I could smell it over the wine someone had spilled.

More comings and goings, Anders' legs walking out of the room and back in again. A little banging around at the window. He came to me and gently took the labia clamps off, but not the ones on my nipples. The baskets were gone at least. I throbbed.

They lifted the thing off my back. I felt like a turtle without a shell, though I was grateful for the chance to flex my neck. Black Beauty with the checkrein off. Karl took me by the ring at the back of my collar and tugged me over to the other side of the room, beneath a long pole propped at an angle from floor to windowsill. There was a little eyebolt below the window, where floor met wall. He arranged me with the pole parallel to my spine, with my tail at the low end, then threaded a cord through the eyebolt and tied it to the clips on my nipples, pulling my chest down almost to the floor.

Then he linked my wrists behind my back. I crouched on chest and folded knees, chewing my bit gag and wondering what all this was in aid of.

To my left, Svend and Val were rearranging furniture, swinging the couch around, bringing a chair into line with it, all facing me. They sat 414

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down, as did Ria and Karl, and they passed around bowls of popcorn. I could hear the crunching, and the place smelled like a movie theatre. All they needed were some liquorice Nibs. I had an audience for whatever it was.

My master stood on my other side. I felt the end of a rod of some kind prodding beneath my hip, and I lifted it accordingly The rod continued to tap, and I raised my hips higher, until my tailbone was up against the slanting pole. It was fixed somehow, not moving.

Lashes slashed down and my ass retreated hurriedly. But the rod continued its impatient prodding. Up again, slash again, retreat again. The implement was a cat with thin, stinging cords. I sucked in breath, whimpered. Again the rod prodded me upward, more painfully this time; the deep voice at my side hard and insistent. My butt raised itself up obediently to the pole and held still and cringing for the next lash. Now the rod tapped beneath my public bone. Further up? Oh, god, this was going to hurt. I hollowed the small of my back and tipped my pelvis, so that the pole was between my ass cheeks, and let out a shriek as the lashes fell on the flesh thus exposed. On the next one my flinching buttocks tried to recoil, but the relentless rod tapped even harder. More? How? I arched higher still, and now it wasn't my asshole against the pole, but the place where my cunt lips began.

I shuddered and groaned through two more applications of whipcord, glued to the pole, the sting introducing itself to more newly exposed areas.

The rod wasn't done with me yet. Desperately I arched, my chest grinding into the floor, nipples screaming in their clips. With great effort I slid myself a little further up the pole, which was now between my cunt lips. The cat scourged, and I clenched and almost twisted away, but held – and rubbed.

Grunts I hardly recognized issued from deep in my belly. Away to my left, the sound of laughter, catcalls, cheers, jeers. Please…please let me…oh, god….

Liquid, the pole slid along my snatch. Red pain fell scattershot, thick threads and flicks of agony. More, I needed more…before the god of my life could act on his next whim, before I was parted from the one thing I lacked.

Frantically I strained, finding the last possible centimeter of flex. And touched my clit for a moment to the pole.

I screamed. Heard a mocking chorus, glasses ringing together.

Extreme effort beneath that scourge that stung without mercy. Again 415

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that moment of contact, that pure, unbearable, slippery tone, like being inside the sweetest of bells. My body reached back and up in a frenzy, and at last was there: full contact. Straining, shaking, paralyzed between ecstasy and the punishing cords.

And their increasing rhythm took me over the edge. In that instant, falling past the excruciating threshold, nothing existed except a gargantuan, reverberating gong of pure sensation.

The moment faded into a deep, slow throb, like a giant's footsteps receding beyond the horizon. Once again the applause and laughter reached me. Tears and the pain of scored flesh swelling. When the boots appeared through the blear of tears I licked them fervently, abjectly. Then did the rounds of the gods' company, offering all appropriate gratitude with my tongue for their derision.

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Chapter Thirty-Two
Through the Keyhole

"So what did the guy say?"

"Schaeffer? He's in." Anders leaned on a door frame, arms crossed, watching Graham rekey a lock. "He ran down a list of possibles with me, a lot I've never heard of. Sounded quite optimistic, actually."

Graham slid out the cylinder plug and picked up his pliers. "Still non-profit, right?"

"Yes, for sure. It would have to be someone's tax write-off. Once it's underway we'd link to some existing services."

"You gave this guy the plans?"

"Uh huh. Sample plans, budgets. He's already tracked down reports on similar stuff they've done elsewhere, some news clips too. He'll turn it all into some slick Power Point whizbang thing."