Carrie's Story: An Erotic S/M Novel (17 page)

She put them on me (I guessed I'd have to go barefoot),
and then she strapped the harness to the plow, which was
just standing out there in the middle of a half turned-up field.
No stroking or crooning at me, that was for sure. And then
she grabbed the reins and briskly began to lead me down the
rows, occasionally swatting me with a thin stick she held in
her other hand.

And that was that. I mean we just kept going. Back and
forth as the sun rose in the sky and sweat started pouring off
me. It was hot, hard, and boring. It was work. It didn't have
the little gut-wrenching thrills of exposure and humiliation
I had come to expect-I hadn't realized just how much I'd
come to expect them. The woman hardly looked at me, and
I had to admit that it was a hell of a lesson and a punishment, kind of a metahumiliation, being out there dirty, naked,
exhausted, exposed, and virtually invisible. I remembered
Jonathan, that first day in his study, asking me if I liked to be
looked at. Had it really been so obvious?

From the field, I could see cars coming and going down to
the stable area. Customers, of course, but it was also Sunday,
and Cathy'd told me that "Sunday to Sunday" was the customary term for a boarder. So Sir Harold had really done
Jonathan, that nice boy, quite a favor by taking me on in the middle of the week and driving all the way down and picking
me up, too. I wondered, idly, about just what had gone on in
the old days, while I watched a beautiful, expensive car drive
up the road toward the gate. Briefly I caught Cathy's rapt,
triangular face at the window and Madame behind the wheel.
And then they were gone and the woman was swatting me to
hurry me up. So now I was naked and invisible and lonely as
well.

The field I was plowing was, of course, bare, being turned
over for new crops. But there was a field opposite where they
were growing vegetables and some flowers, and there was also
a greenhouse. You could walk down a path between the fields,
and once a couple came that way to buy flowers from the
greenhouse, the woman just leaving me to stand around while
she helped them. The couple chattered happily as they walked
away with their flowers, and it was so silent out there, except
for an occasional car on the road and the slap of the woman's
stick on my calves, that I could hear them even after the path
curved away and I couldn't see them.

The voices faded eventually, and then I heard some new
voices, new people coming my way. And realized that these
voices were familiar. I heard Sir Harold's rumble first, though
I couldn't quite make out his words. And then another, a
woman's voice that was unmistakably familiar and melodious,
the words quite clear as the speakers approached.

"I'll have to give her to the emir tonight. It's his last
night, and he's been drooling over her photographs. He'll love
the job you've done on her. It's just that she's so unmarked...
No, it's not your fault, darling. You were the good girl I've
taught you to be, and Sir Harold just couldn't find enough reason to punish you. But well beat you when we get home,
just to put some lovely marks on you."

And as they came into view, Sir Harold and Kate Clarke,
with Stephanie between them, unbridled but harnessed
to a little wicker cart, Stephanie said softly but joyously,
"Yes, Kate."

Filthy and sweaty as I was, they seemed like creatures
from a different world -Kate in a short, crisp, pale yellow
sundress and wide straw hat; Stephanie, her eyes never leaving
Kate, looking like an adoring child with her hair in two ponytails over her dazzling naked shoulders and breasts; and Sir
Harold decked out in a silly blue blazer. I looked down at my
bare dirty feet and I wanted to disappear into the earth.

I should have known, I thought. A slave as beautiful and
perfect as Stephanie. I remembered Jonathan saying that
Kate's standards were astronomical, and now I knew what
that meant. I felt that up until this moment I'd simply been
pretending to play a game I didn't understand at all, one
whose rules and parameters were written in a complicated
and impersonal, perhaps mathematical, language. I realized
why Stephanie hadn't cared what went on here, except, of
course, for learning to be a perfect pony. For Kate. All for
Kate. I wondered if I'd ever be that kind of slave, worshipful,
adoring, and totally without irony. I wondered if I wanted to.

Kate was coming over to me, having sent Sir Harold
and Stephanie to the greenhouse to get flowers. The woman
left me in the half-plowed row as she hurried to help them.
I watched Kate walk carefully through the plowed field, her
perfect sandals somehow managing to stay clean. But she
wouldn't touch me, would she, I thought. I mean, I was too
dirty, too abject, for that. And I realized that I wanted, more than anything, for her to touch me, any way she would deign
to.

She was smiling at me, almost triumphantly, even as
she looked at me with her hard, appraising stare. And then
she amazed me by coming very close and softly stroking my
breast.

Very quietly, she said, "You are very much improved,
Carrie. Even if you didn't steal the little hose-and I don't
think you did-you needed this punishment. And this week.
The world is a lot larger than Jonathan's precious little study,
isn't it?"

I nodded, tears in my eyes, as waves of sensation rippled
from my breast down to my knees. I didn't so much understand her meaning as feel it, glimpsing a never-ending horizon
of pain and challenge, as yet unimagined extremes of experience opening out for me, if I were brave enough to try to
encounter them. If they were what I really, really wanted...

And that was all. Sir Harold and Stephanie came back,
Stephanie's wicker cart piled high with sweet peas and
snapdragons, and Kate joined them on the path back to the
stables. I just pulled for the rest of the day, numbly, barely
noticing the little Mercedes leaving the ranch an hour or so
later, mostly keeping my eyes on the hard, bright sky, on the
hawks circling in the distance.

They brought me back to the stables that night, washed me
down, and put me to sleep, and the next two days passed
uneventfully. The pony routine was simple and challenging,
and I was open and pliant whenever anyone came to the stables to use me. Sir Harold, I could see, was surprised at how
well I was doing. He hadn't expected me to be able to get beyond my intellect as well as I had. What he didn't understand was that at that moment the weirdness of my situation
had simply undone me. I would have been happy to forget
my surroundings, knit my brow, and meditate on what in the
world was happening to me, but it was all too much for me,
so I just let it go, half believing that I'd never lived anywhere
but in a stable.

Besides, I realized suddenly, as I saw Jonathan coming
down the path with Sir Harold, it had been Jonathan
who'd kept me so cerebral. He'd never entirely let me relax
into the fantasy-he wasn't a master I worshiped, the way
Cathy clearly did Madame, or Stephanie Kate. He was a
"master," surrounded by ironic quotation marks. He was also
Jonathan -neurotic, compulsive, a control freak firmly rooted
in the obnoxious world of conference calls and deliverables.
Somehow he'd managed it so that I never forgot that about
him-we'd played a double game out on the edge the whole
time. Or further out than the edge-this was the moment, I
realized, when Wile E. Coyote looks down and realizes that
he and the Road Runner are standing on thin air, five feet off
the cliff, and fifty feet above the ground.

He was coming toward me and all I could think of was
what I'd miss about him. Not, I thought, his tone of command or assurance-hell, I figured I'd find that wherever this
adventure took me. What I'd miss were the little, funny, offcenter things: a raised eyebrow or an ironic grimace, the hair
on his belly, the bones in his wrist. And gestures, especially
his defensive gestures when I'd caught him out as middle-aged
or otherwise unhip. I'll miss, I thought, all the "gotcha's"-
undercover ways we'd teased each other beneath the stately
minuet we'd been dancing all these months. And I knew, no matter what I'd thought we'd been doing, and no matter what
roles we'd been playing, what a joint feat of the imagination
it all had been. Even if I'd thought I was in free fall all that
time, in another way we'd certainly been collaborators. A collaborator, I thought, remembering when he'd sent me for that
first haircut. Oh my.

He and Sir Harold were standing in front of me now, Sir
Harold asking him whether he'd want to take the long path
or the short one, and whether he wanted to harness me to the
cart himself. I was shocked, somehow. I hadn't realized that
he'd drive me. Well, of course, I answered myself, I mean,
wouldn't he want to see howyou've done here? But he seemed
a bit hesitant himself, finally agreeing to the short path, while
he harnessed me up every bit as quickly and tightly as Don or
Phil could have. And I ran through the woods as quickly and
gracefully as I possibly could, and he used the whip sparingly,
though he was good at cracking it, and at driving-he seemed
to know the paths. In fact, we didn't even use the whole path;
he turned off at a shortcut and we were back within twenty
minutes.

Nobody was around, as he undid all the straps, taking off
the harness and bridle, kissing me briefly, rubbing me down
carefully and silently. I wasn't supposed to say anything, of
course, but I had the idea that he didn't know what to say,
either. I mean, what was there to say except something like,
Here we so beautifully are, mission accomplished, over and
out.

Sir Harold was hurrying down the path now, panting
and surprised we were back so soon, concerned that something was wrong. Jonathan turned gracious and polite,
waxing enthusiastic, if briefly so, about the wonders that had been worked upon me, acting boyishly charming about how
perfect everything had been, including lunch, but you know,
Sir Harold, we've got a long trip back to San Francisco, and I
want to get her home... Sir Harold all but winked.

Only he didn't take me home, at least not right away. He
pulled into a Motel 6 maybe twenty minutes from the ranch
and checked us in. He took a collar out of his pocket and put
it on me. And then he fucked and buggered me until I was
sore. Later, leaning on his elbow and examining my marks
and bruises, he only said, "You actually have a bit of a suntan.
I wouldn't have thought it possible."

He left for a little while and came back with Big Macs,
fries, and big chocolate shakes, which, after the Science Diet,
tasted like the best thing I'd ever eaten. We watched motel
pay TV while we silently ate in bed. And then he told me to
tell him about the week, and once again I made it into a long
sexy story for him to jerk himself off to, which he did. And
the last thing he said, before he turned off the light, was, "I'll
miss your stories." I wondered, as I lay awake, listening to
his even breathing, whether anyone would ever want to hear
one again.

ur last few days in San Francisco continued silent,
stark, ritualistic. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't gone to the pony farm, but I had gone to
the pony farm, and the consequences were clear. I was out
in the world now, Kate's big world. I felt I was just on loan
to Jonathan in his study, and I guess so did he. What was
happening between us was abstract, dreamlike. He'd do a few
hours of work in the morning and then summon me, and I'd
present my body to him, to use, to beat, to look at. I'd thank
him afterward. I always paid attention to him, always knew
what he wanted. He didn't seem moved toward any more
inventiveness, and I was amazed that I had ever found his
rules difficult to follow. He amused himself in the afternoons
by taking me shopping, buying me pretty, expensive clothes
for the trip, never asking my opinion about an item, dealing
with the surprised and uncomfortable saleswomen all by
himself while I didn't say anything except "Yes, Jonathan."

So the time passed and we finally took a night flight to
a chilly northern European city, which I never really got a
chance to see. The journey continued dreamlike, cyberspacial
if you will, real time and geography squeezed into a sequence
of bland, corporate interiors. We flew first class, which I'd
never done before. I wanted to pig out on the champagne
and quite good food, but Jonathan wouldn't let me, saying it would add to my jet lag. Rather, he made me take a Dalmane
and drink a lot of water; I slept most of the way on his shoulder. A big black car with tinted windows met us at the airport
and drove us straight to our hotel. We slept some more, shaking off the jet lag, and the next morning the car took us to the
trials.

You didn't just get into the auction automatically. First you
had to run the gauntlet of a board of examiners. My board
was three men and a woman, a varied group who had seen
just about everything. They had the same kind of brisk,
no-nonsense attitude Kate Clarke had had and no sense of
humor. Undressing in front of them, handing items of clothing to the maid who would give them to Jonathan to hold,
I barely could keep from trembling, from fumbling with hooks
and buttons.