Carrie's Story: An Erotic S/M Novel (24 page)

"You know how busy my schedule is, how I work around
the clock, I nap on that couch when I absolutely have to. So
I could arrive at any time. Sometimes you prick up your ears,
get all wet and excited thinking you hear my footsteps, and
it's only a servant with your food.

"Or sometimes I am simply too busy to come that day
and must send a servant to beatyou instead. You have learned
to contain your disappointment, and you know that you must
obey the servant in every way.

"When I do come, I make you beg for everything, even the
beating. You need to be eloquent, to persuade me why I should
tax myself, why you need it, how much good it will do you.

"You are very articulate, perhaps too much so. I'd make
you put all that verbal inventiveness to good use."

I gripped the edges of my chair. I hadn't had caffeine or
alcohol in days, and I hardly ever smoked. So all the potent
legal drugs I'd just ingested were combining to make my
head swim, and my cunt was wet and burning. She stood up,
wheeled the table away, and looked down at me.

"Take your clothes off, Carrie," she said.

"I thought," I stammered, even as I started to unbutton
the dress, "that you had this, uh, ritual here ..."

"Shut up," she snapped, "unless you want another spankmg.

I stood up and took off all the clothes, slowing down a
little as I took off the underwear. She'd gotten it for me, I
thought, so maybe she'd want to see it a little. And she did smile a bit at that point. But then I hurried along. No point
pushing my luck.

"Kneel in front of the couch," she continued, when I was
naked. "Back to the couch, facing me. And you can look at
me."

"Yes, Mistress," I said, without even thinking too much
about it. "Thank you, Mistress."

"Good girl," she said, and took off her silk shirt. Her
breasts were small and round, with very dark nipples. They
were beautiful under her wide shoulders. She walked over to
her desk and picked up a manila envelope.

"I want you to see how your photographs turned out,"
she said, and handed me two prints. Then she sat behind me
on the couch, her legs straddling me, her hands on my breasts,
her breasts touching my shoulders. "Do you like them?" she
asked close to my ear. "Tell the truth, slave."

I figured I'd better. "No, Mistress," I said.

She squeezed my breasts painfully, "And why not?"

The pictures were very careful, very documentary
jobs. She had been right the other day; Paul did good work.
The light was harsh; the general effect was of truth-telling.
Something about the marks on my ass, the shadows under my
eyes, the pallor of my skin. Nobody was being flattered, the
pictures said, but this was itself a form of flattery. And if the
viewers were not being flattered, they were certainly being
asked to participate, if only imaginatively.

"Here," the pictures seemed to say, "this is for you,
if you want it. She will receive whatever you care to give:
caresses, thrusts of your hand or cock, blows. It's up to you.
Interested?"

I was scared to see how I had posed for the pictures. In
the front view, I thrust my pelvis out a little, as though I were
offering guests something to eat. I looked shocked and a little
outraged, but I held the pose anyway. Even in the back view,
smarting and still sobbing from a beating, I held myself up.
I was surprised at how firmly my feet were planted on the
floor. I had remembered dangling from my suspended wrists,
but in fact the pose was much more provocative. I couldn't
deny it; without even realizing it, I had complied with Paul
and Margot. I was showing off the bruises. I was displaying
myself for buyers. I looked proud to be able to receive pain.
I was showing myself to whomever and whatever, to strangers, who could do anything they wanted to me; I was offering
myself to the highest bidder.

"Why not, slave?" she asked again, this time twisting my
nipples and making me gasp.

"They frighten me, Mistress," I temporized. I knew she'd
insist on hearing me more. "I...I look willing to be hurt,"
I mumbled.

"And?" she insisted.

"I look available to everybody," I said sadly. "And proud
of it."

"These are wonderful pictures," she said, moving one
of her hands in slow circles down to my belly. "Right now,
in various expensive hotels and pied -a-terre in this city, there
are dozens of people looking at these pictures. They are considering whether they would like to fuck you, whether they
would like to hurt you, whether you could be led and trained
and forced to become what they want. You look like... new
red wine. Beaujolais Nouveau. The depth is still developing, but the sweetness caresses the tongue and touches the heart.
Not everyone wants it, but it is a unique pleasure."

Her hand had reached the opening of my vagina. Her
fingers were slowly searching their way around. I wanted to
drop the pictures, but I was afraid to. I just kept staring at
myself and feeling her. She'd reached my clitoris. She was in
no hurry. I heard myself moaning. I dropped the pictures and
leaned into her leather-clad thighs, her bare breasts, her hair,
her mouth on my neck. And then she stopped.

Lithely, she swung a leg over me and stood up. She
turned to face me.

"I would whip you right now if I could," she said. "I'd
love to see you trembling and weeping under me. But I can't.
We'll manage, though."

She went to a drawer and pulled out some black leather,
and something else. A harness for me? No, a harness for her,
I realized hazily, as I watched her fit the big dildo into place.
It was a heavy clear plastic-virtual phallus, I couldn't help
thinking. She pulled some zippers on her leather pants, and
they fell away from her lean belly, though they stayed around
her legs like a second skin. And then she quickly strapped on
the harness while I looked at her in awe. Bright skin against
black leather, shiny transparent up-curving member, insolent
smile, clouded, intense eyes.

I was still kneeling in front of the couch. She nudged the
dildo into my mouth, deep, deep, deep, and then she pulled
out and pulled me to my feet. She lay down on the couch and
pulled me into a straddle on top of her, the dildo deep in my
cunt, making me groan as I raised and lowered myself on her.
Her fingernails played with my nipples. She moved her hips
subtly, suavely. Her hands were on my ass now, squeezing my flesh and moving me with her. And I followed her blindly,
seeing her face through a haze of pleasure, the hard dildo
probing deep inside me, my groans louder and louder, cresting to a howling orgasm.

She didn't let me recover very long. Quickly, she pushed
me off her and forced me down to my hands and knees. She
took off the harness and pulled my mouth down on her. I
licked, I sucked, I nibbled. I wanted to do everything she
might possibly want. I wanted to hear her cry out. I succeeded. She took her hands off my head and stroked my back,
my ass. I lay with my head in her lap.

I heard a low laugh. She raised my head and kissed me a
long time on the lips. I held her tightly.

"Do you think," I murmured, "that I'll ever see you again,
after tomorrow?"

She nibbled at my neck a little more before she
answered.

"Well," she said, "I do have some influence. I don't use it
much, but I suppose that makes it more valuable. So if what I
think is going to happen happens.. .well, yes, maybe you will
see me again. But only after you've been worked so rigorously
that you will have almost forgotten me."

I looked at her imploringly.

"No," she said, "I'm not telling you a word more."

I sighed, though of course I wasn't surprised.

"But I won't forget you," I said, kissing her hand.

"You won't forget me, what?" she asked sternly.

"I won't forget you, Mistress," I said meekly, dropping
my eyes. End of idyll.

I didn't want to move, but she got up and started searching
around for her shirt. When she'd gotten it sloppily buttoned up, she walked to her desk and found my bracelet. I was still on my
knees in front of the couch, my head resting on my arms, but
I turned and straightened into a position of attention, raising
my arm passively to let her buckle on the bracelet.

"Get up," she said, and when I did she led me to the
door.

"If you've forgotten how to get back to your room," she
said, "the Argus will help you, of course."

Of course. And just then, as she opened the door, the
bracelet prickled.

"You're going to be very tired tomorrow morning," she
said, pushing me gently into the hall. "All the other slaves have
had their regular tofu dinners and special baths and massages.
Except, of course, for that crazy boy with the ponytail, who's
probably still down in the kitchen, servicing every woman
who works there." She chuckled and kissed me on the forehead. I was too tired and satiated to be anything but amused
as well.

"Sleep well, Carrie," she said, and closed her door. As
I waved my bracelet over the Argus, trying my groggy, confused best to make sense of the diagram that appeared on
the screen, I heard the keys at her keyboard clicking fiercely
away.

was considerably less amused the next morning, if it was
.morning at all when the maid woke me up. It was dark
outside, and I was a mess. The maid gave me a nice bath and
a brief massage, which helped somewhat. I guess she was
catching me up with last night. I grimaced ruefully when I
remembered how readily I'd bought Margot's story. Last
supper. Right. Everybody gets his or her favorite food. We've
got salmon for Carrie, and then, let's see...how about jelly
beans for Tommy, colored eggs for Sister Sue? Still, it was a
nice memory and what had I lost? Some sleep was really all.
Better, I supposed, to be rushing through these preparations
than have all the time in the world to be scared to death of
what the day would hold.

And of course, as soon as I thought about being scared to
death, I realized that scared to death was exactly what I was.
I mean, it had been one thing to have Jonathan-who, when
you got right down to it, was a composite of crushes I'd had
throughout my life-pick me up at a party. It would be quite
another to surrender my body and will -for a year-to anybody, anybody at all who had the bucks. Could be somebody
really gross. Could be somebody dumb. Could be somebody
I didn't-underneath it all-actually like. I was choosing
to put myself in about the most choiceless situation I could
imagine. What puzzled me, when I looked at it that way, was why I wasn't more frightened still, why I was still willing to
go through with it, why so many of my nerve endings were
eager, awake, and alert.

But they were. I lapped up the rice gruel eagerly, I
relaxed into whatever the maid wanted to do with my body,
cleaning me up, making up my face, attaching small placards
with the number 14 to the rings, front and back, of my collar,
locking a cold, narrow, iron cuff around my left ankle, and
then leaving me alone in my room.

The bracelet buzzed soon after, and I walked out into the
corridor. And for the first time, I wasn't) ust tracing my own
solitary path through that place. Rather, there was a whole
tide of us, naked, tits and cocks bouncing, numbers hanging from our collars, terrified yet resolute expressions on our
faces, a parade of us walking the now-familiar route toward
the Garden.

When I got there, a security guard, dressed in a spiffy
uniform and holding a walkie-talkie, took off the bracelet,
checked my number, and moved me into the quickly forming
line of slaves. It was all going along so quickly and fluidly that
I didn't really have time to think. As I approached the door,
I could see into the Garden, which was full of beautifully
dressed buyers and marvelously decorated with bright silk
tents and banners, in the colors of a medieval book of hours. A
stage had been erected in the center, and there were pedestals
to the side of it, with some slaves already standing on them.

The guard at the door whispered in the ear of the slave
at the front of the line-all I could really see was fine straight
ash blond hair down to her ass and long elegant legs. Then a
trumpet sounded, and he smacked her hard on the ass. She
ran out to the area in front of the stage, where another guard was standing, and turned, knelt, and kissed the ground in the
direction of the crowd of buyers while an announcer up on a
stage read off her number and the page of the catalog where
you could read more about her. Then a guard took hold of
her wrist and led her to a pedestal. And by that time, the next
slave was being smacked and running... so gracefully, how
would I ever...? And then I was next.

I hardly heard the instructions whispered in my ear, but it
seemed like there were no surprises, nothing I hadn't already
learned by watching. It was just that I couldn't, couldn't possibly-there were too many people out there, it was all a
terrible mistake, I'd just slink back to my room and work it all
out later, and...I heard the sharp sound of the smack on my
ass more than I felt it, and then I was running, feeling nothing
but the smoothness of the cold tiles under my feet and about
a thousand knowing sophisticated eyes on my body. There's
the guard. Stop. Turn. Kneel and kiss the ground. He knows
where to take me, I just have to follow him, to that pedestal over there, past that group of people watching so intently.
I saw Chloe, laughing up at Francis and Andre. Some nasty
Eurotrash boys who'd come to my room one morning and
made a little gauntlet of cocks for me to suck and who seemed
to be happily reminiscing about it now. I saw Margot, in the
distance, her brow furrowed, keeping track of the proceedings like an orchestra conductor with the whole score of the
symphony in his head. Jonathan, looking pale, as though
he'd just finished a workaholic binge, watching me intensely
and dragging deeply on a cigarette. And Kate Clarke, briskly
taking Jonathan's arm and threading their way back through
the crowd.