Descent Into Darkness (9 page)

CHAPTER XVII –
Sandwich Spread

The pointed toes of Katarina’s ballet boots grazed heavily against the floor. The two women efficiently spirited her into a stone-faced room with no more difficulty than they would a paper doll. There was a central grate, they seemed to like those, but Katarina was pushed into a corner then freed of their grip on her arms.

She leant shakily against the wall. Bent for so long, her muscles screeched at having to hold her up and she staggered to adjust. Her heels clacked as she stabbed them down to find an impossible balance and her shoulder throbbed with the deep dull pain from her earlier landing unprotected on cold, hard marble.

The smell of expensive perfume drifted across her nostrils, marking the sashayed approach of Amber. She leant in, pressing against the captive girl, leather on latex as their bodies met. A kiss to Katarina’s cheek. Brief. Captivating. Distracting. The key was ripped from her neck.

With deliberate theatre, item after item was first unlocked then peeled from Katarina’s body. The discovery of each key renewed the smile on the lips that had kissed.

Sleep deprived and weary from the emotional distress inflicted on her, Katarina leant there in the corner while Amber worked. Like peeling the layers of an onion, she was slowly stripped. First corset, then collar, item by item the strenuous outfit was removed. Her arms took most time but released, Katarina was a slender vision in latex in those impossibly high boots.

Katarina looked at the leather clad woman, as the redhead looked on. Amber slowly sank to her knees, slithering hands and kisses down her captive’s curves. The burgundy leather creaked its serenade to the sinuous fluidity of feline movements. Suggestively, she paused, kneeling at the booted feet of the woman she toyed with. A pause to maximise the effect and Amber looked up with puppy dog eyes that suggested submission.

A theatrical flourish and Amber unlocked the first boot. Shears cut through the laces, slicing one side then the other. A tap on Katarina’s calf had her raise a foot and the boot was removed to return Katarina to her natural height for the first time in countless hours. It would be a relief in time but not yet, calf muscles howling a complaint as one foot then the other was set flat to the floor.

Katarina looked to her captor now as Amber rose to stand just inches away. The leather gloved hands rested lightly where the corset had been and eyes found eyes with a smile. Katarina’s pleading look met with a sure shake of the head.

“Speech is a precious luxury that slaves must work hard to earn.” Amber pressed two elegantly gloved fingers across the leather panel still compressing Katarina’s lips. “The cock stays right there until you learn to love it.” Amber’s voice was richly tinged and still accented to hint at antipodean origins. Applying an insistent pressure on the gag to force the latex cock deeper, in response Katarina sucked, obedient to the woman before her.

A satisfied smile seemed to thank her, until additional hands sliding around Katarina’s torso told her it had been for Red. Dominant leather sandwiched submissive latex and the two captors started to explore. Female hands ventured unfettered, washing Katarina with sinful sensations.

Sights, scents, sounds. Leather and latex filled her senses. One hand found its target and pressed the benwa balls deeper, eliciting a moan of pleasure that begged for a repeat.

“God, she’s eager.” The voice of the taller woman cooed from behind. Her husky voice though also spoke of her own arousal. Encouraged, Amber leant her cheek against the captive girl’s, ignoring a moan to kiss her American lover over Katarina’s shoulder.

The kiss didn’t stop. Two leather-clad lovers kissed with abandon, one continually pressing the cock gag into Katarina’s mouth while the other pressed up between her legs.

A set of hands paused. Through a pleasurable haze Katarina could see Amber looking at her, waiting. Half-closed eyes were forced up and Katarina watched transfixed as a finger and thumb closed on the tab of her catsuit’s zip.

The other hands stilled now. Katarina chewed on the latex cock. The air was heavy. Promise was pulsing. Need was ripe. Amber bit the corner of her lip as if to savour what was soon to be shown. Indeterminably slowly, Amber started to draw Katarina’s zip down. The air was chilled as moist, raw skin was revealed. Tooth by tooth, the zip edged lower. Two stretched halves of the latex splayed aside.

The revelation of cleavage won Amber’s moan of approval. The zip slowly descended. Over Katarina’s abdomen and still Amber nudged it down. Stooping slightly to reach forward, the blonde eased it down between Katarina’s legs. She took care unexpectedly and in that most sensitive of spots, the blonde pressed gently upwards into the flaming folds of flesh with the leathery knuckle of her thumb.

A groan pushed around Katarina’s gag but the needed touch was already gone. Why was she feeling like this? What were they doing to her? The zip passed lower and, with a hand reaching through Katarina’s crotch, it was slid to the top of her butt, past the plug.

Hands gripped the upper edges of the catsuit to stretch it down past Katarina’s shoulders. The edges were drawn further down her arms, peeling away the thin layer of protection. The rubbery material strained across her breasts, preventing further revelations. That wasn’t enough though, not to them. The gloved hands of Amber pushed between latex and skin, scooping them out, cupping them appreciatively before the latex was drawn lower.

The captivating woman still cradled the orbs of her breasts. They were caring hands, safe hands. Her eyes though focused beyond Katarina, locked on her red-haired lover as she pulled the catsuit further down.

Like a statue, Katarina stood. Her catsuit was peeled past her thighs and impatient fingers flexed around her breasts. Reaching her ankles, no command was needed as Katarina raised one foot, then the other, feeling the last grip of latex wrestled free with a pop and a snap, catsuit recoiling with natural elasticity.

Katarina was naked now except for the locked gag - a sign of her status, naked between two leathered lovers. Her breasts registered the first assault from Amber’s lips. Katarina already knew that these women could do anything to her and she would comply willingly, bound or not.

She felt her butt plug move and twisted to meet the eyes of the redhead. She could feel it corkscrewing before fully emerging, Red having also pulled out a grunt. A kick of a boot on Katarina’s ankle insisted she widen her stance.

Easily accessible now, Red’s finger first pressed, then pushed. Katarina grunted again at the easy intrusion. With a hooked finger, Red coaxed out the benwa balls. The feeling of relief, of restored humanity, was almost beyond Katarina and the first bite on her erect nipple sparked a moan of approval that surprised even her. More bites followed, interspersed with the lapping of a tongue and the gentle pressure of full lips. The feelings were divine and Katarina pressed eagerly to the mouth that had captured her breast.

Another kick on her ankle. Katarina shuffled her stance wider again. A leather-covered finger found her clitoris. Another hand reached between her legs and pressed twin fingers inside. She couldn’t stop it, didn’t want to.

Slick, natural lubrication oozed as lips teased her further. God, these people were all about sex! Sensuality in place of sadism, the assault continued. Fingers slipped into a steady rhythm that would not permit Katarina to resist long. Her eyes fluttered closed. The image of the blonde was captured, mouth clamped to breast, breast cupped by long leather fingers.

There was no denying the effect. Katarina’s hips started to rock back and forth in time. They beckoned her body to climb higher. The trials of her abduction melted away and her body obediently climbed. Tenderness blanketed her. Slick fingers slid back and forth. Her fire started to rage out of control.

Again, the image of the blonde locked to her breast spun through her mind. Fingers surged in and out. Lips whipped her senses still higher. It spun through again. This time the blonde in the picture wore a collar. The word picked out in silver lettering said ‘Kat’s’. She was held to a breast by force. The fingers interlaced into blonde hair were her own.

Surprising. Dangerous. Divine. Katarina’s breathing stalled. The image was all around her. It consumed just as lips did. There was no way back. And to the image of the blonde, she came.

But they didn’t stop. As much as she writhed, they continued, spinning her toward oblivion until finally satisfied they had squeezed all they could from her.

Katarina slumped forward against the blonde Amber, embers of ecstasy still burning bright. She felt herself being dragged forward again. Then, as the supporting hands dropped away, Katarina collapsed, eyes closed, savouring the slow dousing of the fires the women had together stoked.

The picture of the collared Amber still blazed in her mind. The image appealed to Katarina in such a deep-seated way. She hadn’t known those depths before. And to that image, her hands started to roam, taking delight in her own sensitivity.

That brief vision was enough to restore her resolve. There was strength in her still. She would endure. Survive. Thrive. She would emerge from the other side stronger, more assertive, certainly less naïve. Patience would deliver its own rewards, she was sure of that, even as the first jet of icy water struck her.

CHAPTER XVIII – Water Water Everywhere

Katarina’s eyes shot open as
cold water hit. It doused her afterglow, abruptly stilling silken aftershocks. The single light was dim, but showed her twin assailants, Amber and Red, who was brandishing a fire hose. Another frigid blast struck Katarina, this time in the stomach, punching out her air. The next blast was aimed squarely at Katarina’s crotch. “That will cool you off, girl.” Red laughed as her victim plunged protective hands down between her legs.

Amber stood impassively by, arms folded. Eyes flitted first to her wicked lover, to the sodden girl doubled over on the floor, then back. A hint of compassion perhaps? Katarina couldn’t be sure. A third blast struck home, freezing a breast to contrast with the recent warmth of lips. Katarina cry was choked off by her gag.

Off and on the hose went. Each chilling blast threw Katarina’s mind back, forcing it further away from the warm comfort she had found in the tender touch of those hands. She tried to rise between torrents only to be knocked backwards by another. Gallon after gallon swirled and gurgled its way down the drain at the centre of the room.

Seemingly endless, Katarina shivered. An attack on body and soul, she cowered there now, hands covering more sensitive areas while jet after jet was directed at her tired body.

The roar of each surge of water gave Katarina scant warning of the next attack. Each punch of bitter cold forced the air from her lungs as effective as any blow. Breasts. Legs. Tummy. All received targeted attention. The only consolation was the thought that she finally felt clean.

Katarina sobbed, eyes pleading for it to stop. But the cycle of targets restarted, repeating until her spirits were as bedraggled as her hair. There was no comfort to a body which now quaked uncontrollably with cold, shivering involuntarily in a vain attempt to retain even a semblance of heat. Her consciousness began to withdraw from the absolute discomfort, skulking away in a state of protective withdrawal as the cleansing continued.

A scream yanked Katarina back to the present. Another quickly followed before Katarina had enough presence of mind to know it wasn’t hers. There was a swish. The crack of a whip. Katarina jolted, expecting the explosion of pain.

But no pain came. Just the cycle of ice rotating around her body. Katarina felt numb. She forced her eyes open, confused and searching for the source. Red still held the torturous fire hose. There was no whip in the room and Amber visibly flinched as the trigger was squeezed again. Had she once been subjected to this too?

== ~ ==

In the adjacent room, the imposing woman with black hair paused to survey the elfin girl. She stood there, arms hidden behind her, melded together in a web of ropes. The girl’s hair flopped over her face, hiding the tears that flowed. Satisfied with her accuracy, attested to by marks on her target, the woman shifted her stance and transferred the bullwhip to her right hand to exercise her less practised side.

With a studious concentration, Raven took time to focus. She drew her hand back, uncoiling the bullwhip and the long leather strand coiled at her feet. With another breath Raven entered her zone. A flex of her shoulder started it off, a twist of her corseted torso and finally a flick of her wrist. The braided leather strand leapt and landed with a tell-tale crack of wicked force. The whip expended its momentum, wrapping rapidly around its victim’s abdomen, increasing the length of its bitter sting.

The ensuing scream was its own reward to her. Raven moaned contentedly and shook the gripping leather free of the girl. She smiled a genuine smile. She always enjoyed this. Shuffling her stilettoed feet into place and bracing herself, Raven puddled the whip, making ready to lash out again.

Not quite cathartic, but then nothing
could
be to Raven. With each crack of the whip, she unleashed her unbounded anger, an anger seeded deeply in her childhood. With each stroke, she pictured her mother.
She
was the one with the latticework welts, not Mela. It gave Raven a sense of satisfaction and that satisfaction pulsed through her.

She remembered how she’d waited all those long lonely hours. Occasionally, her mother’s latest lay had been there, usually drinking on the sofa. More often than not though, Raven had been alone to her thoughts, despair her only company.

The last lay had climbed beer in hand, from the chair. He’d noticed her, despite her best attempts to remain in the shadows. Fuelled by drink, he’d grabbed her, aggressively introducing her to a world that she was not yet ready for, stealing sweet innocence, even as she fought him.

After he’d seized his coat and slammed the door behind him, she’d cried in the corner for hours, clothes hanging off her just as he’d torn them. Her mother had found her there. Drained and tired after a long shift in the diner where she worked, she’d already befriended a bottle of cheap vodka. She’d done that before all too often. With the departure of her latest meal ticket she’d flown into a familiar rage. Oblivious to the protests and sobs of her much neglected daughter, she’d kicked out.

In desperation for a crumb of understanding, Raven had clung to her ankle. The next kick was as an outlet for life’s frustrations and deaf to the cries below, she’d continued to kick as her own tears streamed.

Cowering to reduce the force of the blows, there had been no fight. But an unfamiliar feeling was growing. It bubbled and boiled until it exploded in an upward punch of such ferocity that she’d stopped her mother in her tracks, giving her time to rise.

The conflagration within consumed her. She had lashed out again before turning and fleeing as her mother rose shakily to respond. From that moment she’d been alone. She was no longer the unhappy girl in the shadows. She needed nobody but she needed to be more than she was to survive. Independent, solitary and dangerous. That was her future.

No more cowering. She would always fight. Fight for her future, fight for her position, fight to survive. She’d kept to the shadows, tried to hide from life’s torments but life had only found a way to torment even more. Her only way was to fight. She knew what she had to do and for the first time in her life, she took control.

The subsequent years had hardened her further as she slipped into a world with power as the only benchmark. Her heart crystallised and blackened by the trauma, she became Mistress Raven to those she took and used as her amusement and therapy but that wasn’t all. She was Raven to those she gave herself to. There was a masochistic depravity too. She needed that in a subconscious echo of how childhood was so violently torn from her.

The rage fired by those memories was etched across the back of the girl before her. She’d really let loose and couldn’t match memory to the number of welts she could see - she always did though when thoughts of her mother replayed.

Nearly a decade had passed before she had crossed paths with her mother again. She had been staying in a middle of the road hotel for a time and was waiting for the arrival of the next nameless client eager to revel in the kiss of her whip. She’d asked for extra towels, always best to be prepared as some lost control.  She’d had to call twice but services finally knocked on her door. A brow-beaten woman was there, a bundle of towels across her arms.

Head down, the woman had bustled in, keen not to linger where she was neither comfortable nor wanted. The towels were deposited on the corner of the bed with a clumsy apology for the intrusion. Even though poorly bleached hair straggled limply down to hide the woman’s face, Raven had recognised her immediately. She was the one different though and in her leather dress and towering heels, beyond recognition from the girl she had been.

A conflict had raged in Raven’s mind. She should reach out, bridge the chasm.  But no sooner had the thought appeared then it was chased away by a darker, infinitely more satisfying idea. As the door quietly closed she’d picked up the phone. A complaint was logged, simple and damning; a complaint of non-existent abusive language, of the way she’d been interrupted without apology, of the towels being thrown at her.

No evidence needed, it had been her word against her mother’s. She was a longstanding guest, a regular, valued. Her mother would be fired, thrown back on the street, if not worse.

A smile twisted across Raven’s lips. A hurried knock on the door had signalled the expected arrival of her client. She would draw blood on
this
client. It would indeed be a good day. A second knock, more insistent. The necessary permission to enter was given.

The door had been flung open but the entrant was anything but expected. Her mother stormed in, arms flailing to elaborate on curses she spewed on the immaculate woman. Her intent was unclear but fuelled by the anger of her dismissal. She didn’t make it far. Raven snatched the heavy bag resting on the side of the bed and, swinging it hard, thudded it into the onrushing woman’s solar plexus.

Winded and speechless, her mother had staggered back. The second blow connected with her chin and she was unconscious before she hit the floor. Raven had quickly got to work.

First she’d silenced the woman, quickly forcing a large rubber ball into the gaping mouth. The sedative she poured over it ensured resistance would be limited and she continued to work. The attached web of leather straps were strapped tightly to embrace her head. Raven took no care, oblivious to hair yanked out by the roots as it caught in the buckles.

A leather hood was next, tugged down into place and tied before the thicker leather of the collar was drawn closed, just that single notch too tight. Raven afforded herself a smile and squeezed the lock shut. Her mother was now a faceless, silent body, unrecognisable, there to be nothing more than used.

All those years ago, her mother had attacked her when she was most in need of loving comfort and Raven felt the abandonment still. She tore at her mother’s clothes, ripping where any cloth resisted. The cheap nylon of the work apron crackled a static protest until finally a naked body was revealed. Long years of hard manual work had kept her in reasonable shape, belying her forty seven years.

Another knock on the door told of the arrival of Raven’s latest 200 buck an hour self-therapy. She drew him into the room by a leather gloved hand to his balls. Raven pointed toward the woman on the bed. “Be a good boy and she’s your bonus.” Her voice was laced with seductive promise and the man sank to his knees before her. She would make him earn his bonus, though he would get it regardless.

The naked man, a fresh filigree of lash marks streaked across his back, had hauled Raven’s now semi-conscious mother onto her front. After an hour of teasing denial Raven knew he was hungry and yet striding past him, she left without a backward glance.

It was the last time she’d seen her mother but she hadn’t the slightest tinge of regret. When Raven had closed the door it had shut firmly on her past. It was vengeance but not full closure, instead prizing open a darkly sexual Pandora’s Box.

The back she now found herself touching only ever offered temporary respite. There was a trickle of blood. She needed more and Mistress Raven lashed out with renewed vigour.

== ~ ==

The sounds of more swooshes echoed into the room. Cracks were accompanied by more curdling cries. Katarina’s heart reached out for the victim in the next room as the freezing cycle started afresh. The cold was striking through to her very core now and she was barely above slipping into a hyper-thermal unconsciousness. At the end of this cycle though the blasts stopped abruptly as the door was flung open.

“How many?” Steel heels sang around the stone chamber. The clank of tightening chain followed soon after and, redirecting her look, Katarina’s eyes travelled up the lengthy legs of Mistress Raven.

“Four cycles Mistress, though I doubt the whore can take any more,” spat Red in reply, gesturing toward the naked girl, who lay shivering in the corner, hands barely preserving her modesty.

“She will take a fifth with her new friend.” It was clear Raven would bear no argument. Amber took a breath as if to speak before holding back.

Three pairs of eyes questioned but Raven’s command soon made sense as she stepped forward into the light of the room. Behind her she dragged a leashed girl. Katarina’s eyes settled instantly on her, widening in horror to see the lattice work of welts crossed back and forth across her torso. It was the woman she had heard screaming. It was Mela.

She resisted with all her might but Mela was no match for the tugs on the chain attached to her collar. Her arms were bound with her elbows grinding uncomfortably together and her bare feet gained no traction on the slick, wet floor. Inexorably, she was pulled forward into the room.