Judgment II: Mercy (14 page)

Her scalp ached where he'd pulled her hair. Her arms and her bottom burned, her womb felt positively battered, and her heart sang.

She rolled sideways to face him, admiring his strength, thrilling within because he could have had anyone and yet it was her body that he took for his enjoyment. That she hadn't found her own completion didn't matter at all. She had pleased him. He really did need her.

"Thank you," she said.

Shipe sat up and looked at her incredulously. "Christ, woman, would you stop with the thank you's!" Pulling the pillows out from under her hips, he threw them against the headboard. "Get your ass up there!" He landed a stinging swat to her bottom as she scrambled to get all the way onto his bed. "Christ," he said again, and lay down, turning his back to her. "Shut up and go to sleep already, or I'll gag you with your own goddamn hair."

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She cuddled up as close as she could get without touching him. Smiling happily, she closed her eyes.

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125

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

Chapter Seven

Mercy awoke to a sharp pain in her wrists. She reared her head with a start, just as Shipe finished tightening the knot that bound her hands to the bars of the headboard. She drew a sharp breath, at first confused and not at all sure where she was. It all came back to her when he pulled his pillow out from under her head.

"Get your ass up," he said.

In the semi-darkened room, the only light being the glowing embers in the fireplace, Mercy gripped the bars she was tied to with both hands. She twisted her head from side to side, searching the bed for signs of an implement. Then, slowly, wincing as her bottom protested having to move, she crawled up onto her knees. "M-Master Shipe?"

His arm encircled her hips and she gave a sharp cry as he lifted her completely off her knees. He stuffed both pillows under her hips and dropped her back down with her bottom well propped up in the air. Heading for the massive trunk at the foot of the bed, he returned a moment later with a ball gag, which he forced between her teeth. "When I want you to talk, I'll ask you a question."

He tied it tightly at the back of her head, then he bound her long hair into a pony tail at her nape so that he could see her face. Her ankles he fastened to opposite posts of the footboard, pulling her legs very wide apart.

Mercy twisted her head back, giving him a very uncertain look. She had never been tied like this before, with her 126

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bottom so raised as though offered for punishment. She again searched nervously for a waiting cane or strap or paddle, but there was nothing ... yet. She drew a shaky breath as she raised her eyes to watch his powerful body moving through the shadows, and he went back to the foot of the bed.

"It obviously hasn't occurred to you yet," he said as he delved back into the open trunk, "it may not be your thanks that I want to hear coming from your beautiful mouth."

She had a beautiful mouth? Mercy felt both a trill of pleasure that he would so compliment her, and a shock of apprehension for what he intended. She blinked, her eyebrows coming together as he took out a piece of plastic and a small clay jar, which he brought back to set on the night-side table. The piece of plastic became a condom, which he unwrapped as he sat down beside her. He stretched it over the top of his cock and unrolled the length down his thick shaft, already fully erect, bathed orange in the dying of the fire's light, and pulsing to be buried inside her. She heard the soft 'tink' of pottery as he removed the jar's lid and dipped two fingers into the pale lotion within. There was a faint medicinal smell, and she couldn't help but clench her bottom cheeks as he reached back between her legs and thoroughly moistened the rim of her anal entrance.

The gag muffled her whimper as he pushed his fingers past her reluctant anus. She closed her eyes, bowing her head onto her arms as he stroked the lubricant as deep into her bottom as he could reach. Anal sex was not unfamiliar to her.

And to be honest, she didn't remember it unfondly, at least not when her husband had cared to enter her gently. But it 127

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had been a while. A very long while, and she couldn't help but wonder if it would hurt as much now as it had the very first time.

Once, twice, he slowly pumped his fingers in and out, then withdrew them to re-coat her anus with a fresh layer of the medicinal ointment. It wasn't until he again invaded the dusky rim of her bottom that she began to feel an odd warmth. He'd spread it on her labia, up and down the crack of her buttocks, and everywhere that he'd touched her, her skin was heating.

Mercy mewed her distress, the heat becoming painful as her bottom burned both inside and out. She grabbed tightly to the bars of the headboard, grunting into her gag, her fingernails scraping the wood. But tied as securely as she was, that was all the struggling that she could manage, and the mattress shifted under his weight as Shipe settled between her splayed thighs.

"No," he growled, biting and sucking at the lobe of her ear.

"It's not your thanks I want."

She gave him her suffering instead, screaming and crying into the mattress between her outstretched arms as he entered her with brutality and claimed her body with furious savagery. The friction as he pumped inside her increased the heat, scalding her from the inside out with a fiery agony that lasted for a long time even after he'd exhausted himself.

Mercy was still groaning a good hour later, when Shipe finally roused himself to take the gag from her mouth.

"Well," he said. "What have you got to say now?"

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Weary, Mercy licked her dry lips and hoarsely whispered,

"Thank you."

He laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "You're saying that just to piss me off. You think I'm hurting you now? This is pure gentleness compared to what I could be doing."

Her eyes burning from crying, sticky with sweat, her body aching as though he'd already fulfilled that promise, she whispered, "It's better than being ignored."

Shipe stared at her for a long moment in silence. Then he stuffed the gag back into her mouth and left her tied to his bed the rest of the night.

* * * *

Mercy was still tied hand and foot to the corner posts when she awoke the next morning. Although Master Shipe had spent most of the night sleeping beside her, one leg thrown over the top of hers, his arm around her waist with a hand possessively cupping her mons, he wasn't touching her now.

The mattress gave a slight shake and Mercy lifted her head, glancing back over her other shoulder to find him perched along the edge of the bed, hunched over as though struggling to pull on his boot—although it was unlikely since he wasn't yet wearing his pants.

He sat, clapping his hands to his thighs with a stifled sigh, and looked down at his lap. Drawing a resigned breath, he stood up evenly on two legs. The muscles of his back and buttocks bunched as he took a single step, and Mercy cried out in shock as she sat up. Or would have had she not been so tightly tied down.

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Shipe turned around to look at her; she peered through the dark at his false leg. "It's not a goddamn miracle. It's a prosthetic."

For once, he didn't sound angry when he spoke to her.

Perhaps that made her bolder than she should have been, because the second he took off her gag, the first thing she said was, "You don't like to wear it?"

Shipe glared at her, then moved down the bed to untie her ankle. "No, I don't like to wear it."

"Why not?"

He stopped working on the knot and braced his hands on the mattress, a gesture that was rife with aggravation. He glared at her even harder, his look turning familiarly cross.

"If it pinches," she hastily continued, "I could sew a pad inside it to make it more comfortable." With wide and hopeful eyes, she bit her bottom lip and waited for him to answer.

"What did I tell you last night?" he growled.

"Less talking, more screaming?" she hesitantly paraphrased, her uncertainty making it sound more like a question.

His dark eyes glittered. It might have been amusement; it might just as well have been annoyance. It was hard to tell with Shipe and the darkness of the room wasn't helping.

"Then what should you be doing right now?"

She raised an eyebrow suggestively. "Screaming?"

The smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth was the most reluctant that she had ever seen. His was an almost cross amusement as he growled, and she shrieked with 130

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laughter as he climbed on the bed after her and flattened her bottom with a not-so-gentle swat.

Her cries became more laughter as he bit it, first one buttock and then the other. Then more gently, and her laughter began to die away as he lay down between her splayed thighs and his mouth moved lower still. He made them both very late to breakfast.

* * * *

It took two months to list the books that lined the back wall of the common library. And that was just the back wall.

She may not have made a lot of progress in the cataloging department, but Shipe had certainly made a lot of progress in the last two months on her.

The most notable change was in her uniform. Although still an ugly split-pea-soup green in color, the neckline had dropped nearly to her nipples and the tunic had lost its shapeless form. A stiff black corset hugged it to her body, lifting her breasts as though offering them for the approval of the masters. Sometimes late at night, as he buried himself within her willing body, biting and suckling at the tips of each creamy globe, he would threaten to have her nipples pierced.

"I'll cut off the top of your tunic," he was fond of saying.

"You'll go through the mountain with your breasts bared, so I can admire my handiwork throughout the day."

But he hadn't done that yet.

He had, however, cut away the extra length of her skirt and removed the sides, leaving Mercy with soft bib-like swaths to dangle below her corset in front and back, and 131

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making modesty for her nothing more than an illusion. When she bent over, she didn't even have that. To show her marks better, Shipe had said.

And he was very, very fond of marking her, both with his passion as well as his vengeance. In fact, he had dedicated one evening a week—a night she'd come to call 'Hell Night'—

solely to art of painting her body with the evidence of his pleasure. For no other reason than perhaps because he wanted to hear her screams, he would lay into her with paddle, strap, birch or cane, or any combination thereof, until she had barely breath left to wail her gratitude. Sometimes afterward, he would love her with some measure of tenderness, but more often than not it was with the ferocity she had come to recognize as him.

As hard as it was sometimes to bear, Mercy was grateful every time he beckoned her to him. She near cried with joy each night that he allowed her to sleep with him in his bed, rather than banishing her to her closet, as he only did now if she was disobedient enough to earn a Demerit Caning. Most Lessers in Judgment earned a session with the Black Master only once or twice an annual quarter. Mercy, on the other hand, seemed to require a punishing dose once or twice each month.

It was a funny thing to fear the bite of the rod and yet to seek it out, but that's exactly what Mercy found herself doing.

Already her name appeared in the Black Book more times than half of the Product in Judgment, the majority of her punishments being for little things. Taking too long in the shower and running to lunch a little bit late, was the most 132

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common. It became a very convenient misbehavior. Anytime she began to feel the tendrils of panic welling inside her, the ones that whisperingly suggested that she was once again being ignored while Lessers gained in favor, all she had to do was run a little late and the calming reassurance of discipline would once more enfold her in its pain-filled embrace.

"Must be making up for lost time," Shipe commented, as he'd signed her latest Demerit slip just the night before. "Your naughty bottom must not think it's getting enough attention."

Standing in front of the fireplace in the common library, an armload of books hugged to her chest, Mercy stared into the flames and relived Shipe's solution to that particular problem.

If she clenched the muscles of her buttocks, she could feel again the mass of tender bruises that cris-crossed behind her, first from the ten-stroke Demerit Caning that had reduced her voice to a hoarse rasp by the end, and then from the strapping Shipe had given right over the top of it, just to make sure the job was done right.

Her battered bottom still burned when she touched it, or sat down, or even walked. But it made her smile; she was so well cared for.

"Mistress."

As soft as a sigh, the word made Mercy jump. She turned her head to find Mahogany standing less than ten feet away, surrounded by the rows of study tables, watching her with cold, hard eyes.

"That's what we called you," Mahogany said. "Or we were beaten for disrespect. Now we call you Drone, and are beaten 133

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for allowing the acknowledgment of you, like a thing of shame, to pass upon our lips."

Had she missed the mid-morning break's bell? For one horrified second, Mercy stood in total shock, staring at the Judgment Elite, halfway expecting Shipe to melt out of the shadows and descend upon her with a fury born of disapproval. Whether it was the eminent punishment or the thought of truly disappointing Shipe, she dropped her armload of books there on the floor before the fireplace and fled all the way to her stool in the corner.