Last Slave Standing (21 page)

“All agreed?” John looked around and there were no dissenters. “I’ll accept then but stipulate a neutral ground.”

By the end of the day an arena in North Africa which was holding a show at that time agreed to tack the special challenge on to the end of the proceedings and it had been formally agreed that Blondie would go head to head with Snake over as many rounds as it took to see one of them knocked out, the rounds were to be fifteen minutes each. If the contest was still on after ten rounds then every other round – of five minutes – would be slave against slave. The items of equipment on which punishment would be administered had also been decided.

The following morning Blondie was roused early and taken straight up to the stadium where Doctor Sands put her on the treadmill and attached monitors to her to record her heart as she was progressively pushed to her limits. Straight after breakfast she was taken out into the fields and put to log pulling for three hours and then in the afternoon she was run in harness around the park before going back onto the gym equipment. For two hours in the evening she wrestled and boxed against Carlo, Brian and Tony with only twenty second breaks every ten minutes.

Chrissie Sands kept meticulous recordings of her pulse and her rate of recovery. At the end of a week the stable was cock-a-hoop, the training regime was paying dividends and Blondie was, if anything, responding and flourishing under the relentless discipline.

So when the storm broke it came out of a clear blue sky.

Chapter 22

Brian stood back and zipped up his trousers, feeling relaxed and warm in the wake of his orgasm. Blondie knelt in the mud before him, licking her lips and swallowing the last trails of his hot, sticky jism – the day was overcast and damp so a good mouthful of hot sperm had probably been welcome. He pulled her to her feet, checked the log was still clipped securely to the chains at the ends of her yoke and whipped her across her buttocks with the thin leather strands of the flogger he held.

“Come on, girl! Get your carcase moving! There’s some more lovely mud for you to wade through. Come on!” He sang out his usual encouragement as he smacked the tails of the whip across her back and she leant into her work, the powerful thighs straining as she trudged heavily downhill and into the deep ooze that he and Carlo cultivated to develop strength and endurance – and no one was going to need it more than Blondie was in less than a week’s time. Her legs sank halfway to the knees and Brian could feel the cold ooze pressing in on his boots as he waded alongside her. The heavy log she was pulling squelched and wallowed sluggishly through the mud behind her and Brian began applying the whip to her breasts as they swung beneath her when she leaned further forwards. But suddenly one foot went from under her and she was down on one knee, mud spraying up her body.

Brian wasn’t perturbed at first, a slip was not unusual, and as normal he let her have four or five heavy swipes across her shoulders. Usually it would have had her snorting and groaning with effort as she surged back up to her feet. But on this occasion she just carried on kneeling in front of him. He yanked on the leash running from her collar and lashed her again. Slowly she staggered back to her feet and resumed her work but Brian could see an odd look of apathy in her eyes and what really alarmed him were the grimaces of pain she gave when he whipped her. Blondie was normally calm and remote but when she was doing anything that she knew was Carlo’s work, she concentrated fiercely and relished the hot sting of the whip. But on this particular afternoon once she had pulled clear of the mire, she simply stood in a kind of dumb daze.

“The lights are on but there’s no one home,” he told Carlo when he led her back to the stadium where Tigre and Blackie were sparring in boxing kit, making the steel structure echo with the thuds of the punches and the strained grunts and cries in response. Carlo frowned and took her pulse then freed her hands and stood back, adopting a fighting pose and shaking out his whip. Normally it was an invitation she would have leapt at but instead she lumbered sluggishly into a crouch and yelled in pained surprise when Carlo’s whip lashed across her stomach. All activity in the stadium ceased at the sound of her cry. Blondie was legendary for her silent determination in any sort of combat – especially when it was against her beloved master.

“Get the doctor!” Carlo snapped. “And get those other bitches out of here!” he yelled at Helga.

The first that Raika knew of anything being amiss was Patti rushing out of her office and summoning her.

“There’s some problem with Blondie and Carlo wants us up at the stadium now!”

She put down the brush she was using to groom Ox’s hair and scurried off after her boss.

In the stadium the air was crackling with tension. The inert and apathetic figure of Blondie was tethered to the boarding surrounding the floor of the stadium and beside her stood Carlo who was plainly in a fury; almost chin to chin with him was Chrissie Sands with Brian and John Carpenter keeping nervously to the sides of the confrontation.

“All I know,” Carlo was shouting, “is I don’t got fancy letters after my name but for the first time I got a sick slave on my hands! And now the doctor with all the fancy letters can’t tell me what’s wrong!”

Chrissie Sands was red faced as she retorted. “Her pulse is normal her temperature is normal - rectally and orally! Her eyes are clear, there’s no breakage or strain anywhere! Her urine’s clear, her bowels are fine! No, I can’t tell you what’s wrong!”

“Have you tried blood?” John Carpenter put in.

Chrissie shook her head. “I suppose I could courier a sample to a friend and get a result sometime tomorrow,” she said. With a final glare at Carlo she picked up her bag and went over to Blondie.

As Raika approached she heard Carlo’s aside to John Carpenter and her stomach lurched even as her heart raced.

“I told you we didn’t need anyone with all her qualifications,” Carlo was saying angrily to John. “When the shit’s hit the fan she’s a waste of space and money!”

“Easy, Carlo,” John replied. “We went all through this, we needed to comply with all the other stables and you have to admit she looked the business. But, okay, I take your point. If she can’t get Blondie back on track, we might have to let her go…….”

Raika was horrified at the prospect of losing her mistress when she had so nearly completed her task and her kind master would come for her and the doctor……..Her task. Never for a second had she given a thought to what it actually was, or what its consequences might be. Now she looked over at the tall blonde apathetically looking down as the doctor pulled a syringe full of blood from a punctured vein in her arm.

Just as when Sir John had beaten her while the others were all away and it seemed as if scales had fallen from her eyes and she saw what she truly had become, or more probably what he wanted her to believe she had become. Now it happened all over again and this time she saw what a stupid, selfish idiot she had been. She had no guarantee that anyone would come to rescue her, of course she didn’t. And no one would. All Sir John had wanted was Blondie turned into a pale imitation of her normal athletic, sexually supercharged self. The only thing guaranteed was that the slave they were all so proud of was going to be humiliated and Doctor Sands would be sacked. She had been used by Sir John and her previous master far more brutally than by any of the men here. She had been a fool and had nearly ruined CSL. It had to stop before it got any worse.

Raika stepped forwards, her heart was pounding but above all else she was certain at last that she didn’t want bad things to happen to CSL. It was, after all, the nearest thing to a home she had.

She reached into her blouse and produced the last three sachets of powder that Sir John had left under the bush just that morning.

“No, you mustn’t sack Doctor Sands,” she said as firmly as she could. The two men turned to stare at her and she quailed in the face of Mister Carlo’s anger. “I….I’m sorry, but I think it might be these.” She held out the sachets and was aware that a complete silence had fallen.

Mister Carpenter picked one of the sachets up from her outstretched palm.

“Raika,” he said. “What have you done?”

An hour later the stable’s senior staff were convened in John’s office in The Lodge itself. Chrissie Sands was on her mobile. Raika was locked in one of the punishment cells down beside the dungeons. John put down his desk phone and sighed.

“Sir John Fitzgerald checked out this afternoon. He must’ve got cold feet at the last minute.”

Chrissie signed off from her call. “They’re going as fast as they can but so far nothing’s showing in the blood sample,” she said.

“It won’t,” Carlo said. “Conor’s no fool. He was in the forefront of the move to dope test, so he’ll be damn sure he doesn’t use anything that will give him away.”

Chrissie rubbed her eyes tiredly. “It’s only a guess but I reckon it’s some kind of depressant. It’s slowing her right down so she doesn’t give a damn about anything and I’ll bet it’s affecting her endorphin and adrenalin production, so she won’t get any sexual hit out of being whipped – or any other sort of pain. The only thing that saved us was a slight miscalculation in the dosage. If it had been a little less we wouldn’t have known a thing about it until far too late.”

“So what do we do? Now we do know?” Brian asked.

“Get the wretched stuff out of her system,” Chrissie said.

“And we make pretty damn sure no one knows that we know. Let Conor and whoever planned this go on thinking we’re going to field Blondie so spaced out she’ll fall asleep in the ring,” Carlo put in.

John brightened up. “That’s true, we’ve got that in our favour. All we’ve got to do is feed her some emetics, pour some enemas into her and clean her out!”

“I could pump her stomach,” Chrissie suggested.

“No!” Carlo stood up, suddenly decisive. “That’ll only weaken her and we’ve only got a few days to work in. First, we stick to our workout plans and hope that with no more doses it’ll start to wear off quickly. Secondly, there’s someone I need to talk to.” He strode towards the door.

“Who?” John asked.

“Blondie,” Carlo said and left the room.

They had thought it best to stable her in the horsebox rather than back in her stall and Carlo stood for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Ahead of him and just to his right he eventually saw the pale form of his thoroughbred slave as she sprawled on her bed of straw.

He stepped across quietly and quickly shrugged off his clothes before kneeling between her carelessly wide-spread thighs. Even asleep the sight of her long legs and her gently rising and falling breasts and the thought of all that they could be made to willingly endure, had him stiffening rapidly. He touched her knee and immediately her eyes opened. They fixed on him with no start of surprise or any sign of recognition or pleasure, all of which normally greeted him on the occasions when he would stop by her stall and enjoy her on his way to bed. She just looked at him with complete indifference.

There was only one thing he could do to get through to her.

“Tara,” he said. For a moment there was no reaction and then she sat up, shaking her head as if to try and clear it, an expression of anger at last displacing the horrible blankness.

“Ssh, now!” Carlo whispered and pressed her back down so that he lay on her, feeling the helm of his cock just brush the softness of her labia. Beneath his chest he felt the cushions of her breasts flatten.

“I know you don’t want to hear your real name. But there’s something you need to know……..” He shifted his position slightly and thrust with his pelvis. He felt the gentle suctioning of her lips as they parted and then the humid warmth of her vagina engulfed and caressed him. In the dark her eyes shone with awareness and then softened as he thrust and withdrew, then thrust again.

“Now that I’ve got your full attention I need to tell you that Conor Brien’s been trying to dope you.........”

Underneath him he felt Blondie buck and twist at the mention of the hated name – the one man who had ever tricked her and who she would never forgive.

“Whoa there!” Carlo grinned down at her and resumed a leisurely rhythm inside her as she calmed. “Now the next few days aren’t going to be pleasant and I guess you’ve not been feeling too good today. But Conor doesn’t know that we know what he’s been up to……..”

Chapter 23

With just the one crate to be transported, Salim Mahmood, the arena owner who was hosting the Last Slave Standing challenge, sent a limousine with discreetly blacked out windows to collect Carlo, John and Patti. The crate, covered with a light blanket was loaded into the boot at the small airfield and the car sped them away from the gleaming white towers beside the azure bay of the Mediterranean and towards a tourist spot of quite a different kind. Two miles out of town and just as the country was becoming barren, the car turned off and followed a small but well tarmaced road towards some low hills. The road wound through them as they became higher and more bleak until it began to descend once more and before them they saw a collection of low, ranch-style buildings clustering around the unmistakable shapes of an arena and a circus, while beyond them stood the towers of the hotels.

As they pulled in at their hotel, the roars of the crowd enjoying the final action of the first day of the show drifted across the hard packed and dusty earth and once Blondie was safely stabled, Carlo took a walk. This arena had followed Conor’s blueprint for its slave pens and built them up so that spectators could walk around above them, shaded from the sun, while down on the sand the brutal struggles took place for their entertainment. Carlo was impressed by some of the boxing he saw, satisfyingly hard punches swung in against leather corsets with studs set on the insides. The delighted laughter of the onlookers mingled with the grunts of pain and effort rising from the pens, and to Carlo it was familiar and well-loved. Fortunately no one seemed to recognise him and he was able to lean on one parapet and watch several wrestling bouts, appreciating the way the trainers had hammered into their slaves the need for showmanship as well as skill. All the participants understood the importance of breast holds to an audience. Around him female voices rose shrilly as the more spectacular holds and throws were made. Beside him a man pulled his cock out of a woman he had had bent forwards over the concrete above a hard fought whip duel.

“You want?” he asked generously, gesturing towards the woman who was busy yelling encouragement to one contestant who had disarmed her opponent and was delivering a thrashing that would inevitably bring victory for her and a visit to the whipping post for further punishment for the loser. She was so carried away by the sight of the naked women delivering and taking the whipping that she never noticed Carlo slip into her and had made no move to put her skirt back down when the first man pulled out. Carlo didn’t mind. It was all part of the arenas and the woman fucked quite energetically without ever looking round to see who was enjoying her. When her master did turn up at the end of the bout and the loser was dragged out to take a further thirty lashes, nobody cared that he was a completely different man to the one who had offered her to Carlo.

Back at the hotel later in the evening, it was decided that the following day should be spent giving Blondie very light exercise and that none of them should appear at any social function. They wanted to project the image of a stable concentrating solely on the upcoming challenge and with no knowledge of anything untoward.

However, on the third day, Carlo and John had to accept invitations to sit in the owners’ box. Somehow they managed to maintain civil relations with Conor until it was time for the final melee and then at last Carlo was able to make his excuses and go below to see to Blondie.

Although the bright sun and the colour and noise of the arena terraces, orgiastic and eager for any fresh cruelty was intoxicating in its own right, in the cool depths of the arenas was where he felt at home. He descended the stairs that led off the back of the box and was soon down in the corridors lined with the ancient stones of the original arena that had stood there in Roman times. A few turns to left and right and he was in the modern corridors that had the smells of sweat and body oil, of female musk and leather almost oozing out of the stones. Patti was standing guard outside one of the holding cells where slaves about to be led into the arena were kept once they were kitted out for their event. As he entered one end of the passage, many of the cell doors were being thrown open and the cells emptied for the finale. There was a brief spell of noise and shouts and whip cracks and then there was only him and Patti and at the other end of the passage, Gerd standing outside Snake’s cell.

Carlo and Patti peered into the cell through the small grille set in the thick wooden door. Blondie was lying quietly on her straw, champing on her tongue ring from time to time.

They let themselves in and Patti knelt to fix her tongue leash in place then pulled her up so that she could brush out her hair and oil her body ready for the crowd. She took her time but even so there was half an hour or so left over when all they could do was walk her round on her leash. In the last days of training Blondie seemed to have recovered some of her vitality and as she padded around the small room after Patti, her eyes held a look of patient anticipation and awareness that was very different to the drug-induced apathy of six days before. Carlo now felt quietly confident that the strenuous workouts and the mention of Conor Brien had cleared her system and her mind.

When the call came he patted her haunch as he led her out and shushed her as her nostrils flared and she reared back slightly. Conor Brien was leading Snake out. The big Irishman grinned over at Carlo and it was all he could do not to make a lunge for him this time but Patti put a restraining hand on his arm. However there was plenty of distance kept between the two parties as they headed for the tunnel into the arena. They passed the home team’s battered squad who were sat, laid out and in some places heaped along one wall, recovering from the final melee. The guards were beginning to go up and down the line sluicing cold water everywhere but they stood aside respectfully as Snake and Blondie passed by.

While they waited at the very threshold of the arena, Carlo kept Blondie’s tongue ring held tightly so that her head was down at his shoulder as they stood in the twilight of the tunnel. Outside they could hear the compere’s voice whipping up the crowd by recapping Snake’s recent and meteoric rise and then going back over Blondie’s career, starting with the punishment flogging that Carlo had meted out at Conor’s arena. The roar that greeted extracts from the two gladiators’ exploits being shown on the arena monitors seemed to shake the ancient stones on occasions and Carlo kneaded Blondie’s left breast and nipple to keep her calm.

But at long last the doors were swung open and the two groups entered the arena blinking in the light.

The noise was a physical force. Even Snake and Blondie reared back on their leads as it broke about them. Somewhere on the PA a fanfare was playing but it was submerged by the chants and cheers. Up on the monitors Carlo noted some footage of Snake taking another girl down with a studded whip. On another one Blondie was rolling under the pursuing horse in one of her pursuit runs, then leaping up and making another length. But gradually they were replaced by close ups of the slaves as they approached the rings, already set up. The last pieces of punishment equipment were being assembled and the referee and timekeepers were waiting.

Carlo ducked through the ropes with Blondie behind him and the roars became even louder as Snake did the same in her ring and he and Conor set about removing collars and restraints.

While the compere ran through the rules, Carlo inspected the punishment equipment. Beside each ring there was a standard trestle, a rectangular whipping frame, a pivoted X cross in a frame and a rack with fully adjustable limbs for the arms and legs of its occupant to be spread out as well as stretched. The sides of each item were hung with identical sets of

clamps, pegs and whips. At the time the arrangements were made he had been quite happy with the studs set into the X frames and the racks. It was only when they uncovered the doping plot that he realised that Conor had meant to demoralise Blondie by increasing the levels of pain at a time when she couldn’t respond in her normal way. Now, however, he could allow himself a quiet smile as he smacked Blondie’s delectable buttocks – restored to their proper smoothness and unblemished perfection temporarily – and ducked out of her ring. He and Conor waved to the crowds as they made their way back to the owners’ box.

Blondie tested the ropes for tension and roughness – she was certain that at some point at least one of the men would ensure she came down astride the top one. It was something she intended to do to Snake after all. They were made from the coarsest hemp imaginable and she felt the familiar stir in her stomach at the thought of the coming combats. Screwing her eyes up against the glare she looked around at the terraces and felt her usual pride in her body that could inspire such excitement. She knew from past experiences at the edges of the arena floors that the terraces would be one mass orgy as the afternoon wore on and she let her hands trail down across her breasts, proudly stroking the nipples into full erection. The noise redoubled. She looked over at Snake and for the first time took in the true savage beauty of the tattoo. She was parading around her ring, proudly holding up her left breast, which was entirely covered by a snake’s head tattoo and occasionally she would pause and part her legs to let the cameras get close ups of the way the snakes boiled out from her sex, even the labia having been tattooed.

During that divine night when her master, her lord, had deigned to sleep with her in her stall, Blondie had learned about Snake and she had found out why she had felt such a growing blank apathy for the previous few days. The last part of training had been hard and the whip had hurt much more than usual but now she felt back at her best. She looked up to the owners’ box, searching it for the familiar black hair and finding it at last. She hardly noticed the two lines of men march out and begin to limber up, or that Patti had taken up station beside her ring with a bucket and sponge. All that concerned her was that the strutting freak in the next ring was the only thing that stood between her and making her master more proud of her than he had ever been before. He had whispered it to her in the dark of the stall as he took her again and again.

Blondie relaxed and waited for it to begin.

Hardly had the bell stopped ringing before the first man vaulted over the top rope and came straight for her. He was lithe and muscular, dressed only in shorts and Blondie’s pulse raced as she took in the spare frame and plates of muscle. But she dropped her shoulder and evaded his initial charge, spinning away and bouncing on her toes in a way she knew the crowd loved as it made her breasts jolt and swing invitingly. The man lunged again, and again she dodged. He stalked in more carefully, backing her against the ropes. She feinted left and right and dodged away again. But this time he got a hand in her hair and pulled her back but she turned away as she was pulled and jabbed an elbow hard into his stomach. There was a roar from the crowd as he went down. She glanced across at Snake’s ring and saw that she was already in trouble and being held in a headlock. But she shouldn’t have risked looking away, the man came up at her off the ground before she was fully aware and suddenly she was squirming under him on the ground, his hard body was hot against hers and she felt the long rod of his erection against her lower stomach as they struggled, she got a forearm across his throat and tried to push his head back to make him roll off. He dug a punch into her midriff and as she gasped for breath he settled across her, holding her shoulders down. The bell rang as the referee counted three and rang again almost straight away for Snake. As Blondie was hauled up she was aware that she faced over ten minutes’ punishment, but the upside was that Snake hadn’t fared any better.

They were both put on the X crosses but were at least given time to settle their breasts as comfortably as they could against the studs.

Blondie was aware of the camera on her left zooming in on her attempts to lift and settle her nipples against any piece of wood she could find that wasn’t sporting a wicked little tine. There wasn’t one. With a rueful grin and a proud toss of her hair she made the best of it and raised her hands to the shackles at the top of the X. Sharp little spears of exciting pain stabbed into her as she did so and she realised that her love of being tested by her master had returned in full. And that meant that Snake was going to suffer and Conor Brien was going to lose. Her thoughts were broken into by the cross being tilted forwards until it was horizontal. The hot spears at her breasts intensified as more of her weight bore down on them. The crowd clapped and cheered and looking up at the monitors, she could see why. Her soft breastflesh was squeezed out sideways and the bright points of steel beneath them could just be seen.

The timekeepers started the clocks and the beatings began. Blondie’s victor chose a heavy strap and she could well appreciate why. With her thighs laid down on the unyielding wood of the cross, her buttocks were high and prominent and would provide a fine sight as they helplessly swayed and rippled under the heavy lash. One quick look up at a screen between lashes confirmed her judgement. With only limited time at their disposal the man delivered an almost metronomic beating; no variation in rhythm or force, just as much good spectator sport as he could get inscribed onto her flesh in the time he had. And when he did eventually stop, the tide of pain went on rising for some seconds so that she had to grit her teeth even harder against the cries she was determined not to emit just yet. When she opened her eyes she saw the man’s shorts hit the floor in front of her and then her head was dragged up by the hair so that she could see a cock of considerable girth rearing up arrogantly in front of her face, the heavy and tightly crinkled sac of the scrotum invitingly just inches from her mouth. Still holding her hair the man eased himself forwards until he was crushing the base of his cock against her face. She stuck out her tongue and began to lick – the sight of her heavy ring caressing the scrotum and delving as deep as it could go between the strong thighs brought a fresh cheer from the crowds. Then he began to wield the strap across her shoulders, the weight of the leather and the force of its impact driving her breasts against the steel beneath them. She soaked up the pain and hoped her master could see how she kept to her task. He would know that it meant Conor’s drug had worn off completely. After a few crowded and hectic minutes of her trying to lick and cry out at the same time, the man stood back, and with one hand aimed his massively broad helm at her mouth and moved back in. She barely had time to make her mouth open to its limits before he was in her, ramming her tongue down and slamming against the back of her throat. Only long experience enabled her, in her uncomfortable position of trying to fellate with her head up, to relax her throat and quell the gagging reflex so that he could thrust and withdraw smoothly as he resumed the beating. This time she felt him put his real strength into each lash and readied herself for the climax which was surely coming. When it did, he stopped the beating and instead she felt both hands dig themselves into her hair and press her face down into his pubes as he swelled in her mouth and then began to pump. It was all she could do to contain his thick ropes of sperm and inevitably some of the stuff erupted from her nose as she spluttered. It was what he had been aiming for and he stepped back to acknowledge the applause, waving with one hand, wiping his triumphant cock on her face with the other.