Owned And Owner (17 page)

They looked at me, kneeling among the greenery and glanced meaningfully at each other. Then they both made pet-soothing noises and started to close in, one from either side. I tried to slide out between them, but one caught and held my upper arm in an inescapable grip. A finger hooked through the ring in my collar and stayed there. They stroked my hair and talked me over for a minute or two, their big bodies hiding me from the increasing numbers of men out enjoying the sunshine. Then they called to one of the staff crossing the lawn with drinks, and sent him into the house. He came back with
Arleben
, who blanched at the sight of me and immediately hustled me into the house through the basement door. There were ball bearings in the hall outside the workroom; his eyes followed a trail of them and he gasped. He grabbed me around the ribs, jerked me off my feet and carted me up the stairs under one arm, my legs dangling behind. Within moments I had at least one of my wishes: he rapidly used heavy straps to immobilize me, then gagged and bridled me and pushed me into my kennel under the stairs, hooking the straps on my feet and head to ringbolts in the wall so I couldn’t move at all. I had never seen him look like that, and I closed my eyes against his anger. If he looked that way, what would my master’s reaction be? What had I done?

Still, for all my terror and guilt, I sighed with relief. I was safe again.

‘You did what?!’

‘I got the pastry out of the oven; it was burning.’

‘And what did you do with the woman?’

‘I don’t remember, I’m sorry.
It was chaos in there. I think I handed her leash to
Yrin
, that dark-haired one. He would have locked her
up,
he’s seen me do it.’

‘
Pav
…’ Garid raised his hands in exasperation.
Pav
looked at him, upset and feeling guilty.
Arleben
was almost as distressed.

‘I know,’ said
Pav
. ‘I know. I’m so sorry, sir. I meant to put her in her kennel during the meeting. In all the rush I completely forgot. She’s always been so docile, I never expected her to behave this way. She’s never done it before.’

‘She’s never been left to roam free around the house and garden before.’

Pav
winced. He thought reluctantly about what
Arleben
had said, and about the slave’s teasing propensities when he let her out on the cable for a run, the way she pushed any freedom to the limit. He had been spoiling her.

‘We were lucky this time,’ said Garid. ‘She was found quickly. Nothing important was damaged, and the meeting went better for the break. But do you realize how close I came to losing all my credibility with that crowd? My whole presentation was based on my ability to control the variables on the project. If they realized that my house was in chaos because I couldn’t control my own pet woman… Incredibly lucky it was a couple of friends who found her, and they kept their heads.’ Garid rubbed his weary face. ‘A pervert in control is one thing. A pervert made ridiculous by his own possession would be a laughingstock.
This mustn’t happen again
.’

Both the men miserably agreed.
Arleben
spoke up. ‘Sir, I think you’re right that she needs careful watching. Really, she needs more attention than we’ve had time to give her lately. She’s been low for weeks since you’ve gotten so busy. If this goes on I’d suggest either hiring someone to look after her, or letting one of your friends have her for a while.’

Garid looked grim. ‘Things will ease up shortly; I’m not giving her away.’ Pangs of conscience struck him. ‘She’s been low, has she? I haven’t dared to go near her; I didn’t have time to take a break with this new development, and I wouldn’t have been able to keep my hands off her…’

Arleben
watched the dawning gleam in
Garid’s
eyes with some alarm. ‘This may not be the time, sir,’ he said hastily. ‘She’d see any attention as a reward for bad behavior.’

His employer’s sigh was half a groan, and was followed by a long silence. ‘You’re right,’ Garid said finally. He considered a minute longer. ‘And we still have guests in the house. You’re on to something,
Arleben
– she was certainly trying to provoke some attention. She has to be punished, and she has to be isolated. She’s obviously up to her old tricks; we’ve got to be severe, and not give her what she wants. Now, you can be quite dispassionate; I’d suggest you discipline her, and use methods that don’t excite her. This needs to be pure punishment. I’ll show up so she knows I’m still around, but then I’ll leave her to you.’

‘What doesn’t excite her?’

‘Good question,’ Garid said wryly.
‘To start with, a beating on the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands.
Shoulders and back. And dip her gag in something harmless but foul-tasting.’

‘What about the noise?
Our guests?’

‘Use the screen room. It’s soundproof. Then I want her isolated. Leave her in the screen room closet for tonight. Lock her hands behind her back, and make her stand on those feet. That should teach her.’

Arleben
turned to
Pav
. ‘You’ll have to move some equipment out of that closet. Can you install a bolt in the wall for me?’
Pav
nodded. ‘Then, sir, I’d like you to check my work when I’ve finished.’ Garid agreed, seeing
Arleben’s
reluctance to take final responsibility for this punishment. He couldn’t blame him.

Garid considered. ‘The worst loss is the wine. Those two bottles were the last of the
Barithet
‘22, and they were worth about a quarter of what I paid for her, believe it or not. The clothes will repair themselves in the machines. Fortunately Raniz is a bit backward in that way; she doesn’t seem to have realized the pointlessness of that bit of vandalism. We’ll have to reprogram the ventilators and the photoelectric cells, but that won’t take too long.’

‘What about the workroom?’
Pav
asked quietly.

‘Let me think about that. You don’t need it right away, do you? She should help with the cleanup, so leave it the way it is for now.’

Pav
still looked upset. ‘Never mind,
Pav
,’ said Garid, his eyes suddenly gleaming. ‘Just think what we missed. She could have walked straight into the meeting and sat on the Under-Secretary’s lap.’ A vivid image of this flashed across
Pav’s
mind in all its horrifying detail, and he covered his eyes. Then he burst out laughing. Garid began also, and finally
Arleben
snorted and gave in to silent laughter, so intense tears rolled down his cheeks.

‘I suppose we should be grateful she didn’t,’ wheezed
Arleben
, catching his breath. ‘Do you think she knew what she was doing?’

This punishment wasn’t funny at all, I decided. I tried to distract myself from the pain by thinking about my master, my little free run, sex, almost anything. Nothing worked. I hurt so much I kept letting out little involuntary moans. My feet throbbed unbearably. I leaned this way and that, but my ankles were locked together and I had very little freedom of movement. My hands were curled around themselves protectively behind my back. A huge gag made my jaws ache and filled my mouth with a filthy taste. It was locked directly to the wall in front of me.

Time in the closet had taken on a physical presence that had no endpoint, no boundaries. I had the confused sense in the darkness that the closet had another dimension to it, had morphed somehow into a corridor stretching off into infinity. An end to my stay there seemed a remote and theoretical possibility; an infinite series of agonies was the reality.

After my escapade I had been tied up under the stairs, immovably for hours, suffering on the hard floor, before
Arleben
came for me. He had been in a surprisingly good mood. He had slung me over his shoulder, still bound up in straps, and carried me off to the screen room. It was late; I saw no one else, though I could hear people moving around in the kitchen.

I had never been punished so thoroughly and methodically. At the beginning I felt almost tearfully eager to accept whatever was dished out, especially when my master looked in on us. I would gladly have taken anything from him, anything at all, if only he had deigned to hold the cane. But he only looked at me for a moment, one penetrating glance that I couldn’t read. He exchanged a few words with
Arleben
, and then he left. I knew I didn’t merit anything after what I had done. I also knew it was my master who had ordered the punishment, and that was some comfort.

By the time the punishment had progressed a little further I was grateful for the straps that held me so tightly, because I would certainly have tried to get away. At least they were punishing me, and not ignoring me anymore. Very soon, however, I would have done anything to be ignored again; the pain was simply beyond belief. I knew I deserved it; that was all I could cling to in the claws of the outrageous agony. But oh, how I wished myself back on my quiet mat in the kitchen! Please, please, please, I wanted to scream through my gag, please, I’m sorry, I swear I’ll never do it again, please, no more! But
Arleben
went on systematically covering my skin with welts, each, I imagine, a precisely equal distance from the previous one. He took
care,
however, to cross them all with a couple more on each target area, and the resulting excruciating pain almost made me pass out.

Leaving me standing all night on my welted feet was cruel. Oddly enough, I would never have applied that word to my master’s treatment of me before, and I puzzled about this in a confused sort of way; it offered me some distraction. Toward morning, the dividing line emerged for me. For the first time in all these months, arousal wasn’t transforming the pain. Oh, he had given me some severe punishments before. But somehow even in those cases, the whole experience, the restraint, the helplessness, the subjection to my master, had transmuted the pain into something else, something nearly ecstatic. Not this time. This time he forced me to experience only suffering, and it was cruel.

Toward the end, through the haze of anguish and exhaustion, a revelation started small within me, a feeling that gradually expanded till I could get hold of its meaning. Not a very startling revelation, thinking about it now, but it was something that had never occurred to me before. I understood that I deserved this punishment, not only because I had misbehaved so outrageously, but because I had thought I had the right to my master’s attention. What was I, to think I had such rights? I had forgotten that I was just a thing for his enjoyment. I finally understood, with a tired inward sigh of
resignation, that
he had no obligation to reciprocate. As long as he kept me safe, fed and healthy, he could do, or not do, whatever he wanted with me.

The closet door opened at last, the light blinding me. Big hands unfastened and lifted me, finally taking my weight off my poor feet. I would have wept with relief, if I’d any tears left. One of them – it was
Pav
– carried me over his shoulder through the house, down the stairs, and out into the cool of the very early morning. Behind the tool shed, he sat me down and made it clear this was my chance to empty my bladder. I had a lot of difficulty; I was pretty dehydrated, and that was not a position I was used to, but in the end I managed. He wiped off my belt with a bit of cloth, carted me into the shed, and chained my collar into a far corner near the floor.
Arleben
appeared with something for me to drink. I could barely taste it after the dreadfulness that had been in my mouth all night, but the coolness and moisture were very sweet. They released my hands from behind my back, and holding my wrists, made me flex my sore shoulders; the stiffness and the welts hurt dreadfully. Within moments they had fastened my wrists immovably to the front of my thighs, and replaced the gag with my usual bridle, the gag thankfully clean and tasteless.

I was desperate to lie down and rest. The length and position of my chain, and the way my wrists were fastened, made me think that this was the intention. They weren’t done with me yet, however.
Pav
arranged me on my knees with my head down, and
Arleben
laid two careful, searing strokes of the cane across my ass, and two more across each hip. The purpose of this became clear as soon as they left; I could not sit or lie in any position without it hurting.

They left me in that tool shed for three days. At least, I think it was three days; I lost track at some points, and against the evidence of the daylight and darkness, I felt I had been there for weeks. It was hot in the middle of the day, cool at night. They arranged some sort of heating, gave me the bare minimum of attention to keep me fed, watered and clean, and other than that they left me. I hurt all over, and my master didn’t come. He didn’t come. I didn’t know if he ever would again. Every painful welt could be the sign of his caring, or it might just be a lesson for an unruly slave who would be passed on some day when he had the time to arrange it. Or maybe I’d never leave the shed; I’d been here for weeks, hadn’t I? No, only two days…

My miserable thoughts revolved endlessly, relentlessly. But inside that pointless whirling there was a central place, soft and dark. If I could let go I might find it, find it and rest there. If my insistent brain would only shut off… A beating helped me get there, pressure to perform, helpless and intense sexual frustration, anything to push me past the point of thinking, calculating, anticipating,
weighing
the odds.