Red Grow the Roses (15 page)

‘Hit him!' she shouted, jerking the mesh back and forth.

In the end, Leon won by being able to soak up more damage than the other man: he'd spent a professional career enduring pain and exhaustion, and his stamina and his bigger bulk told when it came down to it. Able took one blow too many, staggered and sat down suddenly. As Leon fell on him, knees in the ribs, he folded and slammed his hand down on the canvas.

‘Submission!' roared the loudspeaker. ‘We have tonight's winner!'

The crowd cheered and groaned in equal measure and Jacqueline sagged against the wire. The whole bout had taken perhaps five minutes. She was shocked by her own visceral reaction to the violence and to the threat to her husband; and then nearly as shocked by his. Slightly unsteady on his feet, Leon still managed to strut about the stage, arms aloft in triumph, spitting blood and blinking wildly. His sweat-soaked shirt had been ripped open and his broad chest was gleaming as it heaved. He looked twice as large as life. Red marks over his ribs showed where he'd have terrible bruises in a few days, and his face was already swelling into a lumpy moonscape.

Jacqueline found herself taken aback: she'd almost forgotten what a big strong man he was, how broad his shoulders – and how utterly stubborn he could be. The thought made her self-conscious and she averted her face, not wanting him to recognise her. But Leon was beyond recognising anyone right now: he was buzzing on his victory. The crowd roared and he roared right back at them.

The wall at the back dropped again, and Pleiades staff hurried on to the stage. Three of them plucked Able up on to his feet and led him off, while a white-haired man with a microphone came to greet the warrior triumphant, raise his arm and then calm the crowd in the afterwash of their final acclaim.

‘To the victor the spoils,' he breathed into the mic. ‘What's it going to be, Herrin? Are you going to claim your prize now?'

He gestured and two male attendants dragged a much smaller figure on to the stage. It was the dancer, Jacqueline realised: the blonde in the fishnet dress. She had her wrists tied at the small of her back and was dragged on almost bent double. The MC jerked her to her knees at the front of the stage and pushed her face down, ass up, yanking up the hem to bare her bottom and then planting the sole of his shoe on the back of the girl's neck.

Jacqueline's heart and stomach crashed together.

‘Well?' he said.

There were shouts and catcalls but the noise of the crowd was ragged now, no longer the voice of a single beast. They were unsure of Leon, divided among themselves. The girl didn't struggle, though her pale ass swayed from side to side a little. Leon was looking right down at her bare pussy. He must be looking right at the twin bull's-eyes of her cunt and anus, wondering which to aim for. Slowly he reached to his crotch and hefted his package through the material of his trousers. It was obvious he was packing lead there. Then he unzipped his fly. The room was suddenly so quiet that even the rasp of his zipper was audible. Manhandling his cock and balls out from the open fabric, he revealed a full-on erection.

It was so familiar, Jacqueline thought: that little list to the left, the colour and the shape of his pubic thatch, the bulge of his ball-sac, hairy and heavily wrinkled and seamed up the middle. So familiar, but not in this context. Here, it looked mean and threatening and somehow considerably bigger. She was suddenly hot all over, despite the fact that this end of the room was air conditioned. Something uncomfortable seemed to writhe in her sex. Would she – could she – stand and watch him fuck that girl in front of a slavering audience? Was he really going to do it?

Oh, he'd always loved the public stage, hadn't he?

Leon stroked himself lovingly, revelling for one more long moment in his triumph and in the helpless pink snatch presented for his pleasure. Then he lifted his chin.

‘What's it going to be?' the MC urged, stepping away from the girl, circling to Leon with the mic. ‘Are you going to claim that sweet little cunt?'

‘Fuck the slut!' someone shouted from the crowd, but was silenced by others: a rumble of irritation.

Leon gave his hard-on one more preening tug. ‘No. I want to see the Boss.'

The crowd went absolutely ape. There was no mistaking their approval. This, thought Jacqueline wildly – this was what they'd come here for tonight. The men behind her surged up against her, bouncing her against the mesh, and she felt her hardened nipples snag on the wire with a sensation of physical shock.

‘Herrin! Herrin!' they started chanting.

From the Olympian heights of the mezzanine floor came movement: a glass elevator was descending to the main level of the club. Jacqueline couldn't see the door open because of the crowd, but she saw when the occupant emerged into view from the back of the stage. There was a collective roar, and then everyone went quiet. It was like they were holding their breath.

The Boss was a tall black woman: over six foot in her heels, her hair a 20s-style platinum-blonde bob, with lips painted the oozing red-black of Angeleno plums. She strolled into the open cage with the lithe, swaggering arrogance of a lion-tamer. Jacqueline's glance, once she'd got over her surprise, was critical: the woman was, she thought, only saved from being categorised as wiry by the jut of her breasts and bottom. Both of those were wrapped in a shimmering dress, as white as her hair, that clung to every curve and was slashed in a multitude of places to show slivers of her skin, the satin skirt long enough to trail on the canvas but split to her hips.

Around her hips was tied a pale suede belt with no buckle. The effect was oddly medieval.

That's a wig, Jacqueline thought, trying to find some chink in that aggressive and overwhelming beauty, as if it would make the woman any less unnerving. She looked so completely at ease there, surrounded by those excited men and practically swimming in their testosterone, looking Leon up and down as if he were a horse she'd been asked to judge. Her luscious lips curved in a faint, amused smile. She lifted a hand and signalled off-stage, and staff hurried on with a padded bench – the MC having already made himself scarce by this point, taking the dancer with him. Meanwhile she approached Leon and looked him long and coolly in the eye. His gaze didn't falter, though his chest was rising and falling sharply, all the adrenaline now making him unsteady. He just gripped his erect cock tight in his fist.

‘The hero of the hour,' said she. Her silky voice needed no electronic amplification: everyone in the room was hanging on each word. She glanced down at his purple-headed glans with no apparent interest, then drew two fingers down his chest, over his ribs, probing at an enflamed red patch before licking her fingertips to taste his sweat. Leon gritted his teeth. ‘Strip,' she ordered, turning on her heel and going over to sit on the bench.

Leon took a deep breath, then pulled off the shredded shirt that clung, transparent, to his shoulders and arms. The Boss crossed one long bare leg over the other, sitting with her back very straight, her attention entirely on him. He dropped his trousers next, kicking them away, and stood with his legs apart, naked.

‘Arms out.'

He raised them wide. The stance emphasised the breadth of his chest. He was still a fine-looking man, thought Jacqueline, shot through with pangs of very physical admiration. His erect cock bobbed slightly.

‘Turn.'

He turned, showing her the pale flash of his untanned rear, then faced her again. Her smile broadened momentarily.

‘Kneel.'

Without a word he went down on his knees. Jacqueline's mouth had gone dry. She hardly believed what she was seeing, unable to reconcile the everyday Leon she knew with the warrior, unable to reconcile the proud warrior with such obedience. Unable to defend to herself her own reaction to the sight.

‘Are you hurting, hero?'

He didn't answer. He just jerked his chin in affirmation, keeping it high. She unfurled her long legs and stood again, approaching him. Now that he was on his knees she could look down into his face without effort.

‘Think you can take more?'

‘Yes,' he croaked, his cock twitching.

Whipping back her hand, she slapped his face hard – hard enough to knock his head sideways. His eyes widened and he blinked fiercely: Jacqueline could almost see the rush of adrenaline through his system as his face went pale, leaving the red imprint of her palm to bloom slowly on his cheek. Jacqueline herself had to grip the wire to hold herself up, so shocked was she.

‘You sure, hero?'

‘Yes,' he said through set teeth.

She backhanded him on the other cheek: this one drew blood, because she was wearing heavy silver rings. ‘Really sure?'

The breath hitched in his throat, but his cock didn't falter. ‘Yes.'

The Boss laughed, low and delicious. Then, stepping back, she untied the suede belt from about her hips, looped it round her hand and swished it through the air. Leon clenched his jaw. The lash whipped out and snapped at him, right across both nipples, with a crack like something breaking. His head jerked, but he didn't utter a sound.

‘Good,' said she, lifting the belt again.

She whipped him on the chest and the back and the thighs. She whipped his clenched ass-cheeks. She whipped each of his outstretched arms as if trying to pull him down from an invisible cross. She shortened the strap and beat him on the face. She snapped the very tip of the leather across his penis. She was fast and accurate and incredibly strong: she beat him over and over and didn't tire, didn't get sloppy, didn't miss. Not once. Leon began to groan with every strike and roll his eyes, but he didn't protest or lower his arms or flinch. His erection sagged – but only to half-mast. Sweat rolled down his body in rivulets, but she didn't even start to perspire. And Jacqueline's world turned upside down and inside out as she watched, appalled. She didn't recognise this Leon. Her husband was a man who took shit from no one: she didn't understand why he was kneeling there and soaking up the pain and the humiliation like that. What sort of man was he?

Then she looked round the other faces at the wire and knew that they were all that sort of man. They were watching in avid wide-eyed silence, quivering at every blow, every one of them wanting to be up on that stage. Imagining themselves in his place. There was a strange charisma to his suffering: a nobility even. And the women – did they see themselves in the role of the Boss, or were they picturing themselves being punished? She couldn't tell. She just knew that they were pressed to the mesh, mesmerised by the spectacle of her husband's pain. One woman had pulled down the top of her designer gown and thrust her small breasts into the diamond gaps between the wires and was plucking at her big dark nipples. Jacqueline's own body felt like it didn't belong to her, awash with sensation that made no sense, off-balance and trembling, her sex swollen like rising dough despite herself.

At last, when the scarlet welts on Leon's torso had melded into one burning glow, the Boss halted. She took his jaw in her hand and lifted his face, then stooped to as if to kiss him – but she wasn't kissing his lips and his cheeks and his forehead: she was licking him, mouth wide, sucking the salt of his pain and the ooze of the little cuts left by the fight and her own hand, mumbling greedily at every gash and bruise. The whole crowd groaned low at that.

‘Can you take more?' she growled, forcing him to look at her. Her eyes were flashing now, her voice suddenly laced with an accent that sounded French. Jacqueline had always thought dominatrices were supposed to be ice-queens: not this one. She was far more fire than ice.

‘Yes,' he rasped.

She picked him up. Jacqueline's eyes widened, but she had ceased to balk at anything now; the line between possible and impossible had dissolved in Leon's sweat. The Boss hefted him to his feet one-handed, gripping him under the jaw, and flung him down on his back on the bench where she'd sat before. Then she straddled his belly – her incredible legs taut now and bare to the thigh – and raked her nails down his chest, hard enough to bring blood welling up in breadcrumb trails. She bent to lick her way up each red path from belly to heart, while the audience murmured. Then she opened her mouth wide and sank her teeth into his chest, framing his left nipple. Leon arched and jerked his legs: his cock rose from where it bounced on his thigh and stuck straight up, jabbing the woman in the rump. She lifted her head, eyes feral, and lips now much more red than black. Her own arousal was more subtle than his but equally shameless. Adjusting the fall of white satin at her groin, she pulled his cock to the hidden cleft of her sex and sat back hard, engulfing him.

Jacqueline took a broken breath. She felt with all the envy of memory that cock filling her own hole.

‘Give me your hurt, hero,' the Boss crooned, sinking her nails into his skin and making him spasm. ‘That's right: give it up. Give it up to me.' She started to rise and fall on his cock, slamming her hips down, and as she rode him – as she
fucked
him, because there was no doubt about who was active and who was recipient here – she dug the nails of one hand into his flesh and struck him with the other, aiming at his face. The heave of her hard round ass over his thighs was dazzling. Little barks of pain escaped Leon's chest with every blow, a mindless animal noise, but he didn't struggle. And she didn't take long: her orgasm was on her swiftly, making her shudder and hiss and lose all rhythm and finally arch her back and nearly fall forward over him.

There's no difference in their reactions, thought Jacqueline. If you're watching, not feeling it, pain looks just like pleasure. You can't tell them apart.

Then with a wrench the Boss was off, standing, and Leon's cock stood bereft, glistening with her moisture. She raised her hand over her head and clicked her fingers, pointing at the ceiling, at the winches and drums of cable. Things began to descend with an electrical hum: a small box on a snaking length of cable; chains; some sort of metal bar with shackles at either end. She took the bar and with swift, practised movements bound Leon's ankles in the shackles, which meant his legs were spread wide and helpless. Then she attached the chains to the bar and, using the remote, raised the chains again. His legs were lifted from the ground, higher than his recumbent body – and then he was pulled up bodily from the bench, swinging with head down, his arms hanging limp over his head. The Boss took up the fallen belt she'd used to thrash him and bound his wrists behind his back. Jacqueline could see that his eyes were wide and glassy, almost unblinking.