Auction

Ethan led her away from the booth, away from the temptation of Suchin and Starke. She said nothing, the strain of her leash enough to tell her that his displeasure would be lasting. They worked their way across the dance floor, the crowd parting for them as they went.

Jen couldn't decide whether it was a mark of Ethan's standing in this community or some unspoken signal of what was to come – not until she saw the look of trepidation on the face of a young slutslave as she walked past. The woman was on her knees, her cheeks hollow from the effort she was putting into her felatio. As they moved past her, however, she stopped, midstroke, and her eyes followed Jen as she moved past. The sharp crack of a paddle hitting what must have been the slaves proffered ass told Jen that she'd resumed her focus, but the idea that someone would break their concentration to track her progress worried her.

At length they reached a large door set in the far corner of the room. As doors went, it was fairly unassuming, save that it was made of brushed steel, like a door to a kitchen or a boiler room – a door that spoke of function, rather than appearances. It gleamed in the half light of the great hall.

Something about its very function nature made her very uneasy.

Ethan turned to her, his face impassive. "Strip."

Confused, she could only comply. It was surreal to finally remove her own nipple clamps; they'd only ever been taken off by others.

Still, the pain made her knees weak as she fumbled with first one, then the second cloverleaf, their grip on her tormented nipples finally released. Waves of pleasurepain coursed through her, and she fought off a small orgasm, knowing it would displease him. Knowing that whatever lesson this was supposed to be, it wasn't one to reward her most recent behavior.

Her Master held his hand for the clips and chain, and she fought back the spots in her eyes as she threaded them out through the hook atop her corset and handed them to him. He nodded and then put them inside his suit jacket.

She nodded and reached behind herself, grasping at the laces that held her fast. After a moment's searching she found them and began to pull them out, gradually releasing the comforting pressure of the whalebone around her torso. Ethan said nothing, and after what seemed to Jen to be an unbearably long time, she was at last free of the garment, its halves peeling away from her heated skin. She carefully shimmied it down over her hips and stepped out of it, and then handed it to Ethan as well.

He took it, folded it neatly, and then pointed at her shoes and snapped his fingers. Jen complied, her confusion now overpowering. Ethan never made her remove her shoes when he ordered her to strip; they were as much a symbol of her slutslave status as the platinum band around her neck.

Still, she doffed the heels and handed them to him. He turned and gave the corset and her heels to the waiting slavegirl, who curtsied and then disappeared.

Ethan looked at her for one long hard moment.

"I'd ask you for your collar if I could. But I can't; that's a part of the contract. But know that I would."

Jen quailed before that statement. Was he releasing her?

A selfish part of her mind, one she'd long thought destroyed by her experiences with him, grew nauseous at the thought of resuming all her debt.

"Now bend over and grab your ankles." She complied, her hands taking a firm grip on her lower calves, the polished marble of the floor casting only the faintest reflection of a very confused slutslave.

Ethan placed a hand on the small of her back, and then slowly withdrew the dildo from her. Jen gasped at the sudden removal, not least because the cast shape of his cock fit her so well. But before she'd even had time to recover, her ass was stretched as the plug within it was removed as well.

Tears sprang to her eyes; she felt so empty without them, something she'd never have imagined possible.

He thrust into her then, making her smile at the sudden feel of him inside her. A new flood of heat and wetness surged through her, but before he'd begun, he was withdrawing.

"Stand up."

She did, and turned to see him snap his fingers at a waiting slave. This one, a striking ebony beauty with springy curls, immediately sank to her knees and began cleaning his cock.

Jealousy snarled within her.

That was her cock to possess. No one elses.

Still, that reaction made her doubt her earlier hunger. Jen knew he wouldn't allow her both ... did she really want all that attention if it meant losing what was rightfully hers?

She'd decided almost from the minute she'd entered his service that she'd win him for herself. Was she willing to forgo that for the delights she'd seen this evening?

After a moment of silence, with their eyes locked and the wet noises of the slave performing her duty between them, Jen dropped her gaze. She couldn't endure that intensity for long.

Ethan placed one hand atop the slavegirl's head, who immediately stopped, and backed away. He placed his cock back inside his pants, and took her in his arms.

"Remember what that felt like over the next few hours. Hold that feeling to you, and you may endure this and come back to me.

What?!?

Her mind screamed as he dropped his arms.

Endure what?

She forced herself to remain calm and said nothing as he took her by the hand and led her to the door. With his right hand he reached up and slid back the deadbolt that fastened it shut. It opened with a sharp crack that brought a palpable stillness to the entire room.

It had to be some signal, she knew, some terrible knell that everyone but her recognized.

Ethan opened the door.

It was even darker inside than in the main hall, but she could see what lay in store for her.

She whirled on him, struggling to break his grip, but he held her fast.

"No, Master, please. I don't want this. I don't want this. I want to be with you." The words came in a rush, driven by the reality of what lay in that room.

Ethan's grip, however, could not be broken, and with a nod, two female slaves came to hold her fast, one locking her arms behind her, and the other holding her head up so she was forced to look into the fate that lay behind that steel door.

"You wanted this," his breath was hot in her ear.

"No no no no no no ..." Her mind was locking up, the dread of what she was about to endure was too much to comprehend. All that she'd envisioned when she'd taken this contract seemed gone, the joys of becoming his bound submission suddenly ash before her.

"Yes, you did. That was your mouth reaching for Starke's cock, wasn't it?"

Ethan stepped back, and moved to stand before her. Jen couldn't really even look at him, so transfixed on the room behind him.

He slapped her, once, hard.

Jen tore her eyes away, and forced herself to look at him. "What is that?"

He smiled, a cruel smile that reminded her of her place in the world, and how much she must have wronged him with her own vanity.

"That, my dear, is a special place. Sometimes, when a slave becomes too willful, or loses herself in her own appetites, we send her in there. Daphne survived it, so did Persephone. Didn't you, Dear?"

"Yes Sir." The brunette's voice sounded behind her; the woman who held her face in such a rigid pose. In her struggles, Jen hadn't even realized that they were the ones holding her.

"Your actions tonight have proven to me that you don't want to be my bound slave. That you want to be something more ... shall we say ... primal. I can accept that, even if I don't like it."

He leaned in, his brown eyes locking on her with a raptor's stare.

"So we will put you in there, and we shall see what you become."

With that, he took a great handful of her curls and dragged her forward. The two slutslaves released her almost immediately, and with one shove Ethan thrust her across the threshold.

Jen stumbled and fell, onto a floor that was padded.

She turned with a wail to see the door close behind her, Ethan's stare piercing her right until the final sliver of light disappeared as the chamber was sealed.

Hands reached for her in the darkness.

Jen awoke, much later. Her body ached and her mind felt full of ashes. Though she opened her eyes, she could see nothing.

Nor could she move. She'd been bound, hand and foot, her voluptuous form stretched to its limits and then lashed to a St. Andrew's cross.

It was warm in the darkness, and still. The simple silence of it all was in its own way very loud.

She licked her lips, uncertain of what she was supposed to do now.

Images came rushing back to her, and she shuddered at the thought of them. Had those things really happened?

Had they really done such things to her?

Had Ethan knowingly given her to him?

She tried to clear her throat, but found it very dry. Jen licked her lips, trying to clear the taste from her mouth.

Time had no meaning for her. She could have been on the cross for a day or an hour. It was anyone's guess.

Jen didn't even know how long it had been before she'd blacked out. The sheer intensity of what had happened to her had robbed her of perspective; it all appeared to have happened at once.

Strangely, though, she wasn't all that scared by what had happened, now that she was able to take the time to reflect on it.

Her nipples throbbed suddenly, as if parts of her body were coming back to life on their own. She looked down seeking the source of her pain, but could, of course, see nothing. Still, they ached, and carried a weight to them that she'd never felt before.

Had she been pierced?

A sense of horror swept through her.

Piercing, for all its charms on others, was never something she'd thought of for herself.

But now, hanging there in the darkness, unable to move, trying to intuit the state of her own body by sheer willpower alone, her mind began to conclude that perhaps she had been, that perhaps Ethan had let her be so marked.

Jen didn't know what to think at this realization.

He must have known. He'd told her in no uncertain terms that this room was reserved for the willful and the recalcitrant, so he must have known exactly what that program of rehabilitation would have entailed.

But the idea that he would let them do that to her.

She wanted to be angry, she wanted to cry out that it was all so unfair.

But she couldn't.

She was too weary. Every part of her was sore and it seemed even to take energy she didn't have just to hang there in the darkness.

Besides, in her heart, she knew she'd wronged him.

She'd broken the contract.

Tears ran down her cheeks as she let her head fall, losing herself in the stillness to escape the remorse she felt.

It wasn't long before she sank back into darkness.

Sometime later, she didn't know when, Jen woke to the touch of soft hands, washing her face with a cool, damp cloth. She knew at once that this was a woman; the faint scent of lavender told her as much.

She licked her lips hungrily, seeking to quench the terrible thirst that gripped her, and, after a moment was rewarded with the taste of wine against her lips. Just a few drops at first, but then, as she could take more, Jen was given all she could drink.

In her depleted state, she felt the effects quickly, and soon forgot herself. She began to ask questions, calling out, seeking some shred of human contact, some explanation for where she was and what had been done to her.

Silence was her only response.

After a long time, when she'd begun to imagine that there'd been no one else in the room with her, that she'd become so delirious that she'd imagined the entire exchange, she felt the touch again.

In the darkness, as she hung there, aching and abuzz from the wine, she felt a warm breath on her vulva. It was so faint at first that she almost thought it part of her hallucination. But then there it was again, a faint exhaled heat against her all-too-sensitive skin.

She was instantly wet, her body responding to unseen person before her.

A long fingernail scored its way across her clit, sending shivers through her body as it touched her. There was no pressure to that touch, only the slightest trace along her skin.

A ragged moan escaped her, and a very feminine chuckle sounded beneath her.

"Good," said a voice honeyed by a French accent, "you are not so far gone yet, Oui?"

"What?" she gasped, utterly confused. Her arousal was peaked by the woman's accent, and by the certainty that there was a woman kneeling before her, so close to her body that she could surely smell how wet she was.

That thought spurred her on even further, and she could feel her lips engorge themselves with desire, like the slow unfolding of a flower's petals.

Her new companion chuckled, "Yes, I think you will be fine."

Jen heard her stand.

And then she was gone.

It was a long time before Jen's desire subsided.

By the time her second visitor left her, she'd almost broken her contract. The safeword she'd agreed on, the one written into her contractor, the one whose use instantly restored all of her debts, was nearly torn from her lips.

But she endured.

Though she couldn't see so much as a foot in front of her in the total blackness of the room, Jen knew her eyes must be glazed from what she'd experienced.

Her initial levity had been replaced by a profound sense of dread. These people were skilled in manipulating her body in ways she'd not imagined, and they'd shown her that what she thought she'd wanted wasn't necessarily so.

She hung there, murmuring Ethan's name, holding fast to that sliver of sanity that was her devotion him.

Then and there, as her wrists sagged against the leather cuffs that bound her, as her thighs burned and shuddered from the weight of her own exhaustion, Jen vowed to rededicate herself to him.

The feel of his lips on hers startled her.

"Master!" she cried out, surging forward in vain against her bonds. She could smell him, knew he was before her in the quiet darkness.

He said nothing of course, but she thrilled to the touch of his hand on her stomach. It was a supremely intimate gesture, one utterly devoid of any overtones of sexuality or submission.

It was a lover's gesture, the way a man might touch his wife.

She sobbed at this, knowing that he was more disappointed with her than angry. That he still believed in their relationship, even if she apparently didn't.

Somewhere inside her she knew that he'd trained slaves more troublesome than her, that everything she was enduring right now – and had endured – was simply a program designed to forge her into what she wanted to become. But living with that reality was another thing entirely.

He kissed her again gently, his hands on her face.

"Shhh," he said quietly, "don't cry. You're doing wonderfully. I hadn't dared to hope for you, but to know you've made it this far makes me proud."

"Master?" Her voice seemed so faint, little more than a parched squeak.

"Yes, Jennifer?"

She was quiet for a moment, her breaths coming long and slow as she considered what she was about to say. Jen knew it'd be a gamble, a longshot, and that he might become angry at what he took to be a ploy to set her free from this place.

But she had to try.

This place had taken its toll on her, had stripped her of any appetites she'd thought she'd had. It was as if they'd leached the joy of it all out of her, robbed her of the power of her carnal self.

She felt profoundly empty.

Even at the depths of her graduate funding woes she hadn't felt like this. It was if they'd stripped away every part of her she held dear, and crunched it all down into powerful, but fleeting carnal sensations.

Frankly, if this was what Persephone and Daphne had embraced, then she pitied them.

She'd learned in the depths of the agonies they'd given her that she didn't want their fate; she'd come to understand as her body burned with pleasures she couldn't stand that her joy, her true joy, lay in making others happy. Ethan was the fulcrum of her existence because she wanted only to please him.

To do that, though, she had to get out of here and back to him.

She cleared her throat, and then made her play.

"I want to come home. I want to be with you and with Kami in our house. I've wronged you, I know that now, and I'm so sorry. But this, this has shown me what I want. What I really want. And all I really want is to devote myself to you."

There, she'd said it. All in a rush, all at once, probably babbling, but she'd said it all nonetheless.

"I know," he said. "Now prove it."

And then he was gone.

She went through six more training cycles before she finally broke ... three sessions more than any previous slutslave sent to that room.

It was the smell of coffee that finally dragged her back to consciousness. Jen opened one eye and then promptly snapped it shut again, hissing at the sting of bright sunlight after such a long ordeal.

Slowly, gingerly, she opened her eyes and let them adjust.

To her surprise, Jen realized she was back in their room at the Driskill. She lay sprawled in the vast white expanse of the bed, a tangle of sheets and the duvet. She was nude, as she should be, but a quick check confirmed that her collar was still firmly in place.

With some trepidation she sat up and looked at her breasts.

It was true, both nipples had been pierced, and were now adorned by small platinum rings. Like the collar before them, these rings also lacked any kind of lock or seam, though how they'd gotten there she couldn't really.

Jen shook her head; there was so much of that night she couldn't recall.

She rose from the bed and strode to the balcony, moving slowly as her aching frame sought out the wonderful scent of French Roast.

"Nice to see you're awake." Ethan's voice from behind her startled her, and she whirled to meet him, immediately dropping her gaze to the floor as she knelt in submission.

He strode to her, his powerful frame also nude, and still graced by droplets of water from the shower. She felt a faint stirring within her, that persistent hunger for him that she never quite seemed able to quench.

"Did I miss the wedding last night, Master?"

"Last night? That was three days ago, little one."

Three days?!? Her mind reeled at the thought of it.

He placed one hand on her chin, and lifted her face until her eyes were level with the heavy length of him.

She smiled, and licked her lips.