I don't know how long I knelt in that position, however I was correct in my assumption that it was a difficult position to hold. Long before Gretchen gave me permission to get up, my inner thigh muscles started to get sore from being held so wide open for so long. Also my neck and shoulders were getting stiff from holding my head up and elbows back for so long.
I was all alone in the room, but the door was open and Gretchen could have come back at any moment. I didn't want to disappoint her, so I held the position despite the fact that keeping my body held this way had gone from uncomfortable to truly painful.
By the time Gretchen came back into the room there were tears on my face and sweat had begun to form on my brow and underarms. There was also warm, sticky fluid on my thighs that had leaked out from my swollen pubic lips.
"You can get up now," Gretchen informed me. Her tone was so polite and so pleasant that it seemed out of place. She had left me naked and exposed and forced me to hold a position that was very difficult and humiliating. Yet her tone of voice implied that none of this was cruel or unusual.
My thighs ached as I moved to stand. They were sore from holding that position for so long, but I knew that would soon pass.
"You have no idea how gorgeous you are right now," Gretchen said as she held my face in her hands.
"What?" I asked. The compliment sounded out of place after the harsh way she'd been treating me.
"The streaks of tears on your face, your blush of embarrassment and the obvious signs of sexual arousal .... Darling, you've never been more beautiful than you are right now."
"Really?" I asked.
"Submissiveness becomes you," Gretchen said as she placed a tender kiss on my forehead. "It's a shame that it has to end after a week."
"This is going to be a very difficult week for me," I said softly. "I'll be happy when it's over."
"Will you?" she asked. Then she reached for my breasts and rubbed my nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. I flinched slightly. My nipples were so swollen that they ached and were sensitive even to a gentle touch.
"Your nipples are hard as bullets, Diane," she said as she rubbed harder. "Do you seriously want to tell me you're not aroused?"
I closed my eyes and my breath came in short, heavy pants and I tried to speak, but my throat seemed to be swollen and I couldn't get my vocal cords to work. Then I felt one of Gretchen's hands let go of a nipple and suddenly felt her hand at my cunt.
I moaned as one of her fingers entered inside me and her thumb slid gently across my clit. "You're soaking wet," Gretchen informed me, "and your clit is so swollen it's practically abnormal. All this before I even laid a finger on you. You really expect me to believe that you don't enjoy being a slave?"
"I love it," I said softly in a helpless, breathy tone of voice, "but I hate it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Gretchen asked as she continued to finger me and play with one nipple.
Gretchen's fingers were driving me crazy and I had trouble getting my mouth to form words, but I did the best I could. "I feel nervous, overwhelmed, humiliated, degraded, excited and aroused all at once. I feel more alive than I ever have in my life, but I also feel scared and vulnerable. A part of my brain wants me to run and escape and another part of my brain wants me to open my legs wider and invite people to touch me."
I opened my eyes and looked to see how Gretchen would react to my answer. I was still confused about my own reactions to my slavery, so explaining them to somebody else was difficult. I was hoping that I had at least made my predicament at least slightly easier for her to understand.
"This is interesting and we'll talk about this more, later," she said as she continued to finger me and play with my nipple, "but right now I'm taking you to dinner. We'll be dining with a couple of people I met today, so no talk about your adjustment to slavery during dinner. This is something personal I want to keep between us. Okay?"
I was so turned on by what Gretchen's fingers were doing to me that I could barely focus on her words. However I managed well enough to pick out a few key words and nod my head in agreement.
Suddenly I felt sharp pain in both my nipple and my swollen labia. Gretchen had pinched them both quite hard. "When a slave is asked a question, she is expected to give a verbal response," Gretchen snapped. "Simply nodding your head is not acceptable."
"Sorry Mistress," I yelped and fought the strong impulse to try and push Gretchen's hands away. It was a major effort at self restraint, but I kept them at my sides. "No talk about this with anybody but you, Mistress!"
Gretchen released her hands from my nipple and my pussy. I reached one hand up to my sore nipple and another to my red pubic lips to try and sooth the pain away, however Gretchen grabbed my wrists and pulled them back. "Also you're not allowed to touch yourself without my permission! If you want to do so much as scratch an itch, you need to ask my permission first."
This was a new level of domination that I wasn't expecting from her. I was tempted to say that it was unfair, but the unfairness of it actually excited me. Instead of complaining I replied, "Yes Mistress. May I use my hands to ease the pain of being pinched, Mistress?"
"No, you may not," she replied, and with that she led me out of our hotel room and straight to the elevator.
*****
The hostess at the restaurant looked me up and down and gave me a look that made me blush. Most people at the hotel looked at me with varying degrees of lust. However this one gave me a look of disdain and contempt. She disapproved of me for some reason. I could have been the fact that I was running around naked in public, or the fact that I was a lesbian or perhaps she just thought slavery should be outlawed in her country. Whatever the reason, she gave me a look that made me want to crawl underneath the floor and hide.
"Your table will be ready in a few minutes," she said in a voice that was so cold it would have turned water to ice. "Please wait here."
Gretchen's guests arrived before our table was ready. One of them was the young married woman who had taken several pictures of me in the hotel lobby. The other was the one who said she would ask my mistress for permission to have sex with me.
Gretchen gave them both a warm greeting. I learned that their names were Donna and Geneva. "Geneva, where's your husband?" Gretchen asked.
"An investment opportunity came up," Geneva responded. "He's on the phone with his partners and his accountant, trying to buy some piece of real estate cheap in the expectation that he can sell it for a quick profit. He said he had to move on it fast, before anybody else got it."
"Will he be joining us later?" Gretchen asked. I was hoping he wouldn't. As bad as it is for me to expose my naked body to total strangers, it was worse when men ogled my body. Having a strange woman look at my nudity with lust in her eyes is still embarrassing, but somehow men getting a look at me exposed and vulnerable and naked was much worse.
Much to my relief, Geneva's husband never arrived. Apparently he was obsessed with making money and often spent hours on the phone, trying to close a deal. When we were finally seated Geneva explained to us that her marriage was less about love and more about convenience. Don was very successful and provided Geneva with financial security and a high standard of living. Geneva was very attractive and provided Don with a trophy wife that he could proudly display to clients, business partners and investors. It was a symbiotic relationship, but there was no romance.
We discussed Geneva's marriage in great detail. We also discussed the political and cultural situation in Sessia. Donna was of Italian decent and informed us that her people are treated as second class citizens in Sessia. Once upon a time the island of Sessia was part of Italy, however Sessia was sparsely populated and economically depressed. There was no manufacturing and tourists almost never traveled there. Then in 1980 British investors bought the island of Sessia from the Italian government. The British investors started up new businesses, opened hotels and hired tens of thousands of employees. They opened Sessian banks similar to the Swiss banks that helped wealthy Americans hide assets and they invested billions of dollars into infrastructure and the tourism industry. As a result, Sessia rakes in almost as much money in tourism as the South of France.
"So now," Donna complained, "we've had a huge influx of immigrants from England. Sessians with a British accent or British ancestry usually get the best jobs and live in the best neighborhoods. Most government jobs go to people of British ancestry and our legislature is filled with people who were born in England. They make up less than forty-two percent of the Sessian population, but they have ninety percent of the seats in the legislature."
The conversation went back and forth on a number of different topics, however I was stunned that the subject of my enslavement to Gretchen never came up. Here I was; a naked girl sitting at a table with three fully clothed women; and neither my nudity nor my submissive status was ever discussed.
Despite my nudity, I began to feel more and more relaxed. There may have been a premeditated plan on the part of these three women to make me forget my status. The reason I say this is that at one point during the conversation, I turned to Gretchen and referred to her by her actual name.
"What did you call me?" Gretchen asked as she raised an eyebrow at me.