The Sisters of Ecstasy

The afternoon after her initiation ceremony, Susanne was called into the Abbess Maria Anne's private chambers. She walked through the cloisters toward the abbess's chambers, and as she walked, the persistent clicking of the chastity device that was locked around her waist alerted everyone she passed of her presence.

She knocked tentatively on the abbess's door, and the abbess let her in.

"Good afternoon, Susanne," she said, looking down at Susanne with an appraising smile.

"Good afternoon, abbess," Susanne replied, keeping her head down and her arms folded in front of her.

"Come in. Close the door behind you."

"Yes, ma'am." Susanne entered the room and closed the door. It was an opulent room by any standards. The walls were painted with colorful frescoes depicting biblical scenes. In the center stood a magnificent four-poster bed with red bedcurtains embroidered with gold borders. On the ground, a woven rug; in the corner, a fashionable writing desk. The abbess took a seat at a chair by the desk. As this was the only chair in the room, Susanne stood and waited to be told what to do.

"You will come to this room every afternoon from now on after two o'clock prayers," the abbess said. "You will remove your clothes and wait for me on the bed. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am." Susanne nodded her head.

"Well, what are you waiting for?"

Susanne hastened to remove her grey gown and black head covering. She set them down on the edge of the bed and lay down on her back on the abbess's bed, naked except for the silver chastity device that remained locked around her waist. Maria Anne sat in her chair a few feet from the bed and observed Susanne, who attempted to keep her body as still as possible. She felt goosebumps appear on her bare skin as the abbess's eyes made their way hungrily up and down the curves of her body.

To the left of the bed, Susanne noticed a fresco depicting Saint Sebastian in the moments before his death. He stood naked, tied to a tree, and pierced with arrows, but his expression was almost comically placid. Under Maria Anne's piercing gaze, Susanne felt like she imagined Saint Sebastian had felt in that moment--utterly vulnerable yet heavenly calm.

"You are a very beautiful girl," the abbess told Susanne finally.

"Thank you, ma'am," Susanne replied, blushing.

"I do not generally take it upon myself to educate novices in the art of the orgasm," Maria Anne continued. "It is a labor that I ordinarily consider beneath me. However, in your case I have made an exception."

"Really? For me?"

"Don't interrupt. I have made an exception for you, and I expect that you will act accordingly and in full awareness of what a great privilege it is to enjoy my company. You see, I have seen something in you, a very intriguing impulse..." The abbess hesitated, then continued. "I am going to ask you something, and I want you to answer honestly. It will do you no good to lie."

"Yes, ma'am. What is it?"

"Last night, at the initiation ceremony. You were stripped and beaten. And yet you emerged smiling. You liked it, didn't you? You liked being dominated?"

Answer honestly, Susanne thought. "I...yes," she confessed. "It was thrilling."

Maria Anne seemed pleased. "Very good. Very good indeed. I would like to dominate you some more. Last night was just a taste--I can give far you more pain and humiliation if you ask me for it."

Just at the thought, Susanne felt herself moisten in anticipation. "If that is God's will..." she began, but the abbess interrupted her.

"It is not God's will, it is my will. You submit to my will from now on."

"Yes, ma'am. I would like that."

"Excellent." Maria Anne hesitated, gazing down at Susanne's body as if deciding what to do with it. Then her expression changed into a sly grin. "I think it's time for a Latin exam. I'd like to see how well Mathilde's been teaching you."

"A Latin exam?"

"I'll make it interesting for you, don't worry," assured the abbess, winking at Susanne. "Turn over onto your stomach." Susanne did as she was told. The abbess produced several short lengths of rope, with which she tied Susanne's hands and legs to the four posts of the bed. She tied the rope quite deftly, as if she had repeated this motion a thousand times before. Susanne wriggled her limbs, testing how much leeway the position gave her, and she found that the ties around her wrists and ankles were secure, stretching her arms and legs outward from each other and rendering her unable to escape.

"Mathilde tells me that you are learning how to count in Latin," Maria Anne said. "How far can you count up to?"

"I think up to a hundred," Susanne speculated, "although I might be a little shaky."

"I'll find that out for myself." The abbess stooped down to collect something from underneath the bed: a slim whip made out of braided strands of leather. Susanne bit her lip, noting the cruel curves of the shiny weapon. She could tell that the abbess was egged on by her fear. Maria Anne held the whip in her hand with a calculated casualness, seeming to delight in the effect it had on Susanne. "I am going to give you twenty lashes," she said, "and you are going to count every one in Latin. The catch is that if you mess up, we'll go back to the beginning."

Maria Anne grinned at Susanne and flicked the whip at her playfully, making Susanne flinch. "I'm ready," Susanne told Maria Anne, fighting back the tremor in her voice.

In answer, Maria Anne delivered a precise blow to Susanne's upper back. "Unus!" Susanne called out dutifully, feeling a thin burst of pain flicker through her shoulder. "Duo!" Another thin pathway of pain imprinted itself on Susanne's back, subsiding almost as soon as it had arrived. "Tres!" The third lick of the whip bit into her thigh with greater intensity than the first two, making her flinch and tense up. She could tell that Maria Anne was barely exerting herself, that this was only a taste of the pain she was capable of administering. "Quattor!" This time, the whip stung her rear end, and before the pain had subsided, the abbess struck the same spot, making Susanne gasp, "Quinque!" The abbess struck again quickly, and Susanne jerked her body away from her involuntarily, gasping, "Septem!"

She realized her mistake too late. "Sex, not Septem," she corrected herself, but the abbess was unforgiving.

"Back to the beginning," Maria Anne ordered. She flicked the whip, sending a vector of pain across the small of Susanne's back.

"Unus," murmured Susanne obediently. The whip collided with her shoulder. "Duo!" Susanne felt a searing pain shoot through her thigh, once, then twice. "Tres! Quattor!" she cried out, preparing herself for a third blow to the thigh. Instead, she felt the whip bite into her upper arm. "Quinque!" Her upper back. "Sex!" Her other thigh. "Septem!" The pain came from every direction. Susanne could not anticipate which part of her body would endure it next. She focused all her might on remembering what Latin numbers came next. "Octo!" she whined as Maria Anne sent the whip across her buttocks with renewed ferocity, then again, then again, "Novem! Decem!" The harder Maria Anne's blows became, the deeper it felt like the whip was cutting into Susanne, the longer lasting the pain from each slash became. "Undecim! Duodecim!" Susanne could barely stand it anymore. She grit her teeth and moaned, "Tredecim," as the abbess brough the whip down once more on her shoulders. "Quattordecim! Quindecim!" she cried out desperately, clutching the ropes she was tied to and squeezing her eyes shut as the whip carved two more lines of pain into her back. "Sedecim! Septemdecim!" She was almost there! Three more lashes and she was done. She felt the whip pierce her rear end, making her squirm and gasp. "Octodecim!"

She felt Maria Anne grab hold of her hair, forcing her head upward. "How do you say eighteen in Latin, Susanne?" she asked.

Had octodecim been wrong? Octo came after Septem, didn't it? Maria Anne slapped Susanne's rear end with her hand for hesitating. Susanne whined, trying desperately to remember what came after Septemdecim on the Latin number line.

"Well?" Maria Anne slapped her again.

Finally, it came to Susanne. The latin for eighteen was not eight after ten but two before twenty. "Duodeviginti," she murmured.

"You'll remember that this time around," said Maria Anne. "Start at unus again. I won't go easy on you this time."

Susanne looked up at Maria Anne, noting the look of delighted mastery on Maria Anne's face. The abbess had clearly been hoping that Susanne would mess up her counting. Still maintaining a firm grip on Susanne's hair, the abbess gave the whip a menacing crack, then brought it down hard on Susanne's backside. No mercy this time. The whip stung deeply and immediately, and Susanne barely had time to cry, "Unus!" when a second blow struck the same spot, intensifying the pain. "Duo!" Susanne called out for the third time that night. "Tres! Quattor! Quinque!" The abbess's blows were focused now solely on Susanne's rear end, setting her skin aflame with every lash of the whip. "Sex! Septem! Octo!" Susanne could feel Maria Anne putting her muscles behind the blows, getting more enthusiastic the further Susanne retreated into pain. Again and again the whip came down on the skin of Susanne's buttocks. She writhed around, driven to movement by the intensity of the pain despite knowing full well that there was no escape from the ropes that bound her. "Novem! Decem! Undecem!"

There was no time but now, no sensation except the sting of the whip, piercing her body and turning her inside out. "Duodecem! Quattordecem! Quindecem!" Each time she felt the whip come down, she thought she could not stand more: but then the next lash would come and she discovered that she could. "Sexdecem! Septemdecem!" This time, when she got to eighteen, she remembered to say, "Duodeviginti!" Another searing blow. "Undeviginti!" she screamed in desperate ecstasy.

The abbess paused, stroking Susanne's burning skin with the whip. Susanne wanted it over with, wanted the last blow to tear through her and be done with this game, but Maria Anne held her there for an interminable moment, awaiting her final blow. "Viginti!" Susanne cried out at last as the whip made contact with her skin for the final time. She gasped and shuddered, feeling the pain penetrate deep into her. Her muscles tensed, then relaxed, and she moaned in pleasure.

"You're fucking sexy when you're in pain," the abbess almost growled, running her fingernails up and down Susanne's body. "You make me so wet." Susanne beamed at her, tickled by the compliment. The thrashing she had received had made Susanne feel paradoxically close to Maria Anne, subjected totally to her will.

Maria Anne took a bottle out of a drawer in the desk. She wet a cloth with the clear liquid from the bottle and began running the cloth along Susanne's back. Susanne felt it sting as it came into contact with the marks of the whip, and then the pain subsided. She shivered and groaned. "Thank you," she murmured.

The abbess stroked her hair. "You did so well," she said. "I loved watching you in pain."

Maria Anne untied Susanne's wrists and ankles with impatient efficiency and produced from underneath the bed a large phallus-shaped object made out of polished wood, attached to a leather harness. "Quick, put this on," she ordered. Bewildered but obedient, Susanne slipped her legs into the harness and tightened the straps over her chastity device. The abbess produced a second object--a leather collar with a metal leash, and fastened it snugly around Susanne's neck. Susanne felt its pressure on her neck, making her aware of each breath she took.

"Sit on the bed," Maria Anne ordered. Susanne did as she was told, smiling shyly at the abbess and awaiting her next instructions, enraptured by the drama of the scene. The abbess stood in front of the bed. "Do you want to see my without my clothes?"

"Yes," Susanne breathed. She looked at Maria Anne's habit, imagining the curves of her body beneath it, what her hips would look like, her breasts.

"Not just yet," the abbess smiled. "I think I'll leave the mysteries of my body to the imagination for now. That's a privilege you'll need to earn."

"Yes, ma'am," Susanne assented.

Maria Anne stepped onto the bed, hiked up her skirts, and straddled Susanne. She stroked Susanne's hair and fondled her breasts. Susanne looked down and saw the abbess's most intimate parts, moist and pink, brushing up against the wooden phallus. Dutifully, she reached down to touch the abbess, but the abbess slapped her hand away. "Don't touch me unless I tell you to touch me," she ordered.

"Yes, ma'am"

Susanne watched as the abbess moved her fingers up and down the sides of her clitoris. "Watch closely, now. You'll need to learn how to do this." And Susanne observed the placement of her fingers, the pressure she administered in certain places and the light grazing she administered in others. She heard the abbess's deep, laboured breaths and felt the muscles in her thighs tighten as she built up to orgasm.

"Ohhh," Susanne moaned, tuning into the abbess's pleasure secondhand. She felt her own moisture swell between her legs, shut out behind the strip of metal. It began to register what ingenious torment her chastity device was--to be taken to the precipice of arousal by the abbess but to never be able to offer herself orgasm.

When the abbess had worked herself up to her satisfaction, she ordered Susanne to spit onto her hand and make the phallus moist for her. Susanne obeyed, stroking the prosthesis as if it were her own. She felt a surge of power course through her. Even amidst the thrill of servitude, there was an undercurrent of dominance that made a brief appearance in Susanne's psyche, then disappeared as soon as it had arrived. Maria Anne lifted herself up and positioned the phallus so that it was primed to enter her, then lowered herself onto it with a sigh of pleasure.

"Yess," the abbess whispered, almost to herself, as she moved her hips up and down in rhythm. "Yes!" She took in deep, gasping breaths, her eyes wide. She grasped the chain attached to Susanne's collar, pulling it taut and wrapping it possessively around her wrist. "Move your hips up and down," she ordered. "Fuck me."

"Yes, ma'am!" Susanne obeyed, leaning back on her arms and moving her hips in rhythm with the movement of Maria Anne's hips. In, out--slowly, deeply.

"Faster!" Maria Anne ordered, tugging on Susanne's collar with urgency. Susanne accelerated her thrusting, in and out. "Harder!" The abbess half ordered this command, half begged it, seeming almost to lose herself in the ecstasy of orgasm but not quite. She clutched the chain around Susanne's neck with one hand and grabbed a fistfull of her hair with the other hand, holding Susanne captive with an almost desperate possessiveness. Beginning to feel out of breath, Susanne continuing moving her hips in and out with as much intensity as she could muster. She felt the abbess's grip on her hair tighten and her muscles tense. Maria Anne's body buckled as if possessed. Susanne felt a tremor go through the Maria Anne's legs as they pressed against Susanne's thrusting hips, and she saw the wide, faraway look in the abbess's eyes.

For a split second, Maria Anne lost control, her body shaking, her eyes closing, her limbs seizing up. She gasped and sighed and rocked back and forth on Susanne's dildo. Susanne watched her, enthralled. Here it was: the divine. Bursting forth through Maria Anne like an exorcism. Susanne gazed upon a woman possessed by something wholly other from this world, a woman who for a brief second glimpsed paradise.

At long last, Maria Anne came back to Earth. She released her grip on Susanne's hair and extricated herself from the phallus. She smoothed her habit out, sat on the bed next to Susanne, and but her arms around her. She stroked Susanne's hair and ran her hands up and down her torso.

"That was beautiful," Susanne said finally.

"I know," Maria Anne concurred.

"Did you feel close to God?"

"I felt so heavenly close."