The Slave and His Mistress

2.

"Really, Solande he's not much to look at - not what I've come to expect from you at all. He's not quite up to your usual standards, is he?"

This was true: Gyorg was not a handsome man. The slave's face was too thin, the skin still sallow from his time in the mills, and though clean-shaven, there was little sign that he had ever been able to grow much of a beard. And he was quite bald: apart from his brows and eye-lashes - which admittedly, were rather fine, there was scarcely a hair on his head. But his features, if over-large, were regular -- and under all that flour, Solande thought, arranged pleasingly, in a pleasantly expressive face.

For it was clear he had never learned to conceal his emotions: Gyorg's feelings were easy to read and in the weeks since she obtained him Solande had come to derive a deal of quiet amusement from watching the expressions changing over his face. She had been finding the mill-slave an agreeable companion, his degenerate origins notwithstanding, and frowned a little in spite of herself, slightly irked by her guest's reaction.

Solande's visitors that evening were sisters, cousins of her late husband's, and, because the most aristocratic bloodlines in this part of the country all ran to some extent inbred, also her own kin: distant relations from Solande's side of the family. While her husband Gurund was alive, when she was still one of the inmates at his crumbling country retreat, a keen intimacy had developed between Solande and the sisters, all three being more or less contemporaries, certainly in terms of age and social position - if not at once in personal tastes. Though bearing the technical status of house-guests, even on Solande's first arrival at her husband's home as a new-wed bride the sisters Lavinda and Esadora were already residents of such long standing as to be counted permanent fixtures at the estate. The ageing Gurund had no closer female relatives than his unmarried cousins and the women, having come to consider themselves rightful ladies of his house were initially resentful at being displaced by Gurund's new wife.

Solande's first impressions of the pair had been just as unfavourable; Lavinda and Esadora were similar, sharing the same coarse attitudes and bawdy sense of humour -- and of greater concern, a definitely cruel streak that was evident in both their natures, which was never quite completely masked by their usual vulgar bonhomie. Relations between the three women at first were stilted for a time, but eventually -- and largely due to the numerous marital difficulties Solande soon found she had to face - the trio had come to share a number of common interests. The sisters had been instrumental in inducting Solande into her life of sexual adventuring, the pleasures of which currently, she was in such avid pursuit. Before Lavinda and Esadora took her under their wing Solande would have never have dreamed of using a slave's body to satisfy her carnal desires but to the sisters, such relations were as much a part of aristocratic life as breathing -- and they simply could not understand why Solande should consider them degraded or debased. But then of course, Solande thought, considering the attitudes of her younger self with keen contempt, she had been an utter innocent and pathetically naïve with it, back then.

Even though the sisters' influence had lessened substantially since Gurund's death, after Solande returned to own ancestral home, she did feel obligated to the women -- who had after all, helped her through some dreadful desperate and harrowing times. Lavinda and Esadora's approbation, their good opinion, still mattered to Solande -- and that, naturally, was why she had invited them to give her their appraisal of her most recent acquisition. Yes, the sisters' opinions still carried weight with her. Unfortunately, what they said still mattered to her a great deal.

The slave Gyorg was mounted on a low table that stood directly under the cluster of oil-lamps hanging from the vaulted ceiling in the middle of Solande's private sitting room. It was late autumn and even at this early hour already dark outside, so the Lady had had to take care to select a position for her showing that would present her subject - quite literally - in the best possible light.

The flickering lamplight played over the flat planes of the mill-slave's muscles, highlighting his maleness and his wiry strength, but also revealed in stark relief the ugly lash-marks that scarred across his shoulders, the backs of his thighs, his buttocks and his back. For while Solande usually allowed her slave the indulgence of covering his nakedness, tonight her aim was for him to be properly displayed.

Apart from his iron slave-collar and the manacles that were permanent fixtures about his wrists, he wore only a single flap of rough leather that hung from his waist like a loin-cloth, concealing his manhood. His hands were currently fastened behind his back even though Solande was by now quite confident of his continuing obedience, for no reason other than because the Lady enjoyed seeing him held in this position. It reminded her of the day when she first viewed him, chained in harness with the other slaves; reminded her of that first encounter, before she quite set her mind on him. Yes, in memory of that now when the fancy took her she often had Gyorg bound before he served her -- often had him kneel before she made him use his mouth to pleasure her. Sometimes to further restrict him she occasionally fitted the slave with a blindfold -- but not as often lately, for she had come to realize how utterly Gyorg relied upon his sense of sight. That night however she had for reasons of her own decided to keep his eyes covered, and there was a narrow binding of black fabric tied tightly round Gyorg's head.

The overseer in the tithe-barn had been wrong when he claimed the mill-slave's wits were not all they should be. Gyorg, in fact, was far from being stupid - and yet occasionally and despite his apparent willingness to serve he was at times undeniably slow to react. Solande was quick to discover the reason. There was a peculiarly intent way he had of watching whenever anyone was speaking -- with his look focussed always on the speaker's lower face and mouth -- that reminded Solande of a great-uncle of hers, of whom she had been especially fond in her early girlhood. She soon realized that in common with that elderly gentleman, Gyorg's hearing was badly impaired; but in the slave's case had been so since early in his youth, rather than being a side-effect of old-age. Raised in a charitable institution as a foundling, Gyorg, unusually, had not been entered into serfdom until the very brink of adulthood. Still slim and limber at the time, the young man had been tasked with setting blast-charges in the narrowest and least-accessible tunnels of the mines, when an accidental detonation of one recently-placed cartridge brought down a section of the roof. Barely far enough from the blast-site to avoid being crushed by falling debris, Gyorg had been caught by the pressure-wave following the explosion. The noxious, heated vapours emanating from the blast permanently singed most of the hair from his upper body and his head, and at a stroke rendered him in one ear completely stone-deaf. While there was a little recovery of hearing on the other side, that also suffered irretrievable damage and he was left able to perceive only a very limited range of sound-notes as audible. How Gyorg learned to compensate for this as well as he did -- which he accomplished mainly by reading movements of the mouth and lips as they formed words - was remarkable, and yet following the explosion it was not enough to prevent him being categorized as a mental defective. Following the accident the overseers in charge of the slaves saw only that the formerly quick-thinking Gyorg now lagged behind his work-mates, regularly mistook his orders, and seldom responded even to direct speech. Caring little for the true causes of the slave's difficulties, brain-damage from the cave-in was at first suspected -- and soon after passed from mere opinion into universally accepted fact.

Ironically enough however, it was this very impairment that had led Gyorg to develop his keen powers of perception: the slave's ability to anticipate (and fulfil) Solande's wishes was uncanny, and was one of the attributes that made him such a perfect foil for her. But their relations had quickly become something of a two-way street. While the Lady had no wish or desire for forming any kind of emotional entanglement with anyone, she couldn't deny that in some ways she had begun to feel the first inklings of a personal attachment to Gyorg -- although, as she told herself, it was only the kind of mild and generalized indulgence that any mistress might express towards a lower creature; a pet lap-dog perhaps, or her favourite horse. Still, knowing Lavinda and Esadora, Solande had been reluctant to allow her slave any awareness of what they might have to say about him -- as they would undoubtedly relish not so much speaking their true opinions as having the opportunity to continuously find fault. And so that night she bound his eyes; a kindness, did Gyorg but know it for in a way really, it was for his own protection.

Since taking charge of the slave Solande had taken great pains over him, and to expose him to the sisters now, she felt, would be to risk undoing much of the careful groundwork that to date, she had only been partially successful at putting into place. Because on his arrival it was soon apparent that the slave had been too well-broken, in fact. He had been curbed and controlled so rigidly and for so long that the spirit was all-but squashed out of him: he was scared of his own shadow; a useless, nervous wreck. Every aspect of his life had been regulated so stringently in the mills that at first he would neither sit nor stand, or eat his food or even try to clean himself without express instructions to tell him he should begin to do so.

In her attempts to gain the slave's confidence then, Solande had exhibited degrees of patience and perseverance that were really quite uncharacteristic for her. Not because she had any sympathetic feelings for the man, of course, but because a level-headed, well-motivated slave was most efficient, and therefore always to be preferred.

But he did look awkward, perched blind and bound up there half-naked. The Lady realized that the short, apron-like garment she'd draped around his hips was not quite sufficient to cover Gyorg's genitals at the front, and that the unfortunate slave also knew it, for he was trying to hide his manhood by means of the difficult feat of keeping his legs closed around it. She should have berated him for insubordinance -- since a slave's physical person was not, of course, counted as his own property -- and yet to her surprise Solande began to feel a slight pang of conscience, an unfamiliar emotion that she dismissed as inappropriate, and then, in turning her attention back to her guests, duly forgot about at once.

"Now, Lavinda!" Esadora, the younger of the sisters, exclaimed. All evening, she had been watching Solande's reactions closely, and had not missed the fleeting frown that had just flickered across her relative's face. "You're upsetting dear Solande -- why, anyone can see she seems terribly taken with her new pet! This one's strong point may not be the way he looks about the face - but let's not judge him too hastily, shall we?" She circled Gyorg on his little platform, regarding him appraisingly. "It's a shame. The slave's figure could be quite striking, but his manner of standing is almost bow-legged. And must he always crouch hunch-backed like that? The way he carries himself makes him look half-stunted - like some kind of ape!"

Actually, Gyorg was tallish. If he was ever to get into the habit of straightening his back properly he would perhaps have had an inch or two of height over Solande (who was unfashionably tall for a woman) but of course his posture had been shaped by the constant, straining muscular effort he had expended in the mills. Chained into position with the rest of the slave-team, Gyorg's labours had been unrelenting, as he and the others toiling beside him drove their mill wheel round and around, with no option but to shuffle out the same weary circular route, retracing their steps over and over again. A single session on the wheel lasted around twelve gruelling hours, and was followed by only a scant four or five hours rest before the dog-tired men were required to resume working again. Recently there had been no respite for them even at night, for at this time of year the mills ran continuously and had to be powered with no breaks in service. This mindless, repetitive work had dulled the mill-slave's wits and deadened his senses even as it altered the natural configuration of his body, and now when he stood it was as if he had never been released from his harness. Gyorg customarily held himself head-down and shoulders rounded, with his knees bent, and stooping forwards slightly from the waist. It was as if he was still braced for strenuous work and awaiting only an overseer's shouted order -- or the lash from a whip to fall across his back as a signal that he should begin his labours again.

Not that he spent very much time on his feet. In the early days especially, Solande saw to that. Part of what the overseer had told her of him was true, as Gyorg himself confessed: he had never once joined in carnal union with a woman. Unless questioned directly he said little on the subject, but it seemed to Solande that even for a slave Gyorg had led a life of unusual repression and duress. Given his evident maturity (for like Solande, the mill-slave was in the middle-age years of his life) she might have doubted what Gyorg told her - had corroboration of what he said not been plain to see in the scars and other marks he carried over every surface of his body. And as well as that, his initial reactions to her seemed a unfakeably honest confirmation of his virgin state. He might have never coupled with a woman, but when Solande first unbuttoned her dress-front and stood before him with breasts and pubic hair exposed, the blush on his face and his gaping mouth suggested that apparently, he had never even looked upon one when she was in the barest state of undress.

And although Solande did have him penetrate her, with his tongue or sometimes his fingers buried deep in her cunt, working her to regular peaks of orgasm, Gyorg was still a virgin in the most conventional or accepted sense. Possibly it was a pity, but given her own prelidictions, Solande's intention was to keep him that way. At first, before she was sure he could be trusted, whenever she had need of his services she had Gyorg's hands as well his genitals tightly bound and confined. Solande had the ring in the mill-slave's nose removed and replaced with one worn through the end of his male organ. The ring in his cock entered through the slit at the tip and came out in a piercing slightly to one side of the head the member -- an arrangement, as was explained to Solande by the artisan who carried the work, that would allow the slave to retain his foreskin intact. This ring could be used to draw the shaft of Gyorg's sex back between his legs where it could be fastened harmlessly against the underside of his body, by means of an attachment that secured it to a thin belt worn about his waist. Gyorg of course, was unable to have his member stand up or harden properly when he was restrained like this, and the constrainment seemed to cause him some level of distress. Solande was not an especially cruel-natured woman and when it became clear that whenever she had him lick and kiss her sex Gyorg was becoming genuinely aroused also, she took to letting his member go unbound. Because she was pleased, as well as surprised by his reaction; it was rare for a male, in the Lady's experience, to find such pleasure solely in stimulating a woman with his mouth. And yet he did seem to enjoy it -- was always keen to serve her in this way. Following a few points of basic instruction from Solande, Gyorg's ministrations soon became near-perfect and his labours for her pleasure were tireless - unstinting. Solande was so pleased with his efforts that on occasion she even took to allowing the slave to find his own release - eventually.

Recently however, Gyorg's excitement and arousal had also begun to contribute to Solande's own response. There had always been keen enjoyment for her in straddling a slave's hips and riding him there till she climaxed -- allowing his member, of course, only ever to touch to the outside of her sex -- but in this particular slave's case, lately she was finding her pleasure was multiplied if at some point she brought Gyorg to completion also. The previous morning she had bound him hand and foot on her bed and amused herself by working his organ between her breasts, working the helpless slave writhing under her hands until he began to ejaculate - and at that point Solande had experienced a fluttering little climax of her own, too! The quick series of contractions in her cunt had gone on and on - for as long as she watched Gyorg's cock continue its spasms in fact -- and all without a trace of finger or a tongue or lip laid on her! By rights Solande should have had him satisfy her properly then, should have made him open his mouth then straddled his face and suffocated him, while she ground herself onto his tongue and his lips and came to her climax again and again - for after all which was the slave, and who was the mistress, here? But inexplicably, the Lady had not claimed her rights just then. Feeling relaxed and pleasantly sated she had simply lain down on the bed to rest - and then when she felt Gyorg's mouth -- with disgusting presumption! -- begin moving in her hair, gentling her brow and the top of her head, in her drowsy, forgetful state for a moment she had actually begun to return the slave's caresses! Only onto his sickeningly scarred and naked chest -- thank God! -- though that in itself was bad enough. Afterwards, while rubbing her lips and the inside of her mouth raw with a wash-cloth and harsh soap, she felt nauseated by what had happened. It was one thing to take a slave and use his body, but especially for a well-born woman of her pedigree, utterly reprehensible to even consider treating that slave as if he were her lover.

Since her husband, Solande had always kept the tightest possible rein on her sometimes traitorous emotions, her suppression of them being so absolute that she had almost tricked herself into believing that human feelings, for her, did not exist. And so she did not understand what could possibly have overtaken her that morning; even considered for a wild moment that she might by some night-demon have been devilishly possessed. After the shameful incident she dismissed Gyorg from her presence immediately and had not been alone with him since. And she sent for Lavinda and Esadora's assistance at once.

Both sisters' attention was all on Solande as they waited, slyly, to see how she would answer them. With a glance at Gyorg, she arranged her features into an easy smile. "It's not for his face or his figure that I chose him," she said smoothly, crossing the room with a few light steps to stand close beside the slave. "This slave's 'strong point' as you call it Esadora, in fact is here beneath his breech-clout as anyone can see. It's so obvious indeed, I'm surprised that neither of you has thought to notice it before."

She picked up the front of the slave's leather garment and flirted the lower edge up and down, allowing Lavinda and Esadora a brief but fully-revealing glimpse of Gyorg's large, tumescent cock. It was only halfway hard, but even this was enough to sway the sisters, apparently; Solande though pleased by that was irked when she saw that against her express wishes, Gyorg had already lost some of his erection -- the erection she had specifically instructed him to keep! Just before her guests arrived that evening she had had him face the wall and strip, then ordered him to take himself in hand and masturbate until his manhood stood erect. Admittedly, it had taken longer than usual for this to happen but when he seemed fully hard, at last, she'd taken the precaution of tying the base of his cock and balls off with a tightly buckled strap, hoping to maintain him in that state. Unsuccessfully, it seemed, though what was left was still was impressive to Lavinda, as least.