. 35-37

XXXV.

While for Matt life was becoming a baptismal pool in which he could immerse himself in guilt; for Jenn it was a growing freedom she could bathe in – bask in, a freedom from restraints, a freedom from conventional morals and society's morés, a freedom, indeed, from inhibition itself.

The morning they anchored outside Singapore, after most of the guests had disembarked for their day in the city, a handler came to take Jenn to the quarters of one of the older male trainers.

There were basically three levels of service crew working with the vassals. The keepers looked after them, washing, bathing and feeding them; the handlers escorted them to their various assignments and assignations, and left them ready for whatever awaited them; and the trainers developed their skills – or crushed their wills, as necessary – and set up various scenarios for the guests. The keepers were voyeurs. They got a tremendous vicarious thrill out of being close to the fantasy incarnate but safe from its effects. They sometimes had sex with their charges, and were occasionally involved in light discipline, but mainly they just watched and listened and savoured their rights to touch and feel. The handlers were further up the ladder, as it were. Here were the petty dominants who enjoyed their positions of power and felt important in their escort roles. Neither keepers nor handlers were well paid – room and board and a bit of pin money; they were there simply because they loved their jobs – fantastic positions, indeed. Those staff members were never assigned to particular vassals. It wouldn't do to have them form attachments to individuals. From the point of view of Jenn and Matt – of the vassals, they changed continuously.

The trainer accepted Jenn at the door of a stateroom, from the keeper who had delivered her. Without a word, he took her firmly by the arm and led her to the middle of the room to stand before another man seated there in a swivel rocker. "I'll leave her with you, then," he said. The man in the chair only nodded. He was staring intently, looking up and down Jenn's body. Such radiance shone from his eyes that Jenn imagined she could almost feel the visual energy searing her skin. The trainer turned to her. "Mansa has offered to help me with your training. You will follow his direction implicitly." With that the trainer left the room – left Jenn standing silently. A shiver ran over her, like ripples on the surface of a pond.

Mansa sat comfortably in a soft leather chair, while Jenn stood naked, waiting. In the interval, another shiver rippled through her body, whether from apprehension or anticipation even she couldn't be sure. After surveying her again, top to bottom, he finally spoke. He was a classically handsome, large south-central African man of about sixty, dressed casually in an intricately embroidered robe of purple satin over a loose pyjama bottom of the same material. Immaculately groomed, he had a sophisticated spray of grey at his temples. With a deep voice, reminiscent of James Earl Jones, he spoke slowly and softly, but there was an intensity that allowed for no thought of discussion – no other consideration. He first ordered Jenn to turn around once, slowly. Apparently satisfied, he informed her that, as a part of her training, she would be required to keep a cock – his cock – in her mouth for a few hours without letting it get soft or sore and without making him come until he was ready. "Have you had an orgasm yet this morning?" he queried quietly. Those kind of questions, out of the blue like that, in quiet everyday voices, never failed to startle Jenn. She tensed and blinked her eyes for a moment, before replying shyly that yes, she had. "How many?"

"One."

"How was it achieved?"

Jenn amazed herself that she could still feel embarrassed about this, as she felt the blood colour her cheeks. "With my fingers, Master." she replied.

"Do it again," he said, mildly. Adding, after her momentary hesitation, "Now!"

Flustered, Jenn looked around her in a vain search for support, but her hands had already slid from her sides around to her groin. Tentatively, her eyes staying on the face of her instructor, her left hand straddled her labia, easing them apart and holding them wide while the fingers of her right hand began to make slow swirls around her clitoris. Gradually increasing the pace, her orbiting digits dove at random intervals into the folds of her vagina. Now fully open and engorged, she let her left hand drop along the verge of her wetness, stroking and poking, dipping and twirling, taking on more and more of the arousal. At times she had both hands pulling herself open, fingers from each inserted forcefully while her right thumb continuously circled and teased her love-button.

Mansa watched intently from his chair, not moving or making a sound. He wasn't looking at her face and perhaps didn't notice her eyes glaze as they lost focus. Jenn could feel a trembling in her thighs and sensations building in her gut like the roar of distant thunder. Then, like a sudden storm lashing the shore, her orgasm crashed over her, bolts of lightning slicing, blinding, rending. Her eyes fell closed as the climax consumed all available energy. Her legs liquefied under the relentless irritation of her own fingers, and only through the courageous struggle of a deep, tiny portion of her brain was she able to keep from collapsing. As the pounding waves slackened, her quaking body stilled leaving her hands finally motionless in the rain forest of her pubis. Only her breathing belied the paralysis that had settled onto her.

Gradually opening her eyes, regaining her ability to focus, she met the beam – the fiery beacons that shone from her instructor, penetrating her, pinning her. He gave her a slight nod of approval, before speaking. "Now that you have that out of the way, we can go on.” He began to lecture, his discourse slightly patronizing, verging on pedantic.

"I'm not a child," Jenn wanted to say, but her thoughts were interrupted once more, for while he spoke, he leaned forward slightly to grab a handful of her sopping, still sensitive quim and began a forceful manipulation, swirling her clit with his thumb while stirring his fingers inside her. "You will learn to control your responses – focus your attention, your concentration, on the task at hand. You mustn't let extraneous sensations distract you." Jenn noticed the large nut of his penis peeking out from between the flaps of his robe. Her vision began to swim as he continued to diddle; she squeezed her thighs against him, and fought to keep her own hands still, until, with small mews deep in her throat, she surrendered to another orgasm.

Finally dropping his hand from her crotch, Mansa stood up. His bulk dwarfed Jenn as she stood naked before him, echoes of her climaxes still quivering through her. In a parody of the classic headmaster he announced, "The lessons will commence in a moment." His robe fell open to reveal a huge erection waving impatiently from his fly-front. "But first..."

Placing his hands at her waist, he spun Jenn like a dance partner, catching her in the half turn and placing a hand between her shoulders to bend her over. Without a word, without a hesitation, he plowed himself deep into her open cunt. Eyes widened in surprise, a small gasp escaped her lips as Jenn felt her womb assaulted with a tool as long and as thick as a billy-club she had once experienced at Celebration. It seemed far too large to be real, yet, the man behind her thrust it in and out with quick, deep strokes, his thighs slapping against her buttocks as he pulled her by the hips to meet his spear on every insertion, battering her cervix mercilessly. As her unsupported body flopped around like a rag doll in the jaws of a playful pup, Jenn felt yet another climax shrieking towards fulfillment as it rose from a point just inside her vagina. Her fornicator's rushing, shuddering explosion was complemented by the pulsing, grabbing tremors of her vagina. Jenn felt the repeated spurts of hot fluid splashing off the end of her passage. Then they stood for a few seconds, the only motion between them the gripping and releasing of Jenn's vaginal muscles around its relaxing captive.

Abruptly he pulled out and turned her to face him as he lowered himself back into the chair. Jenn's eyes dropped to his lap. Protruding from his open robe, lying slick and semi-flaccid over the top of his thigh was the largest, blackest penis Jenn had ever seen. As she stared at it, glistening there against the satin of his pyjamas, her mind adrift in a confusion of desire and apprehension, he quietly told her to proceed. She knelt between his legs, smelling the ocean scented, cottage cheesy residue of their intercourse that clung to the thick underbrush of his groin. As she licked him clean, tasting her own come mixed with his, Jenn felt the sticky juices of their sex run out of her and down her thighs. The lightest tap on the top of her head communicated his impatience to start. Taking a last good look at the huge flaccid organ, she lowered her mouth and sucked him in.

Mansa spoke to her very quietly, running his fingers through her hair. His tone was kind and encouraging. "You must give it your complete attention. Only think of what is in your mouth; concentrate, regardless of distractions around or within you." So Jenn began her marathon. She felated him while he read the paper, watched TV, talked on the phone, even while he entertained visitors. For the most part, he completely ignored her, except for the occasional growing or twitching of his cock. Yet, he would apply a reminding touch if her attention seemed to stray, a murmured warning – "Don't make me come," – if her oral caress became too effective.

Jenn’s mind wandered back to an earlier era of her life. She hadn’t always been so super-sensitive – so hair-triggered. It used to be that she needed actual, physical clitoral stimulation in order to reach orgasm; later, she could get there with any sort of general genital caress – the feather touch of a tongue on her labia, or a fingertip softly reaming her anus. Now she could climax from just the anticipation of sex – from just the consideration of the erotic potential of any circumstances. She could, indeed, almost will herself to come.

Hence, early in lesson she succumbed to several more crashing, shaking orgasms, the intensity and sudden onset of which almost scared her. But the same quiet voice, with its deep, comforting rumble that she could feel against her cheeks, reprimanded her mildly, reminded her of her task. Anonymous visitors stroked and prodded her, sometimes asking Mansa's permission, sometimes exclaiming in delight, sometimes with a peremptory abruptness that startled Jenn. Inexorable manipulation and caress threatened, time and again, to overcome Jenn. She wanted to yell, "Stop it!" every time someone touched her genitals. The slow arousal was increasingly infuriating, despite Mansa's quiet reproof. How could she control herself? "I'm only human!" she felt like screaming. Finally someone mounted her, and, amazingly, his abrupt penetration calmed her vexation and soothed her jangled nerves with the narcotic effect of oil on water.

Then the insertions became plentiful – at some point, almost continual. While some were assaults – violent and frightening, others were caresses – soothing and dreamy. Jenn saw nothing – no one except the dark expanse of groin at which she toiled. For reasons Jenn couldn't understand, she felt this was a very important lesson. She tried hard to capture that control that Mansa spoke about – that single-mindedness.

A woman friend came in to visit Mansa and relentlessly fingered Jenn's genitals, while conversing. Whether due to the afternoon's enervation, or her repeated mantra, or a combination, Jenn at last, found it possible to ignore the conversation above her head, and forestall her orgasm despite the excited tingling between her legs.

A steely shaft mercilessly invaded her rear, yet as it violently churned in and out of her rectum she was able to concentrate on her own mission and dismiss the outrageous treatment of her bottom. Maybe she could pass this test.

Finally, after what seemed like hours and hours, when they were once again alone, Mansa said in his same low voice, "Okay. Now do it to me." Despite her fatigue, Jenn jumped to the call; giving way to her suddenly uninhibited lust, she abandoned herself to their mutual pleasure. She tunneled her hands into his robe to play with his nipples while her tongue danced up and down his turgid shaft. Quickly he began to thrust deep into her mouth. She responded by increasing the speed and depth of her strokes, plunging violently against him, banging his glans hard against the back of her throat. As the inevitable arrived, he held her head still, then rammed his cock as deep as possible, bruising her lips against his pubis, and blasted his seed well down into her gullet. The first pulse of semen triggered another climax for her, and she collapsed in a swoon on his lap.

He allowed – ordered her, once they had begun to recover, to masturbate again. Jenn wasn't sure if she could, but he chuckled as he said, "I've got lots of time. Keep me in your mouth until you come again." Dancing her tongue about his deflating penis, she set her fingers to work one more time, rubbing and stroking herself, looking for the magic touch. And it was surprisingly quick in coming. Her sensitive, irritated, puffy genitals, at first complaining, helplessly gave in to the sparkling shimmers of arousal. Gathering into a vortex of sensation, churning within her pelvis, then boiling up her spine, the heat of the impending orgasm stimulated a further erection in her mouth. The catalytic effect spurred Jenn and her instructor on to another amazingly intense mutual climax that left both breathless and speechless.

In her frazzled mind, some objective, detached part of Jenn observed that not only did the earth move, but it actually seemed to switch universes beneath her. Something was different; something had changed. She slowly recovered, the flaccid cock still encircled by her lips. Mansa patted her on the head like a pet, then called for a handler to escort her back to her room. She was exhausted – but strangely happy.

The handler arrived promptly, and took Jenn by the arm, supporting her around her waist, led her from the room. She could feel Mansa watching, but lacked the energy to turn to him, take her leave of him. She followed the handler like a docile child, trusting and oblivious, through a haze of exhaustion, until an unfamiliar starkness in the passageway shook her from her daze. Jenn felt a shiver of foreboding when she realized that she was not being taken back to her room. "What's happening?" she whispered inaudibly, but chose not to voice the question. "You've leave to question nothing," her training breathed in her mind, "Wait and see – always wait and see."

Her eyes now wide, she followed obediently as they – she and her escort – trudged deeper into the depths of the ship, down more stairs than she thought the ship should logically have. There was confusion in her eyes as she caught the gaze of the handler. “New quarters,” she was told, flatly, and as the question "Why?" shouted wordlessly from her visage, he muttered something about needing to make room for some new initiates. Eventually she was shown into a tiny room that was much more of a cell than a dorm. It was absolutely stark. The simple wooden bed frame had rings at each corner, and a seatbelt-like strap across the middle. It had only with a sheet and a pillow at its head, no blankets – the room was, nonetheless, comfortably warm. Along its length, against the wall was an assortment of cushions and bolsters of various shapes and sizes. There was a jug of water, and a lamp on a night table.

The windowless inside cell was lit only by a single low-wattage bulb, and the dimly illuminated drabness of the Spartan interior was somehow oppressive yet soothing. Its soft dullness had a calming effect on Jenn, or any occupant for whom egress was not an option. One even felt some degree of safety, albeit it tenuous. The door could open at anytime, requiring one to perform virtually anything, yet, the warm dusky closeness of the tiny room looked to Jenn as if it would welcome and relax a tired, well used player. Her handler, unable to disguise the pleasure he was taking in Jenn's silent response, opened the drawer of the night table to show her its collection of lubricants, dildos, butt-plugs, restraints, whips and clamps. A small port-a-potty sat beneath. Bright white lighting, indirect or intense, he explained, proud of his knowledge and position, was available to the masters. It was, however; exclusively controlled from outside the cell. She could be subjected to the overwhelming studio-like light at the whim of a master, at any time or during any activity. Video taping would be aided by such strong illumination, he assured her. As he closed the door behind him, the handler smirked, "Don't go anywhere," underlining the fact that the inside of the door was featureless.

Only a mirror graced the walls. Jenn studied herself in the mirror for a few moments. "Who am I?" she wondered. "What am I becoming?" She felt the sharp edges of a hollow despair scrape across her innards. "Who cares?" she muttered, flippantly and tumbled her dripping, sticky body onto the bed heedlessly. Dreamless sleep engulfed her almost instantly.

Amazingly, Jenn awoke to the first morning in her cell calmly and gently. She stared serenely at the white ceiling, wondering where she was – literally, for a disoriented moment, then figuratively. Alone in her cell she asked herself where it was all leading; to what end had they subjected themselves to continued humiliation and degradation; and how would they know when they got there? But maybe the end was of little import. Perhaps, contrary to the popular philosophy, rather than justifying the means, the end just legitimized the means; the journey was everything, the destination nothing. Regardless of where the profound significance lay – if it lay anywhere at all – the absolute freedom from self-imposed restraint was what Jenn relished the most. Her life was, increasingly, taking on the unreal air of a persistent, waking dream. It was continuously sensual, intensely erotic; it had become pure sexual fantasy manifest.

Her feelings were, perhaps, inexplicable, but simply inexplicable, or inexplicable in their simplicity. Walls of words, such as those in Henry Miller's

Tropics

... – ponderously laid line upon line, page upon page – were just not necessary. It was all about passion and lust – that was all. There was no need to define them; she had become the definition. All of the writing – chapter and verse – still missed the essence. Book after book of periphrastics – circumlocution – passionately spoke of passion, alluded to and incited lust; but to know passion intimately, one could only live it. And that's what she was doing; learning the definitions, at last.

While Matt, on the other hand, only enjoyed his circumstances as total freedom from responsibility – any responsibility – all responsibility. For him it was all fair punishment for the good times he had experienced; a just consequence to his life and all its sins; a reasonable trade-off for his having had the tenacity to survive.

In coming together to share such a strange fate, their lives had diverged. Even if their mutual love persisted, as Jenn was convinced it did, even if their spiritual bond remained intact, their corporeal paths took them steadily further and further apart. It was almost inevitable, yet it made Jenn sad to consider. How much further could they stretch and still keep contact?

As the memory of the day before crept back, she rolled to confront herself in the mirror. "Who are you?" she asked quietly. "Does anybody know?" Staring into her own eyes, she let her mind wander back to another world.