Although my stories are certainly BDSM stories in their subject matter, they are certainly
not
genre/lifestyle/romantic BDSM stories, where one can expect care, consent, safe-words, and a code of conduct that keeps real people safe in real relationships. My stories are pure fantasy, and much darker--please don't read them if this will upset you. Accordingly, these stories will be put into the Non-Consent/Reluctance category.
Only one girl--that anyone knew of, at least--
had ever come close to disturbing Anne-Marie's aura of imperturbable control and omniscience.
Liana.
And this was confusing, to those who had not been around during the time, or who had not paid attention, for Liana was in many ways one of the least remarkable girls of that period.
Stories about the Castle must often be understood as relating to a particular period: as much as new members are initially transfixed by the simple fact of unconstrained access to a cluster of beautiful, submissive girls who are apparently eager to be degraded, to be fucked, to be subjugated; as much as these less experienced members are often overwhelmed by the freedom of choice, the freedom to make real their most twisted fantasies without the slightest restraint--even this remarkable experience eventually begins to seem fairly normal for regular members.
Note that is not at all necessary for a girl to be 'in fact' eager for such treatment--only that she be apparently so. Some members prefer authentic eagerness, and some like to know that the requirement to smile, to offer herself for appalling treatment with soft open-ness has been cruelly imposed on the lovely naked creature that spreads her legs and smiles desperately as she offers her pretty breasts for the dog-whip--still others like there to be boundaries between these two conditions that they can use to tease a girl with; tastes vary, of course, and at the Castle, all are served, as far as is practical.
Despite all this, over time, a member who attends often enough gets to know--quite literally--the ins and outs of all the available girls--even though there are always at least 12 in residence, plus others on shorter-term placements. It's quite obvious how this must be true, really; since the range of behaviour permitted to these girls has been so drastically and forcibly reduced from the full gamut of human conditions to a tightly restricted set concerning their use and abuse as sex toys, they are in fact rather boring creatures.
For most men, it remains exciting to use and abuse even the prettiest, most delightful girl perhaps a dozen times before she ceases to hold much fascination apart from that of a soaker-up of casual cruelty, a generic provider of soft holes and despairing screams and moans--unless, of course, she becomes a favourite for some specific reason.
It is necessary, for this and for other reasons, too, for Anne-Marie and the Great Table (as the management committee is known, after some long lost particular table in the original Castle of the 1890s around which the original--and still enshrined--principles of The Castle were agreed) to ensure a turnover of new girls.
Although new girls come--and other girls are moved on--in ones and twos, so that there is irregular but continuous change, there are occasionally notable inflexion points, when for some reason new dynamics between girls, or between girls and members, change the character of the current 'crop' or 'gaggle' (such demeaning and utilitarian metaphors are deliberately used, with knowing and amused callousness).
These moments, when sufficiently distinct, are what define the end of one period and the beginning of another.
As an example, the points where a lesbian romance is detected between two of the girls can bring a noticeable sea-change. Likewise an event, like the public branding of a girl who has somehow been brought to consent to such treatment, can change things even without arrivals or departures. Arrivals and departures, though, are the key drivers of new periods. Particular girls often become identified with such periods.
Liana's period was sometimes known as 'The Time of the Ice Queen'--a stretch of months during which Anne-Marie surpassed even her own reputation as the 'cold corrupter'--a time when she had become utterly relentless--all-consuming in her requirements of her charges--a time in which several new recruits were thoroughly broken within 6 weeks of arriving, almost before their initial shock at the reality of what they had foolishly committed themselves to had sunk in.
Only a few members really understood, so perfectly did Anne-Marie manage herself, that this was all because of Liana--that very same Liana who was now Anne-Marie's apprentice and successor apparent.
Anne-Marie had never intended Liana to become an inmate of the Castle--not seriously, at least. You see, Anne-Marie had a private life, away from the Castle. She kept it that way--it was crucial to her ability to play the specific part she played while there. No sane person could be as certain, as all-knowing, as brilliantly skilful, as smilingly cruel, as smoothly manipulative as the Anne-Marie of the Castle was on a full-time basis. She needed--absolutely required--space and time away from the Castle, in the 'real' world, to function.
Not that the Anne-Marie away from the Castle was anything other than magnificently self-contained. Even with her guard down and her intellect off duty, Anne-Marie was still a powerful presence, wherever she went.
One aspect of Anne-Marie's private life was a string of love affairs. Anne-Marie had long since realised that all human experience is relativistic. That to enjoy sweet, one needed to experience bitter; to appreciate light, one needed dark; and so it was with sex. Anne-Marie had both acknowledged and accepted her extreme dominant tendencies within sexual relationships when she was very young, but she had always refreshed her palate, so to speak, with simpler, more reciprocal liaisons--always with women, almost exclusively younger than she.
These were never romantically serious (although there was often a playful aspect of this), and never lasted overlong--a year at most, but they were an important part of Anne-Marie's life.
She had never had any trouble attracting lovers--she was a magnet in many environments, and to her satisfaction, it had become easier and easier to propose sexual relationships to women over the years, as flexibility about gender relations had made for cultural progress in this area (the contrast between this increase in freedom and naturalness in her private life, and the crudely and violently patriarchal modes of The Castle was another contrast that provided her with pleasurable
frissons
).
She had picked Liana up at a classy restaurant--the girl had been waitressing, obviously inexperienced, and had made a mistake with Anne-Marie's order.
Something in the way she had apologised--clearly terribly upset, terribly eager to be approved of, to make amends--had alerted Anne-Marie's fine-tuned senses, and since Liana was also gorgeous, she swooped. The girl didn't really understand what had happened, but she certainly understood that Anne-Marie was in charge, and in the end gloried in this as she experienced, one after the other, sexual intensities and delights that were beyond anything her experience with the young men she had been with had prepared her for.
Liana believed herself in love, although Anne-Marie had never talked of love, and laughed at her when she proclaimed hers, so fervent, so sincere, so sure. It made her cry, sometimes, but Anne-Marie always kissed her tears away, and cuddled her, and stroked her, and caressed her breasts, nipped sharply at her earlobes, and kissed her deeply, languidly, invading her, and they would be at it again, Anne-Marie driving her to peak after peak--and demanding service in return, too; taking her pleasure from the lithe young body that so earnestly sought to offer itself for anything that might be asked of it.
There was, though, something different about Liana. Soft as she was, helplessly worshipful as she was of Anne-Marie, happily passive as she was, in the face of Anne-Marie's smiling certainty, her smoothly imposed but diamond-cored willpower, the girl nevertheless retained a core of determination, of committed intent; things she would not let go of, no matter how often deflected, shut down, distracted, beguiled...
And one of these things was an unquenchable itch to discover just what, exactly, it was that had Anne-Marie so often unavailable at night, whereabouts unknown; what it was that paid for the gorgeous clothes she showered on Liana; the jewellery, the glorious weekend trips to delightful and swanky destinations, the luxurious flowers she would have delivered to the girl's tiny, cramped apartment, to the astonishment of her flatmates.
