"Well, that's settled, then. I'll ... I'll go when ... when you take me. I ... I don't think I want to have any choices about anything at all, now. Not any more. Is that OK? Will ... will you control me, now, please?"
During this little speech, she has raised her head to look him, full in the eye, and even though her voice is very soft, trembling, it is also very sincere. She means what she says when it comes like this, he knows.
Again, he's impressed, but doesn't show it. Instead he smiles -- a genuine, compassionate smile, slow, almost sad. She is struggling, he can see, to hold back a torrent of emotion. He, too, is suppressing strong feelings -- his dick is a painful bar in his pants; his smile turns rueful, then amused.
The callousness of this change nearly breaks her again -- compassion, she saw it -- but so fleeting, and now he's finding humour in the situation? Humour, when she has just given away her life?
Her mouth is full of a bitter, harsh tang. Her world has gone from happy excitement and tender feelings only a few short minutes ago to this bleakness. An inescapable future of sexual abuse. It's so hard to understand how this can be the choice she has made. So hard, but at the same time there is no question in her mind. That this is it -- this has been inevitable for weeks now, and fighting it, refusing even to accept that she is fighting it, has been eating at her more and more. Underneath the sadness, the storming emotional waves, there is, she knows, a deep, deep letting go of enormous buried tension.
And as she realises this, accepts it, the emotional intensity seems to just wash away. Is she sad? Yes, terribly. Is she frightened? Yes! Is she appalled at the lurking horror of having done to her what she saw done to the luscious blonde girl? At what must have been done to her for weeks, months before that to get her to the point where she would play her part so sweetly.
Yes, she is frightened, yes, she is sad -- so much so that she can't really bear to think of it. And so she is grateful for the calming distance that acceptance brings. It's all still there, just as raw, just as horrible, but it matters less. Because she has given in.
She has given herself to him. She is no longer responsible; it's going to happen, and she can't stop it -- so, what can she do about the fear and sadness but accept them, too?
All she can do is all she has ever really been able to do for him, she realises -- do her best to look pretty, look sexually inviting; it's so clear, in retrospect, that that's all it ever was to him -- that for him the fun was actually foreplay (
'If I'm honest', she thinks; 'that's what it was for me, too..'
). He watches her, as this thought sinks in, sees her take herself in hand, straighten her back, pull back her shoulders, spread her thighs a little, push out her chest, look meekly down at his hands, control her breathing, and his dick surges again, causing him to wince. This one is going to go down very well indeed!
Smiling -- a private smile now, he decides to be cruel to her, enjoy himself. Signalling the waiter, he asks for a brandy, and for an ice cream.
She'll be on tenterhooks, expecting him to phone someone, make arrangements, but there's no hurry -- The Castle is always open for new submissions.
He's going to enjoy this. He's never been cruel with her before. Sexually aggressive, yes, demanding, yes, but always he's worked on the basis of consent. Manipulated consent, perhaps, but she has always known that she has asked for everything, and he's never taunted her about it or abused her trust. He's never deliberately hurt her without it being some sort of game that she has agreed to play.
Now, though, things have changed. She's no longer really a person. Or soon won't be, once Anne-Marie has begun to work her magic (he freely admits, as do most Castle Members, that Anne-Marie's skill puts his own into the 'amateur' category). Soon to become; '
Tits, ass, three warm, wet holes, all wrapped up in a pretty package, presented with a scared little smile and a helpless desire to serve
', as the cruder members like to put it.
It's time to have some fun with her, goad her, pressure her, begin to push her face into the harsh reality of her new existence. So he can watch as it sinks in for her, as she begins to understand just what it is she has done.
He still hasn't spoken since her request to be given over immediately; there is really no need -- everything changed at that point. But the entertaining part is that she won't understand this, has no idea at all, really, what has been going on for these ten months. For while he has never lied to her, he certainly has not told her the full truth.
And so she is sitting there, with nothing whatever to hold on to but her presentation of her body, everything else suddenly irrelevant, denied her, all claims null and void. But she is, she realises, waiting on something nevertheless -- some recognition from him, of her sacrifice, of her submission, of her gift of herself to him. Something.
But there's nothing. He says nothing, he stops looking at her even. She heard him order, hears the other diners' conversations -- so she hasn't gone deaf, despite the roaring of her own disordered pulse, all but random in her ears -- hasn't been too distracted by her inner turmoil to register -- easy as that would be to believe, so incessant is the whirlwind of wild thoughts in her head;
What about my pot-plants? How will they tell my work, so that I don't get registered as a missing person? They're going to whip me between the legs, like they did her, with people watching -- make me scream and howl like a mad thing. My pension! Will they steal my pension (as if its worth anything!)? His mark! I'll have his mark (he'd shown her how the blonde had a tattoo on her buttock that identified who had procured her for The Castle. The girl had two other marks -- she'd been bought and sold apparently; will he sell me?). Aunt Mary -- will she think I've forgotten her?/