"I ain't talking about boobs and cunts, you know I ain't. And, anyway, yours are better 'n hers. It's quality. You got it."
"But if you and Daisy keep on whipping me like this I'll be dead in a month."
"Daisy ain't touching you no more. I'll guarantee it." His voice was grim. "As fer me, I got a bit o' judgement. I didn't whip yer yesterday, I ain't a' goin' ter whip you today. I ain't spoiling a good thing now I got it."
"I suppose I'm your secret desire come true?" I asked bitterly.
"Damn right you are!" He struck the table for emphasis.
"You think men, any men, don't dream about a gal' like you are and the things we been doin', -you'd be crazy. A lot o' the silly twits 'ud deny it, but they'd lust for you and a whip just the same as me." It didn't seem like much of a future. I'd just been sentenced to a lifetime of slavery. "Aren't you ever going to let rile go?" I asked wanly.
"I'd hoped you wouldn't want to, Phemie." The sincerity of his words was like a blow. If he loved me I was indeed lost. With feminine guile I used this new advantage. "It's hard for a girl to love a man who whips her all the time." I made my eyes as fawn-like as I could and focused them on him with full candle power.
"Dammit, Phemie, I ain't whipped yer that much!" I suppose by his standards he had been moderate. He had not been as cunningly cruel as Daisy. My real fear of him was the stringent bondage in which he kept me. There was no hope for freedom in it, none!
"You've really been very kind, Mr. Hennery," I acknowledged. "I'm sorry if I seem ungrateful." I gave him a sweet small feminine gesture. "It's all so sudden, and it hurts a bit, and that business yesterday with Daisy…"
"I gotta' leave yer again today, love: But I'll make it real easy…" After he had copulated with me again and was ready to go about his affairs he chained me to a tree. Alone again, after Hennery, had vanished over the hill, I assessed my new status. I was loved. But I still wore the handcuffs! On the other hand I was not being whipped, not at the moment! There had been no suggestion that I had said good-bye to cutting thongs and limber canes, but I now had a day in which to allow my weals to stop hurting. As for real freedom, I did not have any, but I was a lot better off than before. Hennery had employed his longest chain. One end was padlocked round a tree, the other locked to the single link between the metal bands round my wrists. I had no faintest hope of escape. But if I wanted to, I could walk 'round and 'round the tree in quite a wide radius. I could sit, lie down or stand as I might desire. Exploring this relative freedom I felt a bit guilty in not having given my captor more fervent thanks for it. It must have been about noon when James Pollard came into view.
I saw him before he saw me. He was walking. I longed to wave, but I couldn't. He was making a determined bee line for the house. Just before he reached it he caught sight of me.
"Phemie!"
"Oh darling!" I forgot everything else. You don't want the jumble of love and kisses and half coherent explanations. There were a lot of them. Until I reassured him, James' first concern was of enemies. Then my own concern got attention. Imagine my gorgeous long drawn out sigh of ecstasy… James had the key. It's funny though. When I pertly turned my back and proffered my chains I found myself loath to part with them. Nuts!
"Damn! I suppose that yokel's got the key to this padlock?"
"I expect he has, darling. It's for sure I haven't, and it's not hanging on a nail anywhere that I know of."
"That means I'll have to leave him the handcuffs. The lock's in 'em. But I'll have you free in about four seconds." He was as good as his word. Now that I had hands and arms we loved all over again. Golly, my shoulders were stiff. It had been days… Yet, when I finally looked down and saw the shining metal that had held my wrists so long I knew a pang of remorse. They lay on the ground at the end of the long chain. Empty and forlorn… James must have felt something of my regret. They did look like a pitiful small part of me abandoned and rejected. It was easy to find a hammer. With a rock beneath the padlock and a few hard blows he shattered the device that had held me captive. The handcuffs fell free.
"Snap them on me again, darling," I pleaded. "I don't feel right without them."
"Afterwards," said James. The afterwards took quite a long time and I was very thankful for my arms. But when it was over and I had brushed the barnyard off my back and bottom I turned and wiggled my hands. I know it's crazy, but the click, click, click as the metal tightened back 'round my wrists had the sound of wedding bells. We walked back to where James had hidden the car. I wondered what conclusion Hennery would arrive at when he found his empty chain and broken lock. I had a sudden prescience of his loneliness. Perhaps, on the following day, Daisy would be able to earn another five pounds. I couldn't hate either of them. It was gorgeous in the car. I pleaded not to be covered. What would be the use! We were on our way to Castle Glynt, if I arrived dressed Yolanda would certainly strip me. I wondered if she'd be angry at all the trouble I'd gotten her into. She could punish me to her heart's content and I wouldn't complain.
"I figured those two chaps of Ashad's had spirited you away while I was puttering around that damn farm," James explained as the car purred it's way over the dirt road to the village. "I had not broken with Bolling, so I went back to the office. There I learned Ashad was as puzzled about you as I was, his bloodhounds were still chasing a lost scent." He looked at me sideways and grinned. "Girls like you don't utterly vanish: They're around somewhere. So I phoned your uppity Miss Harding."
"Yolanda's not uppity."
"She was with me. She demanded I deliver you on her doorstep, pronto. What's with that female? It took me about five minutes with servants asking fool questions before I heard her dulcet tones. She sounded a bit distrait."
"That's what Hennery said."
"He was my clue, of course, She told me about this uncouth voice that claimed to have you and how shy he was of contact. He hung up on her. It sort of clicked. I couldn't figure how he'd fooled me but I knew I'd have to come and find out. How come all those whip marks?"
"He enjoys whipping girls," I sighed happily now that it no longer mattered, then added ruefully: "Who doesn't!" I didn't tell him about Daisy. And I thought it best not to mention all those times I'd laid down with my legs apart. I mean, after all! It was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! I snuggled into my handcuffs and into the upholstery. I kept my eyes on James in adoring contentment. I was safe, safe, safe! In a little while we'd be back at Castle Glynt and Yolanda. No matter what awaited me there I'd be happy, happy, happy! If a faint cloud of wonderment hovered as to how I'd reconcile Yolanda and James, I refused to think about it. Something always happened! I loved them both. My fire burned bright. The homecoming of a slave girl! What pictures it evokes! My heart thudded happily as we drew up at the foot of the steps. Capriciously, I refused to have my hands freed or to be covered. The Castle servants were conditioned. I'm sure the male staff regarded me as one of the more attractive perquisites of office. The females usually giggled or pretended I wasn't there. We mounted the steps like a victorious army. It was not Beddoes the butler who opened the door. It was one of the lesser housemaids. She produced only a faint giggle and gazed at my pubic hair with awe. "The Mistress is in the morning room," she announced breathlessly. Preceding us down the hall she threw open the door. Majestically, we made our entry. I never saw a thing. The rug enveloped me and strong hands held it down. Since I was inside it they held me too. How bitterly I cursed the joie de vivre that had prompted my sentimental plea for the familiar handcuffs. I was a neat package, obligingly delivered, helpless! I heard James's vehement: "You son of a bitch!" There were thuds and scuffles. They were still going strong when I was carried from the room and down the stairs. Even in my struggling distress I was too familiar with Castle Glynt not to know where I was being taken. Steps, doors, changing temperatures all combined to make me cringe in foreknowledge. When the last fateful door opened I was set on my kicking feet. The rug was whisked from over my head. Behind me the dungeon door thudded shut and the bolts shot home. In the dim light I beheld a girl. She was in the corner I knew so well. She was as naked as I. But, whereas I wore only handcuffs at my back, she was bedecked in chains. Ankles, wrists, waist and neck were encircled with the metal bands I too had worn. From the one 'round her waist a heavy chain tether ran to the ringbolt in the stone. She had risen to her feet at our entry and taken a hobbled step against the leashing iron.
"Welcome home, Phemie," said my Mistress, Yolanda. We kissed, we cried, we nuzzled, we bit. Abandoning our flood of incoherencies we made lesbian love within the constrictions of our chains. It was awkward, but we were compelled by a sudden feverish desire that made light of fetters and links and a measure of helplessness. To have my beloved Yola again was good, good, good! I revelled in her flesh and in the pungent scent of her — all else forgotten! Our devouring reached such an intensity that when it was over we slept. How strange a reunion! Never had a Mistress welcomed back an errant slave girl in so great a depth of humiliation. My darling knelt on the stone and played with her shackles. They were heavy and secure. I had worn them often enough by her decree. Now she was a more helpless slave even than I. She told me of her hatred of the span of links that fastened her to the wall. It allowed her a few steps, but that was all. She could not walk half way to the door. She stood to show me her full panoply of prisonment, kicking at the chain which joined her feet, holding wryly for my inspection the fetters upon her wrists, raising a captive hand to feel the metal about her neck, a band purely punitive since it was joined to nothing. "They've got me, Phemie," she confessed wanly. "And now they've got you too. It's what they wanted… both of us."
"But James-"
"They'll probably send him back to his precious Roland Bolling with an admonition to keep his mouth shut."
"You don't think…" She shrugged resignedly. "No, they won't kill him. This lot don't need to. Bolling will tell him to behave and shut up. Bolling's probably fed up to the teeth with slave girls."
"You're not a slave girl, darling." Yola raised her chained hands. "Aren't I!" It was then I saw her marks. "You've been whipped!" It was as though I uttered sacrilege. She smiled at my consternation. "The fainter ones are from your boyfriend's fun the day he and his louts took you and whipped me. The fresh ones are because I was considered far too haughty in my insistence that I owned this Castle. I was told they would teach me a lesson. I suppose they did. Oh Phemie, when I think of all the times I've whipped you!" Once more we wept together. This time I laved my darling's wounds with my tears and my wet lips. I never even thought of mine. We finally got around to the facts of why Miss Harding and, Miss Carstairs were chained in a dungeon. We would have preferred to make love on and on and on! But you can't, can you? I mean, there comes a time… I told Yola my adventures. I know I'm a wicked little something or other but I just couldn't bring myself to tell about the male thing and me. With my darling in that dungeon those huge male organs piercing me again and again just didn't seem real. They were gone! Why hurt this girl I loved, and to whom I belonged. I told of my captivities, that was enough. I made her laugh with my story of my handcuffs and how Fate seemed determined I should wear them behind my back forever. A girl with whipmarks does not have to prove anything she tells. They are a scarlet testimony of anything she admits. Through all my chronicle I had been aware of Yola's troubled eyes seeing beyond me into something else, some thing she did not wish to talk about. Abruptly, I broke the thread of my chatter and eyed her demandingly.
"What is it, Yola, you haven't told me? What is it? Whose prisoners are we?" We were kneeling on the stone, facing each other. She gazed at me with what seemed an infinite pity, and spoke a name…
It began a long time ago as girls count time. A travel folder and a wish to get away. Alone! A two week holiday that would be pure adventure without the nag of girl friends or boy friends or relatives. I was terribly young. It was my first time. I chose the wrong place. Someone had hinted, but I had just laughed. The travel agent had just shrugged and said there were always stories about any place. Any doubts I started with evaporated in the excitement of the flight. The North African resort of my choice was colorful and smelled to high heaven. It had a lot of flies and men who wanted to sell you dirty postcards. It also had the most exciting shops. They were run by the most villainous chaps you've ever seen; so evil in appearance you could feel quite sure they'd be ever so nice if you got to know them. I mean, no villain is deliberately going to look like one. The chap who kidnapped me was positively hideous. Since I'd insisted on being alone it wasn't much of a trick for him. He handed me a brass pot to admire, then while my hands were busy he draped a rug over my head and tied a cord around tight. He then put me in a big wicker basket, the kind used for laundry, and some men carried me away to slavery. I could not see a thing, but from sounds and motion I could guess. In the dark in that damn basket I was frightened almost out of my skin. I knew for sure I'd be taken to a brothel and broken in by a huge nubian, but the only mental picture I could think up was the reassuring smile of that blasted travel agent. To the woman who released me I was just another job of work in a hard day. She did not have too much English, and seemed unwilling to use what she had. "You are now slave girl," she said brusquely. "You will please to behave."
"You don't think I'm going to stay here, do you!" I demanded angrily. I was so frightened I was brave. She just smiled quietly and motioned with her head. I looked around and got the message. It was a very large stone room. The windows were barred and the door was closed. The woman went to one wall and took a whip from a nail where it had hung waiting, presumably for me!
"You needn't think you're going to use that thing on me!" I affirmed with a fine British confidence I did not feel. She used it on me with great competence and a frightening absence of emotion. To her I was a silly child. I was clothed, so she contented herself with my legs which were bare. I skipped and ran and howled, but she was always there. She slashed away at me until I was reduced to a pleading bundle on the floor. The only way I could think to shield my legs was to sit on them the way a hen sits on her eggs. The woman's name was Lotta. After the whipping of my bare legs I treated her with great respect. I gave instant obedience to her slightest word. I had no idea where I was. The wicker basket had been loaded into a truck and the journey had been long. Between the basket and having my legs whipped I was more than ready and very surprised by the modern bathroom. Lotta stood by watchfully while I made myself very clean. There were oils and perfumes she poured in the water for me. You can guess what was coming. I never did get my western clothes back. With the help of a giggling native girl who looked at me with the most avid speculation in her wise eyes, Lotta bedecked my nakedness with some pretty odds and ends and bangles that made me feel twice as nude as nude! I was then escorted to The Presence. He was old. Hawk faced. Arab. I liked him instantly, there was something paternal about his lined face and bright intelligent eyes. He said, "Good afternoon, Miss Carstairs." In perfect English. As I said, I was very young. Instead of returning his greeting I said frostily: "The police will make a frightful fuss about this, y'know." He inclined his head, just fractionally. "You will give me much pleasure, child. You shall have no regrets." I muffed everything. I said the first thing in my mind: "But you're old!" Surely grandfathers didn't ravish maidens! His eyes clouded momentarily, but his voice remained even: "I must ask you to forget escape, the police and the past. None of those things exist for you now. All in my house welcome you." I was a pompous little pussycat. "If you let me go now I won't press charges," I said in the manner of the best fiction.
"Allah has willed that you be a member of my household. Heed his will and mine, child."
"I'm not your child, and don't bring Allah into this!" I retorted, painting my path to pain with profligate abandon. The old man sighed. He looked at Lotta with only a faint lifting of one eyebrow. He dismissed me briefly with two awful words: "Twenty lashes." For me to fight Lotta was nonsense, but I tried, After a silly scuffle she picked me up and carried me from The Presence under one arm. I was kicking and beating my fists against her impassivity like a fractious little girl of nine. This time a quite different room. Large, of stone, punishment implicit in every inch. I quailed at the things I could recognize and at those I could not. Lotta hung me up by my wrists. She was a faithful custodian. She stripped me completely naked and folded my rejected finery neatly. I hung with my toes six inches above the floor, trembling, feeling foolish and shamed. Exposed! Some instinct told me to keep quiet. Without preamble she proceeded to whip me very, very slowly and very, very hard. The cuts of the lash falling from across my shoulders down and down to meet the scarlet and purple on my legs and thighs. Her strokes might have been governed by a metronome. I remember my screams. There were a lot of pleadings here and there, and some promises. They sounded shameful even as I uttered them, so I won't repeat. I had not known such pain existed or that it could be endured by a naked girl. During the first ten strokes I was sure I would die. Twenty was not possible to bear — I knew it wasn't! But the blows fell regularly as I shrieked and kicked. Twelve, fifteen, eighteen… My youth and Lotta's skill deprived me of the drama of demise. I was led back to The Presence, bare naked and shivering. I was made to pose. I was still young and English enough to be afraid of my own nakedness. I had been taught it was shameful and that no man should ever see it except my husband. True, I had taken some of this with a grain of salt. But just the same I had done very little hopping around in the nude, Now I was forced to stand erect with my hands clasped on my head. First with my back to my owner so that he might count my stripes and judge them adequate, then facing him so that he might assess the quality of his most recent acquisition. I also had to stretch my legs far apart and to bend down to expose my bottom. He viewed my enforced performance with a grave regard that might have prompted me to revolt or sarcasm had not Lotta stood to one side with her whip. I wanted no more of that. Then the catechism. I answered his questions respectfully and promptly. I was a changed girl. I stood there with my breasts thrust out as he desired and told him all he wanted to know, I'd have told him anything. It shocks me still to know how easily and how well a girl can be governed by a whip. I was then taken to a very bare room. Its only furnishings were a thin mattress, a slop pail and a collar and chain. The metal collar was locked around my neck, the other end of the chain was made fast to the wail. This tether enabled me to move about in approximately half the area of the room. It snubbed me short when I tried to reach the door. I spent an hour or so feeling sorry for myself and pulling uselessly at my collar and chain. I found that tether bitterly humiliating in its simile to the control of dogs. No girl wearing it could fail to realize its superfluity so far as keeping her prisoner went. The massive door and its bolts did that! My chain and collar were locked on me to tell me what I was and to induce a proper submissiveness. They did it very well. I have told you of my induction into slavery in a factual sort of way. But I don't suppose I can portray the psychic shock. It was tremendous: Yesterday, a carefree young female tourist, today, a naked slave in a barren cell and with a chain 'round her neck and her skin well striated by a whip, a whip used in pure utility to teach obedience. When I desolately lay down on the hard little strip of mattress, it was logical enough that I should remember that other time with Miss Hilde… It was my first understanding of the singularity of pain. It can be given and received with love, or it can be inflicted purposefully as Lotta had whipped me. But then it happened! I suppose the friction of the mattress on my nipples, or on my puss as I wriggled to find a comfort that was not there, was what sparked it. But, seeping through my misery, I was astonished to recognize a familiar heat between my legs. It was like meeting an old friend you thought had dropped you. I found an immense comfort, a sort of sanctuary, My eager hand and seeking finger were involuntary. As I drifted off into rainbow fantasies it was not Miss Hilde who exerted her dominion over me. It was Lotta. I slept, of course, You always think you can't, but you do. In the morning I began my new life as a slave. My behavior was meticulously proper. But once, as though I couldn't help myself, I deliberately provoked Lotta into whipping me: nothing dramatic, but enough to fan the embers of my fire. I did not quite understand it, but it was good, something to hold on to. I was not alone. In the same faintly preoccupied manner in which she did everything, Lotta used her authority to make me service her. That is the polite term; isn't it, for having me feed between her legs? It was a minor Sheikdom, and my owner was the venerable Sheik Inman Azzam. He told me, with a rather sweet regret, that he could no longer pierce my loins, but that until a man died he would worship beauty, and that was why I was there: I was beautiful! That was enough. I would be an exquisite plaything who always did his bidding. About the time I was feeling as though I was promoted to Princess, he explained how I would be whipped quite often as the mood took him. He smiled benignly as though bestowing a mark of favour which, in a strange way, he was. Being young I adjusted. Azzam was lovable. In serving him I found a contentment I would not previously have believed possible. He was wise and kind — unless offended. Then he was implacable and cruel. The oddly detached Lotta with her smoldering eyes supplied me with the need Azzam's departed virility could not fill. Satisfied that she had me well broken, Lotta bestowed on me the same beneficence that I daily rendered unto her. I became compliantly happy in a small enchanted world. The fact that I was always, in some intriguing manner chained bothered me not at all. I would have felt unloved without it. Silver shackles completed and enhanced my scanty costumes — no one could call 'em clothes! I was whipped constantly. In the moulding of what is now me, those whippings were important. They never injured but they sure did hurt. As my fire grew I approached them in a trembling dither of lust. But Lotta always ensured that I ended them in tears. Often, afterwards, I was left fastened for the rest of the day. Sometimes when I remained bound in my pose of punishment Azzam would come and talk to me as though nothing had happened. I grew accustomed to nudity before his eyes. The days became weeks and the weeks broadened into months. It was then that Yolanda happened. I was standing naked in the room where I was whipped. My hands were chained above my head. I'd been there a couple of hours and was half asleep in fantasy land when a girl walked in. She stood for several moments staring at me with wide, startled eyes. Then, in an endearing English voice, said: "Frightfully sorry?" and turned to leave.
"Don't go… please!" She turned back. I could tell she was curious. She came and stood before me, examining my nudity and the tell-tale whipmarks it bore.
"You must have been a very bad girl?" That's Yolanda! Not shocked. Open mind. Curious! Actually she was loving it. I had absolutely no thought of escape, or rescue, or of using her. I fell in love with her on the spot and wanted only to keep her from discreetly leaving. "I'm afraid I like it," I told her mischievously. She nodded, eyes shining to match my mood. "Then why are you chained?"
"Well, it does hurt quite a lot. And besides, I'm a slave girl."
"I'm sure you deserve every stroke." It was as though we had known each other always. I was thinking up a cute retort when we were joined by Sheik Inman Azzam. He was unperturbed. "Miss Harding. Allow me," as he inclined his head in my direction, "Miss Euphemia Carstairs." We were frightfully British and came up with a pair of frigid "How d'you do's". The Sheik told me afterwards he found us hilarious. "Your last remark was correct, Miss Harding. This beloved child is in constant need of the lash," he said with grave courtesy. "Perhaps you would assuage her hunger?" He took the whip from the wall and offered it to the girl who had wandered into my punishment room by accident. Yolanda looked from one to the other of us, gauging the mood. She accepted the whip. Carefully, and with cruel skill, she lashed my back and bottom five times. I almost swooned with joy. Azzam nodded approval.
"You have done this before, Miss Harding?"
"No, but I've always wanted to."
"You are unusually honest, my dear."
"Daddy always told me I could be, with you." Azzam sighed. "He was a fine man and my friend. It has pleased me that you should visit my house." His eyes twinkled. "I think it matters not that you have stumbled on this domestic scene."
"It was inexcusable. I should not have wandered-" My owner waved a forgiving hand and relieved her of the whip. "It is perhaps the will of Allah. I sense between you that strange intangible for which man has no name. Is she not beautiful!"
"She is lovely beyond dreams," Yolanda breathed. Two days later she purchased me and took me home to Castle Glynt. At the last moment I did not want to go. I fell to my knees before the Sheik who was my lord. I kissed his hand as though I could not let it go, wetting it with my tears.
"Azzam isn't all that rich," My new Mistress explained to me on the plane that winged us home. "My fifty thousand means something to him. I think he has some special need of it. If there's any oil in his kingdom no one seems to have found it." She patted my nylon clad knee. "I'll tell you this, you outrageous sexpot, if he'd been thirty years younger a couple of million wouldn't have been enough to pay your price. He loves you, I think he believed he was being kind…" I was terribly, terribly happy.
"But Azzam was kind, he liked you," I protested.
"Azzam hasn't arrived yet, Phemie. It's a sort of an advance guard that's taken over Glynt. I think they're soldiers in civilian clothes, but Lotta's the boss."
"Lotta! Here?"