"I'm an absolute bitch, aren't I?" Cicely Woods suggested blithely. "I've popped a real psychological test at you, darling. What does a girl do with freedom? You tell me."
Ilona was still nursing her whipped hand. She was in no mood for anything except tears or hysterics. But it was true, there was not a restraint upon her! Why? "If I run I'll be caught and punished: that's it, isn't it?"
"Who's to catch you, darling, 'cept me?"
"And you would. My feet are bare, and you can get the best of me in a tussle.
This hand won't work for a week."
"Yes it will. Remember schooldays?"
"No kid ever got her hands punished with an awful thing like you're holding, or anywhere near as hard."
"Ilona, dear, I'm not getting through to you. I actually do want you to go out there and see how you make out. Look, I'll stand right here so you can look back and see me until you're out of sight."
"You'll come after me on a horse."
"Don't quibble so."
"I just know I can't escape? and there'l be some damn awful punishment waiting."
"Hmmmm, don't trust me, eh? Can't say I blame you. Tell you what, darling, I'l give you an incentive. You run along like a good little girl, or else stick your other hand out for another five."
The whipped hand of a girl was a beastly stomach turning kind of pain to which her sex glands made no response. Ilona wanted no more of it. Without volition, she fell to her knees and clasped her mistress's jodhpurs with bare arms she did not control, and frictioned the expensive cloth with a desperate cheek. She heard her voice from far away. "Please no, oh, no. .! Cicely. . please!"
The Mistress was surprised. The surprise was pleasant. It encompassed a new dimension of Ilona Paisley. Cicely stood quite still and gazed down at a whipmarked bare back with speculative eyes. Her tone was interested.
"Darling, what are you doing down there?"
"I? I? I don't know. It just happened."
"I like it. Ever done this act before?"
"No. And it's not an act."
"What is it then?"
Ilona could not answer. She did not know what it was. The impulse had been basic and beyond her control. But she did know for sure her arms did not wish to leave the pulsing safety of the woman they embraced. Lamely, she pleaded: "Don't hurt me any more, Cicely, you don't need to."
"No fight left? Is that it?"
"I suppose so. . I couldn't possibly win."
"But if you could, you would?"
"I'm not sure. This is all so. . impossible."
Cicely Woods was intrigued. "I really do want you to run." She admitted disappointedly. "And I'll still whip your hand if you don't. But you've just made a discovery about yourself. . You have, haven't you?"
"Cicely, would you consider keeping me enslaved without whipping me all the time? The chains make me obedient."
"Well, well! Is that Miss Ilona Paisley speaking! The one who wrote that unforgivable article about the Texas Tycoon?"
"Alright, so I gave you a bad Press. Whip me for that."
"My goodness, sweetheart, we seem to have come a long way."
The same thought was in the mind of the naked girl. She was bemused by pain and hopelessness. But she could not hold on to the aristocratic jodhpurs forever.
Reluctantly, she loosed her bare arms and knelt back on her heels. "You only bought me yesterday." She said listlessly. "So far today you've chained me and whipped me. . I'm just plain lost, and frightened, and unsure. I'm even scared of your escape offer. Cicely, please, give me a little time to catch up?"
"Poor darling, I think I'm seeing a changed girl? But I can't have you telling me what to do, y'know."
"No, I suppose not."
"I won't whip you for that article today, but thanks for the offer. I'll certainly whip you for it within a week or two. But right now I must insist you either walk or run off across the prairie or else place your whipped hand up there on the post."
The shackle was hanging open. Compelled by a force she could not control, Ilona rose and placed her hurt hand within its jaws. Pulse accelerating, she watched Cicely prison her wrist in metal.
"I like the way you did that." Cicely said thoughtfully. "You're giving me ideas.
Does that feel good to you? back on the chain? no decisions?"
". . Yes."
"You know what comes next?"
"You're going to whip my hand. I'll have to hold it out."
"Matter of principle, darling."
"I understand. Is it. . now?"
"Want to get it over with, eh! Poor kid! You make me feel a real bitch. But I'm still going to do it. Being a girl owner isn't all that easy, y'know."
"Well, not really. It's something I'll never know about."
Ilona felt hypnotized. She held out her hand, palm taut. "There, is that the way you want me?"
"Darling, you're adorable!"
The thin cruel crop cut the air with a snickering swish. Ilona Paisley was ashamed of her tears, she was ashamed of hands that could only fumble, she was ashamed of all her contortions and her cries as her hand accepted each cut of the crop, and then fought for the control by which it would once again offer itself to agony. She stood with her back to the post and used a forearm to try and cope with the salt drops on her cheeks. Her shackled wrist was close before her eyes, mocking her return to its grasp.
"I'm. . I'm sorry, Cicely, I didn't behave very well." Her voice was choked and colourless.
"You were beautiful."
"Do I have to stand here now, with my wrist up?"
For answer, the mistress unlocked the shackle and took her whipped purchase by the arm. "You know where we're going, don't you?" She demanded firmly.
Ilona knew.
Ilona knew she could not have borne it the first day, she would have become hysterical. But several days had passed and several nights. . ! The metal blinds on her eyes were still hateful, and the spreadeagle tie to the four stakes was a frightening and shaming obscenity. But she had not yet screamed. She could not tell how long she had been tied thus, exposed and spread, and very, very naked, but she judged it an hour. Her wrists hurt, her ankles hurt where Nora's ropes bit tight, her shoulders ached. . ! And this was just the beginning of what Cicely laughingly called her
'spreadeagle day.'
"Every girl should have at least one, darling. Teaches her she's female."
"Have you?"
"Well, no. . But I'm privileged, and I've watched enough to pick up reactions."
"Please forgive me this punishment, Cicely? Or if I must have it? not blind?"
Nora had blinded her and tied the ropes. She had done both with competence and apology.
"She says it must be tight, and your cunt open."
"And I have to be blinded this way?"
"Yes, Miss Paisley, I'm sorry the thing's so tight, but that's the way it fastens. You see any light?"
"None."
"I'm sorry. It's a poor sort of day. I've been told to go and leave you and not come back."
"Things will be done to me, Nora. D'you know what they are?"
"I'm just thinking 'bout the same things as you, Miss. I don't know anything for sure."
There had been kissing, and then the receding clink of Nora's ankle chain.
Robbed of sight and motion, Ilona viewed the pictures in her mind. Nights of love, days of strange punishments, the constant laughingly offered escape she knew would never happen. . Dominating every vision was Cicely Woods. Ilona could understand none of her own mental responses, but of one thing she was sure. She was hopelessly in love with the woman who held her prisoner. She could never get enough of Cicely's nude loveliness. She was enslaved by it as firmly as by her chains.
She was allowed to feed on it nightly, but her appetite fed upon itself and was insatiable. She was beginning to see her pain as a small price for such felicity.
Ilona tensed her stretched limbs. There was no freedom. She would lie, a naked
'X' during Cicely's pleasure. She had already struggled. It would be best to struggle no more. Her mind inevitably drifted to men, and how they would view her splayed thighs and pubic hair. And then the acts they would perform on her. A girl was spread like this for only one purpose! She supposed these acts already decided and ordained, but she would be made to wait for them. It figured.
It seemed a long, long time before Ilona sensed a presence. The voice was unexpected. It was Cicely's.
"Is it very bad, darling?"
"Yes." She was alive with hope, but dared not plead.
"All the time expecting something in here?"
Cicely must be kneeling. Her hand was caressing Ilona's blatantly open sex. It soon evoked gasps.
"Of course! I thought that was??"
A tinkle of laughter. "I bet you were expecting Josh instead of me?"
"Yes, oh Cicely. . Cicely!!"
"Yes, honey, what?"
The feminine hand was wise within her cleft. Ilona could only moan a denial.
"Nothing, Cicely. . It's nothing. I'm sorry."
"Going to ask me to let you loose, pet?"
"I'm always asking you to let me loose, Cicely. It's time I shut up."
Her lips were kissed. Fingertips traced the contours of the metal blinds upon her eyes, continuing down over her lips, her chin, her throat, to reach her breasts. There they stayed, imparting the vibrations of girl to girl, teasing the nipples while Cicely talked:
"I'm tempted to let you loose, darling. But I can't. It would be bad for our relationship. I've sentenced you to a day like this and that's what you're going to get."
The mistress giggled. "I almost envy you the awful suspense: Cocks hovering, dogs sniffing? Maybe a whip all ready to crack! It must be positively cunt watering."
"Well, yes. . But, Oh Cicely, it's still damn awful."
"Good! You're a delight to be mean to. Just think, if you hadn't written that bitch of an article about me this wouldn't have happened."
"I've said I'm sorry?"
"Forget it, pet. That's past. For you and I there's just right now. It will always be like this. I'll wake in the morning and ask myself: 'What will I do with the darling today?' And you'l wake up in my chains and wonder: 'What will she do to me. .
what will she do?' Does that give you the hots the way it does me, sweetheart?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it does." Ilona twisted against her four stakes and said a heartfelt:
"Oh, damn!"
The wise fingers were evoking gasps and the straining of a nude torso against its bonds. Now they whispered their way down across the concave bel y into the shining pubic hair. One went further. . Ilona moaned.
"No, darling, no orgasm. I've got you to where it's agony for me to stop, so I'll stop. You're being punished, remember?"
"Cicely. . please!" It was a wail of anguish.
"No, dear. I'd better not touch you again or you'l explode. I can tell the signs. If you like, I can give you a cut with the whip? That'll cool it down?"
"No, never mind. . Mmmmm. .!"
"I'm wondering about the cocks and pricks, pet." Cicely admitted reflectively.
"That's what you're tied here for. It's almost a sacrificial binding. Gosh, you're beautifully available to any male thing out sniffing for cunt."
Ilona contented herself with straining tautly to demonstrate her helplessness within her ties. Cicely would do as she pleased, so why plead. But, in her darkness, she drank in every word, hoping for reprieve.
"But now I'm not sure I want Josh's sperm inside you, or any other man's."
Cicely's musing tone verged on apology. "Your lovely slit belongs to me." She patted the lovely slit lovingly to make its owner gasp in joy, risking orgasm. "In fact I'm thinking of rewarding you with a nibble this evening, so I don't want a pol uted puss. . Ugh! I'm going to let the possibility of Josh hang in your mind, it could still happen, y'know? even the dog. . ! I can't rob you of all your cunt crinkles. But I've thought of something else, something exquisitely clean from me to you."
Ilona' flaring nostrils and in-drawn breath spelt ecstasy.
"The whip." Cicely's two words vibrated passion. "Inside your thighs, sweetheart, it hurts with such a special kind of pain in there. Or your breasts, or that nice flat tummy, or across your pouting pussy? Did you know your pussy pouted, darling?"
Silence and darkness! The bound girl tensed for agony. It did not come. Instead, Cicely's voice tinkled mischief.
"It might be me, Ilona, you won't know. Or it might be Nora who whips you: I might even allow Josh. .! One lash. . Out of the silence. . In the dark!"
The helpless woman, spread and nude, heard no more sound. Her owner departed as silently as she had come. Or was she still there looking down and smiling at her possession! Ilona could not tell: she would never be able to tell. The cuts across her bare skin would come from nowhere without warning. Cicely was clever. She had taken away the messy ugliness of impalement and replaced it with the searing cleanliness of agony?
The blow was exactly as promised. A scald from knee to groin within the tenderness of her right thigh. Ilona screamed and was galvanized into frenetic surges of energy against the stakes. The four stakes and the four cords at wrist and ankle held her fast. Cicely's clear laughter penetrated the dark.
"I had to be the first, darling. I just had to. You respond so exquisitely." Hot lips took possession of her own and kissed hard and harder yet. A wicked finger traced the rising weal to make Ilona moan and strive to arch her nakedness from the ground. A soft whisper was in the captive ear. "Keep track, sweetheart. See if you can tell how many are mine and how many from Nora or Josh."
The silence and the dark were suddenly a void. Al her five senses told the staked prisoner she was alone. To Ilona, Cicely's presence was a tangible entity, but it was no longer there. She sighed and relaxed, refusing to stay tensed. Her next agony would come when it came, meanwhile she would nurse the one she had.
It was a small sad compensation for such bitter pain, but the girl who was whipped kept her tally of each stroke upon her flesh. To her, they were unmistakable.
Four more from her mistress, four from Nora, one fearful stroke across her sex from Josh, to a total of ten. She sobbed and moaned her way out of the pain from each, only to lay there, a taut 'X' awaiting a cruelty she had not earned. A cruelty for which she found herself unable to bear malice. When, after many centuries, fingers tugged at the knots of her bindings her moans of pleasure were the strangest ones of all.
"I tied you so tight it takes a minute, but I'll soon have you loose. Was it very bad, Ilona?"
Ilona did her best to tell how very bad it had been. But found herself more thankful to tell of how good it was to be freed. When the cords were taken from a wrist she flexed her arm joyously as the maid pursued her task from stake to stake. She did not tear at the blinds on her eyes but waited passively for Nora to give her back her sight. When it came she saw it was the beginning of evening. Wallowing in the sensuous motions of release, she said over and over: "Oh, Nora, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Then, simply: "Kiss me. I want to kiss you."
It was good to have arms again. Ilona used them to enfold her companion in nakedness while their lips clung, appeasing the lonely hunger of slaves. When Nora returned the speech she sounded anxious. "You O.K., Miss Paisley?"
"I think I am, just stiff." Ilona rose to her feet and indulged in orgy of liberated motion. "I'm fine." She said joyously. "Look, I can kick. . Mmmmmm, this is so wonderful!"
"Can you walk alright? That cut over your cunt Josh gave you? It don't stop you walking?"
Ilona felt her swollen labia and winced. "It was just pain, Nora, that's all. It's still tender but I've still got a pussy. Nora, aren't you supposed to put something on me? I mean, handcuffs or something?"
"Sure I am. But I'm not going to. I'm sick of being mean to you. What I want right now is for you to run. There's nothing to stop you. Run like crazy. I'll cover for you as long as I can. . By then you can be ten miles away."
"Nora??" Ilona was bereft in shock.
"Do it." Nora's command was peremptory. "You do it, Miss. It's maybe your only chance."
"But she'll know! She'll punish you terribly!"
"Can't help that. Sure, I'll get a whipped ass or be tied up for a week. So what?!"
"But, unless you can come too??"
Nora laughed bitterly. "No way!" She kicked a shackled foot. "Josh ain't going to chisel these off to oblige us."
"Then I won't go!" The released captive was adamant. "Nora, darling, handcuff me."
"I can't, Miss Paisley. I didn't even have orders to untie you. You're still supposed to be spread out on the ground."
The brief silence was heavy with portent. Then, Ilona's decision was incisive. "Tie me to those stakes again, Nora. You must."
"It's no good, Miss Paisley. You're supposed to stay there 'till midnight. Then she's going to untie you herself. You couldn't see, but she's dropped wax on the knots I've untied. Even if I tie you again she's going to know." Nora's voice turned wistful: "I've done it, Ilona. If you don't run I'll be whipped for nothing."
Ilona Paisley would remember the moment forever. It was the moment of a decision she could not make, a decision to change a life. "I can't run away." She admitted is shame. "I'm in love with Cicely."
Nora laughed ruefully. "Think I don't know that! It's been sticking out a mile."
"Then why untie me?"
"Because you could get free and then have me freed, and then make love to her anyway you pleased."
"What, behind prison bars!"
"Ain't no way that much Texas money ever gets behind bars, Miss Paisley. Please do it for both our sakes. . ?"
Ilona kissed her hard, then turned and ran into the gathering dusk.
It was the second day. A naked woman sat on a rock on a small rise and surveyed her world. As far as she could tell she was its only human occupant. Ilona Paisley was facing the realization of being lost and being very, very hungry. She had found water in her flight, but that was all. Her bare feet were filthy with dust, their soles wounded and protesting. She was also facing a second realization, one that filled her with disgust with her own mixed up emotions. Ilona Paisley had made a terrible mistake.
With the clarity of crisis, the female fugitive from a strange slavery made her assessment of her condition. Everything stemmed from one single fact: She was desperately in love with, and dependent upon, Cicely Woods. Her enslavement to Cicely went beyond chains, it was a deeply emotional involvement, the depth of which she had not yet plumbed. She saw everything, from that first day of visiting Antonia Noyes, as an inevitable chain of events leading to where she now sat on a rock in the wilderness.
She had escaped on impulse, allowing Nora's sacrifice to cloud judgement. To flee was a human instinct for which she now must pay. She looked back at Paisley Publications as a shadowy menace from a distant past. She would never return to it.
In erotic reflection she fingered her whip wounds and found joy in them. She also felt shame, but closed her mind to it as a ghost of the past. If it felt comforting to play with the tender traces of Cicely's whip on the inside of her thighs she would do so.
There came then the cold assessment of her slavery to a woman. She spent little thought on it other than in longing. She belonged to Cicely Woods by right of purchase and because it was her human destiny. Beyond that she had no wish to peer. Slavery was an ancient human condition.
The present was not to be denied, it was demanding. Amusedly, she surveyed the plight into which impulse had lured her. Suppose she found another human in this wasteland, it would most likely be a man. She was a woman? naked! The equation was simple. If she found others with good intentions they would call the police to give her aid, and the police would deliver her back to Cicely with an admonition to be a good girl in the future. Most certainly that was not the way to return to her mistress.
Ilona knew now she should have gone to Cicely and pleased mercy for Nora's good intentions. It might have been granted. At any rate Nora's punishment would have been less than now. She herself would not have been punished at all, now she would be punished terribly. Even if she retraced her steps Cicely would punish a disloyal slave as being no more than was just. Ruefully, the fugitive felt an almost masochistic satisfaction in the thought. It would serve her damn well right. The pangs of hunger nagged constantly. Miss Ilona Paisley rose determinedly and began to retrace her steps.
There was a sizable eminence, a hill. It had been in view throughout her flight.
Using it as a mariner does a star, she set her course. Her feet hurt but even they seemed glad to be going home. When she awoke the following morning it was to the sound of horse's hooves. Joyously, Ilona sprang erect and emerged from the bushes to greet her love. But it was not Cicely Woods who gazed down at her. It was two men she had never seen before.
Ilona felt more naked than she had ever been. The riders were regarding her with lewd interest. She was gripped by disappointment and a mounting fear which held her mute.
"Reckon we've hit the jackpot, Luke."
"Sure 'nuff. Ain't likely there's two pieces like this running around out here. Damn nice stuff."
"What's yer name, lady?"
"Paisley. I'm staying with Miss Woods at her ranch." They guffawed. "She's the one, Rance. Dammit', that's a streak of luck. The rest of the boys'll be hoppin' mad."
"You mean, there's a search?" Ilona was nonplussed. "Shit, lady, there'd better be.
You could starve to death runnin' around here like that. You 'et since you run?"
"No I haven't. But do you have a shirt, a bit of cloth, or something, anything at all?"
"Wouldn't give it to you if we had, lady. You're fine as you are."
"But I'm naked!"
"Sorta' noticed that. Lovely tits."
Miss Ilona Paisley had never felt less adequate. Her instinct was to run, but that would be futile. She longed to cover herself but that was denied. These men were rough and tough and there was a look in their eyes as they assessed her femaleness.
She clutched at a single hope, and asked: "Are you taking me back to Miss Woods?"
"After we've given you a right royal fucking, lady."
She turned and ran. She did so in blind instinctive fear, knowing she could not stand passively for their pleasure. Her flight might be futile but it was something her femaleness demanded of her. She sped towards the nearest trees.
They caught her easily, grasping a handful of her flying hair. Dismounting, they tethered their horses and eyed their captive with fresh interest. Their air of preordained purpose was daunting.
"Better tie her, Luke. She'll be nothin' but trouble." Ilona eyed the rawhide strip askance, she wanted none of it. Frantically, she surrendered pride. "Please don't tie me. There's no need. I promise I won't run again, I know it was foolish. I'll? I'll do what you tell me."
"Lady, you gits tied, and that's that."
"Well, could I eat first, I'm so hungry?"
They fed her as they might have fed their horse, a necessary nuisance. While she ate they stood close, hawkeyed.
"Pity we ain't allowed ter knock her around a bit, Rance. That fixes 'em good.
Gals pay real attention to a man's fist."
Wiping her fingers on the grass, Ilona tried again. "Let me give you my parole, it's a promise not to even try to escape. I want to go back to the ranch, I honestly do.
But it's hateful to be tied when I'm? I'm all. . naked."
"What yer' want yer' hands for, lady? Cover yer cunt?" She did not answer, nor did she protest further while they turned her about, gathered her arms and tied her wrists behind her back. The rawhide bit hard, the knots' where her fingers could not reach. Ilona Paisley trembled in a terrible certainty.
"Awkward to lay her on her back, Rance."
"Hell no, she'll manage. Damn good fer givin' her a feel. C'mon, she's got more'n one place."
She stood, trying hard to look at the horizon, while her body and all its recesses were explored and probed by rough insensitive hands. She was forced to spread her legs to make her crotch available and to stick out her chest to aid in the mauling of her breasts. Pathetically, she asked:
"Does Miss Woods wish you to treat me like this?"
More chuckles. "She ain't here to ask, lady."
Ilona Paisley's initial shame was limited by male arousal. Her body acted as a powerful stimulus upon the men who had bound her. Luke swept her from her feet and laid on the grass in woman's most ancient sacrifice. While he ravished her she wept, but he accepted her tears as an additional tribute and licked them thirstily as he pumped at her with the avid thrusts of a man who sees few women. When Rance took his place between her thighs her healthy woman senses betrayed her, she began to gasp and to respond. When Luke returned to her sheath she climaxed violently in a manner she had never known, her whole being wracked by spasm after spasm of orgasmic agony.
"Dammit', Luke, we can't be that hot. Took three shots to make the gal come."
"She ain't used to it. Most likely a tongue and groove bitch, and she's scared. Best way ter git 'em hot is to lace into their ass with a quirt. Shit, we got the time."
It was going to be worse than she had feared. These were virile brutes, infinitely potent. Rape was a quick savage assault, this was a lustful attrition to conquer every part of her body and mouth. She was rolled over, Rance sat astride her neck and dragged up on her bound hands. "There y'are, Luke, as perky a little ass as a man ever see'd."
The pain was hateful and bitter. Luke's quirt had heavy thongs which splatted into her flesh with surprising force, venomous bites of leather which set her bare legs to flailing ineffectually but to the great delight of the men whose booty she now was.
"Lookit' them red lines!" Rance enthused. "Never seen a gal whipped 'afore. I like it."
"Best way I know to make 'em be a woman." Luke punctuated his statement with a swift and accurate slash on squirming flesh. "Makes 'em hot, makes 'em obedient?
and, boy, look at them legs!"
It was a nadir of humiliation. Ilona was helpless. Rance's weight on her neck and shoulders, his grasp of her arms, her bound wrists. .! Al she could do was moan and kick. She wanted to lay still and rob them of the erotic delight of female motions, but the pain was too much for that, whatever relief she could find she had to take. Even if her lips had not been pressed into the grass it would have been useless to ask mercy. She was not being punished, she was being conditioned. Her prescribed aphrodisiac was the quirt. It was being applied on her bottom as a sexual stimulant. Hating her captors and herself she had to acknowledge its efficacy. The arousal in her loins was all that separated her from the simile of a small but naughty girl being held down by stern parents while her perky derriere was well and truly tanned.
"Bet she's hotter'n a firecracker." Luke was proud of his work, emphasizing its quality with a ferocious swipe across bounding cheeks to bring out Ilona's first scream. "Y'see, she actually felt that one. She shore got a flaming little ass."
The weight was lifted. Ilona was turned back upon her bound arm, her burning bottom protesting its contact with rough grass and bits of twig. Within seconds she was impaled. Before Luke and Rance were done with her Miss Ilona Paisley climaxed four more times.
After she had been coarsely complimented on the superlative quality of her cunt her captors laughingly broke the news of being not many miles from the ranch.
Ilona's flight had turned to circle. Al three of them speculated as to where it might have taken her had she not brought it to a halt. They hoisted her behind a saddle and fastened her thighs to it with the latigo laces. Her quirted skin screamed disapproval, her tied wrists denied action. She sat astride to gaze at her captor's red neck and smell his sweat.