A Gentlemen's Agreement (7 page)

“Every one of these slaves will
work to earn as many canapés as possible tonight, for fear that she will be the
one selected to fast again tomorrow.

“Do you have any questions,
gentlemen?”

A voice from the middle of the
group: “Are you going to shed your clothes and join the others?”

“No, Sir Lawrence.” Irene knew
that knight. He wasn’t a bad fellow overall, but he had a bit higher opinion of
himself than he merited and that annoyed some of his peers. “As the director of
entertainment, I will not be available for service.”

There were a few groans of
frustration.

That was a compliment to her
desirability but it contained dangerous undercurrent. No slave should ever make
a gentleman think that she was denying him anything. She had to offer something
in place of sexual service. So she was prepared to offer myself as a sacrifice.
“But let me tell you about the other part of tonight’s entertainment. As a
slave in Lord Snow’s kennel, I, too, have been starved for two days. Believe
me, I would like nothing better than to drop to my knees and serve you and hope
to earn one of those wonderful treats from your hand.” Irene looked over at the
canapé buffer with undisguised longing. “I will envy these other slaves every
time I see one of them enjoy a delicious morsel of food. I will feel it
especially keenly because, unlike them, I already know that I will go to bed tonight
with nothing but unrelieved hunger gnawing at my belly. The best that I can
hope is that I will be fed again at breakfast.

“But my fate may be considerably
worse than one more night of starvation. At the end of the evening, I will ask
you to decide how much pleasure you have received. You will be asked to vote on
whether you have enjoyed this evening more than most entertainments or not. If
the majority of you do not believe that I have provided you with more pleasure
than you receive at other entertainments then you may decide that I will not be
permitted to eat anything all day tomorrow or the following night. No breakfast
or dinner for me. If I have not made you happy, you may decide that there will
be two slaves in Lord Snow’s kennel who suffer a third day of fasting. And I
will suffer even more than the slave who loses tonight because my fast will not
have been broken, even by so much as a single canapé.”

The gentlemen were appraising Irene
with frank interest. Her slender slave body was displayed to advantage in the gold
lamé
dress. More than one of them was wondering how
much leaner she would be if she were starved for another thirty-six hours.

Irene was wondering the same thing.
She prayed that she would not have to find out.

“Gentlemen, I give you slaves
eager to serve you.”

The five slaves wasted no time
approaching the gentlemen and offering their bodies.

Irene had primed the pump well.
Not a single one of the slaves was taken in the ass or cunt. Every one of them
was ordered to her knees and told to start sucking cock.

They looked ravenous in their
eagerness to get something in their mouths. Like a flock of vultures bobbing
their heads over carrion.

Irene hoped that none of them
tried to take a bite of meat. The slave who let a tooth graze a cock would be
punished cruelly. Irene had once heard a story about a slave who had been
accused of hurting a gentleman with her teeth. Every tooth in her head had been
pulled so that she could never bite again and a permanent tracheotomy valve
installed in her throat so that she never again needed to breath through her
nose or mouth. After those modifications, her mouth could be raped for hours at
a time without a break. She spent the rest of her life on her knees in a
brothel lubricating men’s cocks with her tears.

Irene hoped that the story was
apocryphal – a cautionary tale whispered between slaves late at night to
warn each other against letting their attention wander when performing fellatio
– but she couldn’t be sure. It was entirely possible that such a horror
had been visited upon some poor slave.

Tonight, there were five slaves
available to twelve men. To the slaves’ dismay, not one of them was offered a
treat after sucking off their first cock because another was already waiting to
fill her mouth.

For the first twenty minutes, the
slaves ate nothing but cum by the spoonful.

Once all the gentlemen in the room
had been sucked off at least once, the fun began. The men began drifting over
to the buffet and picking up a canapé or two.

The slaves stayed on their knees
when a gentleman approached with a dab of salmon mousse on a cucumber slice or bits
of mushroom and caramelized onion piled on a rice cracker. The slave nibbled it
directly from his hand. Irene had told them that they were not to take any food
into their own hands but could only eat it directly from the gentlemen’s
fingers.

It was natural that they would
lick the gentleman’s fingers clean and
kiss
them dry
afterward.

The gentlemen seemed to get as
much pleasure out of that as from getting their cocks sucked dry. It was
natural for them to pat the slaves’ heads and stroke their hair because they
were at waist level.

Irene had given instructions to
the cook that the canapés would be exotic and delicious, tasty enough to please
a baron, but not filling. There would be no deviled eggs or steak on toast
triangles here. A slave could eat a couple dozen of these dainty morsels
– bits of flavor on thin slices of vegetable or light crackers –
and not feel even slightly full. Even the slave who was the most successful at
begging treats would still be hungry by the end of the evening.

As the slaves were being treated
like pet dogs, they were soon being fucked like bitches. They stayed on their
hands and knees while men mounted them from behind and fucked them like
animals.

Irene couldn’t see if the men were
using the slave’s cunts or assholes. It didn’t matter as long as the men were
happy.

Judging by the smiles on the men’s
faces, they were having a great time.

Irene had not prohibited the
slaves from standing up, but none did. Once they went down on their knees, they
stayed there. It was a natural response when they were being hand-fed, patted,
and fucked like dogs.

Slaves are always subservient, but
this entertainment elevated subservience to the highest level of artistry.

Irene not only envied every bite
that the slaves ate, she envied every violation of their cunts, mouths, and
assholes. She hadn’t been fucked in weeks. She desperately wanted to feel a
cock inside her – inside any orifice – but there was no hope of
relief in her foreseeable future.

She silently damned Lord Snow to
Hell where the fires of Satan’s furnaces would soon boil him into Lord Steam.

When the festivities wound down
and most of the slaves were begging treats by nuzzling the nearest gentleman’s
hand rather than needing to offer service, Irene gestured discreetly to Lord
Snow. He nodded in approval. She mounted the small dais again. “Gentlemen, if I
can have your attention please. Our entertainment is drawing to a close. I hope
that you enjoyed yourselves.” There were some nods. “I mean, I really, really
hope that you enjoyed yourselves.” She looked toward the canapé buffet with
longing and earned some quiet laughter.

“Our first order of business is to
select the slave who pleased you less than the others. Slaves, form a line
along the wall next to me.”

The slaves rose to their feet and
strolled to the wall to form a line.

“Apple, step forward.” She did.
“Gentlemen how many found Apple exceptionally pleasurable? A show of hands,
please.”

She made a quick count. Eight.

“Step back and Lime, step
forward.” When she did, Irene asked for a vote. Nine.

When the gentlemen had voted on
all five slaves, Irene announced the final tally. “Gentlemen, Tamarind has received
only seven votes. Though most of you found her pleasing, she was not quite as
pleasing as the others. Therefore, she will not be eating another bite until
the day after tomorrow.”

Tamarind began to weep softly.

“Hey,” one of the gentlemen said
– someone that Irene did not recognize. “She was damned good.
As good as any slave that I’ve ever had.
She doesn’t deserve
to be punished.”

“Yeah,” Sir Lawrence said. “There
are only twelve of us and seven of us thought that she was exceptional.”

Someone else chimed in. “They were
all great. They all deserve to eat.”

Irene was shocked. She hadn’t
expected the gentlemen to show such compassion for a slave. It was completely
out of character. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but all the slaves understood the
rules before we started. It wouldn’t be fair to the others if I changed the
rules now, would it? I can’t do it.”

The grumbling sounded menacing.

Lord Snow stepped forward and
faced his guests. “Irene is
right, gentlemen
. She
can’t let Tamarind eat tomorrow.” There were groans of dismay. “But I can,” he
said. “For her exceptional effort, and for the exceptional effort of all these
slaves, Tamarind will not have to watch the others eat breakfast, she will join
them.”

The guests applauded Lord Snow’s
generosity.

Tamarind fell to her knees and
kissed her owner’s hand.

When the hubbub began to subside,
Irene raised her hands. “Thank you, Lord Snow.
Now, the last
item of business.
Did any of you gentleman find the entertainment
tonight less pleasurable than most of the entertainments that you have
attended?”

No hands were raised.

But before Irene could breathe a
sigh of relief, Sir Lawrence spoke up. “That was not quite the question that
you said that you would ask. You said that you would ask if tonight’s
entertainment was more pleasurable than most, not less. It’s my understanding
that you need a majority vote on that question before you will be permitted to
eat tomorrow.”

“You are right, sir.” The
gentleman is always right when his opinion differs from a slave’s. “So let me
ask you–“

“Before you call a vote, I would
like to make a point. I think that we can all agree that tonight’s
entertainment was out of the ordinary and we all took much pleasure in it. But our
pleasure was marred just now. I think it was quite clear to all of us that we
wished the rules to be bent in favor of the slave who gave so many of us so
much pleasure and you refused to do it until Lord Snow intervened. I take no
pleasure in being defied by a slave.

“I will not forget how you stood
around in your lovely dress, untouchable, while these eager naked slaves served
our every desire and then you decided that one of them should starve while you
eat.

“So I, for one, will vote that you
not be fed tomorrow.”

There were mutters of agreement
among the guests.

Irene’s heart fell, but she
mustered her courage and put the question to the assembled gentlemen.
“Gentlemen, how many of you found tonight’s entertainment more pleasurable than
most of the entertainments that you have attended?”

Five gentlemen raise their hands.
Seven did not.

Irene would not eat breakfast or
dinner tomorrow.

She wanted to weep as Tamarind had
done, but steeled her courage and said, “I’m sorry to have failed you. I will
starve again tomorrow, as is your wish. Goodnight, and
may
luck be with you always.”

When she turned toward the other
slaves, she saw looks of satisfaction on their faces. She had put them through
a considerable ordeal for the night’s entertainment – an ordeal that they
thought completely unnecessary – and they found it just that she continue
to stave while they filled their bellies with breakfast and dinner tomorrow.

Peach, in particular, looked
positively gleeful.

* * *

Breakfast was a misery. Irene had told the slaves that the
loser would be forced to watch the other slaves eat. But after
Tamarind was pardoned by Lord Snow
, she was the only loser.

Nickel took pleasure in ordering
her to sit at the breakfast table in front of an empty plate while the other
slaves slurped their porridge in exaggerated delight, slurping loudly and
telling each other how exceptionally delicious it was this morning.

Then they commented on how
wonderful the canapés had tasted the evening before, just to remind Irene that
she had not been able to sample even one of those morsels.

They were merciless. For two
hungry days, they had resented Irene for depriving them of food. It didn’t
matter to them that she had deprived herself equally. As far as the slaves were
concerned, it was all her fault. She had designed the horrible entertainment
and she deserved to suffer for it.

After breakfast, Apple and Lime washed
the dishes. Nickel would have ordered Irene to do them herself, just to torture
her by having to watch the leftover porridge get washed down the drain, but she
feared that Irene might manage to sneak a couple of bites by wiping her finger
on the dirty bowls and licking it off.

She was determined that Irene
wouldn’t taste even a crumb of food until another twenty-four long hours had
passed.

When the dishes were finished,
Nickel told Irene that she was to wait in the pleasure room for Lord Snow.

Irene waited alone on her knees in
the center of the room for several minutes.

Lord Snow couldn’t be pleased by
the outcome of the entertainment. The majority of his guests had decided that
it was so badly handled that she, as director of the entertainment, should be
starved for a third day in a row.

As soon as he entered from the
billiard-room tunnel, she said, “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“For failing you. For failing to
provide an adequate entertainment for your guests.”