As She's Told (52 page)

The same colouring, except more sun exposure. The hair was the same; it would be hard even for a Mediterranean sun to bleach that blond any blonder, but Svend cut it shorter, and sported a little goatee.

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As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

Anders had described his brother as the nonconformist of the family, the one who'd reinvented his major every year of university, and was still making up his mind what to do when he grew up. His latest incarnation was as a writer. I'd seen a couple of the travel pieces he'd sent Anders; not bad.

The incongruity of this inward critique, given our respective positions, wasn't lost on me. This strange/familiar man had first looked down at me through the bars of my cage, and I still hadn't been allowed to speak in his presence. I visualized the friendly domestic scene from a little distance: the two brothers framed in overlapping pools of warm incandescent light, so alike, sharing stories after a year apart, one with a silent pet on the floor at his feet.

My head pressed against my master's leg; I felt his fingers twining through my hair, felt him savouring the moment. He was very happy, and this reassurance spread warmth along my taut nerves. The storm surge was ebbing a little. Just enough to allow me to examine my own self-deception.

I'd lied to myself back there, just to get through the initial panic. Told myself I was for display only. Why shouldn't Anders' brother visit? Obviously he knows about our relationship and doesn't mind it. He'll come over like any brother; look but not touch; that's all. Ha.

There was a sea change coming. I hadn't missed the signs. Anders was opening up our small safe harbour, to what depth I didn't know. My lungs slowly released a breath of air I hadn't known I was holding.

I didn't need words to read my master. So much of what he conveyed was by gesture or body language; my responses were conditioned and so immediate that they often bypassed my language centres altogether. But I could dredge up a translation if need be. When Svend had almost touched me, Anders' body language had not said 'no.' The gesture had said 'not yet.'

***

Anders listened to the tale of a sailboat cruise to Milos, and played with the dark ringlets at his knee. Svend kept glancing at the girl as if he was talking to her also, though he'd followed Anders' lead and stuck to Danish, and was aware she couldn't understand a word. Of course he was fascinated by the beautiful thing, the pretty tits pushed forward in the harness, waist tiny in the belt's grip.

Her anxiety was diminishing; he felt her breathing it out, settling in.

One of the ways she had of adjusting to the inevitable. Anders' fingers found 326

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tension in shoulder and neck; he gently squeezed and released, and felt rather than heard her sigh.

When the coffee was done, they went on a tour of the upstairs, Maia on her lead. Svend stood a step or two up on the stairs and looked out at the finished surfaces and clean lines of the ground floor. "Man, this place is too much. I knew you did this sort of thing for customers, but I wasn't expecting you to be ready for hardwood floors yourself just yet. Couldn't you wait until you turned thirty at least?"

"Oh, go wallow in your anarchy and stained carpets."

"I intend to." He sniffed. "Christ, this place smells of furniture polish.

Even mom doesn't keep the house this clean. Have you developed a compulsion of some kind?"

Anders smiled. "Maia has to have something to do in the afternoons.

And yes, the standards are rather high."

"Ah, that explains it. Hey, can I borrow her? Jesus, you should see my place after the mad tenant got through with it. He must have been having crack parties.”

“Yeah, no wonder. I told you to get references."

Svend snorted. "C'mon, lend her to me, I could use the help. Just with cleaning, or whatever you say."

Anders looked at Maia, who was aware she was being talked about, but not the content.

How lovely, Anders thought, the small, naked, vulnerable thing following at the end of her lead, straining her ears at speech beyond her comprehension.

"Not on her own," he said. "I'll think about it."

In the bedroom Anders folded his slave over the footboard and left her motionless there, bottom up and hands locked back.

"Have you talked to Karl?" he asked. "Ria's actually going to join him."

"You're surprised?"

"I never thought they'd make it through that separation."

"Why not?"

"All those other sex partners to bond with. And I suppose…come to think of it, I never thought that two doms together were going to last."

Svend glanced at the little figure on the bed. "You may have some bias on what works for doms."

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They talked over the renovations, and Svend described the retrofitting of an old boat he had worked on in Brighton, till at last he asked with some irony, "Is she comfortable like that?”

“Comfortable enough."

"Tantalizing, apart from that hardware between her legs." Svend adjusted himself, and returned his brother's grin. "She hasn't moved at all. Is she asleep?"

Anders laughed. "That's very unlikely." He perched on the footboard and put a hand on one warm ass cheek, feeling the trembling alertness beneath her skin. "She hasn't moved because I haven't told her to."

"Jesus. Puppet theatre. All right. I guess she's used to being put on display.”

“Only to me. Consider yourself privileged."

"Am I? Thank you. What a good brother you are." His eyes twinkled.

"You're still sharing your toys with me."

"Sure. Don't want you complaining to Mom and Dad."

Svend laughed. "Hey, I might. There was that robot that you'd only let me play with in your room, and never reprogram.”

“Very true. Even good brothers keep some things to themselves."

"Uh-huh." Svend's eyes returned to the rear view of the still, harnessed little figure on the bed. "So tell me, what happens if she does what she likes instead of what you like?"

"Well, mostly she likes to obey me. Or she wouldn't be here."

"Yes, I suppose so. But – "

"But if she misbehaves, of course I punish her, and she learns to behave better. She tries very hard to please me, but it's still taken a lot of training to get her to this point."

"To the point where you don't have to punish her as often?"

"Not for the same things. She needs a lot of punishment."

Svend raised an eyebrow. "Needs?"

"If she's going to perform for me the way I want her to, yes. And don't give me that 'You hypocrite!' look. Of course I enjoy it. Anyway, she was born with a guilty conscience; she really does need it. Do you want to see?"

"Why not?"

"Here, come into the other room." In the back bedroom, Anders took his girl by the chin. "What did you do wrong today?"

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She bit her lip, and flicked a humiliated glance at their visitor. "I forgot

– forgot to tell Tania – that the schedule had changed – ." She swallowed, glanced again shamefacedly at the witness, said what she was required to say. "I'm sorry, master. Please – punish me.”

“Certainly." He took a strap out of the cupboard, and continued in Danish to Svend. "This isn't a major one, obviously, but she's inconvenienced someone, which particularly bothers her and which I never allow. Over the stool, girl," he said in English, noting that this evening English had become the language for brusque, simple orders. The stool was a wooden one with rounded edges, high and smoothly sanded. She leaned on it, her arms still behind her, and her little bare feet clambered onto the low rungs. Anders took her by the arms and helped her up, arranged her hips over the seat, and fastened her collar and ankles to the bars.

At a gesture Svend moved in for a closer look at the marks from previous beatings, then stepped back to watch this one inflicted. After the first crack of leather on flesh Anders gave his brother an assessing look, and again when Maia began crying out. Svend looked back at him with a twist of a smile, and nodded. All that showed was mild fascination with the proceedings, the usual touch of irony, and a lot of arousal. Good. Anders relaxed, and returned to the beating with an easy conscience.

When that was done, he opened the drawer with the nipple jewellery in it, including every clamp, bell and weight he'd acquired, arranged in neat rows. Maia was shifted to the wall, where he hooked her elbows back over one of the short horizontal bars he'd installed on the wall, and locked her wrists to the sides of her belt. The height of the bar forced her up on tiptoe, and cranked her arms back. He looked back at Svend at the drawer. "Take your pick.”

“Some collection. What does this do?"

Anders demonstrated the adjustable C-clamps, and they experimented with weights and bells and other clamps until Maia was groaning and her calves trembled. Svend started out just handing things to his brother, like a surgeon's assistant. Then he hooked a few weights on himself, and jingled a bell or two. Anders watched his slave slide deeper into pain and arousal. No longer blushing with shame at the presence of an observer, she was flushed all over, panting and clenching her thighs. His brother was swinging both chains of weights and bells, and she was moaning in time to the swings. "All 329

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right. Go for it," said Anders.

At once Svend slid a hand around one tit behind its decorations, and squeezed. Then the other. Maia whimpered her heat.

Anders stroked the thick hair back from her face. "You like that, girl, don't you?"

She whispered, "Yes, master."

"Thank Svend, then."

Hoarsely she said, "Thank you, S- Svend."

"For…?" Anders insisted.

"For – for touching me – for playing with my – tits and – hurting them."

The man stepped back, not enough to lose his grip, just enough to give a little bow. "You are most welcome."

Anders' hand slid over her metal-covered crotch. "Tell Svend what state your cunt is in."

A wince, a tiny whimper, and her head drooped. "So wet and swollen and – needing to come."

"You want to come all the time, don't you, slave?"

A whisper. "Yes, master."

"And are you allowed to come?" asked Anders gently.

"No, master."

Svend, who was seeing how far her breasts would move within the harness, looked up and said, "What, never?"

"Rarely," said Anders. "Once in a blue moon."

"Poor little muffin."

***

I was used for one more demonstration back in the living room: the

'erector set' as Anders now called it.

The two brothers had unquestionably a long shared history with construction toys. They fell instantly into a lively collaboration, and I was posed, arranged and manipulated into one weird position after another.

Although Anders naturally did a lot of directing, Svend soon had his own ideas. I began to feel like a kids' action figure after the make-believe runs out and the imagination turns to how wide those plastic legs will go. Their final effort left me in a widekneed crouch with my elbows by my ears, hands pulled tightly back into a V behind my head, my tits stretched forward. As I was also modelling the hood and blindfold, I couldn't see what they did next; 330

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my guess from what little I could hear was beer by the fire.

Internally, my immobilized body surged, its salty currents set in new channels. The sea change was carrying me fast into uncharted regions.

Another man had handled me at my master's invitation. A stranger, amusing himself with my body. And I was crazy with lust. From the touching, of course, but even more from the knowledge that I was that kind of commodity. Something that could be shared, used, toyed with. No slightest need, not the shadow of a requirement, for my consent. The shame and fear made my pelvic muscles clench and grasp around their intrusions. Jaws sucked frantically around the gag. Nipples ached.

A voice of reason and convention spoke out from some orthodox alcove in the convolutions of my brain, shocked and admonitory, shaking its head.

Norms, proprieties, choice, autonomy, self-respect, all making their case in the courtroom of my mind, completely rational and utterly false. I was what I was, and I wished like hell to have the hearing over with once and for all, the sentence pronounced, condemnation complete; longed absurdly to have been a slave from birth, who would surely know herself unambiguously as chattel. Stupid, Maia. As if a born slave wouldn't want to be free.

There was another dread that would hit me hard later, when the arousal seeped away, later when distractions faded: fear for the tight link between me and my master. Could this new element dilute it, perhaps even loosen and dissolve it? No, not now, I couldn't think about that now. The hands were back, rescuing me from reflection, releasing me, pulling gag and hood away from my face, squeezing stinging breasts and buttocks. Then I was on the floor, drawn by the leash between two hard sets of knees, syllables deep and incomprehensible going back and forth above my head. An unaccustomed hand on my leash, conveying no subtle signifiers, no live link, only the obvious command. Hands unrolling a red condom. Cherry flavoured. I did my best, trying to attend to the needs of the man in front of me, tremblingly aware of the man behind my back. Serving two masters and not knowing how.

There was a moan and a shout and a shudder as I sucked out the last spasms. Then a long arm reached over and plucked the leash from a nerveless grip. I was pulled into a hard, safe harbour, every vein and sensitive nerve in the bare penis familiar and adored, every angle and thrust known and eagerly embraced. A higher pitch and fury tonight, caused by 331

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what? Jealousy? Or the use of a thing that could in hospitality be shared?

Down on my knees and elbows on the rug, tasting semen, and a residue of cherryflavoured latex. Leash lying in a limp, snaky curl by my shoulder.