Discipline of the Private House (23 page)

Jem recognised several of the group gathered around her. Some of them had come from the main House. With a shock she realised that the tall, dark-haired young man with pierced nipples was Bernard; less than three weeks previously, in what seemed now like a different existence, she had taken a liking to him and had summoned him to her chambers at the main House. He had proved to have remarkable stamina: he had kept Jem entertained for the whole of a rainy afternoon. He had a long, strong tongue, Jem remembered. He had come three times, but on each occasion not until Jem had pretended to become annoyed with him and had been obliged to put him over her lap for chastisement. Jem now recalled that it had been she who had recommended that he would benefit from a stay in the Chateau. His nipples had been pierced since Jem had last seen him.

The pretty little oriental girl - Itomi, that was her name - was also in the group. Jem had thought Itomi would be on the Chatelaine's staff, as Jem knew she was a spirited and clever young woman, even though she could always be distracted by the promise of a spanking. Perhaps, Jem thought, she's been made a slave again as a punishment.

Jem started as the whip-mistress's lash flicked across the front of her thighs. 'Don't slouch,' the whip-mistress said. 'You're rested now. Let's get you into another harness. Bernard, fetch me the phalluses and plugs.'

By the end of this lesson, Jem thought, there will be no doubt - in my mind or among the slaves - that I am the least of all the slaves in the Chateau. A few weeks ago I had Bernard in my power; I used him for my pleasure, and punished him at my whim. Now he's going to see me ask politely to be penetrated and held open; he'll watch me as I'm whipped, not as part of a pleasure ritual but casually.

But it's too late to protest, Jem realised; I have been given opportunities to withdraw from this subjugation, and I failed to take them. If I protest now, I will become the Chatelaine's plaything for ever. I must submit.

As the lesson passed, Jem began to appreciate the little ways in which the Chatelaine's regime was stricter than those in other parts of the Private House. The harnesses that the slaves wore every day were cruelly tight, especially the thin strap that passed between the legs and was drawn up between the buttocks to buckle on to the waist-strap.

It was, it seemed, a commonplace for the strap to hold in place a flanged plug in the slave's anus, or a phallus in the vagina, or both. Jem demonstrated how to put on the harness and how to carry oneself while wearing it. She was made to undo the strap between her legs and, kneeling on a bale of straw with her back to the slaves, show how to insert various objects into herself and secure them in place with the strap.

She was smacked while wearing the harness, an anal plug, a phallus, and nipple chains. She was made to show the slaves that the smacking had made her excited. She was instructed to walk, sit, kneel and squat while wearing the harness and the entire range of paraphernalia. She was obliged to ask the slaves to touch her: to feel for the base of the plug through the strap, to pull on the nipple chains to prove that they were securely clamped, and to move the phallus inside her.

It was all intensely arousing, and Jem soon found that she was yearning to be permitted another climax.

Instead, she was brought to the brink again and again as she modelled one of the less quotidian outfits that the slaves might be expected to exhibit themselves in.

She found the ball-gag the most oppressive restraint, until she was made to pull on a pair of rubber shorts that had two stems of solid, oiled rubber rising like slender, glistening mushrooms from the inside of the crotch. Struggling into the shorts, which were very tight, was infuriatingly difficult and demeaning; Jem could imagine how pathetic she must have looked as, grunting behind the gag, she danced from one foot to the other as she hauled the resisting material up around her hips. And there was nothing she could do to prevent her cheeks colouring and her eyes widening as she felt the two rubber phalluses begin to penetrate her. She heard the murmured comments of the slaves, overlaid with the voice of the slave-mistress reminding them th^at, as the awkward little slut was the lowliest slave in the Chateau, all of the slaves would be permitted to touch her, once the slave-master had demonstrated that a slave in rubber shorts could be caned on the buttocks and between the legs without leaving unsightly marks.

At this point Jem came close to protesting, but she realised that each time she tugged the recalcitrant shorts upwards the two stems lodged themselves deeper inside her, and the sensation was becoming far from unpleasant. And, although she had enjoyed many a sound caning, particularly at the hands of her beloved friend Julia, she could not remember ever having been caned while her bottom was encased in rubber.

Before she was punished, however, Jem was ordered to fasten around her head a black rubber helmet. It covered her completely from the neck upwards, apart from an open seam at the back through which she pulled her hair, and a space around her nose and mouth. She could see nothing, and could hear only muted sounds. She was suddenly more conscious than ever of the ball lodged in her mouth, and the rubber erections filling her vagina and rectum.

Hands grabbed her, held her arms behind her back, and bent her forwards. Her breasts swung as she leaned from the waist and suddenly they seemed very vulnerable. They were flattened against something soft and yet prickly, and Jem realised that she had been bent over a bale of straw.

Jem had no warning of the first stroke; the cane landed across both rubber-clad buttocks with a vicious sting. The pain was excruciating - Jem could remember few occasions when she'd experienced such keen sensations from a mere flogging - and she couldn't prevent herself making absurd, muffled cries with each unexpected stroke. She wriggled, ignoring the pricking of straws into her breasts.

The caning of her buttocks seemed to go on for ever, and when it ended she was given no respite. Her writhing body was picked up and she was placed on her back on the bale, with her bottom protruding over one side. Her ankles were pulled up and back, above her head, and then were abruptly pulled apart. The caning began again immediately: swift, sharp strokes aimed directly at Jem's anus and vulva.

The bases of the rubber stalks took most of the force of the cane-strokes. Blinded, gagged and almost deafened, utterly helpless, Jem could concentrate only on the sensations of her body. Her bottom felt as hot as a furnace and was still stinging; as ever, Jem found that in the aftermath of a
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she was acutely aware that she was aroused, and she knew that she was clenching her muscles around the two rubber intruders. Someone was touching her nipples, rolling them, pinching them and, Jem thought, pulling them to create upward-pointing cones of her breasts. Some of the cane-strokes landed awry and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the pain and the feeling of curling up inside; but most struck the rubber stalks and served only to make Jem convulse with pleasure as the stems were driven into her.

The spasms of pain and pleasure became indistinguishable. In her enclosed world, Jem was only half aware that she was pushing her hips up to meet the strokes of the cane, and that the guttural noises she was making behind the gag were becoming louder and more frantic. She knew only that she was riding a torrent of sensation towards a cataract over which nothing could prevent her from falling. And then she was at the edge, and over it, and crying out, her ecstatic shrieks muffled by the gag, as the flood swept over her and through her and carried her away.

A little later, as the slave-master and the slave-mistress wound ropes about her body to show the slaves how they could expect to be placed in bondage, Jem tried to order her thoughts. The slave-mistress, in particular, seemed outraged that Jem had achieved a climax while being punished, and took every opportunity to ridicule the idiotic grin that Jem could not remove from her face. Luckily the slave-mistress seemed to regard Jem's orgasm as a breach of etiquette rather than of discipline, and gave no indication that the Chatelaine would be informed.

Although she felt used, sore and thoroughly satisfied, Jem knew that her day of being paraded as a demonstration mpdel in front of the denizens of the Chateau was drawing to a close, and that tomorrow she

would face much sterner trials.

* * *

Olena sat on the bed and gazed round at the bare, windowless stone walls. The cell - two wide, vaulted aisles divided by a line of three carved pillars - was larger than the bedchamber that she had begun to think of as her home. The furnishings were, if anything, even more decadently luxurious than those to which she had become accustomed. And the bathroom, found by ducking through a narrow archway, was opulent with marble and gilt.

Yet it was still a cell. Olena, weeping in her distress at having failed the day's test in the most abject manner, had been brought here by Master Robert and Barat, and despite her tears and her distraction she had been able to see that she was being taken underground, into the bowels of the Chateau. These were the dungeons, and she was a prisoner in them. The cell had only one small door, and she had heard it being bolted and locked behind her after Barat had tried to console her and had then abandoned her here.

She knew it was no less than she deserved. Her case was hopeless. She was rotten to her core, a devious sinner whom no amount of chastisement coujd restore to wholesomeness. She wondered how Barat could bring himself even to look at her. He was so patient with her, so hopeful for her, so full of goodness and wisdom. And time after time she had proved herself unworthy of his trust.

Today they had concentrated on her breasts. Tears sprang again to Olena's eyes as she remembered the humiliation. The spanking in the library had done nothing to quell the sinful feelings that she had been experiencing since waking that morning; with a comfortably warm bottom, and the memory of the books she had found in the library, Olena had known that it would be futile to expect that she could exhibit purity of thought and behaviour while being tested.

Nonetheless, she had tried. As she had toyed with her lunch she had tried to banish from her mind every image that the books had summoned, every memory of her recent punishments, every thought about Barat's body. Instead she gave herself over to recollections from her childhood: acts of worship with her family; games played at school; the countryside around her rural home.

By the time Master Robert had summoned them for the day's test, Olena had felt calm and secure. She had followed Barat willingly to the small, polygonal chamber in which the test was to be conducted.

Her confidence had lasted no longer than it took Master Robert to say the words, 'Disrobe, please, Olena.' She was about to be naked again, in a small room with two men.

As she had started to pull off her robe she had tried to analyse her feelings. It was surely right to feel shame: no respectable, worthy woman would feel any other emotion on undressing. But it was wrong - wickedly, heinously wrong - to feel a tremor of excitement at the thought of Barat casting his eyes over her nakedness; and the hot vibration in her secret place when Master Robert announced that today he would carry out the inspection for evidence of lewd thoughts - that was unpardonably worse.

Yet Olena had undressed and had lain, as instructed, on her back on the couch with her legs drawn up and widely parted. Master Robert had sat on the end of the couch, almost between her upraised knees. Olena had been able to sense his gaze, like fingers pressing against her skin, as he surveyed her secret parts.

'We have perhaps been trying to move too quickly,' Master Robert had said. 'I suggest that today we submit Olena to the very mildest of tests. A test,' he had added with a laugh, 'that even the most hardened whore might be able to pass.'

Barat had readily agreed, and had sat at the other end of the couch to stroke Olena's hair.

'Olena,' Master Robert had said, 'you should, if you have followed the teachings of your community as I understand them, be aware of your breasts only as inconvenient bulbs of flesh. Is that not so, Barat?'

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'Entirely,' Barat had agreed. 'Their function is only to provide sustenance for your babies, should you be so blessed.'

'You should therefore be entirely unaware,' Master Robert had continued, 'that your breasts can inflame the desires of men, or that your breasts might be regarded as particularly admirable, or attractive, or especially well endowed in terms of size or shape. Do you understand?'

'Not really, Master Robert,' Olena had replied distractedly. She had been trying desperately to cling to thoughts of her parents' home, but she could feel the prickling at the tips of her breasts that indicated that her nipples were stiffening, and she was trapped between Master Robert staring between her legs and Barat gazing at her bosom.

'No matter,' Master Robert had said. 'This will prove a simple test to succeed in. Barat will touch your breasts, and I will watch vigilantly to ensure that you exhibit no signs of shameful excitement.'

But the very words 'shameful excitement' had been enough to stimulate Olena's secret parts. She had been getting wet there since she had been instructed to disrobe, and having the eyes of the two men on her naked body had filled her with precisely the feelings of perverse embarrassment that summoned sinful imaginings and engendered the tickly, trickling feeling inside her^

As Barat's hands had descended on to her breasts she had arched her back from the table, and when his fingers had brushed her right nipple she had been unable to restrain a gasp, which she had transformed immediately into a cry of despair: she had realised that at Barat's touch her body had shuddered, and she had felt her secret place opening. Master Robert, she had realised in that moment, would see at once that she had become aroused. And the thought of Master Robert watching the unfurling of her shame had caused another tremor of excitement.