Exit to Eden (21 page)

To the guests it was a coarse, hilarious pastime, getting a number of rings around the neck of the victim before he vanished into the wings. And for all the simplicity of it, it had a real scariness to it: the submission of the kneeling victims, the way their well-oiled bodies had become mere objects as they passed before the crowd.

I stared at the little stage, the bowed heads, the rings hanging from bent necks. I didn't want to be left here. I couldn't. There had to be some way of making it clear. And without considering it really, I backed up until I was suddenly behind Lisa and I kissed her on the top of the head.

"Outside," she said. "And don't waste your pleas. If I wanted you up there I'd put you up there. I don't."

She pushed me toward the door.

The lights of the avenue flickered against my closed eyelids for a second, then I was moving again, being pushed steadily towards another booth on the right.

This was a much larger booth, with the same glossy high-tech decor, with a bar and brass rail along the wall, about thirty feet deep. It wasn't rings this time, it was brightly colored plastic balls, about the size of tennis balls, pitched towards the moving bull's-eye targets that were painted in thick gleaming colors on the backsides of the male victims, who, with their hands tied over their heads, tried desperately to dodge by constant movement what they couldn't see. The balls stuck to the target when they hit. And the slaves shimmied to shake them loose. So deliciously humiliating and not the slightest real pain involved. I didn't have to see the faces of the slaves to realize they were preening as they twisted and turned. Every lovely muscle was fully alive.

I felt the sweat streaming down my face. I gave a little negative shake of my head. Impossible, simply impossible. Checking out. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lisa watching, and I made my face blank.

The next two booths were similar games, the slaves being made to run on oval tracks above to escape the balls and the rings, and in the fifth booth, the slaves were hung upside down from carousels and did not have to twist or turn themselves.

I wondered if that was what they did with them when they were tired from the other games, put them on that carousel where they hung helpless? Scrumptious sufferers. And this was regular service in The Club, wasn't it, this place, not punishment like being sent below stairs.

Any memory of a sane world in which these things didn't happen seemed untrustworthy at best. We'd stepped into a Hieronymus Bosch painting, full of lurid silver and red, and my only chance of getting out again was the lady who'd brought me in.

But did I want to get out? Of course not. Or let's just say, not this very minute. I'd never thought of stuff like this in all my sexual fantasizing. I was scared to death and secretly entranced. But it was like the old "Purple Cow" poem by Gellett Burgess: "I'd rather see than be involved."

I moved numbly, through the glare of the lights. My senses were flooded. Even the noise seemed to penetrate me, the sweetish smell of the smoke to drug me slightly, the hands that now and then touched or examined me stoking the mixture of dread and desire that I couldn't hide.

Naked women slaves appeared and disappeared like flickering pink flames in the shifting male crowd, as they offered cocktails, champagne, white wine.

"Aren't we geniuses of exotic sex?" Lisa whispered suddenly. It was startling to hear her speak. But the expression on her face was even more surprising. She was taking in the crowd in the same dazed way that I was taking it in, as if we'd been drifting for hours together at a county fair.

"Yeah, I think so," I said. My voice sounded as strange as hers. I was steaming.

"You like it?" she said. No irony. It was like she'd forgotten who we both were.

"Yeah, I like it," I said. I got a powerful, secret satisfaction from the innocence of her face and voice. And when she looked up at me I winked at her. I could almost swear she blushed as she looked off.

It occurred to me, why not grab her and bend her over my arm, kissing her madly, like Rudy Valentino in
The Sheik
? I mean in the middle of all this exotic sex it would be a scream, at least to me. I didn't have the nerve.

I was going to die if she got pushed out of shape with me. Which meant playing one of these alluring little games if she said to do it, right?

As we started to walk again, I watched her out of the corner of my eye, her jutting breasts under that elegant layer of lace, the vest that made her into a little hourglass. This was heaven and hell.

And as she directed me towards one of the small clearings, I realized she might show me all of the diversions before choosing the one that had affected me the most.

But when I saw the game in the clearing, I couldn't too well cover up what I felt.

There was a race in progress here, men all around the four-sided fenced enclosure with feet on the rail as they might be at a rodeo, cheering on the naked slaves who ran in neat tracks on their hands and knees.

But the slaves weren't simply racing each other for the distance. They were retrieving in their teeth black rubber balls thrown down the tracks by the guests at the railing who would not release a second ball until the first one had been retrieved. And the spectators were whipping them on with leather straps.

It seemed some five balls made up the race, because a winner was pulled up by both arms right after he laid a fifth ball at his master's feet. His face was red, dripping wet, as he was applauded, patted, caressed. He was at once taken out of the clearing, a white towel wrapped around him, but the others, panting and shuddering, were whipped into place for the next race.

I saw the punishment. You raced until you won.

And just as I figured, the slaves were glorying in it, really competing with one another. They knelt poised and desperately ready to begin again, eyeing each other, jaws set.

Again, I backed away, trying to appear casual about it. Weren't we going on to the next clearing, the next booth? I mean, come on, there's lots of stuff to see, right? I think I'll go home and read the
New York Times
now. The noise was like a buzzing in my head.

"It's really tough for you, isn't it?" she said, big brown eyes looking up again. Everything melted in me except what never melts, of course. I thought of a lot of little nasty things to say, but I didn't say them. I felt lusciously subject to her. And defiantly I kissed her cheek.

She backed up and snapped her fingers and made a little gesture for me to get moving. "Don't do
that
again," she said. She was really flustered. Her face was pink.

She led the way down the crowded avenue without glancing back. I told myself I didn't want to look at the clearings on either side, but I couldn't resist. More races. Different lengths of races, variations. But it was more fun watching her beautiful little bottom moving under her skirt, the sweep of her hair that came down almost that far, the little seams of flesh behind her naked knees.

The avenue branched to left and right as we neared a thick crowd before a low, lighted stage. Some eight or ten slaves were on the stage, each naked except for a white towel draped over one shoulder.

Lots of tousled hair and polished muscles and smiles, amazingly provocative smiles, as the slaves apparently taunted the crowd with little gestures and "come on" motions of the head.

I soon saw what was happening. The handlers were selling the slaves for the races or games, and the slaves were lapping it up, vying for the high spenders. Two were sold off while I watched, the result of a little informal auctioning among three bidders, and immediately another pair were led up the steps out of a pen, and started the same preening and good-humored taunting. Hoots, shouts from the guests, and occasional threats like, "I'll work that smile off your face," and "You think you want to run for me?" strengthened the convivial tension.

Lisa put her arm around me and pulled me close to her, the feel of her fingers against me pretty maddening. I stole a couple of glances at her breasts beneath the low-collared blouse. I could almost see her nipples.

"Which one is the most attractive, the most sensuous?" she asked, inclining her head as if we were just a couple at a pedigreed dog show. The feeling of being utterly subjugated by her was getting worse. "Think about your answer, and answer me truthfully," she said. "It will teach me things about you."

"I don't know," I said kind of testily under my breath. The thought that she'd buy one of these brutes and start paying attention to him infuriated me.

"Get your mind on exactly what I'm telling you to do," she said coldly. She reached up and brushed the hair back from my forehead, but her expression was flinty, threatening. "Pick the one you really think is the most handsome, the one you'd like to fuck if I let you do it. And don't lie to me. Don't even consider it."

I was pretty miserable. All I felt was jealousy. But I looked at the men, and things inside me were scrambled. My senses took over and shifting gears this fast felt entirely new. They were all very young, obviously athletic, and they were as proud of their stripes, their welts, the pink blush on their butts as they were of their genitals, the muscles in their legs and arms.

"I think the one on this end, the blond, is terrific," she said.

"No," I shook my head as if this wasn't even discussable. "There's no one on the stage who can equal that guy in the back of the pen, the dark one." He was something special even in a place full of people who were special, a young, black-haired, smooth-chested faun, right out of the forest primeval. He should have had pointed ears. His curly hair was short though full on the sides, and only a little long in back; and his neck and shoulders were particularly well shaped, powerful. His partially erect cock was on the way to being as big around as a beer bottle. He looked part demon, especially when he stared directly at me, his lip curling a little, his sleek dark eyebrows coming together for an instant in a playful frown.

"That would be your choice, you'd like to have him?" she asked, appraising him. He was being moved to the front of the pen, his hands behind his neck, his eyes fixed on us as his cock hardened.

I imagined it, screwing him while she watched, and my mind split in half. That had been hard for me at Martin's, very hard, screwing in front of others. Easier to be whipped, humiliated in a dozen ways than to let them see that. There was a sense in me of something being released. He was making my temperature rise.

Lisa made some little gesture to the handler, like the subtle hand bids made at art auctions. Immediately, he motioned for the slave to come up on the little stage, and then down the steps through the crowd towards us.

On close inspection, he was damn near overwhelming. His olive skin had been darkened by a tan, and every inch of him was hard. He dropped his eyes with perfect courtesy as he approached, his hands still behind his neck as he went down on one knee to kiss Lisa's boot with a grace that was slightly surprising. Even the back of his neck was enticing. He threw me a quick up-and-down look. I looked at her, half wanting him, half hating him, unable to detect what she really thought of him.

She took the towel off his shoulder as he rose, and threw it to the handler. Then she motioned for us to follow her.

We came right away to a very noisy clearing, a large open ring where the loose crowd was roughly three deep right up to a half circle of jammed-packed bleachers.

Lisa pushed her way forward, motioning for us to follow until we were at the railing, the crowd closing around us instantly.

Two obviously fresh and sexually primed slaves on hands and knees were just entering the ring, and the spectators began counting in a low chant, one, two, three, four, five… as the pair squared off from one another like fighters. Warily, the slaves peered at each other through tousled hair, their bodies glistening under a thick coating of oil, one a dark-skinned, brown-haired slave, the other a silver blond, with a long mop veiling his face.

But what exactly was the game? Just pin the other guy down for the count or rape?

The brown-haired slave sprang with a hiss at the blond one, trying to mount him. Yeah, it was rape. The thick oil allowed the blond to slide free easily, and as he did so he turned and sprang at the darker one, failing to catch hold in the same way. A real scuffle followed, with oily hands slipping desperately off oily limbs. The chanting count continued now past one hundred, and the struggle intensified, the brown-haired slave getting on top of the other, his arm locked around his throat. But he was shorter than the blond slave and no matter how he jabbed, he couldn't pull it off. The blond rolled over on him trying to force him off, and finally got free just as the count ended with 120.

No winners. Both were booed by the crowd.

Lisa turned to me. "Need I tell you what to do?" she asked. She gestured for the handler. The olive-skinned faun gave me another curling smile as I glared at her.

"Pretty damned old-fashioned stuff, if you ask me," I said. The top of my head was coming off.

"Nobody did ask you," she said. "And you picked a champ, by the way. You better be good."

There was a lot of racket from the crowd as the handler pulled us aside for the oiling. The evil little faun was studying me, sizing me up, his lips curling in that same maddening fashion. He was ready to go. I could hear bets being placed, see men arguing and talking in the crowded bleachers.