Madeleine (4 page)

Not daring to delay by further inspection, she hastily selected a round stone she thought might weigh in at fourteen pounds, and hurried back to her starting point.
The stone was large enough, and lacking in projections, that it was difficult to grip in a woman’s small hands; yet it was rough enough that, clasped to her chest, it abraded her breasts and especially her nipples, as the attention, however unpleasant, brought them up into rigid points, the more vulnerable to the rubbing of the stone.

Arriving back at her gaoler, she dropped to her knees and presented her rock.
In her absence he had acquired a spring balance, such as anglers use to measure their catch, and a string net.
He weighed the rock carefully.

“Not big enough.
You’re two pounds short.
Now get moving.
I want fifty full weight stones laid out in five rows of ten in the next two hours.
Underweight stone won’t count.”

Fifty in a hundred and twenty minutes!
She was going to have to fly. As she reached the shore she began to see the sort of dilemma she was facing.
Did she risk her stone being underweight, and a wasted run, or did she go for obvious overweight rocks to ensure acceptance, but at the expense of carrying more than she need?
Fourteen pounds was quite enough of a problem to grip, and run with, and even a little more required a quite disproportionate extra effort.

She made her choice, and ran back with it.
Success!
The skull-like stone weighed in at sixteen pounds, two pounds of wasted effort, but better than outright rejection.
She set to work to keep up a steady pace, but disaster soon struck. Two in a row just failed to make the grade, one by less than two ounces, and both were set aside from the slowly mounting ranks.
She put on an spurt to make up the loss, picking certain winners, some as much as six or eight pounds over- weight, the extra effort shortening her breath, and wrenching her muscles.
On and on she battled through the long hard morning, sweat soaked, sore nippled and gasping with the effort.
Despite her best guesses, and many useless pounds of punishing excess weight, she still managed to score only marginally better than two out of three coming up to specification.
At the end of her two hours she had just made her quota but, as she collapsed onto the mass, her fiftieth acceptable rock filling the last space on the fifth row, twenty-one rejects lay in the discard.

Carrying a length of rope in one hand, he seized her by the hair with the other, and dragged her to the apple tree, where she had pictured herself as Eve in the Garden.
He tied her wrists together and, throwing the end of the rope over a branch, drew her up until she was standing on her toes, her already sore breasts pressed against the rough bark.
Cutting a three foot length from the rope, he made the rest fast around the trunk, securing her in place.

“Twenty-one under weight,” he said, “and now it’s time to even up the score.” With a swing of his muscular arm he brought the rope’s end slashing down across her stretched white back.

The unfamiliar pain caught her off balance, and she cried out aloud, and jerked in her bonds.
Again the lash descended, and again she cried out, weakened by pain, fatigue and frustration.
As the flogging proceeded, the whiteness of her back gave way to red stripes from the top of her shoulders to just above her incurving waist, and curling round her right side, in more than one case biting into the side of her firm pert breast.

Twenty-one stripes laid on, greeted by twenty-one anguished cries and much twitching and jerking of the suspended body, and she was left to hang there, her weight partly on her wrists, sweat running into her eyes and insects plaguing her sticky body as she tried, in vain, to keep her nipples from being skinned by the rough bark of the ancient apple tree.
When he finally released her so she could make his mid-day meal, she collapsed again onto the grass, and had to be allowed a few minutes grace before she could collect enough strength to drag her weary body back to the dungeon room.

He allowed her a substantial break, but only to drive her yet more hard.
When they returned to the neatly marshalled rows of rocks, he selected one that seemed to contain more than its fair share of over-weight stones.

“You’ll pick these up, one by one, and carry them to the other side.” He indicated a clump of heather some fifty yards distant. “When you’ve set it down - don’t just drop it or you’ll regret it - at the edge of the grass, you come back for the next.” He slapped her bare bottom with a hard hand.
“Now, get going.”

Suffering now from stiffening bruises in her back, as well as the more familiar aches in her behind, she squatted to pick up the first stone in the line, and race with it to the distant mark, where she crouched again, more aching of thighs and back, to place the awkward weight on the turf.
A quick unencumbered dash back to the line, and she was bending again to grip an unaccommodating rock to her soft scuffed bosom, like a mother nursing her babe.

Every run took its toll, each greater than the last, and she was gasping for breath when she reached the start again, with ten heavy loads deposited in a neat line on the other side.

Her red-headed tyrant gave her no respite.

“Now fetch them back here, the same way you took them,” he ordered.

A weight of despair, greater than the weight of the soulless stones she had laboured under so long already today, fell over her, as she realised that she was likely to have to repeat this futile exercise endlessly, until she collapsed or he ordered a cessation, so that she could meet his stomach’s demands and later the even greedier requirements of his prick.
Hours later, weary and aching in every muscle, breasts and hands worn sore by contact with the gritty stones, she was dismissed to take up her kitchen duties. By then she was staggering unsteadily on rubber legs, only kept moving by searing cuts of the switch across the backs of her thighs.

After supper, with his bed prepared, she reported for her nightly duty of giving sexual satisfaction, but with little prospect of receiving any herself.
However, when she knelt before him, intending to take his penis in her mouth as a preliminary to inserting it in her vagina, he seized her by the hair and dragged her over to the table.

“Buggery tonight,” he roared, “time to breach that tight little arse.
Get over the table, and spread your legs.”

Trembling with fear, she did as she was told.
Her belly heaved and her arse cheeks clenched.
She’d only experienced anal sex once, and then far from fully.
With great care her lover at the time had introduced the tip of his prick into her well-greased anus, but had failed to fully overcome the reluctant sphincter and, when she had cried out, had abandoned the attempt and soothed her outraged body by gentle conventional sex, more effectively than she had expected.
There was unlikely to be such consideration tonight, and she could look forward to a brutal anal rape, and further punishment if she failed to co-operate.

Something cold was slapped between her rear cheeks.
She realised he was working butter into her anus, and almost went dizzy with relief that he was not going to thrust his prick up her dry rectum.
A moment more and the buttery fingers were replaced by an altogether thicker, and more powerful, member.

“You’ll do yourself a favour if you relax and let it enter,” he advised, “once the tip is in, relax your sphincter by trying to shit me out, you’ll make it easier on yourself.
I’ll only thrust harder until I drive it past your bum ring if you clench.”

She didn’t want to imagine what that would be like, and did her best to co-operate.
Between them, they got his prick entered, to groans and gasps from the reluctant recipient.
And then she shrieked outright.
He had, without warning, made a brutal thrust that sent his iron hard member deep into her bowel as his belly met her buttocks with a distinct slap.
Now that he was in, he worked her hard, thrusting fast and fully, nearly turning her anal ring inside out on each withdrawal.
Though it still hurt intensely, she was aware of a rising sexual response and, when she felt his rod harden even further, and then start to pulse as gouts of semen shot into her guts, her own orgasm swept over her in overwhelming waves, and her screams contained as much of passion as of pain.
When he pulled his flaccid penis from her leaking anus, she lay supine over the table until revived by the ‘sixer’, indicative of his satisfaction with the service provided.
Her chain clipped to her collar, she crawled across the flagstones to be caged for the night.
As she found her straw, and the grille clanged shut behind her, she plummeted down into exhausted, but satisfied, sleep.

‘Discovery’

Morning found her refreshed by long and untroubled sleep, though her body was stiff from her labours and stripes of the previous day.
Also, her anus still burned from the brutal rape it had been subjected to, a sensation that seemed to communicate itself to her clitoris, for she felt sexual arousal from its warmth.
Before long, however, all such feelings were drowned by the insistent demands of her bursting bladder.
She had heard no sound of movement from where she had laid out his bedding beyond the table, yet she sensed that it was later than she had been kept caged on the previous days.
Possibly, very much later, if her screaming bladder was to be believed.
She writhed and clenched, squeezed her vulva viciously to suppress the ever rising pressure to let go.
At last, desperate with pain and apprehension, she called out to him for permission to speak, but there was no answer.
She called out again, in vain, and crawled to the entrance of her kennel to try and attract his attention.

She became aware of two things almost simultaneously.
She could see no sign of him as she looked along at floor level to see under the table, and the iron grille which secured her cage was not locked, but stood open a couple of inches.
Hesitantly, she crawled out, dragging her chain behind her, and stood up to look around the chamber, her hands still clasped to her aching vulva.

The chamber was bare!
The table, the heavy bench, the trestle, on which she had ridden in such agony, remained, but every personal possession of his had vanished. His bedding had been removed, and the cupboard doors stood open, revealing their stripped interiors.
The fire was cold, and the cooking pots gone.
He had vanished as if he had never been, and she had only imagined the torments she had suffered.
A quick inspection of her thighs and buttocks soon eliminated any doubts as to the reality of those events, as her fingers found rope-like welts by the score, their soreness re-awakened by the touch.

But if he had gone, what was to become of her, chained by the neck, and left without food or water?
It suddenly occurred to her that she had never explored the fastenings of her chain and collar, let alone tried to escape them.
Now she rectified the omission, and found that the chain was attached to the collar by a simple snap shackle which she could have detached at any time.
Hastily, she did so now, and ran, knock-kneed, keening with pain and effort, to empty her bursting bladder and bowel in the accommodating bushes at the courtyard gate.

Her immediate distress relieved, she made her way to the part of the shore where she had seen the outboard inflatable pulled up among the boulders.
It was gone.
An unaccountable sense of loss swept through her mind, as if a lover had deserted her.
She shook herself back to the reality of her situation.
The man who had terrorised and tortured her these last few days had gone, and left her free to depart too, if she wished.
At first she wandered back to the dungeon room, as if expecting, - hoping for? - some word of farewell.
Finding no message, no trace, she went back to the surface, and down to the southern shore, where she had landed - was it only three days before? - and slipped into the chilly water.
Half an hour later she was heading south in the little car, the clothing on a body grown accustomed to going naked, raising unfamiliar feelings.

She drove with a concentrated determination, stopping only briefly, when hunger, tiredness or natural functions dictated.
She reached the A74 at Glasgow by mid-day.
The afternoon saw her pass Carlisle and traverse the M6 to the Midlands.
Darkness had overtaken her before the M1 brought her into London, bone weary, and saddle-sore from sitting on her welted bottom and ravaged anus for so many bruising miles.
She tumbled into her bed, the unaccustomed softness soothing to her battered body, and fell deep asleep.
It was not until she woke that she realised she still wore the collar.

In the morning, longed for coffee and crisp rolls, then a protracted soak in a scented bath, where she conducted a leisurely review of her situation.

What on earth had happened to her?
Not the physical beatings she had endured, they were easily understandable, although, on first waking she had wondered if she hadn’t imagined it all.
A simple examination soon removed any doubts in that direction.
No, it was her reaction that bewildered her.
For a start, why had she driven straight home, without going to the police with a complaint of rape and assault?
Why hadn’t she taken them to the island and had them look for evidence, and trace the red-headed ogre who had so ill-treated her?

Come to that, why hadn’t she made any attempt to escape while she was on the island?
She had surly had plenty of opportunities.
Seventy-one in fact, when she was running down to the shore, unsupervised, to collect rocks.
Even if she argued that he would have become suspicious after a few minutes, and caught her with his outboard long before she could have swum ashore, she couldn’t hide behind that excuse when she had been sent to gather driftwood for the fire, and had worked her way along the shore, out of sight of the tower, for half an hour before hoisting her uncomfortable burden onto her back to carry it to the dungeon.
In fact she hadn’t even examined her chain and collar to see if they could be removed.
She hadn’t resisted his assaults or his rapes.
Even when he had told her she was to be buggered, she had made no protest, but lain over the table where he had placed her, and waited, submissively, for him to violate her virgin sphincter.

The fact was she had found satisfaction, sexual and mental, and after satisfaction, peace, for the first time in months, if not years.
She hadn’t enjoyed the beatings and the degradation, the labour and the rapes.
She had screamed and writhed, kicked and moaned, but at the end of the day, they had faded away to leave the fulfilment she craved.
She had actually climaxed under that brutal anal rape.

She lay working out the answers, and the lessons learned, until the bath grew cold, then swung into action.
Two letters, to Paragon and to ‘Hells Bells’, signed and faxed before she should lose her nerve, then, still wearing nothing but her now fading bruises, she searched her bag for a card, tucked in a pocket, and punched out the number on it.
A female voice, not young, not old, with a suggestion of a foreign accent, answered by a discreet repetition of the number.

“Madame Ruskova?”

“Who is this calling, please?”

“My name is Madeleine Fines.
I would like to come and see you on an important matter of business.”

“May I ask how you obtained my number?”

“Peter Silters gave me your card.”

“That was, perhaps, rather indiscreet of him.” The voice took on a slight edge.

“Not really, seeing that I am his immediate superior.”

A pause, as if for reflection, and then Madame asked, “What business is it you want to discuss with me?”

A slight sigh of relief from the caller, as if she had staked a lot on getting the woman’s attention.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to go into such things on the telephone, do you?
May I come and see you?
Sometime today if possible?”

“Very well.
Be here at four o’clock precisely.
Do you know where to come?”

“Thank you, yes.
I’ll be there.” And the receiver was replaced softly in its cradle.

Madame Ruskova lived in a small block of discreetly secluded luxury apartments, West of Queensway, and near the Park.
Madeleine was let in by a young, and very pretty, maid, who took her to an elegantly furnished drawing room, where an equally elegant woman in her forties, indicated a chair, opposite her own.
The woman ws tall, very straight, with glossy black hair drawn back off her high boned features, into a severe bun.

“You said you wanted to discuss a matter of business?” she opened without preamble.

Madeleine replied with equal directness. “Yes, I would like to work for you, entertaining clients.”

Madame Ruskova raised her eyebrows in surprise and question.

“I thought you had come to request services, not to offer them, she said,
“did Peter not make clear just what the nature of the business is?”

“Oh, yes, I understand exactly what sort of services are provided, Peter was very explicit.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I am asking you to take me on as a call-girl, available to entertain clients able to afford my services, which would not come cheap.”

“I see, and what figure would you place on yourself?”

“I would expect to receive five thousand pounds for the use of my body for a twelve hour period, normally overnight.
That would be after you had taken your own fee and expenses, of course.”

The older woman shook her head. “It’s not unknown for the kind of clients I handle to pay that sort of money for something they especially fancy, but the woman would have to be both exceptionally beautiful, and exceptionally sexually talented,” she explained, “and, while you are certainly beautiful, I have a dozen on my books who could match you, and an amateur, like yourself, could never match their erotic expertise.”

“For a start, I do not intend to be an amateur at this game.
I told you I was Peter Silter’s boss, and that was perfectly true when I spoke to you, but the company has my resignation, effective from noon today, and I have also turned down a job offer at one of the biggest outfits in town.
I intend to devote myself to my chosen profession, though I might just freelance occasionally in the advertising business as a cloak for my real activity.”

“I appreciate the seriousness of your intentions,” Madame Ruskova said, a little sharply, “but I am afraid you are still putting too high a value on your body.”

Her visitor stuck to her guns. “Tell me,” she asked, “do your girls ever refuse to go along with a client’s requests?”

“They would me very sorry, indeed, if they did,” came the reply, with not a little menace in the tone, “although,” she added, “naturally, we draw the line at sadism, the whip and all that.”

“If you were to accept my offer, you would not have to draw that line.” Madeleine said quietly.

Madame Ruskova looked at her, without replying, for a long ten seconds, then:
“Take off your clothes.”

Madeleine stood and without haste, removed her clothes one by one, laying each garment carefully on the chair she had been sitting on.
Madame’s mobile eyebrows rose a touch as the blouse came off, revealing rope marks across her shoulders from the flogging at the apple tree, and she nodded, as if confirming the answer to something she had been suspecting, when the discarded knickers revealed the ravages, fading slightly now, to the once white globes of the proud buttocks.
Naked, Madeleine rested her hands on her head, lifting and offering her pert breasts, with their prominent pink nipples now firmly erect, and made a slow pirouette, displaying her body to its full advantage, and finishing facing her prospective employer, her feet apart to expose her sex, and looking her straight in the eye.

“Wait here,” came the command, and she obeyed, relaxing her pose slightly, remaining naked and astride, but with her hands ‘at ease’ behind her, while Madame Ruskova left the room.

She returned after five minutes with a slip of paper in her hand.

“Put on your jacket and skirt.” Again, it was an order, rather than a request. “That will be sufficient to travel in.” And then when she was partially clad, as instructed. “Now go to the address on this paper.
No, you won’t need that.” She took the handbag from her, giving her only a ten pound note, “for the taxi,” and her front door key.
She offered no further explanation or instruction and Madeleine walked from the room, barefoot, to find a taxi, and the rendezvous she had been given.

Three hours later she let herself into her own apartment, and dropped face down onto her bed, her body heaving and twitching, low moans coming from her throat.
The man she had been sent to was a master of his craft, and of women.
He had tested her to her limits, and beyond.
It was not just the savage beatings, for he had made her bend time after time for fresh sets of cuts of his fearsome cane, and which now made it impossible to rest her devastated buttocks even on the softness of her bed, nor the pain he had inflicted by his brutal sexual assault on her throat, her pussy and her anus and by the dozen other tortures he had inflicted on her.
In his handling of her, by the manner in which he made her submit to him, and his tortures, sexual and otherwise, by the countless degradations he heaped on her, he had reduced her to a whining, crawling animal and then, suddenly, contemptuously, had stuck a folded note in her vagina and told her to get dressed and go home.
Now she lay, spiritually disembowelled, wearing only the crumpled jacket and skirt of a once-smart silk suit, awaiting whatever might come.

What came was a special messenger, bringing a parcel which proved to contain her handbag, and the underwear and shoes she had abandoned at Madame Ruskova’s apartment, and a telephone call from the lady herself.
It was brief, and to the point.

“Your performance was satisfactory.
You may come and see me in the morning.”

The interview was long and searching.
Madame did not fail to note the stiffness in her ‘guest’s’ gait, but invited her to sit, nevertheless, and smiled, quizzically, at the grimace that fleetingly crossed her face as she did so.

“I understand that Walter gave you a hard time yesterday,” she remarked.

“About as much as I could take,” came the rueful response, “I did agree to more, but stipulated that I would have to be tied.
I don’t think my body could have taken it without restraint.
As it was he didn’t insist.” She moved uneasily on her chair.
“I thought your clients did not go in for that sort of thing?”