One Week in the Private House (23 page)

i just hope you haven't ruined my make-up,' she siad petulantly as her eyes swept across her surroundings.

The quality of the furniture couldn't disguise the emptiness of the gloomy room. It was a long rectangle, almost a corridor, in which a few armchairs and couches were all facing towards the one long wall that was not made of monumental stone blocks. Instead, this wall consisted of darkened glass. The room was a viewing gallery.

Jem found the place unnerving, but tried to look unconcerned as she deposited herself on a leather-upholstered couch. She watched Headman remove his cloak: he revealed a costume not unlike Jem's, although all in black. Chains ran round his body and met at two rings, at the centre of his chest and back; from the metal rings inset into his wide leather belt hung an assortment of whips
and
lengths of chain. His boots and gauntlets were of
black
leather, and his codpiece of fine black gauze was already stretched to transparency by the semi-erection of his twitching member. He sat on a couch behind a console of switches set into a coffee table.

'Remove that silly jockstrap, Jem, and come over here. Sit on the arm of my couch. That's my ever-dutiful concubine. Legs wide apart, you should know that by now. That's better. And now show me those luscious lips of yours ... And open them for me, use your fingers, Jem, I want to see right inside. That's perfect.'

Headman studied Jem's vagina for several minutes. He neither spoke nor touched her. Jem stared at the top of his head. She loathed him; she knew that, but she couldn't help the feelings that his steady gaze seemed to be causing between her legs. She began to think that it was his eyes, and not her own fingers, that were separating the delicate membranes, pinching the plump flesh of her lips, pushing against the soft skin of her inner thighs. She could feel the itch deep inside her; the gradual seepage of fluid collecting into a heavy droplet at the mouth of the gully.

At last Headman moved. He removed one of his gauntlets, and placed a finger on the droplet. Jem shivered. 'What I adore about you, Jem,' he said, without removing his finger, 'is your intransigence. There are countless women here. All of them are at least pretty, or striking in their way. Some are more beautiful than you, you know. Most of them are obedient; unthinkingly obedient. Anyone can be transformed into a slave, Jem, with adequate application of fear and pain and pleasure. It's almost too easy. They obey, but I find I take little pleasure in them. A few retain a remnant of their previous selves; they obey, but they remember that they should not obey, and it causes them great shame. These I find entertaining, if only for a while. They allow themselves to perform the most indecent acts, to have humiliation heaped on them, and all the time they are blaming themselves for transgressing moral codes which have no meaning here. They blush as they are penetrated, as if it was their fault, and the penetration is thus much sweeter. But you, Jem: you're not in either of these categories. You don't need to be trained into obedience, because there's nothing you won't agree to do. You're quite without shame, and so you never feel degraded. And yet there's some resistance in you, something I can't identify. Intransigence, I called it; and yet you've never refused me. There's just something in your bearing that suggests you might refuse me, if it pleased you to do so. You obey, and yet you act as if you could choose not to obey. Is that it, Jem?'

Jem's heart was in her mouth, it's not an act,' she said, and thrust her hips forward to capture Headman's finger in her dripping hole. Would he recognise the truth now that she had admitted it?

Headman chuckled, and wriggled his trapped finger. That reminds me,' he said, i have work to do today. And work, in the dungeon, usually entails the use of my riding crop. And a riding crop is much more effective when wet. I'll retrieve my finger, if I may, and replace it with the sharp end of my crop. And while that's going on, let's see what's happening in the dungeon.'

Headman leant forward and touched a button on the console, then turned to his task of pushing his riding crop, centimetre by centimetre, into Jem. After each push he jiggled the handle of the crop, and each time Jem's shiver of pleasure started more deeply and spread more widely then the last. She almost failed to notice that the lights in the room were fading almost to nothing, while other lights were springing into life beyond the dark glass screen.

Jem pushed her sex together round the thin cylinder of leather, gasping as her labia touched the chill corrugations. That's far enough,' she said. 'Let's soak it for a while, and I'll take a look at this dungeon of yours.'

The dungeon was a vast chamber, its shadowy vaulting supported by massive columns of black stone. Its walls were a maze of walkways, balconies and buttresses; Security guards stood to attention here and there. It was
difficult
to differentiate the floor from the walls: every corner was a black shadow, and the floor seemed to consist of a jumble of flagstoned platforms connected to each other by ramps and steps. Fires burnt in the deepest pits; on some platforms, and at the shadowy edges of the chamber, iron cages and rows of cells contained huddled and naked prisoners.

The viewing gallery seemed to be about one-third of the way up one of the walls. Near to it, presumably to entertain its occupants, other prisoners had been secured in more interesting constraints. On one platform a young woman with spiky black hair was standing sandwiched between two parallel sheets of curved wood so that she was bent forward at the waist but her back was flexed into an upright position. Holes had been cut in the wooden panels so that her buttocks and breasts protruded.

Nearby a man swathed in chains was seated in a hole in the centre of a circular wooden platform. His bare arse hung from the bottom of the platform, which was itself suspended on chains from a wheel at the apex of a pyramid of scaffolding. Cogs and chains connected the wheel to handles at the base of the scaffolding, and Jem assumed that the entire platform could thereby be raised, lowered and turned like a carousel. Beneath the platform, and beneath the man's exposed buttocks, was another mechanism with a row of artificial penises arranged in order of size. Jem didn't like to imagine how this part of the contraption worked.

Hanging from a gargoyle that jutted from the wall near to the viewing gallery were a man and a woman bound in an embrace. Their ankles were tied behind each other's backs, and their wrists were chained together above their heads. They were sitting on a gigantic uplifted hand, part of a leering statue carved into one of the columns; and each of them was impaled on an upraised finger.

Jem was only a few metres away from them. She could see the beads of sweat on the woman's back, and the open-mouthed expression on the man's face resting on the woman's shoulder. She saw the muscles in his arms bulge as he grasped the chains above them and pulled himself and the woman upwards. But he was unable to pull them high enough to release the stone fingers from his anus and his partner's vagina, and he was obliged to lower both bodies back on to their impalement.

What's happening to me? Jem thought, not for the first time since her arrival in the Private House. She was appalled by the couple's moans of tormented pleasure, audible even through the thick soundproofed glass, but even more disturbed to feel her insides churning with excitement at the sound.

She might have guessed that Headman would not fail to notice the involuntary spasm of her thighs. 'You're obviously excited by my dungeon, Jem,' he said. 'It's certainly one of my favourite haunts. Have you spotted your chosen victim yet?'

'No, I don't see her. Where is she?'

'She's on the clock, Jem. And the clock, as you might expect, is on the wall.'

Jem scanned the nighted walls. Above and beyond the impaled couple, a strange machine stood on a ledge. Bound upright to the machine, with leather straps at each ankle, above each knee, round each wrist, above each elbow, around her neck and below her breasts, was a naked girl. She was dark-skinned, with long black hair, wide hips, a narrow waist, and small breasts with large, dark areolas.

'Tell me, Jem,' Headman said, vibrating the crop upwards, towards the apex of Jem's slippery slit, 'precisely why did you request the punishment of Asmita? She's a mere junior field operative. She works out at the Health Club.'

Jem, trembling, was finding it difficult to think clearly. This was the one question to which she had not been able to dream up a reasonable answer. 'Oh, nothing particular,' she said, i just heard she was pretty, you know ...'

'Don't expect me to believe that. I've had the girl researched. She's a friend of your new "bodyguard",
isn
't she? I suspect a simple case of feminine jealousy.'

'Oh no,' said Jem, trying to sound unconvincing, 'honestly, Master, it isn't anything like that!'

'I thought so,' Headman said, jiggling his riding crop for emphasis. 'Well, I don't mind. When I'm half-way
through
dealing with her, I'll tell her that the whole punishment is a present from you.'

'No!' Jem was horrified. 'No, please, Master, you can't do that! I'll do anything -'

'You will do whatever I demand of you, Jem, or you'll find yourself on the clock on the dungeon wall. But Asmita's punishment is your treat; I won't breathe a word to your victim. That suits me: I prefer to chastise the innocent, particularly when they have no idea why they are being punished. We had better have her taken down and prepared.'

Headman reached for the console intercom. Jem placed a hand on his arm. 'And why, Master, is that contraption known as a clock?'

'Because that is exactly what it is. And look: we're in luck. We're just in time for a demonstration.'

The machine on the wall was beginning to move. Jem saw that each of Asmita's plump brown limbs was tied to a separate length of metal. Each leg was strapped into a concave girder that extended from mid-thigh to ankle and then followed a right-angle to support the foot. The girder holding Asmita's left leg started to move in an arc, lifting the leg until it was almost horizontal. Jem was sure that if the girder moved any further, Asmita's leg would become dislocated from her hip; but the girder stopped moving, pointing the leg almost to the 3 on an imaginary clock face.

From the depths of the machine a lever extended into the space between Asmita's legs. Wide strips of leather hung from the end of the lever; and when it jerked upwards, although it did not strike any part of the girl's body, its tail of whips swished against the bottom of her raised thigh and the stretched membrane between her legs. Asmita, unable to move, could acknowledge the blow only with a toss of her head. After nine more strokes, the lever retracted and Asmita's leg was lowered to a vertical position.

'A quarter past ten,' Headman said. Jem had to admit that the clock was an amusing device; she suspected, from what Julia had told her about Asmita, that the Asian girl also found it entertaining.

i guess,' Jem said, 'that at fifteen minutes to the hour the right leg is lifted to point to where the 9 would be?'

'Of course. At half past, the victim is bent forward from the waist, the legs are parted, and the whip is extended rather less. The lashes land on the lower part of the buttocks.'

'And on the hour?'

'The arms are lifted above the head

'- to point to 12 -'

'- and two smaller whips emerge to strike the hour on the victim's breasts.'

'Very ingenious, Master.'

indeed. Accurate, too. The mechanism was made for me in Switzerland. But I will have to have amplification installed if the chimes are as muted as those of your pretty rival. And now we really must bring her down and have her prepared. It's such a shame you're determined to maintain your anonymity, Jem. You could have taken her place on the clock, and shown her how to call out the time.'

Jem did her best to appear disappointed, it's more comfortable here,' she said.

'Your comfort is always secondary to my enjoyment, Jem. But in this case, there's little doubt that I'll enjoy the next hour. I must go and consult Asmita's file. The entertainment will commence shortly. Use this button to call Security if you want refreshments of any kind; this one turns on the sound, like this -' the gallery filled with a murmur of noise from the dungeon - 'but be careful to keep silent: the communication is two-way.'

Jem nodded. Headman leant towards the console. 'Nyman!' he shouted, his voice echoing round the dungeon and within the gallery. 'Bring the operative Asmita down from the clock! Get her ready for punishment!'

Headman pulled Jem's face to his and kissed her fiercely as he withdrew the riding crop from her gaping sex. From its mid-point to its tip the thin leather cylinder was darkly impregnated with her secretion. He pushed Jem away, brought the crop down across the tops of her thighs, and with a clatter of chains, strode from the room.

Jem gritted her teeth and massaged the red lines that had flared across her skin. On one of the dungeon platforms a huge woman with arms and thighs as thick as telegraph poles had emerged from the shadows, cracking a bullwhip. The report echoed like machine-gun fire from the blackened walls. 'You heard the Master!' roared Dungeon Supervisor Nyman with a voice as rough as a chainsaw. 'You up there! Take her to the washroom and get her tidied up!'

Jem, alone but for the amplified hubbub of moans from the prisoners behind the glass screen, pondered whether she should allow the game to continue. But how could she stop it now, without destroying every part of her plan? She was staking everything on one wild scheme; she had no contingency plans. She had dreamt up this dungeon drama as an insurance policy to cement Julia's loyalty and, almost unconsciously, as a sort of test for Headman. But if the Master of the Private House proved to be as unhinged and cruel as Jem was beginning to suspect, to what terrible danger had she exposed Julia's innocent young friend?