Stephanie's Revenge (27 page)

He struggled
wildly, kicking and pulling at the cuffs.

'I wouldn't do
that, Gianni, you'll hurt yourself.'

'You bitch.
You bitch. I knew. I knew...' he screamed.

They dealt
with his legs quickly. Venetia and Stephanie simply sat on a leg
and grabbed his ankle while Jasmina attached the cuffs they had
prepared. They had planned each manoeuvre. Gianni did not have the
strength to kick a woman off his leg. In seconds, he was bound and
helpless, his ankles, like his wrists, cuffed to each side of the
bed.

'You bitch.
Lupa!' he screamed, over and over again. They had planned how to
gag him. Venetia held his head while Jasmina held his nose.
Stephanie held the leather gag, borrowed from the cellars, against
his lips. He firmly refused to open his mouth, but, already out of
breath from his exertions in trying to struggle free, his air
supply cut off from the nose, it was only a matter of seconds
before he was forced to open his mouth to breathe. The gag was
rammed home and Gianni was theirs.

'Well,'
Stephanie said, 'I think we deserve a drink.' There was no hurry
now. Venetia got the bottle of champagne and the glasses from the
sitting room, while Stephanie double-checked all Gianni's bonds.
She wanted no mistakes this time. Satisfied, she took the glass
that Venetia handed her.

'To a job well
done.'

'I hope we
didn't disturb the other guests,' Venetia said as they drank the
wine.

'They probably
thought it was a TV on too loud,' Stephanie said, running her hand
down Gianni's rump. All three women were sitting on the edge of the
bed looking casually at their prisoner. 'He looks so sexy with all
that oil. When we get back, I want to try it. The three of us all
oiled up together.'

'And Devlin?'
Jasmina said.

'Oh, I don't
know if we can allow that. Not after last night.'

'When we
return, I want a lot of everything.' Jasmina stood up. 'I think it
is the tattooing, it makes me very sexy.'

'When we get
back to the castle, my little hussy, you will have no cause to say
that you want anything,' Stephanie said.

'Is that a
promise?' Jasmina said playfully. 'I must take off this oil before
I start. I do not want my hand to slip.'

As soon as
Jasmina had returned from the bathroom, Venetia picked up the phone
on the bedside table and dialled the number they had memorised. It
was answered on the second ring.

'Signora
Gianni, per piacere.'

At the mention
of his wife's name, Gianni, who had remained quiet, seeing no point
in struggling, began to thrash about on the bed, pulling at his
bonds. They did not give. What were they calling his wife for? They
must be completely mad.

'Signora
Gianni. Hold the line one moment,' Venetia said, in her best
Italian. She handed the phone to Jasmina, who had pulled on a pair
of jeans and a white T-shirt.

In her fluent
Italian, Jasmina explained to the Signora that she had been asked
to call by the manager of the Excelsior Hotel. There had been some
kind of incident, a rather unpleasant scene, in fact, and the
manager would be grateful if she could come and pick her husband
up. No, she had no idea what Signor Gianni was doing at the hotel,
Jasmina said, in answer to her question, but he had booked a suite
for the evening. The manager had asked her to make it clear,
however, that Signor Gianni would not be welcome at the hotel
again, after this incident. They were trying to run a decent and
respectable establishment and the use of the hotel for the
activities that Signor Gianni had undertaken was not to be
condoned. What is more, several guests had complained at the noise.
If Signora Gianni was not prepared to come and pick her husband up,
the hotel management would have no alternative but to call the
police, though they were reluctant to do so because of the scandal
it would cause. Nevertheless, there would be no alternative.

Signora Gianni
was keen to know precisely the nature of her husband's activities,
and why he could not come home by himself. Jasmina replied that she
would prefer not to discuss such matters over the phone, but that
Signora Gianni should come straight up to Suite 214-215 as soon as
she got to the hotel.

The latter
remark, as Jasmina hung up, provoked another frantic bout of
struggles from Gianni and a string of muffled curses. Had he not
been gagged, they would have heard a panoply of verbal abuse mixed
with desperate pleading: threats of violence alternating with pleas
for mercy and extravagant bribes. But nothing more than a mumbled
moan could actually be heard.

Jasmina
translated the conversation. Signora Gianni had said she would be
at the hotel within the hour.

'No time to
waste then,' Stephanie said.

Jasmina laid
out her equipment: a large bottle of surgical spirits, bottles of
coloured inks, cotton wool pads and a bulbous instrument that
looked like a large fountain pen attached to an electrical flex.
While Jasmina loaded the pen with blue ink, Stephanie plugged it
in.

'Ca va,'
Jasmina said, satisfied she was ready. She turned the pen on. A
high-pitched buzzing filled the room. Gianni twisted in his bonds
to try to see what was going on. He felt the cold sting of surgical
spirits as she smeared it with a cotton pad on to his left buttock.
He caught only a fleeting glimpse of the instrument in Jasmina's
hand, but knew at once what it was. They were going to tattoo him.
He immediately fought against his bonds, struggling with all his
strength. It was no use.

'You must not
struggle,' Jasmina said. 'If you are not very still, it will hurt
more.'

He remained
still. She wiped his buttock with spirit again and applied the nib
of the pen to his flesh. The vibrating nib broke the skin,
injecting ink just under the surface. Gianni was about to receive
his first tattoo.

Gianni's face
was purple with rage, horror and despair. He could not stop himself
from struggling, wriggling his arse away, but the nib of the pen
only slipped and bit deeper into his flesh.

'I warned you,
you must stay still,' Jasmina scolded. She worked slowly and
meticulously while Stephanie and Venetia packed up and changed into
street clothes. It had been some time since she had used her
equipment, but after a few minutes it became mechanical again: a
wipe of surgical spirit, a stroke of the pen - often accompanied by
a muffled cry of pain from her victim - and another letter took
shape. Normally, with a large design like this, she would have made
a transfer on to the skin first, as a guide; but today they weren't
that interested in precision. As long as the ten letters on the
left buttock and the seven on the right were clear. She worked in
three colours - red, blue and green - reloading the pen, watching
the ink seep under the epidermis, where it would remain more or
less forever. Operations to remove tattoos were always painful and
only moderately successful, especially on such large areas of soft,
absorbent flesh.

The final two
letters of the ten on the left cheek needed Stephanie to hold the
buttock so Jasmina could tattoo right into the cleft. The seven
letters of the right were much easier.

It was
forty-five minutes after the phone call that Jasmina finally stood
back and called for the girls to admire her work. She had done a
good job. Tattooed across Gianni's ample arse, in coloured, ornate
calligraphy two inches high, was a simple inscription: 'STEPHANIE'S
REVENGE'.

'Wonderful,
you're wonderful,' Stephanie said, kissing Jasmina on the cheek.
Gianni was trying to look down over his shoulder, contorting
himself to see. Of course, he could see nothing. He would never see
what was written on his arse except with the letters reversed in a
mirror.

'She'll be
here any minute,' Venetia warned.

They gathered
their bags together. Jasmina quickly packed away her equipment.

Stephanie
knelt at the head of the bed so she could look straight into
Gianni's eyes. 'We have to go now, Gianni. But don't worry. Your
wife is coming to pick you up. She'll be here in a minute. This
time I don't think your secretary will save you.'

The look in
Gianni's eye changed from pleading, to hatred, to despair, and back
again to pleading. He would do anything, he tried to tell her with
his eyes, anything in the world if she would just let him
go...'

Standing up,
Stephanie patted his tattoo. It stung.

'The medium is
the message,' she said, laughing.

They had
planned everything. They were going to take no chances this time
about anything. Not the slightest chance. While Venetia and Jasmina
went down to the waiting Rolls Royce with all the bags, Stephanie
waited by the lifts.

It was not a
long wait. After five minutes, Signora Gianni strode out from
between their opening doors, a look of thunder on her face, and
followed the signs to 214-215. She was wearing the same short,
black, mink jacket. She strode out purposefully, her Bally court
shoes clacking on the wooden floor of the corridor. Stephanie
followed her, pretending to look for a room number.

They had left
the key in the outer door of the suite. Signora Gianni checked the
number on the door, turned the key and went inside.

Stephanie
could hear her calling out Gianni's name. She called three times,
and then there was silence. If Signora Gianni said anything,
Stephanie could not hear what it was. In fact, she said
nothing.

It was a
matter of no more than a minute before she re-emerged from the
suite, walking just as purposefully. She saw Stephanie and gave her
a strange look, but said nothing. She did not bother to close the
suite door behind her, nor take the key from the lock. She walked
quickly to the lift and pressed the call button. Stephanie came to
stand beside her. She pressed the call button too. While they
waited side by side for the lift to arrive, Signora Gianni took out
a silver cigarette case from her snake-skin Gucci bag and lit a
Sobraine cocktail cigarette with a gold Cartier lighter. As she
brought the cigarette to her lips, Stephanie could see that her
hand was trembling slightly. She took a long drag on the cigarette,
and blew the smoke out in a long stream. Then her thin lips formed
into the merest suggestions of a smile.

They did not
normally have the newspapers at the castle; it was too isolated.
But the following day, in the afternoon, Devlin took the powerboat
to the mainland and came back with all the Italian tabloid press.
It did not take an impressive command of the Italian language to
understand the headlines accompanying the pictures of Gianni
alongside separate pictures of his wife. Signora Gianni had acted
swiftly. Gianni had been served with a writ preventing him having
anything more to do with the business: from setting foot in its
offices, from drawing a cheque on its bank account, from even so
much as taking a paper clip. Another matrimonial writ barred him
from the house, his car, his private bank account. All these things
were, Signora Gianni claimed, her property and the property of her
family. She was suing for divorce on the grounds of adultery.

She had even
called a press conference. With her father at her side, she told
the assembled reporters she had discovered that her husband was a
sexual deviant, that he was and always had been a lover of
miniscule proportions and that, as far as she was concerned, he
could rot in hell. Her father had added that his son-in-law had
simply ceased to exist, and he would use his considerable power and
influence to see that the hurt done to his daughter by her
monstrous husband would make him unemployable.

They read the
stories over and over with glee, Jasmina and Devlin translating
every word. By the time they had finished, darkness had fallen, and
the time had arrived for another adventure, an adventure Gianni had
been responsible for delaying.

It was time to
take Jasmina down to the cellars. Stephanie had promised her, and
she was eager to learn. And Stephanie would teach her, teach her to
be dominant as she had been with Devlin. And teach her to
submit.

Upstairs, they
stripped her naked. Venetia brought a white cloak of heavy satin.
It fastened only at the neck, feeling cold against Jasmina's body,
making her nipples pucker.

'Is it time?'
Jasmina said quietly.

'Is it what
you want?'

'Mais
oui.'

'Then I have
to bind you. That is the first lesson.' Taking a silk rope,
Stephanie bound Jasmina's hands behind her back. Venetia helped her
into white shoes. Stephanie kissed her on the mouth, remembering
the first time she had been kissed with her hands bound.

They walked
down the wide staircase on either side of her. As she walked the
cloak flowed open, revealing her black and naked body, her hard,
stone-like nipples, the cultured muscles of her thighs. With her
hands bound behind her back she was unable to prevent it.

Stephanie held
aside the tapestry that revealed the door to the cellars. Jasmina
felt her pulse racing, her breathing short and shallow.

The door swung
open. She saw the well-worn stone steps. She felt a rush of cold
air.

'Are you
ready?' Stephanie said.

'Yes,' she
said, then added, wanting to tell them she understood what was
going to happen to her, 'yes, mistress.'

Stephanie led
her forward, her shoes echoing on the stone. She would give Jasmina
undreamt-of pleasure, fill her imagination with lusts and longings,
swamp her body with sensations, just as she remembered being
swamped the first time she had come to the castle.

In a sense, it
was her reward, her prize for helping Stephanie, for giving her the
means to complete Stephanie's Revenge.

-oOo-