The Academy (69 page)

“You think you are better than a queer, eh?” the old trainer had asked as Walther coughed and tried to breathe. Walther had been a soldier, he was in peak physical condition, but Wein caught him so quickly he was almost flattened by the force of the blows. “Well, think again,
junge
. That fairy can take a beating that would have you mewling like a baby for your mama’s tit! You think an owner who wants a man to fuck is less of a man than you? You are nothing until I make something of you! If I want to line the queens up and have them bang your arse until you drown, I will do that, and you will take it, or you can go find another to train you.”

Walther did leave that night. He walked around the streets, angry and confused and full of righteous passion, hating his master, hating the Marketplace, hating this term of service he’d agreed to. And then, he went back.

Karl looked at him, fierce white brows over fierce grey eyes, and waited.

“I am not queer,” Walther said firmly. “I don’t want a man to touch me. But I want to be the best. I think I am worth more than... my arse. To the man who knows how to best make use of me.”

Karl snorted and shook his head. “Oh, I will use you, bub. And you will learn manners, first.”

And so he had! But oh, how uncomfortable some of his tests had been, and how he eventually began to feel embarrassed not because he was straight, but because the slaves would try so hard to please him, and there was just... a blank space where his ability to respond to them might have been. While that was better than his stupid, youthful hostility and posturing, it was not useful in his profession. There were so many things he could judge, from interviewing, from testing, from observation. But when it came to direct physical contact, he needed his under trainers and trainees and other clients and spotters to stand in for him.

He looked around the room, now almost completely set for the party. He had over forty slaves for his use this evening, some who would stay in this room, others who could be leashed and led away by the partygoers. Five of the slaves present came from his own training house, the best of the past year’s clients. There were more female slaves than male, but that was all right; they tended to be more versatile, and the additions Markus had found to round out the masculine contingent were decorative as well as functional. There were stocks and special chairs and benches and beds and crosses and a huge webbing of rope for those who wanted even more of that sort of thing. There was a selection of sex toys fit for a harem of perversity, and slaves trained to give pleasure in everything from blowjobs to artistic floggings. Corrine had supplied four translators, and he hoped that would be enough, especially since they were available for use as well.

He glanced at himself in the mirror: tight black leather trousers, high officers boots, a vest. He looked exactly like a leatherman in a gay bar would. Ahh, but it looked good on him. He grinned at his vanity; he was as grey now as Karl Wein had been years ago, but his arms and chest were strong and his stomach tight. The large room was ready; Markus was by the door, waiting for the signal, and Walther nodded. Let the debauchery begin!

* * * *

The woman strapped to the ingenious bondage frame was bent over and straining, prevented from arching her back by the arrangement of straps crossing her body. Behind her, another woman was poised, hand buried deep enough so her wrist wasn’t visible, a look of fierce glee on her face. Whether the slave liked being fisted was a mystery, as her head was covered with a thin leather mask, with her lips visible in the round hole at her mouth. But she was panting and making mewling sounds, just discernible over the music and background noise of the party. Another woman leaned over, cupping one of the slave’s breasts on one hand while either whispering against the leather hood. Commands? Threats? Promises?

Despite feeling well acquainted with sex parties, Stuart found his mouth going dry and his boots stuck firmly in place as he watched. There wasn’t anything spectacular about the three women involved; it was an act he had seen and done himself. But there was a frisson of energy in the room, seeming to just emanate from the trainers and the slaves. It was as thick as a slow drifting fog, and as tangible. The days of meetings and seminars and discussions and reading and arguing seemed a thousand miles away. This was at once the frivolous and the essential side of what they did, Stuart thought, clinging to rational thought by the single thread left of his focus.
We are so beyond just people into kinky sex. And we are all about the sex
.

You’re here on a mission!
He heard the voice in his head and fully intended to move on, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. Just a minute more. Just a few minutes of watching the trainer fill the slave’s mouth with her fingers, easing them in and out just as the woman behind her eased her hand, glistening and dripping, in and out of the slave’s cunt. They were intent, both women smiling with a feral hunger.

Stuart couldn’t identify them, despite having studied the pictures and biographies of every trainer present. Dimly, he realized of course he knew who they were, except at that moment, they were simply powerful forces of nature, steaming hot in the chilling fog of his disorientation. They glowed with the heat signature of selfish lust and gratification.

Fingers tightened on the curve of the slave girl’s breast. Was she tossing her head in agony, or pleasure, or was she nodding to something the women were saying to her, demanding of her? Was she merely saying yes, yes, over and over, the way some slaves did when they had nothing else to say? She choked on the fingers in her mouth; Stuart could see her ribcage contract, hear the harsh cough as she struggled to breathe. He wanted to fuck that beautiful wet mouth, so hard. To bury his cock deep enough to trigger that choke, to hold her on his dick while his hands held those sweet tits...

* * * *

“Markus?
Hierher
.” Walther wondered why he bothered to issue a command to come. Markus was at his elbow before he finished the command. “Who is that boy?”

He had watched the skinny lad make a circuit of the room when he first came in, unable to place him. Such a young boy! But clearly old enough to be here, clad in black jeans and boots and a tight black sleeveless shirt that could be latex or rubber. His arms had the kind of taut definition commonly seen in swimmers and gymnasts, and his arse was an invitation to sodomites everywhere.

Markus took a glance and said, “He is Stuart Lundberg, apprentice to the American Marcia Teodor, from Seattle. This is his first Academy. He is trained to program computers, and he is a transsexual.”

Walther grunted. “He will be a very pretty girl!”

“No, no. He has already changed sex. He was once a girl.”

“Truly?” Walther squinted and cursed the distance and his eyesight. No, he still looked like a little schoolboy, down to his tiny chin beard and wispy mustache. “Remind me...” he started to say in a low voice and Markus smoothly interrupted with the response.

“They give hormones, testosterone, yes? And then remove the breasts. Some get surgery below, have a cock made from other skin.”

Walther blinked and struggled not to repeat himself by asking whether this was true as well. More questions came to mind, for example, where—

“The forearm,” Markus helpfully supplied. “Or the leg, I believe.”

“And this one?”

“I don’t know, sir. Shall I find out for you?”

“No. It doesn’t matter. So, this young man is even younger than I thought.” He watched as the lad shook his head like a man awakening from a dream and chuckled at the slow movements as he tried to desperately to draw himself away from the lesbian three-way that had so captivated him. The lad kept looking back and then firmly taking more steps away, as though he was fighting an invisible leash.

“What, do you think he is forbidden to watch? No. He is looking for someone. For something!” Walther nodded firmly. “Yes, he is hunting and cannot stop scenting distractions. Bring—”

Markus was already moving.

* * * *

Managing to drag himself away from one scene did nothing but assault his senses with a dozen others. There, over in the corner, was one of Marcy’s friends, Sebastian Tucker, reclining back on what looked like an impossibly soft and sensuous couch, a slave bobbing her head up and down over his cock while behind her, a lady trainer from New York applied a cane with a delicate and precise layering of marks. In the center of the room, two men shared a male slave suspended from the ceiling, rocking him and the two women beside him in a rhythmic motion that gained an appreciative audience, some with their own servitors at hand. One man had two slaves, one behind him, one in front of him, both on their knees, while he stood, watching the bondage centerpiece bob and rock. His eyes looked glazed; Stuart could feel his own vision get slightly blurry around the edges. The room smelled of pine, salt, and the sweat of exertion; the richness of sex, all at once sweet and sharp, was powerful.

I shouldn’t have worn the latex
, Stuart thought, his mouth dry and trickles of sweat running down his chest and back.
I need
—

Someone offered him a tiny cup of shaved ice with some blood-red flavoring poured over it. As he tossed it back, the rich sweetness of pomegranates and cherries mingled with a dangerous miasma of alcohol and went straight to his head.

Oh get a freaking grip
, he thought, shaking his head to clear it.
What’s wrong with me? There is nothing here that’s new!
Maybe the fact that this was a gathering of the world’s best slave trainers might have something to do with it.
And some of the best slaves
, his mind filled in, tugging at his duty with an insistent clarity. But it felt overwhelming, frightening. How could he just saunter in here, a nobody, a wet-behind-the-ears trainee who knew nothing, and just grab a man and drag him back for Marcy? How could he possibly judge?

They’re all hot!
He thought, spinning as his eyes scanned the room.
Christ, there’s another gorgeous one!

Oh, no. That was Michael LaGuardia, Mr. Parker’s trainee, gliding through the room looking like a fashion model in skintight leather jeans and boots and nothing else. The dark-haired man with those amazing dark-ringed blue eyes stopped at a performance of three slaves climbing and lifting each other and said something that made the people near him laugh.

For a brief second, Stuart wondered whether Marcy would like him. True, he wasn’t a muscle-bound, hairy kind of guy, but he was so gorgeous and he did have a good-sized and quite functional cock, and Marcy would probably love taking him...

What am I thinking?
Stuart dragged himself out of yet another distracting fantasy image.
Why is this so hard? Why can’t I concentrate? Oh, Christ, if Michael is here, does that mean Mr. Parker is, too? Seeing me wander around like some dazed tourist?
He started to swing around, knowing it didn’t look cool and controlled at all, and almost bumped into another man.

Luckily it was not Mr. Parker, although the faux pas was just as embarrassing. The older man put a hand out to steady him, and Stuart looked up with a slight blush. “I’m so sorry, sir,” he said.

“Not at all,” the man replied. He had an accent, and his inclined his head formally. Stuart answered without thinking, automatically lower, and the man smiled. He was balding, his sand-colored hair swept back over his skull, light blue eyes exacting behind horn-rimmed glasses. Stuart searched through his memory and came up with... Walther Kurgan! This man was part of his staff.

“I am Markus Schulze,” the man said carefully. “Please, Mr. Kurgan wishes to meet you.”

“Oh? Oh! Well... sure. Thank you,” Stuart stammered, and followed Markus around the bondage rigging in the center of the room, past the back-to-back flogging frames and the impromptu jack-off contest being held while trainers bet on which slave would ejaculate first.

* * * *

Walther saw Michael LaGuardia striding through his party as well, and he cocked his head slightly to follow him. Ah, but he was a good-looking man. Stripped naked and sold, he would have bidders tearing their wallets to make offers for him. Except... he was not very attentive, was he? That was a puzzlement.

To see young Parker on his own, well, everyone knew that was going to happen eventually, with or without the surprise public promotion to Master Trainer. How many did that make for her now? Six? Seven? A good life’s work. And it was only fitting that a trainer of Parker’s degree have an apprentice in service, but frankly, one expected such a trainee to be better than this Michael.

Of course, how much better could he be, considering his pedigree? To come out of the training house of that posturing, nattering salesman of short-contract trash slaves, it was a wonder he had manners at all. Negel himself was well-mannered, for an American, but some of his students were simply nightmares! Brash, arrogant, yet ignorant at the same time. Negel and his “tribes” and his “new age” and his suggestions that they were all frustrated rapists and monsters simply because they held to a tradition of growth through adversity!

And yet... one of his students wound up in training with Anderson’s newest Master Trainer. How? Why? What did she see in him that he, the Trainer of Trainers of Germany, did not see? Perhaps he should ask to borrow him, exchange a student for a few months.

He put that aside as Markus returned and performed the introductions. Walther smiled just a little as the young man before him stammered something about being honored to meet him and then hurriedly wished him a good evening in what he supposed was the lad’s only German.

“And a good evening to you, Mr. Lundberg. You are Swedish, perhaps?”

“Through my father, yes,” Stuart answered. “My Mom’s French. I mean, they were both born in the States, though.”

Walther nodded. “Welcome to my party. I saw you looking around. Is there something special you are searching for?” Up close, Walther could see the fine boning of the young man’s face, a certain delicacy of chin and neck, small ears. But the feathery hair on his chin and upper lip was real, and there was some across the backs of his slender hands as well. He dressed him mentally in a loose shift, and felt an odd stirring; yes, he realized with some amusement. He would make a very pretty girl! One with no tits at all, but there were many who enjoyed that.