Madeleine

MADELEINE by Stephen Rawlings WARNING! All Olympia books are the subject of international copyright and should not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form - including electronically - without the publisher’s prior written consent. ANY and ALL violations of Olympia copyright will be pursued vigorously through the appropriate courts.

CHAPTER ONE ‘To the Wilderness’ The taxi battled with the traffic as it threaded its way through Knightsbridge, trying to reach Chelsea and the river. The passenger lay back, apparently relaxed, though inwardly subject to the electric tension she always experienced when, as now, she was about to meet a new client. Tall for a woman, with rich glossy hair that, unrestrained, fell between her shoulder blades in a wavy chestnut mane, but now was woven into a complex pleat, her green flecked eyes barely took in the congested evening world outside the cab, as she thought back to how her life had been transformed, only a few short months before. Then, she had been working for one of the second division of the advertising world, Paragon Apex, which had made up for the paucity of its performance by the pretentiousness of its title. At twenty-eight, she had got as far as she could go, and the glass ceiling had closed over her head. She knew, and they knew, that she was the best creative person in the firm, and with organisational and personal skills to match, but that bunch of ‘good old boys’ was never going to let her join their ranks at the top table. Oh, they had made gestures, when she had complained about lack of management responsibilities - and put her in charge of the secretarial pool, ‘because you’ll be all girls together’, as one of the oafs put it. And they’d given her Peter Silters, because everyone else was ashamed to have him on their staff, although the company couldn’t afford to do without his services. Peter was responsible for clients ‘special needs’, in other words a glorified pimp, supplying booze, girls and recreational drugs to keep the men with the power to place accounts happy. But that was as far as it went, she was never going to be given real management responsibility, or be allowed to deal directly with potential clients, and a seat on the board was out of the question, now or at any time, however distant. Until the day the headhunters came for her. It all started with a call out of the blue from George Lloyd, who was with Personnel Assets, and said he had something that might just interest her, and could they have lunch. Any other man, she would have taken the approach as blatant propositioning, and told him where to put his something interesting, but Personnel were the best known hunters in the City, and she thought she’d give him a chance. He did have something for her, an indirect approach from Helworthy, Bellman Associates, otherwise known as ‘Hell’s Bells’, the most thrusting up-andcoming agency in London, and tipped to become world class within a few years. Several lunches later, and a meeting with two of the principals, and she was looking at an offer she couldn’t refuse. Her own team, direct responsibility for meeting new clients, and clinching new accounts, and the prospect of a partnership within five years if she was as good as they believed her to be. “Don’t jump before you’ve thought about it,” they said, “come back in a week, and we’ll have the service contract drawn up for you to sign.” She’d gone back to Paragon, and told them she was taking a week of the accumulated leave she’d never got around to using, thrown some clothes into a case, and pointed her little GT hatchback towards the north.

Her mind was full of conflicting emotions. Excitement, anticipation, pride at being sought out and chosen, but also doubts. Not particularly about her ability, although the job was far more demanding than her present post, but did she really want to go even further into the rat race? The treadmills only got bigger, they led no further in the end than the small wheels, and there was further to fall. Besides, did she really want to spend the rest of her life in a world of baked beans and toilet tissue, soap powder and sanitary towels? There was something missing in her life, and she was going to the wilderness to think it out, before she hurled herself, unthinking, down the slippery slope of the advertising racket. She stayed the night in a Posthouse near Glasgow, and pressed on in the morning, seeking the wilder parts of the west coast, where the sea lochs bite into the land like cuts from an axe in the trunk of a tree. Evening found her far from anywhere on the rocky shore of a deep inlet where the last of the setting sun, picked out an islet in the loch, and on its low summit, the ruins of a gaunt tower. She turned off the road onto an apology for a track to where she could sit, concealed in a knot of pines, but with a view of the water and the little island. As she sat and ate the sandwiches she had brought, and poured coffee from a flask, she watched the light fade, and the ruined tower become a black lifeless shadow, just visible against the gleam of the water. It was too late to go on and look for a room, she decided, she would drop down the seats to form a crude bed, and curl up under the rug she always carried. So far off the beaten track, and concealed by the thicket of pines, what harm could come to her? It was a warm summer’s night, and the car would give her good shelter. She woke to the dawn, and the light picking out the tower from the east. As she made a breakfast from the last of her coffee and sandwiches, she studied the islet and its ruin. Some haunt of sea raiders and pirates long ago, she thought, but deserted now: she’d not seen a light the evening before. It was about a quarter mile from the shore, an excellent moat but easily crossed by a swimmer. She left the car and squatted in the bushes to relieve the morning’s pressures, then rose and looked again at the islet. That would be her hermit’s cell where she could think out her problem, naked and alone, as cut off from the world as if on the moon. She pulled her tee shirt over her head. At work she wore a bra, to coax her outline into a form proper for business and, in particular, to curb her exuberant, and over-easily excited, nipples from thrusting through her blouse. On holiday she left her breasts free, for they were firm, and not over large, and now they stood bare to feel the slight caress of the fresh clean air around her, the large pink teats responding by swelling slightly at the day’s adventure. She’d discarded her jeans and trainers for comfort on her makeshift bed, and her socks and cotton knickers soon joined her watch and earrings on the floor of the locked car. The keys went under a nearby rock; she was taking nothing of her present life with her, as she set off to find out what it was she truly wanted. She ran on bare toes across the turf to the water’s edge. The sea was still, with hardly a ripple, and almost warm against the slight chill of the air on her naked body, before the sun had warmed the day. She struck out for the islet and its deserted ruin with steady strokes, which soon bore her to her target. She winced at the shingle under her bare feet where she landed, but soon found soft turf again and threw herself down in the gathering warmth of the now climbing sun. As its growing strength warmed her body, drying her long glowing mane, she thought about the dilemma she had come to resolve. What was her problem? Most young women of her age would be ordering champagne, and ringing their friends to boast of their good fortune, or their just reward for their talent and hard work, so why was she lying naked on a deserted islet in the most remote part of the kingdom, unable to relax and enjoy the direction her life was taking?

Because there was something missing in it, that was why. Because promoting sanitary protection and family deodorants was not going to be enough. But surely it wasn’t the products, it was the people and the power and the status? True, but she couldn’t make that into a complete and satisfying whole in her mind either. Was it just sex? Did she need a man to make her complete? She’d had many men, but none had lasted long. Some had shown affection, many had been very skilled in bed, and had manipulated her body to apparent physical satisfaction, but they’d lasted no longer than the bumbling incompetents, and the crude boors. Less time than the boors, she realised, thinking about it. Round and round she went, stretched naked on the grass, her hands behind her head, and her legs parted, to let the sun caress her breasts and vulva, but understanding still escaped her. As the day wore on, she became aware that she had eaten nothing since her early breakfast. The lack of food did not worry her, at the office she often skipped lunch altogether, and did not eat until the evening, but she’d always had coffee or tea several times a day and now she was getting thirsty. She put her unproductive thoughts to one side, and set off to explore the islet. Not far off she found a tumble of brambles with the blackberries just ripening. At the cost of several scratches to her thighs, and the odd thorn in her foot, she picked a handful before abandoning the dangers to her vulnerable bare flesh to explore further. She soon realised that the brambles grew along a ruined wall that once protected a garden, or at least an orchard, for here were old, gnarled fruit trees, and on one, at least, were ripe apples. She picked a couple and, standing under the tree eating, felt as Eve must have done in the garden, with a strange sense of guilt, as if she had broken some dread commandment, and dire consequences would ensue. Her thirst partially satisfied, she set off again to explore: her path led her towards the tower. Close to it was quite a bit larger than she had thought from the shore. She climbed the slope to the arch, where the great gate must once have hung. Inside, she stood on ancient flags, with grass growing in the cracks, for the tower was roofless. She stood for a moment, turning her lithe naked form this way and that, as she looked up at the cliff like walls rising far above her, showing evidence of where the inhabitants had occupied three or four floors, now long gone, leaving empty windows and doorways. But one doorway still retained a closure, a stout wooden door with heavy iron ring, low and squat, standing in a corner of the base of the tower, now open to the sky. Curiosity, that fatal weakness of females as well as felines, drew her to it, and to try the handle, which turned easily in her hand. The temptation was too much, and in a moment the door was open, revealing a small chamber, lit by a tiny slit in one wall, and spiral steps, leading both up and down. She stepped inside, feeling the air cool on her naked skin and breasts. The door swung gently to behind her under its own weight, and closed with an audible click. Since the slit gave sufficient light to see her way, she ignored the door for the time being, and set off to climb the stair but, half way round the first turn, came up against an iron grille secured by a massy lock. She didn’t fancy wandering, naked and alone, into the dungeon, or whatever lay at the foot of the downward flight, and turned to the door to leave. But the door was fast, and there was no sign of a handle to open it from the inside. With the first feelings of panic coiling in her belly, she ran her hands over the surface, looking for some catch she’d overlooked but found none. There was a keyhole, bereft of key, but nothing that would serve to open the door and release her from what she now began to think of as a prison. The panic spread its icy coils into her thighs and chest as she imagined being trapped here forever. The islet had shown no sign of life throughout her stay, no chink of light in the

blackness of the night, no boat on the shore that she could see, although, granted, she had not circled the far side. Her car was carefully tucked away in the thicket of pines to deliberately make it unlikely that anyone passing on the road might see it and investigate. In any case, she had not been aware of any traveller passing that way for an evening, a night and a morning, so there was little hope there. She fought down the icy beast in her guts and tried to act sensibly. A further visit to the obstruction on the rising stair showed that it, too, was immovable so that left only the downward path unexplored. As soon as she turned the first bend, and moved away from the meagre light from the slit, she was aware of a faint light below. Another turn and she was at its source, another squat, thick door, but this one open a few inches, letting out a shaft of bright light. But this was no daylight, this was too soft a gold for sunlight. There must have been someone here recently if, indeed, they were not here at this moment. Suddenly she re-awoke to the fact that she was naked. Well, there was no help for it, she would have to investigate if she wished to get out of this imprisonment. She stepped forward and gently pushed the door open a few inches, to peer inside. “You took your time getting here,” said a deep male voice with a strong Scots accent, and nothing particularly welcoming in its tone. “I expected you long ago, but now you’re here, come in and shut the door.” Doubly conscious now of her bare flesh, she shrank back. Before she could formulate any explanation, and ask for something to cover herself before she entered the light, the voice roared out, in a tone that would not be denied. “Get yourself inside, woman - NOW!” She got. She found herself in a vaulted stone chamber. The light came from a modern camping gas lantern hung from a hook on one wall but, at the far end, slanting shafts led up to the courtyard to let in air and a little daylight. The other source of light was a wood fire that burnt brightly in a large fireplace which took up the greater part of the wall to her left. The opposite wall was pierced by half a dozen small arched openings, like those of a dog kennel, but closed by grilles of iron. The room was sparsely furnished, a large, crude oak cupboard, a smaller cupboard, a large chest, a trestle, and a bench, set at a heavy table, but the feature that held her attention was the man sitting on the bench, his boots stretched out towards the fire, a mug of something in his hand, a book on his knee, and a thin leather covered switch by his elbow on the table. He watched her enter his sanctum. He was big and wide, a little fleshy, with wild red hair and beard, dressed in denim jeans tucked into leather boots, and a rather grubby white T-shirt which revealed his muscular neck and arms, the latter covered in a finer version of the red thatch on his head. “There’s little point in your trying to cover yourself,” he said, as she crossed her arms on her chest, “seeing that I’ve been watching you all morning, and know every crease in your bum and each wrinkle in your nipples, so put your hands by your sides, and stand up straight when I’m talking to you.” She did: it seemed the natural thing to do, and he went on. “And your tits and bum are not the only things I saw either. I saw you stealing fruit from the orchard.” She opened her mouth to explain and, perhaps, ask forgiveness. “Shut up!” he roared, “you’ll only speak here when given permission! Is that clear?” Dumbly she nodded.

“Do you know what this place is?” he asked and, not daring to speak, even though asked a direct question, she shook her head this time. “It’s called the Isle of Tears or, sometimes, the Isle of weeping women. The tower was the home of sea brigands, my family’s ancestors they were, and no woman came here as wife or mistress, only as slave. That’s where they were housed,” he boomed, waving a hairy hand at the row of kennels, “unless they had been taken upstairs to work, or warm someone’s bed. There’s no upstairs now, so you’ll live in the kennel, when you’re not working.” “I’m not -” she began, but his bellow stopped her short. “Shut up! You’ve been warned once and you’ll pay for that later. As I was saying you’ll live in a kennel, and you’ll work and toil, like the slave you made yourself, by coming to my island uninvited, and your theft of my fruit.” It didn’t seem worthwhile protesting. It would obviously make no difference and, anyway, her will to resist had ebbed away in some mysterious manner, leaving her bending to his will. He was speaking again. “Before we go any further, you’ll settle your account for speaking out of turn, and learn that it doesn’t pay on my island for a slave to forget her obedience.” He put down his book and his mug and stood, taking up the switch. “Stand here,” he ordered, pointing to a spot on the flagged floor just in front of him. Trembling from a mixture of fear and excitement, she obeyed. “Six of the best, as the Sassenach say,” he pronounced, “bend and touch your toes and don’t get up till I say so, or you’ll regret it.” Like an automaton, she advanced into the room and bent where the switch had pointed. Her body did as it was ordered, with no conscious effort on her part. She stood with bare toes slightly separated, bent from the waist, put fingers to toes, stretching the pale gold skin of her smoothly rounded buttocks, stayed, taut and obedient, awaiting its fate. Her mind stood outside and observed her own reactions, wondered at her own submissiveness, speculated about how much it was going to hurt, and if she could take it. Six of the best with that cruel looking instrument! She had no idea what it would be like, had never been beaten before, but she was going to find out now. Schoolboys, and schoolgirls come to that, traditionally got six of the best, and it was meant to be for the good of their souls, though they were reputed to be unable to sit after, for a day or so, so it must hurt and go on being sore for a long while after. They were not meant to cry out, bad form and all that, and getting up before they’d had their dose would get extra, or even another six. The air behind her parted with a whirring noise and a lancing flame leapt up in her buttocks. Mind and body came together again to try and cope with the terrible visitation. Stay down, stay down, her will commanded, but body squealed in protest, and then groaned, a long drawn out naaaaargh, as the first sharp cutting pain was overtaken by a wave of pure agony that rolled in, washing over her whole consciousness. Mind won, but it was a close thing, and she waited, bottom halves clenching in fearful anticipation, for the next cut. She was better prepared for the second, though it was just as fierce, and greeted it with just a gasp of indrawn breath, let out in another groan, as deep and agony filled as the first. And so for each of the other four, not conceding more than gasps and groans, and twitching, clenching nates. Yes, she could take it but how much more? Would a longer thrashing break her and, if so, how much more punishment would it take to make her howl outright, or cause her body to rebel against the submission it still seemed anxious to make? Far from trying to flee in

panic from this awesome chamber, and its stern master, she only felt more firmly set in it, and her captivity more welcome. What on earth was happening to her? What was happening right now was a barked command to stand, and keep her hands from her bum. Her Master, for she’d already conceded that status to him, took a collar of black iron from the cupboard and closed it round her neck where a catch, whose workings she did not observe, clicked to make it fast. A light chain hung from the collar and he used it to drag her over to the end kennel. Once she had obeyed his order to crawl in, onto the straw inside, he fastened the chain to a staple by the kennel entrance, and went back to the cupboard. He must have stored his supplies there, amongst other things, for he produced a bowl of water which he set down by her doorway, and a pan and foodstuffs, which he took to the fire. She bent to the bowl to suck up water, for to use her hands to lift it seemed somehow inappropriate, and winced as the movement stretched the welts on her throbbing bottom. Then she sat back on her heels, her hands on her thighs, to watch him at work. Soon the delicious smell of bacon, chops and tomatoes wafted across the room, and brought her to awareness of an empty belly and ravening appetite. She hadn’t eaten since her modest breakfast and it must be well past mid-day, though she’d no means of knowing, having deliberately come to the island not only naked, but with no possessions of any kind. Since breakfast, she’d swum a quarter mile, explored the island, thought till her mind reeled about the central problem of her life and, last but very far from least, expended a month’s worth of emotional energy in something under a minute, while he had welted her maiden bottom with ‘six of the best’ from that cruelly biting switch. Her mouth watered as she thought of the succulent food sizzling in the pan. But it was not for her. When it was cooked to his satisfaction, he served it onto a plate and then reached for a blackened pot standing beside the fireplace. Crossing the room, he slapped a soggy pile of sticky grey substance into her bowl. “Eat up, woman,” he ordered, “it’s good healthy porridge and you’re going to need all your strength here.” Stifling her disappointment, she obediently bent her head and ate as best she could, her face soon sticky, and the ends of her auburn mane also, where they had fallen into the glutinous mess. From time to time he threw her scraps, some bacon rind, tomato skins, a piece of gristle. When he offered her a chop bone with the remains of meat on it, she took it gently in her mouth, but immediately laid it in her bowl, so that she could suck clean the greasy fingers he extended to her. After he’d cleared his plate he took a large green apple, streaked with red, and proceeded to peel it carefully, giving her the long, continuous spiral he had cut and, later, the core. He poured beer for himself and refilled her water bowl. The meal over, he unclipped her chain from her collar and ordered her to follow. Crawling from her kennel, she rose stiffly to her feet, her sore buttocks reminding her again of their striated condition, and walked after him, up the spiral stair to the sunlit courtyard. Here he pointed out an old iron pump in the corner, and a sink hollowed from a block of stone. Under his direction, she pumped water from some underground cistern into a bucket, which she carried downstairs, where she was set to work, scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees. Time and again he pointed out deficiencies in her coverage, which he emphasised with cuts of the switch, which never left his hands. When at last he declared himself satisfied, the pain in her hinds went far beyond the mere ‘sixer’ she had thought a severe punishment, and it began to dawn on her that her life with this red-headed Master would be a litany of toil and suffering, but, standing outside her own body

again, she marvelled that, far from feeling resentment and fear, she felt a great sensation of relief, as if coming home, or discovering a welcome harbour. Oh, yes, it hurt like hell, and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming, and the work was degrading and onerous, but when she was not actually fighting the pain at the point where it was inflicted, her whole being was fired by it, and submission to her task-master brought a definite feeling of satisfaction. And that satisfaction was not over with the scrubbing of the floor. The pans had to be cleaned, including the glutinous porridge pot, scraping and rinsing with only cold water and a stick. Each time it failed his inspection, and it failed many times, she had to bend, she felt so much more exposed to the whip, touching her toes out there, under the open sky, and the switch cut into the tumified flesh, just below the widest part of her swelling haunches. He was cutting short, so that the tip burrowed into the right cheek, rather than wrapping round her flank. The throbbing ache told her that its repeated bite was raising a solid mass of bruised flesh, though she did not dare to put her hand behind her to feel, much though she might wish to. The pans washed, it was time for his laundry. He produced a plastic sack of soiled socks, underpants and T-shirts, their odour not improved by confinement in polythene, and she was sent to wash them, as serving women through the ages had done, beating them one a stone in the loch margin, and spreading them on bushes in the sun. While they dried, she was set to gather driftwood for his fire, the harsh bundles digging into her tender shoulders as she staggered along on sore feet, carrying load after load, driven on by the inexorable bite of that asp-like switch, as he slashed it into her now cringing hinds, to the accompaniment of cries she was too exhausted to suppress. As the sun began to sink lower, she was allowed to gather up the washing, though she earned two particularly vicious cuts for a pair of socks, whose welts had been folded under and were not quite crispy dry, and return to the security of her chain and kennel where she lay, worn out and sore, on her bed of straw. But not for long. Called to heel, she crossed the floor on hands and knees, dragging her chain behind her, and was set to cook his supper, a steak grilled over the fire, some vegetables, stir-fried in the pan, and potatoes, boiled in the pot. Again the delicious scent of the food set her salivating after her exhausting toil in the sun all afternoon, but her portion was only a share of the boiled potatoes, put in her bowl on the floor, though he fed her some trimmings from his steak. Supper over, she was released from her chain temporarily, and sent to wash the dishes under the pump. He did not go with her, to see her secure, and seemed to have sensed her acceptance of her serfdom, nor did it occur to her to swim back to freedom. On her return, she had to put oats to soak in the pot for tomorrow’s porridge. While she did that, he took an inflatable mattress from the capacious cupboard, and she was set to pump it up, ready for his use. When this task was complete he had her kneel in front of him, sitting on her heels with her hands crossed behind her, while he told her how, as a slave, still new to the life, she would be disciplined each night, after serving her Master and before retiring to her kennel for the night. A sixer if her performance had been satisfactory, a dozen if not. So now she knew. It had seemed pretty certain from the start that a naked woman, enslaved and beaten, could expect to be sexually used as well, but his behaviour all day had been so lacking in anything that might have been construed as sexual interest, as opposed to subduing and working her, that the possibility had slipped to the back of her mind, but now it had sprung to the fore. Though she feared what this callous man might do to her, she made no attempt to protest, but passively awaited her fate. He looked at her a moment, then stood and pulled the clothes from his large coarse body, revealing a slightly fleshy torso, adorned with more of the

red tufts the showed on his arms, an incipient belly, already displaying folds of fat, and a large, flaccid penis, partly shrouded by the rampant growth between his thighs. Grabbing her by a fistful of dark hair, he dragged her to the mattress and threw her on her back. It was little more than a quick and brutal rape. He mounted her, thrust his prick, by now aroused to monumental proportions, into a surprisingly moist vagina, and battered her mercilessly as she lay passively beneath him, until, with a series of animal grunts, he discharged a copious warm, sticky wetness deep inside her and collapsed, panting, on her body, crushing her with his weight until she could hardly breathe. After a short rest he lifted himself off her, and she filled her lungs properly with relief. “Get up, you worthless bitch,” he growled, “you had your chance, and you muffed it. I said you would be judged on your performance, but you didn’t even try to perform. I gave you plenty of time to start taking my things off, but I had to do it myself. You should have done it for me, and then set about arousing me and ensuring I got sensual pleasure, and full satisfaction. You’ll get the full dozen for that and, if things aren’t a damn sight better tomorrow night, I’ll double the dose until they are. Fetch the switch and get into position.” Shaken by the anger in his tone, and trembling at the thought of having to take a round dozen of the full-weight strokes she could expect when presented in the formal toe-touching pose, rather than the casual slashes that had enlivened her labours, she hurried to obey. The switch delivered to his unrelenting hand, she forced herself to bend, putting her fingers on her toes, and exposing her sore striped buttocks. Until that morning, they had never known the excruciating bite of a whip, now they were bruised and lined by a score or more of livid purple welts, some as thick as a finger, all sore and throbbing, stretching from mid-buttock to the tops of the thighs, but mainly grouped on the under curve of the firm mounds, where the bruised mass on the right oozed bright droplets from the plum coloured ropes of bruised flesh. Humiliated by his contempt for her performance as a sexual partner, or rather sexual object, fearful of the coming onslaught on her sore and suffering hinds, she felt her courage slipping, but held on to his promise that she could seek a respite in her straw after it was done. She gritted her teeth and waited. He did not spare her, indeed he seemed to set out to break her and, by the end, he had. She held out while four fearful cuts mauled her bottom, but the fifth fell on skin that was already splitting and drew a scream where she’d only conceded strangled cries before. Once the dam was broken she screamed at every stroke, and at the ninth, a terrible stroke that opened up the pulpy mass, her fingers left her toes as she arched back in a paroxysm of agony, her hands reaching for the wounded flesh. Under his threats she went down again, was awarded an extra stroke for her loss of position, and shrieked her way through four more agonizing cuts which seemed to slice right through her. But she stayed down, for he’d promised a steadily rising tariff for each failure. When all had been laid on her cringing flesh, she fell on her knees, wracked by sobs, until he seized her by the hair and dragged her to her kennel, where, chained and barred, she lay curled up in the straw, her shoulders heaving, and tears running down her cheeks.

CHAPTER TWO ‘Exploration’ Exhausted, beaten and sexually abused, caged, chained,lying naked on the straw strewn floor, she might have been expected to give way to despair through a sleepless night. In fact, for the first time for a long while, she fell quickly into a deep, satisfied sleep. Though her mind seemed to have accepted her fate without protest, indeed in some perverse way to have welcomed her degradation and abuse, her body was less successful, and she woke, as a thin light filtered down from two grilles set high in the end wall, to find her bruises stiffened, but still throbbing, and her limbs cramped from her hard bed. More urgent was the pressure in her bladder. Yesterday she had been able to deal with her natural functions among the bushes while she worked outside, but now there was no provision. She dared not wet her straw, being uncertain if she’d get fresh, or would have to spend her nights lying on her own wastes and he would probably punish her severely for soiling her bedding, but neither did she dare risk disturbing him. She clung on to her bursting belly in rising distress, hoping she could last out. At last, agonising ages later she heard him stir and called out, almost hysterically, for permission to speak and, when this was granted, to be allowed to relieve herself. “Hold your water, bitch,” he replied, “you’ll regret it if you foul your kennel,” and released her from her cage and chain. Hunched over, clasping her belly, her knees turned in, she scuttled up the stairs to the nearest grassy spot, where she anointed the turf with a golden flood, groaning at the painful release after such desperate retention. More composed now, she straightened, and walked with head high, to deliver herself to her gaoler again. She revived the fire, set the porridge pot to cook, hanging from an iron hook over the flames, made her master tea, though she was only allowed water for herself, and cooked his breakfast of bacon and eggs. Porridge again for her portion, though he fed her the bacon rinds and she was allowed to lick the egg stains from his plate when he had finished. Housework then, the dishes to wash, his bedding to fold and put away, the chamber to be scrubbed and tidied, his boots to be polished by licking every inch of the supple leather and burnishing it with a cloth. She was getting more adept at such work now and escaped with only a handful of stinging flicks of the switch. Just as well, for the welts and bruises on her bottom had lost little of their soreness overnight, and had stiffened so that movement of any kind drew twinges of protest in her behind. Domestic duties seen to, he led her up into the open again. “Hard labour and discipline is the lot of a slave on this island,” he informed her, “and I intend to see you get both in full measure.” He set her to work to rebuild the boundary wall, where she had first transgressed by picking blackberries. It was arduous work for a naked woman, used to a city life. She was not totally unfit, for she took care of her body, indeed sometimes worked out almost to excess in the hope that it would alleviate that empty feeling that troubled her, but lifting the large flat pieces which had fallen from the dry stone wall, and setting them back in place at the level of her naked breasts, soon began to make very taxing demands on her back, arms and legs, to say nothing of her sore bottom, though the enforced exercise did at least serve to take some of the stiffness out of the latter. Nor was the muscular effort her only discomfort. Her bare feet and legs were scratched and stung by brambles and nettles, and her soft white hands soon became sore from the rough stone, and the inevitable knocks and abrasions. Nor could she relax her effort for a

moment, for he stood over her with that feared thin whip in his hand, and punished any slackening in her work rate by barked rebukes, reinforced by vicious cuts to back, shoulders, aching arms, lacerated hinds, whatever part of her bare and vulnerable anatomy was most accessible at the time. By the time he declared a break for a mid-day meal, she was weeping with exhaustion and the pain of her wounds, both deliberate and accidental. Preparing his meal, and the portion of coarse bread which was all her reward for a hard morning’s labour, came as a blessed relief, but it was short lived. Once more she endured the back-breaking labour, the soreness, the stings and thorns in her feet and legs, as she toiled at the endless seeming task. Sweat ran into her eyes, and matted her hair, dirty and neglected, into rat-tails. Her finger nails were broken, and her hands blistered, she ached in every joint, but now she could actually see progress, and earned fullblooded cuts into her welted buttocks when she paused to admire her handiwork. Several yards of once amorphous stone heap now stood clean and straight, as their original builders, centuries ago, had planned them. She felt a flush of pride in her achievement, and a searing flame across her thighs for the break in the rhythm of her work. “You’re meant to be raising the wall, woman,” he growled, “not standing admiring it, like Hadrian, or the Emperor of China.” Shortly after this he declared time out for a tea break, for him of course, only water for a work worn female slave. When it seemed time to resume the unremitting labour, he surprised her by saying she was not to return to the wall but would, instead, be set to contemplate her deficiencies, and accommodate her mind to her status. Thinking she would be put into her solitary confinement again, she prepared to move to her kennel, but he had other ideas. “To the trestle, bitch, that’s where you’ll sit to meditate on your position in life.” He laughed coarsely. “You’ll find the position makes a great impression on a woman’s mind, seeing she keeps it between her legs.” The trestle was nothing more or less than that, constructed of solid timbers, with a triangular sectioned top rail, point upwards, and two lower rails, parallel to the first, joining the front and back legs a few inches off the floor. Under his direction, she placed a short piece of board at right angles to the two lower rails and resting on them to form a step, which enabled her to swing one long shapely leg over the top rail and stand astride it with her weight on her toes. “Pull your cunt open, bitch, and lower yourself,” he ordered, “I want to see the edge parting your fat lips.” When she had done as instructed, he came behind her and tied her wrists together behind her back. It would be an awkward position for prolonged contemplation, she considered, but at least she was spared the bruising labour of walling. Ten seconds later she would have gladly returned to the heartless stone. With no warning, he pulled the board out from under her toes and she found herself, literally, sitting on her mound. With nothing else to support her, her body weight rested on the narrow pointed edge of the rail which drove with painful force into her soft parts until she could feel it cutting into her pubic bone. She leaned back to ease it and found it pressing into her anus and her coccyx. She tried to grip the rail between her thighs to take the weight off her vulva and the protesting bones, but could get little purchase: then what little ease it gave was snatched from her as he parted her legs and tied each ankle with a thong attached to the lower rail, the tension adding to the weight on her pussy. She groaned as she felt the wood penetrating her flesh, and shifted cautiously, trying to ease her position without adding to her anguish. It was impossible, nothing could mitigate the hideous action of the wedge as it cut and bruised flesh and bone.

She groaned again and again, and hissed between her teeth when some incautious movement accentuated the crippling agony. Dear God! Was she to be left like this until he required his meal preparing? She had no means of knowing the time but, judging by the light, she would have to endure this fiendish perch for hours. As the minutes ticked by the torment did not ease, but seemed to bore deeper and deeper into her very soul. Perhaps he had been right, she thought, hysterically, we women do keep our souls between our legs. The anguish made her mind reel and, panicking, she feared she might faint and fall, then realised that with her legs tethered to the bottom rails, she could fall neither forwards nor sideways, she was doomed to sit this terrible mount, conscious or unconscious, until her tormentor released her. Time lost its meaning, there was only agony she could do nothing to ease. She wept as she sat on her aching mound; salt tears ran down her face, and every now and again she burst into a paroxysm of sobbing whose hiccuping motion only served to make her torment worse. She arched her spine and pushed out her breasts until the slight ease it brought to one part of her crotch was cancelled, and then exceeded by increased agony in another. She hung forward, her belly creased and her bedraggled hair hanging round her face, until that position too seemed even worse than the previous horrendous pose. Nothing gave any enduring ease, yet any movement must be paid for in additional pain. Aeons later she heard his voice, seemingly from another world. “Have you learned from your meditation?” he asked. “Are you ready to serve again?” Incapable of speech, and uncertain if she was permitted, she nodded, dumbly. Dismounted from her terrible steed, she knelt, sobbing, at his feet, her head bowed and her hands clasping her vulva. “So what did you learn, up there on your airy perch?” he demanded. “You may speak.” With her mind distracted by the protests of her abused body, and having used her voice so little for the last forty-eight hours, she had difficulty at first in framing a reply. “I learned that there is a place where one can go, when there is pain unending, a place so cut off from everything around that it might well be another world. In that place, that tiny spot with everything concentrated on a point, the inessentials of life are stripped away, and the problems that once seemed important, and intractable, become obvious and soluble.” “Very good, wretch, you are learning, but I don’t hold with women’s tongues clacking too long. Deeds, not words,” he directed. “I’ll have my supper now.” Half crippled still from the assault between her thighs, sniffing occasionally as the tears slowly trickled down her nose, she set about her household chores. A pork chop for him, barbecued over the fire and served with a tangy sauce, green peas and potato moistened with butter, for her potatoes only, boiled and bare, and his gracious offering of his part gnawed bone. When his bed had been prepared, she profited from her butcher’s dozen of the previous night by taking the initiative and his semi-erect prick. Carefully she coaxed it into full erection with soft moist suction of her warm mouth, and then mounted him as he lay prone, impaling herself on the now rampant penis, riding him to gasping ejaculation and, to her great surprise, the first spasms of orgasm in herself, before his collapsing column denied her the last full measure. He gave her grudging praise for her effort, and she took the mandatory six with only gasps and grunts, maintaining her toe-touching pose throughout, as each new cut whaled into her bruised flesh. Sleep came easily, her physical exhaustion capped with a small measure of sexual satisfaction, more indeed than she had experienced for many months past.

With the morning she joined battle again with her bladder and, released and relieved, went through the morning round of breakfast, housekeeping, cleaning, though she was not allowed to clean herself. In fact she had not bathed her body since her swim to the island, two days earlier. Since then she had worked most of her waking hours in the hot sun, and given sexual service twice. Now, as her body warmed again, she was aware she stank. Led outside once more to recommence her sentence of hard labour, she expected to be set to building the fallen wall again, but her captor had other ideas. “An essential element of hard labour, if it is to penetrate to the offender’s soul- ,” as that fiendish wedge penetrated to where he asserts I keep mine, she thought hysterically,” - it must, of itself, be purposeless and incapable of providing any element of satisfaction to the labourer,” he declared, “and I’m aware that you were contemplating your handiwork last evening with something akin to satisfaction. This will not do: today you will be set a totally purposeless task.” He gestured towards the other side of the island to the spot where she had landed. “When you trespassed on my island, you landed on fine shingle but over there on the other side, the sea has washed up much larger stones, some great boulders, most about the size of a man’s head, but all rounded and smoothed by the water’s action. You will run to the shore, select a sea-worn rock that is a stone in weight, and bring it here, still running. Now git!” Reinforcing his command with a vicious cut across the front of her thighs. With a cry of pain at the unexpected and unfamiliar stroke, she set off swiftly across the grass in the direction he had indicated, following a faint trail that led her down to the far shore. As he had indicated, the shore was composed of boulders of all sizes. The first thing she spotted, wedged among a group of oversized boulders, for security, and to conceal it from any observer on the far side of the loch, half a mile distant, was an inflatable dinghy, with outboard motor. Well at least she knew now how he got himself, and his supplies, here even if she knew little else about him. 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 overweight, 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.

CHAPTER THREE ‘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?” “Oh, no, they’re not allowed to practice it on our girls, but there would be plenty of interest in someone like you.” Madame Ruskova smiled thinly. “Walter is a good client, of long standing, and has always respected our limits scrupulously, but has made no secret of his inclinations. From time to time a girl, who has committed a serious breach of the rules, is given the option of being dismissed out of hand, or taking a session with Walter. I asked him to explore your limits and he was impressed. Quite a testimonial, coming from one as experienced as he. How did you find out about your ‘talent’?”

Madeleine squirmed again. She hoped she wasn’t opening up any of the cuts that had bloodied her sheets in the night. They might be staining her skirt through her underwear, if she wasn’t careful. “I only found out in the last few days, but the decision, when I came to it, left me with no doubts,” and she went on to share the considerations she had thought through so carefully in her bath, only twenty-four hours previously. How she’d become aware of an unfulfilled, but unidentified, need in herself, of the frustrations of her career and of the golden offer from ‘Hell’s Bells’. She explained how she’d gone to find herself in the wilderness, and had succeeded, though not quite what she had expected. “It was not so much a conversion on the road to Damascus,” she quipped, “as on the road to the Isles.” The older woman listened with great interest to her description of the events on the islet, and her reactions, and nodded from time to time as Madeleine described her feelings, and her analysis of them, soaking her bruises in her morning tub. “So here I am. I intend to make a career of this, with or without your help, but I think it could be messy on my own, and I would like your protection, if I can get it. I’ve already burnt my boats, as both my present and my prospective employers have my resignation now. I did not think that I was likely to be able to keep up a full time job against a background of irregular nights, or longer sessions and, additionally, I could foresee frequent occasions arising when I might be too much the worse for wear to go to the office. I will be freelancing though. I’m very good at my job and there are plenty of people who will give me work, which will provide me with an ostensible means of supporting my life-style.” “I don’t think your life-style is going to suffer any,” Madame assured her; “the trouble may be in making your legitimate earnings seem adequate. I accept your own valuation of yourself, and you are likely to become a very rich young woman. But only on my terms,” she added, with a slight steeliness to her voice. “Firstly, you will take any client we send you, without question. You may rely on me to ensure your protection. Our clients, however wealthy and powerful, know better than to cross me. Some of my friends are not very nice at all, and even they are careful not to offend some of their friends. We’ve very seldom had a client offend. and no-one has survived to try a second time.” Madeleine shuddered. What was she getting herself into? Well, whatever it was, it was too late now. She was committed now, if only to herself and her need. Madame Ruskova pressed on with defining her conditions of work. “Secondly, you will obey the client absolutely, relying on the same protection. As to the frequency of your sessions, we will decide that and, although I will listen to anything you have to say as to the condition of your body, it will be my decision alone as to whether you are fit to perform again. There may be times when a client wants you unmarked, and you can look forward to a rest of several weeks, but there are others who would have no objection to you bearing the signs of an earlier beating. In addition there are some men who would have you even with an embargo on actions that leave durable markings. The imaginative client, and especially the women, can think up a dozen ways to hurt and humiliate without raising spoor on your hide.” “I would be expected to serve women too?” She hadn’t considered that possibility, but why not? As Madame had hinted, a female would understand her vulnerable points, physical and mental, better than any man.

“Of course. Did I not say any client?” came the swift retort, “and we have many female clients on our books.” She returned to her list of requirements. “I think it must be obvious that you will have no dealings with any client other than through me. That includes giving out your address or phone number. Finally, you will be subject to the same discipline as all our other girls.” Madeleine could not prevent a wry smile at the thought of yet more beatings on top of what she had contracted for. How could they be construed as punishment? As if she could read her thoughts, Madame Ruskova continued. “Don’t run away with the idea that you would be unable to distinguish between punishment and pleasure. There are more ways of punishing a girl than by beating her bottom, a procedure which, in your case would be totally counter productive. I have an enforcer who is quite capable of making you feel deep regret at transgressing the rules, without any of the satisfaction that is the motivation behind your choice of career.” Madame’s dire words, delivered as they were in a flat tone, all the more threatening for its quiet matter-of-fact-ness, had wiped the small smile from Madeleine’s face, and she sat in grave attention, even the soreness in her bottom failing to distract her. “So there you have it,” Madame Ruskova concluded, “you can join my string and earn big money, but we demand absolute obedience, and will enforce it rigorously. The choice is yours but remember, once you are in, you are in until we release you. There is no turning back, or giving in of notice in this game.” A daunting commitment indeed, but the candidate did not hesitate. “I accept,” she said, “and on your terms, of course.” “Very well, then,” Madame replied, “go home now and sort out your affairs in the light of the new life you will be leading. In view of what Walter left on your body, I would think we would not be calling on your services for at least a few days, a week or two even if your first client wants to work his art on an unmarked canvas. Line up your freelance stuff, but make sure you are free at short notice to take on an assignment.” That had been three months ago, and now she was on her way to another client. She’d been to nearly a dozen in that time. Two or three really severe beatings and, in between, others, who had not minded her welts and cuts by other’s hands, and those whose tastes leaned more to humiliating her or torturing her in ways that left little trace to offend the hard men, who got their pleasure from watching blueberry tracks swelling on her white haunches, and thin red stripes lace her alabaster back. She thought this was going to be one of those severe thrashings, the ones that left her hoarse with screaming, body aching and throbbing in a dozen places, her ears still ringing with the echo of her demented shrieks, rather than one of the exquisitely refined sessions of more subtle and degrading treatment. She was never told what to expect, but it was over three weeks since she had been whipped to the blood, and her body was healed enough to be served to the more fastidious exponents of the whip and rod, who were prepared to wait, and to pay, for a pristine body on which to practice their art. And they did pay, too. As Madame Ruskova had admitted, she was worth her five thousand to the oil men, currency dealers, entertainment stars and other super-rich, and even more when she was sent to be a plaything for more than an evening. She’d already served one twenty-four hour stint, and Madame had warned her that week-ends, or even longer periods, were possible, and could not be refused, if offered.

Meanwhile her bank balance grew, and she kept up her cover as a freelance creative writer. She found that her talents were, indeed, much in demand, once free of Paragon’s shackles, and enjoyed the respect she won, and the social contact. Moreover, desperately hard and long though her sessions were at the time, they actually took up very little of her week, and she was grateful for constructive employment to fill the days until she received her next cryptic instructions.

CHAPTER FOUR ‘The Working Girl’ All she had was an address and a time. This was not unusual. Some clients gave a name, especially if they lived in an apartment block, and others had left instructions how to find the entrance to discreet penthouses, with private lifts tucked away in basement car-parks, or office foyers. Once or twice she had received detailed instructions of what to wear, or how to behave on being admitted, but usually it was just an address and a time. A solid town house not far from the river, no name on the brightly polished doorbell, but obviously well maintained, and well funded. A male voice responded to her ring. “Take your clothes off at the top of the stairs, and wait.” The buzzer released the door, and she pushed it open and entered, to find herself in a hallway with an elaborately carved mahogany staircase directly in front of her. She ascended without haste, with the customary sensual traffic beginning to build on the erotic highway that linked her belly and breasts, her groin and her cortex. Already she was vibrating with terror and excitement, while her vagina contributed its own lubricious signals of arousal. She feared and hated what was to be done to her, but ached for the overwhelming waves of fulfilment that would sweep her when she was in extremis, and the deep satisfaction that would follow. As instructed, she stopped at the top of the stairs and began removing her clothes, methodically, and without any attempt to add any further erotic element to her natural movements, themselves full of feminine grace and allure, laying her bag and garments on the one straight chair than furnished the landing. Naked, she stood facing as she had when she reached the top of the stair, her fingers laced together behind her neck, and her feet placed about eighteen inches apart, a pose provocative, without being too blatant, for the watcher whom she was sure was observing her from concealment, possibly via closed-circuit TV. She was not kept waiting long. Within less than a minute, a door before her opened to reveal a tall, middle-aged man, with thinning silver hair, austere features, and a thin lipped bloodless mouth that suggested its owner understood clearly the concept of pain, and did not associate it with the word mercy. She shivered at the thought of how much suffering a man like this might inflict on her. “So you’re Madame’s little Madeleine, who can take anything a man can give,” he observed in a tone that lost nothing of menace by its quietness, “we shall have to see if we can’t make her eat her words.” “I can’t promise to take it indefinitely, there’s a limit to what the body will do, whatever the mind says,” she replied, as softly, “but I do promise to obey you in everything, including submitting to restraint, when I can’t maintain position voluntarily.” “Brave words, girl, but we shall see if you can make them good. In the end, there can be only one winner in a contest between the rod and woman’s flesh.” He turned on his heel, and started to walk up the next flight of stairs. “Follow me,” he commanded. He led her to the top floor, into a circular turret room with slit windows and open beams in the roof space, a quixotic relic of the Victorian Gothic Revival. The room was decorated throughout in blood red, and contained little but what she was experienced enough now to recognise as a whipping frame and bench, and other apparatus for the infliction of pain,

something this man was clearly very familiar with. Well, she would give him a good run for his money, the great deal of money he was paying for the privilege of breaking her. “We’ll start with very basic stuff, just to see what you are made of,” he announced, “touch your toes for one dozen with the cane.” She looked at the yellow length, arching as he flexed it between his hands, and did not like what she saw. It was as long as any she’d had so far, and looked to be a little thicker and heavier than most. Obediently she turned away from the doleful sight, and bent to touch her fingers to her toes, feeling the now pristine skin of her vulnerable buttocks stretch ready to receive the scalding impact of the pitiless length of rattan. The air parted behind her with the familiar ripping sound, and a feeling like hot iron tore her hinds. This was going to be bad, she knew at once, as the agony built and her initial gasp was followed by a low groan. She crested the peak of the pain, and immediately heard the next stroke on its way. It exploded in her underhanging fold, slightly lower than the first, but no less devastatingly, and she rocked onto her toes with the impact of the heavy stick. Again she did not cry out, but she groaned at the sheer weight of the anguish that flowed from it. She could feel the skin stretching, as the bruise began to swell and throb, and she could imagine what the thick purple ropes would be like already. Later they would darken and raise themselves even higher. The man had found his mark now, and continued to lay on the searching strokes at regular drawn out intervals, keeping them concentrated in a close band around the underside of her swelling haunches, and just above the faint crease which divided them from the creamy whiteness of her upper thighs. By seven she was puffing and gasping with the effort of maintaining her position, and her gasps and groans had become strangled cries of torment at each searing impact. She struggled through to the end, her bottom clenching and flinching, but she was conscious as she rose, stiffly, to his command, that she would be hard put to it to endure more than a few repetitions of that fearful dozen. If he simply ordered her over for a second dose, he would probably achieve his aim of breaking her before the evening had even got into its stride. It would appear that he too could see the danger of achieving his ends before an hour was up, and the anti-climax that might follow, if he was then to hew fettered flesh, with no element of contest of wills. He did not press home his advantage, but afforded her a respite instead. A respite that most women would have howled for mercy to avoid, for he had her mount a wedge topped trestle and sit on her mound, the sharp upper edge of the wood bruising her soft vulva and her pubic bone, as she sat with her hands obediently clasped on top of her head. After fifteen minutes, he offered her the choice of a further session on the wedge or to resume the beating, and she elected to sit for another quarter of an hour on her hideously painful perch in order to spin out the time to the point where, inevitably, she would cry for mercy under the rod. When he lifted her down, she had to crouch wide-kneed for a minute, clutching her ravaged vulva, before she could collect herself sufficiently to say she was ready to continue. She had expected him to simply continue the assault on her buttocks, but cringed when he ordered her to stand, legs astride, and hands clasped on her neck, thrusting her firm white breasts, with their fear hardened coral points, prominently to the fore. Her inward shrinking, for she held her delicate mounds out for him without reserve, was occasioned by the thin silver wire he held, its quivering tip bearing witness to its spring steel composition. She had already discovered what this could do, and was not anxious to repeat the experience, but, welcome or not, she had to accept it, and she braced herself for what was to come.

What came was a wristy slash that cut a thin red line just above her right nipple. It was followed by a second and a third, and each drew not only a scream of agony but a line of bright red droplets where the delicate skin of her breasts had parted. And then three screams for the cuts on her left breast. She stood for a moment, her upper body writhing as she tried to throw off the pain, and then her eyes and mouth both opened in horror as she realised that he had moved back to her right again, and stood poised to strike again. Moaning with fear, she closed her eyes, and braced back her shoulders to offer her bubs again. “Keep your eyes open,” he commanded, “I want you to see it coming.” Obediently, she opened them, only to see the steely sliver descend in a silver streak, to strike into her puckered teat itself. She let out a frenzied shriek, and bent from the waist, her elbows coming together in front of her to shield the tender bud from further assault, but in vain. “Straighten up, and put them out,” he barked, “or are you crying ‘enough’ already?” Mustering her resolution, she straightened, and exposed her points again, the right one now oozing redly. It became even wetter as the second cut hit it, and then she was bullied and shamed into exposing the left nipple to the same dreadful treatment. A rest on the wedge came as a welcome relief, and she sat wrapped in agony from breasts mound and buttocks, with tears streaming down her face, the racking sobs shaking her body adding to the distress in her vulva. At the quarter hour, he gave her the choice of a further flogging, or staying on her perch, and she shook her head to indicate she was not yet ready to continue. Fifteen minutes later he took her down and, when she could walk, led her to a frame bolted to the wall where he made her grasp an upper bar, standing on her toes. With cruel deliberation, he flogged her across her alabaster shoulders with a black snake of a whip, until a dozen livid weals scored the pale flesh. She cried out at every stroke, and her upper body writhed from side to side, but she would not let go, and she would not plead for mercy. In the end he broke her by sheer unwavering attrition. He made her bend again, over the trestle this time, and accept his brutal cane across her lower buttocks. He told her, before he started, that this was to be to the finish, and that he would give her a dozen cuts, and then a pause of three minutes to collect her strength and recover her breath, since such a tight bent position restricted the filling of her lungs. He warned her that, after the break, she would have to put her buttocks out for the rod again, and that it would only stop when she begged for mercy, or failed to stick to her post. Then he ordered her to her place. She stuck it out through six frightful dozens. She’d never faced an open-ended sentence before, one which must lead inevitably to defeat, eventually. With no target, or safe haven to aim for, she simply gave herself up to the pain, letting each wave wash over her, as if she were a shipwrecked seafarer, lying in the surf where she had been washed ashore. With her defences lowered, she no longer fought to keep from crying out, and shrieked out her torment at each stroke, and with it, seemed to expel a little of the cane’s vicious bite. She knew she was being wounded behind. The swollen plum coloured bruises throbbed and stung in the so brief respite allowed her, and she could feel the blood trickling down her thighs, as she knelt, exhausted, waiting the command to bent and accept more agony. When the cane descended again, she could feel that it was impacting on wet flesh, and raw meat through her split skin. Though she had managed to ride the pain up till now, these terrible cuts on an open wound lifted the hurt onto an even higher plane that not only was more difficult to endure, but sapped her strength.

And it was exhaustion, rather than lack of will to face further punishment, that finally undid her. On command, she struggled to get her belly onto the trestle for the seventh dozen to her bleeding buttocks, and hung there, her screams audibly weakening, as he thrashed her with no diminution of the force he had deployed from the first. When it was over, her backside now like uncooked beef, she sank sobbing to her knees. At the order to present that raw meat for the eighth dozen, she made a desperate effort to raise herself, but got no more than her tender, striated breasts over the bar, only to scrape them painfully as her body gave up the struggle and slid back, first onto its knees and then, as her strength failed totally, collapsed onto its side, her mind only half conscious that the body had given up. She was vaguely aware of being wrapped in a blanket, of a uniformed chauffeur and a large car, and of finding herself lying on her face on her own bed, her clothes in a plastic sack on the floor and her handbag and keys on her dressing table. It had been a brutal, calculated and inhuman beating, devoid of any personal involvement or contact, designed simply to test the limits of her endurance and, in the process, break her. Well, he had certainly found her physical limit, with the inexorable unending heavy thrashing to which he had subjected her, but she didn’t really accept that she had been broken yet. When she had finally collapsed, she was still struggling to get her belly back on the bar in obedience to his command. To have her spirit broken, as opposed to her body, was an experience yet to come, though she did not doubt that she would be made to endure it one day, on which happy note she slid into deep unconsciousness. She woke, nine hours later, her mind relaxed, even content, but her body stiff, sore, aching all over. As she turned to try and get up for an urgently needed pee, she found the sheet had stuck to the sticky congealed mass on her right haunch, and groaned as it pulled free. She shuffled on stiff legs into the kitchen for coffee and juice, then rang Madame Ruskova, as was standard practice after a session, to report on her condition, and any matters bearing on the client’s practices and preferences for future reference. She gave a brief resume of the night’s events and described the livid state of her behind. Madame said she’d already heard that she had acquitted herself well, and told her to stay in bed while she sent medical assistance. This latter arrived within the hour, in the form of a very large red-headed Irish nurse of about forty, with a brisk and business-like manner, who proceeded to examine her minutely all over, including a speculum survey of her vagina, although she had assured the woman that there had been no penetrative sex, and the insertion of three rubber-gloved fingers deep in her rectum. “Madame would not like it if I failed to give you a complete check-up,” she explained and, big and tough as she was, it was clear from her tone that Madame’s displeasure was something she did not care to provoke. The state of the battered body did not appear to cause her any surprise, as she palped the sore breasts with their scabbed nipples, scored by the fierce kiss of the hardened steel wire. She turned her wincing patient to view the pulpy purple mass on the buttocks which flinched as she drew a forefinger over the ridged weals and the raw, sticky patch where the skin had been broken time and again by whistling thrash of that aching yellow length of cane. “We’ll need Jellonet and a dressing here while you grow some new skin,” she pronounced, “and under your arm, where the whip’s bitten in a few times. A bit of antiseptic cream on the rest of you won’t do any harm, and I’ll give you an antibiotic shot just in case whoever did this wasn’t too careful with hygiene. I’ll come back and see how you’re doing for the next few days, but I’ll be telling Madame that you’ve suffered nothing a healthy woman can’t

take without harm, and should be available for light duties in a week or so. Meanwhile,” she advised, “take plenty of exercise, it will help with the healing and stop you getting stiff and out of condition, and you’ll be ready to work again all the sooner.” She was as good as her word, visiting daily and, for all her intimidating size and nononsense manner, exercising surprising gentleness as she renewed the dressings on armpit, nipples and flank. Obediently, Madeleine resumed her customary exercise routine. She seldom went to the gym these days, her body too often bore telltale marks, as now, but she set aside regular time on the rowing machine, though she would lower her wounded bottom onto the hard moulded seat very gingerly, to the accompaniment of heartfelt groans and sighs, and jogged conscientiously, though the suit rubbed her welted back and tender nipples, and the bouncing motion imparted to her sore breasts made her hiss through her teeth. The big nurse was right though, the exercise speeded her recovery, though she marvelled at herself for the way she cooperated so readily in preparing herself to face further punishing sessions as soon as possible. Within a week she could dispense with the dressings. The nurse pronounced herself satisfied with the patient’s progress, and discontinued her visits. A few days later there was a note from Madame, advising her that she was to expect a client in another three days. “I’m told you have made a good recovery,” she wrote, “and are fit for duty again. This client is happy to agree not to delay your return to an unmarked condition, as he has many amusing little ways of his own that do not involve whipping or similar,”- Madeleine felt an involuntary shudder run down her spine at what that might imply. The shudder somehow ended up in her belly, “-but will, I think, extend you sufficiently. I am enclosing a memorandum of his requirements for your preparation, to be opened on Friday afternoon when you are getting yourself ready.” Friday afternoon saw the arrival of a special delivery package to complement the instructions, and she set herself to carry them out carefully, exactly as given. First she stripped and crouched to insert the over-sized suppository, supplied with the kit, into her tight anus. For ten minutes she exercised vigorously, while the melting gelatine capsule had released its potent contents into her colon, and the demands of her straining belly became almost too urgent to ignore, but she held out against the cramping spasms for the full time stipulated before she allowed herself the relief she craved, squatting on the toilet seat while her over-taxed sphincter relaxed, and her bowels erupted their contents into the bowl. She heaved and grunted for several minutes, them wiped herself, and proceeded to clean and groom her body with infinite care, shaving her underarms, noting with satisfaction that the angry red patch where the whip had caught her had faded into near invisibility, and trimming the luxuriant growth between her thighs. Next a long hot scented bath, followed by a mild borax douche for her vagina and, after careful drying in a large fluffy towel, a soothing application of a gently scented body lotion to every part she could reach, from the backs of her ears to the soles of her feet. A manicure and pedicure were called for next, with pale nail varnish, above and below. While her fingers dried she checked over the instructions once again and, when the varnish was set, went to work, first on her hair, burnishing it into a glossy mane hanging down her back, then on her make-up, restrained almost to the point of primness, but immaculate. The foundations laid, she took out the remaining contents of the Special Delivery package. Silver sandals with four inch heels, narrow thongs separating her big toes from their sisters and her ankles gripped

by thin silver bands that fastened at the front not with a buckle and tongue, but with a clasp carrying a tiny keyhole, which seemed to offer the only means of release once they were snapped shut. From each clasp dangled a small silver ring and linking the rings, a fine silver chain, twelve inches long. Carefully she stepped into the sandals and closed the clasps with a little click. Now she was secured until her Master for the night chose to release her. She took an experimental step and, despite her care, nearly overbalanced as the chain brought her up short; rather more strictly than she had bargained for. She recognised her temporary owner’s foresight in commanding her to commence her preparations early so as to adjust, and set herself to walk naked round the room, learning to accommodate her walk to the twelve inch step imposed by the chain. After a few minutes she began to adapt to the new rhythm and quick stepping gait demanded of her, and very tentatively, tried descending a stair. This was much more awkward, as the twelve inch chain barely let her put one foot down on the next step, but she found she could manage it by always leading with the same foot, so that each stair was, in effect, taken as two paces, rather than one foot swinging past the other to the next tread. The restriction imposed gave her a sense of being controlled, even though she was not directly under anyone’s orders, and raised a discreet warm excitement in her belly. She practised her new gait for twenty minutes, or so, them went back to the package for the next phase. The next item was a silver sheath in a knitted metallic fabric, like fine chain mail. Since her patron obviously didn’t intend her to have any underwear, she slipped it over her head, and smoothed it over her hips. The cool, heavy material clung to her contours from just above her nipples to below her ankles, only the height of her heels keeping it from touching the floor, and spaghetti straps from falling off altogether. The sandals and sheath seemed to be all the clothes she was to have, but the package contained two more items. The first was a wide silver collar, fastened at the front with a similar clasp to those on her ankles, including the dependent ring, but no chain as yet, though she wondered how long that omission would last. The last item was a pair of wrist bands, similar to her ankle straps including the ubiquitous clasps and an eighteen inch chain. Without hesitation she snapped them in place, and turned to look at herself in the full length mirror, seeing a tall silver-clad slave girl, her collar and manacles gleaming in the lamplight, her ankle shackles just visible beneath the hem of her metallic sheath. She practised her walking for a while longer, and explored the limitation on her actions of the chain linking her wrists, until the phone rang to tell her that a car was waiting for her outside. She went down to the foyer of the apartment block, moving now with greater ease, if no more freedom, and gave her key to the porter, hardly needing to explain that there was nowhere in that costume to carry it, and set off to meet her unknown purchaser for the night. She was wearing only what he had sent her, not even her watch, and was ignorant of where she was going, or with whom. A sense of the dangerous unknown created a feeling that would have her wet her knickers, had she been wearing any. As it was it started a warm trickle down the inside of her thigh. Her unknown destination proved to be a very expensive, and very exclusive restaurant, a place that required impeccable references from those who were in, even though you could sign a cheque for millions. It goes without saying that anyone without the millions needn’t bother to apply. The chauffeur had given her no further indication of what was expected of her, merely drawing up in front of the discreet entrance. He opened the car door for her to step very carefully onto the pavement, then resumed his place behind the wheel, and drove smartly off. With little other choice open to her she minced across the pavement, and up the half dozen steps guarding the portal.

CHAPTER FIVE ‘Supping with the Devil’ Thankful that she had tried out the manoeuvre beforehand, she gained the foyer without loss of dignity. Before she could think up any way to explain her presence, she was swept up by the Maitre d’, who expressed delight at seeing her, and requested her to ‘please to follow me’. Relieved at being expected, she duly followed him into the dining room and walked with the most grace that she could muster, tripping along with rapid short steps, her hands demurely together down on her belly, but her head held high as she traversed the long room, past a score of tables at which fashionably dressed women watched her bizarre progress, and their escorts looked at her with frank admiration, mixed with lust, and envy of the man who would possess her. He awaited her at a table set on a raised niche, at the far end of the room, the ascent of the steps giving any watchers a clear view of the cause: especially those who had not guessed the reason for her tiny paces. She saw he was of medium height, with short cropped dark hair, and a suggestion of the Eastern Mediterranean about him, although there was nothing of the Levant in his speech. “I am delighted to see you,” he informed her, “you are everything I was promised. I see you received my gifts and message safely.” “Thank you, yes,” she replied, as formally as he, “I am pleased I am satisfactory.” “I trust you will give every satisfaction,” he rejoined, “but first let me offer you a drink, and then we will see about the menu for this evening.” He ordered a Martini for her and then called for the menu and ordered for them both, without giving her any choice. When the waiter had departed, he passed her a small black suede pouch. “While the food is being prepared, we will have a starter. These are for your lips, though not those you are using to sip that Martini,” he added, “go to the powder room and put them on.” Mystified, but warmly aware of what lips he was referring to, she retraced her delicate path, down the steps and across the room. She was the subject of renewed speculation and desire, not by any means confined to the escorts. Safely in a cubicle, she opened the pouch and took out a short silver chain - was he a silver dealer by any chance, or was it just the trademark? - and saw, attached to each end of the chain, a pair of silver clips. They were of the toggle type, spring loaded for initial grip, and constructed in such a way that any pull on the chain would increase the grip even further ensuring that, however hard the pull, the clip would never slip, but only clamp the tighter. She understood at once what was required and hauled her sheath up over her hips as best she could with her manacled hands. She crouched and spread her thighs, prising open one of the clips, and placing it on her right labia. She hissed through her teeth at the unexpectedly vicious bite, but persevered, opening the other clip and letting it grip her left lip, to a further expression of pain. For a few seconds she remained crouching, trying to assimilate the sting in her tail then, as a certain numbness eased the hurt, she straightened and tried to restore some order to her dress. It was fortunate that the heavy clinging material fell naturally into place for, with her hands fettered, she found it difficult to reach round behind to adjust it. Her mincing gait made even more pronounced by the aching grip on her pussy, she ran the gauntlet of curious eyes, back to the table, and handed back the empty pouch without a word.

“Good. Now you may have your iced melon,” he said in greeting, “but use your hands only. No knives and forks for you, unless I say so.” Obediently she picked up her half moon of juicy fruit in her fingers, and bit into the sweet flesh, the sticky syrup smearing her face as well as stray tendrils of hair that had fallen forward. She reached for her napkin. “Leave that,” he said, sharply, “time for your main course, which goes with the starter.” He handed over the pouch again. Once more the long trek to the ladies’ room, conscious of the other women’s gaze as they took in her sticky face and hair, and of the painful grip on her labia. The ‘main course’ turned out to be a polished silver - what else? - weight, with a hook at one end, and a small eye at the other. It weighed about eight ounces, and she groaned as she imagined what it would feel like when added to the ‘starter’, but pulled up her skirt with her manacled hands, and, very carefully indeed, hooked the weight onto the centre link of the chain spanning her nether lips. She bit her lips as she felt the additional pull on her labia, and the proportionate increase in the bruising pincer grip, but dropped her skirt again, taking a moment to adjust to the new pain, then drew a deep breath, lifted her chin, and set off to rejoin her demanding host. The other diners were now treated to not only the oddity of her gait and posture and the bizarre restraints she flaunted, but also fleeting grimaces of pain which crossed her face at every other step. But she was scarcely conscious of the other women now, her whole mind concentrated on containing the beast pinching at her mound, so as to walk with some semblance of dignity back to her table. The half dozen steps up almost undid her, but she bit her lip, and drove herself to mount them without faltering. She resumed the chair a hovering waiter slid under her, and settled herself with blessed relief, careful to rest the weight on the edge of the seat and take the strain off her tender sex. “I see you’re having a little trouble digesting the main course,” he observed, “still, you should have hurried yourself, your plate is going cold.” She looked at the meal set before her but, mindful of her instructions, made no attempt to take up her knife and fork. “You’re learning,” he acknowledged, and proceeded to feed her with his fork. Kidneys in a rich Marsala sauce, mange tout peas and baby carrots, and the little round pommes parisienne. All the while he kept up a very one-sided conversation, as he alternately put forkfuls into her mouth as if feeding a child, and helped himself to his own meal. He talked about his interests, the opera, books, travel, the theatre. He spoke of the many places he had visited, and the people he met there, but he never let fall any clue as to what his business with them might be, or the source of his wealth. From time to time he held his glass of claret to her lips. Both plates emptied, for she had found a surprising appetite from somewhere, he announced that it was time for dessert and, with a twinge of apprehension, not unmixed with a perverse excitement, she accepted the suede pouch once more and lifted herself, oh so carefully, off her seat, feeling the crabs’ claws in her pussy resume their remorseless grip on her tenderest flesh. Unable to keep all expression out of her face, she made her pain-filled way, with her tiny enforced steps past all the openly staring eyes. She hoped, without much conviction, that they would think she suffered from toothache, though that would hardly explain her strange way of walking. If she had groaned when she saw the ‘main course’ she groaned even deeper now, for the dessert was another weight, fully as big as the first, but with only a hook at the top. Clearly she

was expected to hang it below the other, and bear over a pound weight on her pussy as she walked back, the cylinders hanging in tandem between her thighs, swinging with her motion. With her ankle shackles, she couldn’t even throw dignity to the wind and walk spraddle legged. Gritting her teeth she set off on her now familiar ‘via dolorosa’. If the other diners suspected toothache before, they were probably adding bellyache to the list now, not to speak of the ‘runs’. With set face she slowly mounted the dais again and settled herself onto her chair with infinite care, very conscious that she could not rest both weights on the seat, and that one, at least, would hang over the edge, keeping up the tension on the cruel claws in her labia. He spooned chocolate mouse into her mouth, and onto her face as she flinched from the aching twinges in her flesh. When she was done, and her make up augmented by streaks of darkest Africa, he ordered cognac and a cigar, and a cherry brandy for her. “And here’s something to grip your cherries with,” he added, passing over the pouch once more, “make sure they don’t slip.” The pain of the clips, and the humiliation of exposing herself, soiled and limping once again, to her fellow diners, especially those exquisitely groomed women in their elegant costumes, went through her like a knife. Still she took the ominous suede bag without protest and forced her tortured body to cross the floor, as all heads followed her anguished progress. In the privacy of the lavatory stall she took out the contents of the pouch. Nothing to worry about, surely, in two thin silver wire rings, each about an inch across. But these rings had to grip her cherries, and not slip, and there was only one meaning she could place on that. Well, at least it wasn’t another weight for her lips. A third would be rather more than difficult, though she didn’t suppose that what was coming was going to be a picnic. Her host seemed to have a very carefully calculated scale of torments, ranging from ‘difficult’ to ‘downright unbearable’, but ‘easy’ was definitely not on his list. She shrugged the shoelace straps of the gown off her shoulders, letting it fall to expose her breasts, her nipples hardened by the sexual arousal she always experienced, when subjected to treatment such as this. “You wouldn’t be so cocky if you knew what was coming to you,” she told them, “but then again, you do know, and you are,” she sighed. She pulled one ring open, springing it with difficulty until the rounded ends of the wire could be pushed over her right teat. Her nipples were quite large, and very well defined at any time. In their fear and lust hardened state they stood out like the cherries he had described, with a distinct neck joining them to the pink aureoles of her breasts. A nice decision, where best to place the ring, but she pushed the points until they trapped the fleshiest part, and slowly let them close. The pain was indescribable. She had never been pierced, yet, she somehow felt that it was inevitable one day, but she imagined that a quick clean pass of the needle would be preferable to this ongoing scorpion bite in her tender dug. She whined through her nose as she fought to avoid crying aloud, and being heard by other women in the stalls, or at the basins. Gradually the pain sank from unbearable to merely excruciating, and she realized that she still had to subject her other nipple to the same agony. Jaw clenched, she set about the task of inflicting the prescribed torture on the pouting morsel of pink flesh. God, how it hurt! This was going to be bad. She had worn nipple clips before, men seemed to find them irresistible, women did too but in a different sense, they had clamped the whole fleshy nub and cut off the circulation, so that the pain faded into numbness. Admittedly it was hell when the clips were released, and the blood rushed back into the starved tissue, but these rings, pressing as they did on mere points, seemed likely to maintain their cringe-inducing torment with undiminished venom indefinitely.

She adjusted the top of her dress, trying to ignore the excruciating stabbing pain in her teats, and composed herself to face the long journey back to the table. It could not be said that she had actually forgotten the tearing grip on her pussy, but she’d had to give her best attention to the new problem in her nipples and while she was standing still, the aching bite on her labia had been sustainable. Now she had to move, and the agony down below could not be ignored. She tried to keep her head up and her face impassive, but in vain, as waves of pain swept through her with every step, causing her to screw up her face as if she had eaten a lemon, while sudden hissing intakes of breath marked where the weights had swung extra violently, or the throbbing in her nipples reached a sudden crescendo. “I hope you were able to grip your cherries satisfactorily,” remarked her host, “they’re such slippery little things.” She nodded, dumbly, and he went on, “I believe the best way to hold them is to spit them on a cocktail stick, but I’m expected to return them as I found them.” He picked up her glass and held it to her lips, and she sipped avidly at the sweet strong liquor, grateful for its fortifying warmth as it entered her stomach. She needed all her strength to cope with the torments he had inflicted on her or, rather, had her inflict on herself. And the evening was not over yet as she was about to find out, for he leaned forward and fixed her with a compelling gaze. “Would you care to dance?” he asked, holding her eyes with his. She did not flinch, but accepted his challenge with an almost imperceptible nod, and struggled painfully to her feet, gasping as the full weight was restored to her labia. The dance floor was a tiny circle, only room for half a dozen couples at the most, and the live group played music for body contact, not disco style. She rested her manacled hands on his shoulders while he pressed her close to him, her breasts crushed against his chest, which did nothing for her tortured nipples. With considerable expertise, he guided her round the circle, forcing steps on her that took her shackles to full stretch, but not beyond. Even so it was a demanding situation. Even the slightest movement, the most restrained action, swung and jerked on the clamps in her lips, and the merciless pincers, digging into her nipple, felt as if they must pierce right through, and meet at the centres of the tender pink buds. Perhaps it would be less painful if they did. He kept her dancing through that number, and the next and, by the time he returned her to the table, she was close to tears. He gave her a few minutes to recover, then announced that it was time to go. “All that remains is the tip,” he said, holding her gaze again, “the tip is the most sensitive issue, properly handled, it ensures complete and unstinting service. Do you take my meaning?” She looked at him steadily for no more than a second, then nodded, resignedly, and held out her hand. He didn’t bother with the pouch this time, but laid a tiny, but powerful, spring loaded clip on her palm. A silver bell, such as one might put on a cat’s collar, hung from it on a short, fine silver chain. She closed her fingers on it and started, once more, the painful process of struggling to her feet, ready to limp across the dining room, under the watching eyes of the fashionable diners. As she turned to leave he called after her, “I will settle up here. Wait for me in the foyer.” Back in a lavatory stall for the fifth time that evening, people must think her gastric condition critical by now, she hauled up her dress, and crouched, opening her knees wide to expose her suffering vulva. The labia were stretched downward so tightly by the tandem weights as to defeat her purpose, so she positioned herself over the lavatory seat and rested the weights on it to relieve the tension somewhat. Now she could get freely at the engorged nub of her clitoris. Of course, in its aroused state, it had been protruding between the upper portions of the

stressed labia but she needed better access to it if she was to carry out what her companion had so delicately indicated he required. Now she could stroke the little spear to its maximum stature, and free it from the folds around it, so that it stood out, red and proud. Taking a deep breath, she positioned the opened clip around the sensitive point, as he had described it, and carefully released it until it started to grip the delicate bud. Her breath escaped, half whistle, half hiss, all pain. It hurt. Oh, how it hurt! She steeled herself to relax her grip on the clip, and allow the full force of its jaws to bite into her, but she could not bear the agony, and pressed down again to relieve the pressure. She made a second, and then a third, attempt to relax her hold completely, then, sobbing with pain and failure, steeled herself for one last effort. She closed her eyes, let go of the clip, and jammed her knuckles in her mouth, biting on her fingers almost to the bone, mewling and snorting through her nose, as she tried to ride out the atrocious hurt. She swayed and keened and held on, and little by little the terrible anguish dropped to a level where, albeit with great difficulty, she could just about contain the pain. She stood, and took the whole weight of the ‘main’ and ‘dessert’, while she straightened her gown as best she could, then left the stall and shuffled out. She had abandoned any hope of appearing to move normally up to the foyer, but moved slowly, a silvery tinkle marking her pain-filled progress. She stood with her back to the wall, obediently awaiting her Master’s appearance, half lost in a fog of pain. Suddenly she became aware that someone stood in front of her, observing her agonised grimace. It was a woman she had been conscious of before, who had seemed to take a special interest in her so frequent crossings of the floor. One of the most elegant and fashionable of the diners, about her own age, with a short crop of brightest gold, which showed off the beautiful skull and perfect facial structure. She wore diamond drops in her ears, and a deep collar of white fire. Matching bracelets adorned both wrists, and she wore her diamonds like trophies of war, or were they a slave’s regalia? “I expect you found the main course and dessert quite satisfying,” she remarked in a quiet, cultured tone, “and the cherry brandy’s very bracing, but, personally, I found our friend’s tipping policy the most impressive, certainly it encourages the provision of one’s best service. Enjoy the rest of your evening.” And she was gone. She knew! The bitch knew, she’d been put through the hoop too, damn her! Through her pain, Madeleine realised with a shock that for one moment she’d been consumed by jealousy, so that for one instant, she’d almost forgotten her pain and humiliation. Jealousy of this unknown woman, because this unknown man, she didn’t even know his name, had woven the same tapestry of agony on her body as on her own. She shook away the madness, and concentrated on the anguish that filled her body, the crab-like grip on her lips, the terrible pincers in her breasts and, above all, the stabbing, throbbing, shrieking pain where the bunched ends of all her erotic highways met in her clitoris, and were being crushed by the fiendish little clamp. Again she was roused from her pain-induced paralysis by the presence of a watcher. This time it was her host, her client, her Master for the time being, who beckoned to her to follow. In the car he waited while she settled in her seat, all her hurts reactivated by the contortions required to enter the vehicle. “Your place or mine?” he asked, casually, “Yours, I think. It will save Carl having to take you back later.” All the way he kept up his one-sided conversation about contemporary life and Art, apparently content with her nods and mmms. She collected her key from the desk, ignoring the

curious looks engendered by her bizarre costume and the tinkling sound that accompanied every movement, and led her host, now her guest, into her apartment. “You can offer me coffee and some more brandy,” he graciously conceded, “while I look forward to what further delights you can serve me.” Once more she obeyed him without demur, then stood docilely, awaiting his further orders. “Hoist your dress to your waist,” he instructed, “and bend over the table. Put your feet as far apart as the chain allows. Flex your knees, and open yourself up as far as you can go.” He continued to sit, sipping his brandy and contemplating her bare buttocks, her parted thighs, her openly offered vulva, distorted now by the downward pull of the weights which stretched it into a narrow slit, and the little brown anal dimple. He noted the fading spoor of the cold-blooded, emotionless thrashing she had endured only a fortnight before. The welts had subsided to pale multicoloured tracks, while the raw patch on her right buttock showed freshly healed pink skin. “I agreed with Madame that I wouldn’t whip you tonight, but now I’ve met you I’ll certainly give myself that pleasure in the future. I understand your services are much in demand, and I’ll have to wait a while for a white bottom to work on,” he added, “so for now, I’ll just consider whether to fuck you, or if perhaps buggery would be best.” Lying across the table, the hard edge digging into her belly, her sore breasts pressed against its surface, the weights, hanging free in this position, dragging at her labia and, still the supreme torture, the hateful clamp squeezing hot jets of agony from her clitoris, she still managed a flush of arousal at the threats to her vagina and bum. She heard him put down his glass, and go into the bathroom. She waited, motionless, while she listened to him rummaging in her bathroom cabinet. A moment later, and he was behind her again, and she felt cold cream pressed into her anus. So it was to be buggery then, most men chose it when then saw her displayed thus, especially with her buttocks marked by the rod. A fresh erotic spasm traversed her belly, despite the pain that filled it, or perhaps that merely intensified her lust. His hands gripped her rear cheeks, his thumbs pressing either side of the anointed anus, and then she felt the rock hard tip of his ready member probing the puckered brown mouth. The pressure increased, adding the pain of a stretched sphincter to the myriad hurts she had already incurred, and then he launched himself in an all out thrust, deep into her rectum. The shock and the pain wrenched one sharp cry from her and then she relapsed into gasps and moans, as he proceeded to ride her steadily, deep, implacable, heedless of her groans. As she felt his lust build to climax, her own flowered too, and when he discharged into her ravaged bowel, she cried out again, not from the additional pain his last violent thrusts occasioned in her crushed sexual parts, but to celebrate the shattering climax which released the tensions building all night to this unbearable summit. Totally exhausted by pain, lust, and their consummation, she collapsed over the table. Abandoning her there, his semen leaking from her bruised anus, her lust trickling from her oozing vagina, he adjusted his fly, and got ready to leave. At the door he turned. “I’ve paid for your use for the night, so you’ll keep those clips on until breakfast time, say, nine o’clock. I’ll arrange for the key to your fetters to be delivered in the morning.” Dimly, she heard the door close behind him.

CHAPTER SIX‘ ‘Duty and Discipline’ It was a trying night. She had dragged her aching body off the table, wincing as the weights took up their unrelenting tension in her nether parts, and crawled into her bed. As so many times before, the exhaustion brought on by so much pain, and sexual excitement, with the ultimate satisfaction of consummation, carried her down into sleep, despite her hurts, but in the night the call of nature became too powerful to resist. She staggered out of bed, and the returning awareness of the evil little silver torturers that still gripped her tenderest part, hit her like a blow. She gave a little scream, and clutched her groin with manacled hands, as if to grasp the clamps through the chain mail of the silver dress, and shuffled her way to the bathroom. As so many times already in this long night of agony, she worked the dress up over her hips, and sat on the lavatory to relieve the tension in her bladder in a long golden stream. When she stood again, she was conscious that there was nothing to stop her removing the crippling clamps and weights. Nothing that was except her client’s wishes. She was contracted to suffer in the manner he had devised, even though he was not present, and she would honour the contract. It was not as easy to sleep now, her first exhaustion relieved, but eventually she dozed off. In the morning she could do little in the way of refresh herself. Of course she could shower in the dress, but she couldn’t get dry. The idea of cutting the spaghetti straps was out of the question, it belonged to the Master, the man of silver, and she was obligated to him until nine o’clock. Eight thirty, and the phone rang. It was the front desk to say there was a letter for her for immediate delivery, and the porter was on his way up. She cracked open her door to take a white envelope, just the kind she’d often seen on the desk in the foyer. She was pretty certain that ‘Mr Silver’ had left it the previous night, together with a generous contribution to the porter’s benevolent fund, and instructions not to deliver it until the morning. Well, he was rich enough to buy such service, just as he had bought hers, and she would keep her side of the bargain, to the bitter end. And bitter it was. The clips had been on hr lips and nipples for nearly twelve hours now, and were almost more than she could bear. She spent the last half hour sitting on a plump cushion, her ankles crossed, at least the shackles allowed that, so that the weight was taken off her labia and she could part her thighs without putting any inadvertent pressure on the clip that was crucifying her with its grip on her shrieking clitoris. She sat cradling her sore breasts in her arms, rocking backwards and forwards as a low, anguished keening sound escaped her lips. The figures of the digital clock seemed frozen. Hours seemed to pass before it would reluctantly concede another minute, while she hugged her pain and moaned, but finally nine o’clock appeared and, with a low groan, she got to her knees and opened the envelope. She found a tiny silver key, and a card, on which he’d written, “WE WILL MEET AGAIN WHEN YOUR ARSE IS WHITE.” She had no time to shudder at the implications of that message, other messages from her tortured parts were too urgent. Quickly she removed her sandals with their built in shackles, then her manacles. She ignored the collar, and turned her attention to the scorpion devices in her flesh. Her hands free now, it was the work of seconds to peel the silver sheath over her head, to stand nude and aching, her hands on her breasts. She examined the martyred nipples. The point pressure of the ring ends had not cut off all circulation to the points they gripped, but they were

swollen and bruised, no longer pink, but an angry purple, swelling around the wire ends that all but met in the middle, so deeply had they sunk into the tender flesh. Though she had not worn clips quite like these before, she had enough experience to know that the worst moments had yet to be faced, indeed inflicted on herself, before she could find relief, at last, from these devil’s bites. Very carefully she drew the ends of the ring apart, relieving the pressure on the points, but unable to spring them far enough apart to get them clear of the hideously swollen and distorted nipple. As the blood flowed back into the crushed flesh, the pain hit her like a rising tide. She gritted her teeth and snatched the ring free, to the accompaniment of a sharp cry. Now it all had to be done again on the other nipple. Another minute, another cry, and she was cupping her sore and throbbing nipples in her hands, but not for long. The poor stretched labia and crushed clitoris still cried out for liberation, even though the road to it was lined with more excruciating pain. The weights first. That’s the easy bit, just a welcome removal of the tension, but now the clamps, buried deep in tumified labial flesh, as purple as the nipples, must be released, and she knew very well that this was going to hurt. She had to pull the jaws out of the flesh to which they had stuck under the prolonged and unrelenting pressure, and groaned with her pain as each came away. She rubbed the bruised lips until the throbbing hurt had subsided to manageable proportions, then turned her attention to the pulsing stub of her clitoris, swollen now to twice the size it attained under even the fiercest arousal, darkly bruised, and crushed out of recognition by the pressure of the tiny jaws. She knew, instinctively, for a moment, it was going to be sheer hell, but it was hell while she delayed too, and it would have to be faced. She held the deadly little mechanism gently, trying not to aggravate the effect it was having, then with one quick movement squeezed down hard to open the jaws, and whipped it away from her tortured nubbin. As the tiny teeth pulled out of the swollen flesh to which it clung, she shrieked out loud at the shaft of agony which lanced her centre, dropped the fiendish clip and clasped her hands over her wounded vulva. It was several minutes before she could control her sobs and moans sufficiently to straighten up, and take her hands from between her thighs. Now, at last, she could take the bath for which she longed so much. She was sweaty and stained from what she had endured these last twelve hours. Perspiration had matted her hair, her face still bore the traces of the melon juice, the gravy, the chocolate sauce, from where he had fed her like a child before the watching women and their escorts, and between her thighs, she stank of the sticky sexual emissions, both his and hers. The long hot soak did wonders for her bruised mind, as well as her swollen flesh and soiled body. By the time she had dried herself again, her sore nipples and battered vulva had subsided to a dull, and somewhat erotic, throbbing, while she had acquired that warm feeling of satisfaction which was her real reward for the pain filled sessions she submitted to. Glowing, inside and out, she collected the discarded souvenirs of her martyrdom, the sandals with their ankle chain, the wrist fetters, the clips and rings, noting that they were all solid silver, and packed them in a drawer. She picked up the crumpled silver sheath and hung it in the wardrobe, and it was only then, clad only in her towel, she made for the kitchen, that she recalled the collar on her neck. She put up a hand to finger the broad, smooth hoop, and touch the still locked clasp, but continued on her way, ravenous for her breakfast. It stayed around her neck all week as, in the euphoria that always followed when she had been made to suffer, she threw herself into the freelance work that screened what was now her ‘real’ life. The following week Madame returned her to ‘light duties’, in this case a dinner party for four wealthy and sophisticated couples, satiated with straight sex and always willing to pay for

some bizarre scene. She had to serve them naked, though they accepted her collar, a fixture now. Since her bottom was still ‘out of bounds’, waiting for the last faint traces to fade so that she could be offered unblemished to some cruel rod, they punished her faults, mostly imaginary, by caning her hands. The women were the worst. The men simply enjoyed having her lush nudity to hand, and exercising their mastery by inflicting pain on her whenever the excuse, however flimsy, occurred. The women tried to humiliate her at every turn: besides whipping her poor swollen hands with just as much ferocity, and with an unreasoning hatred, it seemed, underlying all their actions. The evening had started innocuously enough. She’d had to strip in front of the exquisitely expensively dressed women. She’d dressed conservatively enough in black and white for the occasion, though even her simplest clothes tended to display a touch of elegance these days, with her high income. “Those things are sheer presumption on a girl of her class,” one declared, “C & A would be more suitable for the slut. Have her strip like the bitch she is.” And so she’d had to strip in front of them all, meekly folding her dress and underwear as instructed, and retaining only her shoes and her silver collar. They then went on to made a critical survey of her body and appearance. Every aspect was covered, with verdicts ranging from at best damnation by faint praise, to outright sneering, and all delivered in casual comments to one another, behaving as if she were not present or, even more humiliating, as if she were some dumb animal, incapable of human speech. They thought her glorious glossy mane ‘lacked sophistication’ or ‘had a touch of vulgarity’, that her firm shapely breasts made ‘a meagre little bosom’ and tweaked her nipples cruelly. They slandered her flat taut belly by calling it a ‘paunch’ and drove their fists into her with enough force to drive her breath out, doubling her up with their blows, and then told her to ‘stand up girl, and don’t slouch. You’re getting round shoulders’. They told her she had a fat arse and flabby thighs, that her feet were too big, and her toes bent, that her body hair was disgusting and her skin coarse, her make-up was pathetic and she smelt. By the time they had completed their assessment of her she felt more humiliated than ever she had at the hands of any of the men, who had put her to degrading tasks, made her sweat or soil herself, or had mocked at her labours. Now she had to serve these mocking harpies. At every turn they made trouble for her. If she but came near, a glass would be spilled and, condemned without appeal, she would have to hold out each hand in turn to receive four cuts with a thin whippy cane, bringing tears to her eyes, strangled cries from her throat, and extra strokes if she dropped her hand between cuts. Her service was too slow or surly; her portions too large or too small; her arm was jogged deliberately, to make her spill vegetables or sauces; dirty plates were tipped to drop cutlery to the floor; and then she would be reprimanded for bending her knees if she did so, and for grossness in displaying her buttocks if she failed to bend them. Through a long three courses, and through the coffee and liquors that followed, they made her life a misery with their constantly humiliating talk, with the repetition, time and again, of the cruel cane cuts, until her hands were jellied bruises, above all by the sheer injustice and vindictiveness of the women’s attacks. Having served their appetite for food, she had to serve their lust. Bent over the table she had cleared so painfully with her aching hands, she received the men from behind. Three were content to thrust into her receptive vagina until they came, spurting their spunk deep inside, to slowly seep out, and down her thighs but, inevitably it seemed, she had to endure buggery yet

again, as the last forced her anus brutally, making her grunt and gasp before he, too, discharged his load in her belly. All the while the women mocked her, commenting on how the slut looked like a mare or a cow, offering her rump to the male, and then, the men having used her, it was their turn. The first two, as she had foreseen, had her use her mouth to bring their already seething lust to the boil. First a tight black sheath was pulled up over slim hips, and lace panties dropped to the floor, to reveal fine silky blonde wisps above gently pouting pink lips. It was no hardship to suck and lick at this delicate mound until the parted thighs quivered in ecstasy, and its owner twisted her hands in the dark mane to emphasis her coming. Then voluminous velvet folds hoisted to show a thick, dark forest, sprawling, without benefit of knickers, between the rounded thighs. She had to use her throbbing fingers to part the thicket before she could thrust her tongue through the coarse hairs to seek out the sensitive bud of the clitoris, and coax out the only too ready orgasm. The third had not been able to contain herself, as she watched her sisters in lechery mounting to ecstasy, her busy finger under her skirt had brought on her own climax before her turn of the weary tongue came round. She took her revenge, for she blamed her premature release on the ‘slut’, naturally, by presenting, not her groin, but her fat white arse-cheeks, and demanding that the bitch lick out her rear hole. Grimacing with disgust and humiliation, her nose jammed into the tight cleft so that she could hardly breathe, the submissive ‘maid’ obeyed. The fourth caught her totally off guard. Instead of coming to her head, as expected, to demand service of her cunt, or, like her predecessor, the brown dimple of her anus, the last of the quartet, came to her rear, and proceeded to work her vulva, and especially her engorged clitoris, until she writhed on the table, desperate for release. But release was not granted. Her tormentress seemed able to judge with uncanny accuracy just when the dam was about to burst, and let her passions flood, and, on the very brink of detonation, would drive her scarlet talon of a thumb-nail so cruelly into the tender spear that the rising lava was driven down by the pain, and her cry was one of anguish, not ecstasy. Three times she nearly came, only to be driven back from the crest by the tearing agony of the talon thrust into the, now bleeding, bud, before the hand withdrew and dismissed her, still unsatisfied, with a contemptuous slap on the buttock. She stood it to the end, but her face was streaked with tears, and her chest heaved with sobs as she helped them on with their coats, and held the door for their departure, while they thanked their host, and recommended that he take the ‘maid’ in hand. ‘She couldn’t help being clumsy but, at least, get her to shape up, and not look quite so common a slut’. It had been mortifying and painful. Her hands had hurt so that she could hardly dress herself, and the freelance work went into suspension, she couldn’t hold a pen, or work a keyboard for days. They were so stiff and sore that masturbation would have been unsatisfactory, even if the wounds inflicted by the razor sharp talons had allowed it. As it was she could not bear to touch herself there for days. A week passed, her hands and clitoris healed, her bottom was pronounced pristine, and the call to duty came again. As so often, she was given no more than a time to expect a car to call for her, though she knew that she was available again and, with rich men queuing for the privilege of transforming her smooth white buttocks into a ridged and bleeding, purple mass, she was on her way to another severe whipping. Her throat tightened, her knees trembled, as the car rolled smoothly across town, but there was a matching warmth in her belly and moisture wetted the glossy hairs along the folds of her labia.

She cringed at the thought of the cane cutting into her bottom, yet again. These men, who could afford the five grand that secured the use of her body for the night as easily as the average kerb-crawler parted with fifty pounds for a quick blow job, were men who habitually expected the best for their money, and extracted the last drop of value from their purchase, and for most of them that meant the cane on her soft white flesh. And not any light weight swishers, but solid lengths of yellow rattan, heavy and bruising, that could break her tender skin in one blow if there was wrist and weight behind it, or black Malaccas, with a joint like a skeletal knuckle every two inches that left a trail of connected blisters across her hinds, each oozing stickily where the blood was forced through the over stressed skin. God, how she hated the cane. So why did she submit to it? The money? She certainly was making a great deal, but her lifestyle was, in fact, little different from before she had taken to the life, and she would have been comfortable enough if she’d taken the offer from ‘Hells Bells’. And she quite definitely did not enjoy the pain and degradation heaped upon her, and especially the yellow and black rods that seemed to cut right to the heart of her. No, it was an amalgam of pride in achievement and sexual satisfaction, that brought her back, time and again, to face, or rather, expose her buttocks to, the withering cuts her temporary masters inflicted on her shrinking flesh. Pride, in that she was unique. There was no other woman operating in the exalted circle of her monied clients who would, or could, accept the punishment she endured, several times a month. Achievement, when she had held out against a prolonged cruel thrashing, or some other taxing ordeal, which had driven her to the limit of her physical resources, without breaking her resolve to go on taking it. Finally, sexual satisfaction. Whether she had come to orgasm while her battered body was penetrated by the master, climaxes of seismic proportions that left her spent and shattered, or had been dismissed without such physical release, she was always filled with a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction after each adventure, one which carried through for days at a time. The limousine entered an area of fashionable squares, tall Georgian town houses, with pillared doorways lining the sides, each much like the others. There did seem something familiar, though, about the house at which the chauffeur set her down. She went up the half dozen steps into the portico, and stopped dead. A neat label by the entry phone spelt out HELWORTHY. No wonder it seemed familiar, she had been here to meet Maurice Helworthy, of Helworthy Bellman, ‘Hells Bells’, when he had offered her the job, which she had turned down without explanation. How could she face him now? She turned and fled. Madame was not pleased. She did not raise her voice, but Madeleine, standing on the rug before the ornate table that served Madame as a desk, felt like a delinquent school girl, up before the Head. “You have failed me badly,” Madame Ruskova informed her, “and broken our agreement. You understood perfectly well, when you accepted my conditions, that I would decide when and where you worked, and who for. I was perfectly aware of your previous connection with Maurice Helworthy, and considered that there was no reason why you should not be sent to him, just like any other client who is on our approved list. His discretion is guaranteed. As I told you before, we have powerful friends, and our clients know it, and none would step out of line. As to any personal embarrassment you might suffer, that is of no importance, and, if Maurice should take the opportunity to settle a personal score, once he realised who his slave for the night was, that would probably result in a very satisfied client, even if it did result in an extra sore bottom. Do you understand?”

Madeleine shuffled her feet. This was getting more like the Headmistress’s study every minute. Was she going to order her ‘six of the best’ next? She looked at the floor and said, “Yes, Madame.” The steely eyes regarded her coldly. “You’ve broken our agreement, and you’ve caused me to let a valued client down. Of course, I shall send you to Maurice another time soon, but first you must be punished.” Madeleine shivered. What sort of beating could she expect from this implacable mistress? Instead of the expected command to bare herself for the whip, Madame handed down a quite different sentence. “To compensate me for loss of your earnings, you will do a week’s duty as a common whore, at fifty pounds a throw. I’m sending you to a brothel we’ve connections with. Bertha runs it, and she’ll see you work. You’ll put your back into it, because I shall tell her to give any customer his money back if he’s not entirely satisfied, and you’ll stay just as long as it takes to make up the five thousand. One hundred satisfied customers, it’s up to you how soon you get out.” Madelaine’s heart sank as she heard this dire sentence. There was no way she was going to be able to mitigate the effect by obtaining any sexual gratification from it. She was embarked on her current career precisely because straight sex, even with a considerate and skilled lover, left her with something missing, and a procession of uncaring anonymous males would do nothing for her, as Madame had astutely calculated, when she devised this daunting punishment. If she was to get out in a week, she’d have to service fifteen men a day, not counting any who were dissatisfied with her performance, and did the brothel get enough customers every day of the week to sustain that? There’d be other girls who’d demand their share of the trade, and she’d have to make up the shortfall by taking two dozen or more on nights when trade was brisk, or stay in the brothel for days more. Miserably, she nodded her acceptance of Madame’s judgement on her. “Very good, I’ll send you over with my driver at once, but there’s one more matter to attend to first. Follow me.” And she left the room, leaving Madeleine to trail after. She led her to a bathroom, where she bent to adjust the taps of the bidet, calling over her shoulder, “Take off your knickers and lift your skirt.” At a loss as to what special hygiene requirements were called for prior to her unwelcome stint in the brothel, but not anxious to provoke the still angry Madame further, she meekly obeyed, slipping her knickers down to her ankles, and stepping out of them before hoisting her skirt up to her waist, feeling the air cool on her unmarked buttocks, a condition that had, indirectly, led to this disciplinary hearing. Her vulva and belly crawled with apprehension at the bruising fate that stretched before them, this next week or more. Satisfied with her settings, Madame Ruskova indicated that she should stand over the bidet. “Legs wide apart, please, as wide as they will go. Now sit.” As she bent her knees to obey, her balance somewhat impaired by the wide-legged stance imposed upon her and the need to hold onto her raised skirt, Madame bent quickly and seized her ankles, pulling them forward, trapping Madeleine’s legs between her own calves, taking her completely by surprise, as her buttocks dropped with a smack onto the porcelain. She leaned her weight on the younger woman’s shoulders, pinning her in place. Madeleine screamed. Madame’s adjustments had been to ensure that the water from the jet, now playing with full force on her exposed vulva, was at maximum temperature. Not boiling, to be sure, but quite hot enough to scald the delicate genitals. She grabbed at the hands holding

her down and tried to rise, but her feet, straight out in front of her, could get no proper purchase, and Madame’s strong hands kept her inexorably glued to the seat, while the hot jet licked at her par boiled vulva like the tongue of some hellish demon lover. Madame kept her pinned, screaming, to the bidet for a long count of ten, before releasing her and stepping back while the tortured woman leapt from her scalding seat, clutching her excoriated vulva, and emitting broken moans and sobs. When she had quieted a little, Madame resumed as if she had done nothing more than help her wash her face. “I do not intend that you should get any sensual benefit from your sexual exertions, nor do I believe they will be to your taste, but just to make sure, you should now have a sore enough cunt to ensure there’ll be no selfish pleasure to divert you from giving your customers full satisfaction. Now, stop snivelling and sort yourself out. The car will be here at any time to take you off to do penance. Remember, I expect to be paid in full. You’ve been let off very lightly this time, just don’t even think of crossing me again, or you’ll really regret it.” Still sobbing with pain and shock, she dabbed herself dry, rubbing was out of the question with her blanched labia and inner membranes, and eased her knickers carefully back in place. Walking awkwardly, trying not to let her inner thighs rub together, or fret her genitals, she made to pick up her bag. “Leave that where it is,” she was commanded, “you won’t need that where you’re going, and you can pick it up when you’ve earned enough to pay your debt.” Bertha’s establishment was in a large, rather tasteless apartment which took up almost an entire floor of a small block just off the Edgeware Road. Bertha herself was a very large blonde, showing the traces of handsomeness in her youth that now, in her late forties, had gone somewhat to fat. She was immensely powerful, and with a look in her eye that commanded obedience from clients and ‘girls’ alike. She had either been in conversation with Madame, or recognised at once from Madeleine’s ansty waddle, that her new resident had received a fiery baptism into the congregation of whores, for she had her bare herself at once from the waist down, and gave her antiseptic cream to apply to the now red and peeling inner and outer lips. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I give a damn about your comfort,” she growled. Madeleine hadn’t entertained the notion for a minute, but deemed it wise to keep that thought to herself. “I don’t want you getting infected. You’re here to work, and the punters could be put off if you’re all messy down there. On the subject of work,” she continued, “you’ll take all the customers I send you, and you’ll do well to work hard to see that they’re happy. I believe Madame R has told you they get their money back if they complain you didn’t put your back into it. Actually she was not quite right there. They get half their money back, I keep the rest, and I decide if they made a complaint, so I’m always going to side with the punter. You get the picture?” She did indeed, and not a very pretty one at that. This coarse and avaricious woman would have complete control of her for the next week, or however long it took her to work her way over, round or on, one hundred satisfied pricks, not counting those who complained, or into whose heads this terrible creature put the idea that, after all, they were not quite one hundred percent satisfied. “One more thing,” the blowsy flesh mountain, made all the more monstrous by the several acres of plum coloured velvet in which her ample flesh was cased like sausage in its skin, added, “the first three tricks of the day go towards your room and keep. You don’t think I’m doing this for charity, do you?”

Madeleine thought she was doing it to keep in with Madame R, and the shadowy, but much feared, ‘friends’ behind her, but kept her own counsel. “It won’t be necessary for you to take my keep out of my earnings,” she said, “instead, I’ll pay you for them myself.” “Oh, yes! And how does Madam propose to do that? Do you have the cash tucked in your knickers perhaps? We don’t give credit here, you know.” Madeleine realised she was trapped. Madame R had her bag, with her cash, her cheques, her credit cards. No doubt she had done it deliberately to make sure she had to take another three lustful males a day. That could quite likely mean another two dozen before she could get clear of here. The target was mounting alarmingly. Bertha showed her a small, sparsely furnished room, a wardrobe, a small dressing table, with drawers and a mirror, a wash basin and, of course, a bed. “You’ll work here,” she said, “and sleep here too, when there’s no more punters. You may get a lie in mornings, business is pretty slack up to lunchtime, but nights you go on till there’s no more wants you. You don’t have to worry about the money, I’ll take care of that, all you have to do is take care of the punter, any which way he likes, and, as I said, make it good, or it won’t count.” She looked around the room, and spotted the phone by the bed. “Oh, yes. Normally, the girls just do the business, then come back to the lounge, to pick up another. It’ll be up to you to compete for the custom when things are slack, but times we’re real busy, you can use the phone when one leaves, and I’ll send you another, as long as you can keep it up. Now come and meet the girls.” Back down the corridor which linked all the rooms to a lounge, all gold and red Dralon, red velvet curtains, deep pile nylon carpet. Three young women sat around in their underwear and blatant make-up, reading, smoking mending clothes. “OK, girls, this is Madeleine. Show her where everything is, and how we operate round here. By the way,” she added from the doorway, “she’s new to the whoring game, so you can start saving your johnnies.”

CHAPTER SEVEN ‘Hard, Pounding Gentlemen’ Two blondes and a little oriental with long straight black hair half way down her back. Well, blondes on top, at any rate. Madeleine noticed that Carol, with a head like brass, showed glimpses of a dark thicket between her thighs as she uncrossed her legs beneath the slip that seemed to be all she was wearing, other than gold fur trimmed mules and too much make-up. She was large and loud, and the other two seemed to have accepted her as their leader. “Hi! I’m Carol, and these two are Maggie and Lo lei.” Maggie looked as if she might have a better claim to the blonde title, with her soft pale shoulder length hair, though Madeleine was unable to make the necessary check at the time, for Maggie sported bra and pants under an open wrapper. Her rather sharp features and thin mouth, even after her attempt to disguise it with generous application of scarlet lipstick, lent her a slightly vicious look. Lo Lei also showed a certain hardness, probably only to be expected from someone living in an establishment like this for any length of time. Her slight build and round features gave her a very girlish look, no doubt much appreciated by many of the patrons, but when she spoke, Madeleine put her age in the twenties rather than teens, and her background as British born Chinese rather than an immigrant from Hong Kong or Singapore. Maggie revealed herself as Liverpool Irish as soon as she spoke, probably come to the ‘Smoke’ at sixteen to get away from home, and taste the good life. That would have been two or three years back now, and it was the ‘life’ she had found, without the ‘good’. Carol herself was mid-twenties, large and powerful, without being much overweight; big breasts, big hips, a voluptuous woman that looked as if she could eat a man whole. “Bertha said you’re new to whoring, so I ‘spect you’re a discipline. Your feller think you’ve been stepping out of line, does he?” Madeleine didn’t feel like going into explanations, so just nodded, and left them to draw their own conclusions. “OK, here’s how it works. Once the punters start arriving, you have to be here, showing your wares. Actually, we mostly don’t bother to dress much anyway. One thing about this lousy place, at least Bertha keeps it warm and you can go about with your cunt nicely aired.” The others tittered dutifully at their leader’s wit, and she went on, “Once you’ve caught someone’s eye, you take him to your room. It’s all got ready for you. There’s a girl, Lizzie, a bit simple, but a good sort really, who makes sure you’ve got a good supply of clean towels for the punters each morning, and checks your stock of rubbers. You throw the towels in the basket, and put the johnnies in the jar on your dresser.” “Excuse me, but what are johnnies, and why does Bertha want them saved?” The two younger whores tittered again, but Carol silenced them with a look. “Take no notice of them,” she said, “they’re just showing their ignorance. Johnnies are what we call the used rubbers. You tie a knot in the neck to keep the spunk in, and put them in the jar.” Madeleine didn’t like to press her further, and let go of the question of why they should be saved up. “If it looks as if we’re busy, you pick up the phone as soon as your last punter is getting back into his pants, and Bertha will send another on his way, so that you’re not left waiting. She sorts out who gets which once there’s a queue, and you don’t have to come back and fish for

customers, but if it’s slack, she’ll tell you to get back here and make it exciting for the punters. Anything else I can tell you?” “I think I get the picture. When do the punters start coming, and what hours do we work?” Carol continued to monopolise the conversation, the other two deferring to her leadership. “Well, there’s always a little trade from about twelve on as the fellers start on their lunch hours, and fit in a bit of R & R, and it builds up all afternoon. Then there’s a ‘happy hour’ as they fit in a quick one before they catch the train home to the wife and kids, and that merges into the evening trade, which builds up until about half ten, or eleven, but there’s plenty come right up to two or three in the morning. They get pretty awkward after about ten or so as they’re usually drunk and incapable, or drunk and rough, sometimes both.” “What about weekends? Do we have days off, to go out then?” “You still don’t get it, do you?” the bottle blonde spokes woman said, pityingly, “when your Old Man, or in Maggie’s case, Old Lady, puts you in here, you’re meant to spend your time earning, not lying about or spending their money in Harrods. We only get time off if there’s no punters or, if we’re lucky and Bertha’s in a good mood, when we get our monthlies, though she’s been known to bung us up with Tampax and send us anyone that’s into buggery. As to days out, we don’t get out by ourselves. Sometimes our pimp will take us out for a reward, if we’ve been earning good money, and Bertha’s been known to throw a party on a birthday, hers, or one of ours, but she always makes sure that big brute, Pete comes along to keep an eye on us. Ugh!” “Who’s Pete, then?” Madeleine asked, wondering at the disgust in Carol’s expression, the first sign of emotion in her otherwise matter-of-fact discourse. “You’ll meet him soon enough, Bertha always lets him have a free go at any new girl, as well as his other treats. He’s a very nasty piece of work. He stands by during business hours to deal with any trouble makers, drunks and the like. He’s got a nasty vicious streak in him, and can make your skin creep just by looking at you.” “Yeah,” Maggie agreed, “he gets his kicks from making you crawl. There’s nothing turns him on like having a woman afraid of him. And they’re right to be afraid. He has some nasty ways of hurting you and, so long as he doesn’t mark you, or stop you doing business, Bertha lets him do what he likes to us.” Lo Lei said nothing, but her shudder was eloquent corroboration of the others’ assessment of Pete’s charms. Madeleine realised that there could be unpleasantness to come, over and above the endless procession of pricks she was going to have pummelling her body and no doubt her other orifices too, over the next week or more. “Anyway,” Carol continued, “if you’re here to pay off a debt, you’ll have no time to go out, or anything else, you’ll be too busy trying to earn the cash to get you out of here, and Bertha will see that you do.” As she was digesting this cheerless prospect, Bertha reappeared. “Nearly twelve,” she announced, “and the punters will be starting any time now. Get yourself a few less clothes, so the dog can see the rabbit.” With a feeling of degradation at her position, she stripped down to a satin ‘body’ and high heeled pumps. “Very tasty,” said Maggie, “the customers will go for that, but you want a bit more makeup.” Madeleine sat submissively as her face was attended to with bright lipstick and eye liner. Feeling the complete whore now, she sat with the others, listlessly turning a fashion magazine she had read three months ago, and awaiting her first customer.

Within minutes the lunchtime punters started to arrive. With flashing thighs and bouncing boobs, Maggie and Carol quickly hooked a fish each. A reserved younger man had come especially to make use of Lo Lei and went off with her to her room. By the time that the next two punters arrived, Carol and Maggie had expeditiously drained their first prizes and swept in to bear off their second courses. Distasteful though it was, Madeleine realised she would never pay off her debt if she didn’t make an effort to entice some customers herself. After all, what was the point in being reticent when, by the time she got out of here she was going to have been screwed by over a hundred assorted males in every conceivable fashion? There was no room for self respect in a brothel, and she cast it aside and began to put her self about a bit. She unbuttoned the crotch of the ‘body’ to allow a glimpse of her glossy thicket, and slipped one shoulder strap down until a pink nipple jutted over the top. Within minutes she was leading a large and perspiring middle aged man to her place of work for the next week or so, her bed. It was no great deal. She quickly got his pants off and a rubber on, her ‘body’ up to her waist, and his body up to the hilt in hers. It was over in seconds, he was obviously too excited by a woman of her quality to last longer, and it would have been no sweat if it hadn’t been for Madame R’s diabolic douche. As it was even this short pounding of her scalded pussy was painful in the extreme, and she shuddered as she realised how a day of abrasion from coarse male pubic hair, and bludgeoning by uncaring bodies, was going to leave her already sore vulva. It wasn’t going to be pleasant, but she gritted her teeth, wiped herself off with a towel, and put the ‘johnny’ in the jar, as directed, before going back to the lounge to swing a bare boob at the next susceptible client. Soon things became so busy she didn’t have to swallow her pride and compete for custom. As each client pulled up his zip and left, she picked up the phone and said, “Next!” while rubbing some KY jelly between her labia to soothe her throbbing slit, and ease the entry of the next brute male. By the time the mid day rush had subsided, she’d clocked up eight in just over two hours. A good start, she thought, considering the first twenty minutes she’d sat like a dummy, and let the other girls snap up all the trade, but her complacency was soon shattered. “You’re going to have to buck your ideas up if you want to make the grade here,” Bertha told her, when she came into the room during the afternoon respite, “I’ve had to give three of your lot a refund, so you’ve only earned a hundred over your keep so far. They said you showed about as much enthusiasm as a wet lettuce, and kept trying to get their weight off you, instead of pushing yourself onto their pricks.” “You know very well my cunt’s sore. I can’t bear it when they just bang into me without thinking.” “You can’t bear it! You damn well have to bear it. I don’t care if your cunt’s bleeding, you’re going to make it work for its living, or I’ll make you sorry. I know Madame doesn’t want your arse marked, but there’s plenty of ways of making a girl feel sorry for herself without beating her bottom, as you’ll very soon find out if you don’t get your act together.” And with that Bertha rolled her puce covered bulk out the door, leaving her threats behind for Madeleine to think on. Those thoughts were far from happy. She hadn’t thought it was going to be easy, but now the immediate future looked bleak indeed. All she’d got for a hard afternoon grind on her working bed, was a bruised and sore body, worse than Madame had left it, a miserable hundred towards her debt and sundry unspecified, but none the less very real, threats from Bertha, to say

nothing about the blow to her pride. Three of her customers rated her pretty low, even as a whore. Oh, and eight ‘johnnies’ in a jar. When the early evening customers began to arrive, she set about attracting them with flagrant and degrading use of her body and when she had them safely in her room, put herself out to give them satisfaction, thrusting up her hips to meet their brutal lunges, squeezing with her vaginal muscles to bring them off as quickly as possible, while making them think she was reacting with passion to their unwelcome penetrations. All the while she tried to conceal the fact that she was gritting her teeth to try and absorb the pain they were causing her, and hoping they would be so naive as to mistake her groans of anguish for moans of pleasure. It came as a welcome relief when two of her ten customers that first night wanted to use her mouth, at least it meant her scalded labia spent a grateful quarter hour without the torture of being pounded by a wiry haired pubic bush. Not so welcome, the pair who arrived late in the evening. Bertha herself showed them in. “Two for the price of one,” she announced, “and mind you look after these two properly. Anything they want they get, or I’ll see you afterwards.” What they wanted, among other things, was buggery. They used her mouth in turn, each holding her cruelly by a fist wound in her hair, while his fellow plugged her from behind. They rammed themselves in dry. It was excruciating, and as the tearing penises thrust, unlubricated, through her stretched sphincter, she screamed around the other member stuffing her mouth, writhing on the bed where they’d placed her on her hands and knees, seeking vainly to shake off the atrocious assault on her anus. They let themselves out, leaving her collapsed and sobbing. A minute or two later, Bertha came back. “You’ll get nothing for those two,” she said, “in fact, I’m fining you two tricks for that little tantrum, Miss, plus a taste of strap. Hold out your hand.” It was no good arguing with Bertha in this mood. Miserably she held out her left hand, palm upwards. Bertha hefted the thick oily strap she held. It was eighteen inches long, an inch and a half wide and getting on for a quarter of an inch thick. The leather was heavy and hard, but made flexible by saddle soap and elbow grease. The thought crossed her mind that the regular residents of Bertha’s establishment might well be set to nourish and polish this black snake as an exercise in discipline, and a warning of punishments to come. The thought crossed her mind, but did not stay, being driven out by the impact of the first atrocious blow. It smacked across her tender palm, bruising the soft flesh and sending a shock of pain up her arm. Her hand was knocked down by the force of the impact, and she grabbed it with her right, clasping them both to her chest, as if to give them comfort from the soft pillows of her breasts. “Get it out,” grated Bertha, “and keep it there until I’ve finished with you, or you’ll be sorry.” She was sorry now, but could believe that Bertha could make her even sorrier, if she failed to obey. Trembling all over with the effort of will required to face that awful strap again, she extended her left palm, now fiery red and throbbing, and again Bertha savaged it with her strap. “Now the right,” she commanded, as the smack of leather and gasp of pain registered the second welting of the left hand. Again the superhuman effort required to obey, and two more blows of the strap were rewarded with grunts and gasps, and the right hand was reduced to the same bruised condition. As Madeleine stood moaning softly, her hands thrust under her armpits, Bertha addressed her again.

“Do you think that was a suitable punishment for your fault?” she asked. Madeleine nodded miserably, not wishing to appear to disagree and thus risk further strap. “Well, you’re wrong, my girl,” Bertha informed her, “that was no punishment, that was just a small demonstration of what the strap can do, so that you can think about it for a couple of days. I can’t afford to have you out of action tonight and Saturday, they’re our busiest days, but come Sunday, you’ll spread your legs and get the strap on your cunt as an encouragement for the others. They’ll work all the better for seeing what this little number does for a woman’s working parts.” With that she left the room. Two minutes later the next man came in, demanding attention. She used her sore and stiffening hands to get his penis out and fix the rubber. Later, much later, she crawled into the same bed on which she’d serviced so many piggish men. There were sixteen ‘johnnies’ in the jar, and the equivalent wear and tear in her vagina but, thanks to Bertha’s creative accountancy, she was only credited with nine scored. Despite her bruised body and aching hands, she was so exhausted she fell asleep at once. Morning brought Maggie with a mug of tea. A strange young woman, part in need of companionship, part jealous of Madelaine’s maturity and looks, she perched on the wash basin and peed, carrying on a desultory conversation as a copious golden stream flooded the basin. “God, I needed that,” she said, wiping between her legs with the hem of her slip, “that fat cow, Carol, is hogging the bathroom, soaking in the tub and using up all the hot water. And she kept me awake all night, snoring like a pig. The doors between the rooms are paper thin. I can hear her wanking most nights, too.” Madeleine had noticed the communicating doors, and was curious. “Do all the rooms go into the next?” she asked. “Well, they come in pairs. You’re lucky, you’ve got no-one next door right now. I have to put up with Carol’s noise, and Lo Lei is next to Bertha. Madam arranged that little ploy so that she can call her in at night to lick her fat cunt. At least Carol and I don’t have to do that, but I’m sorry for Lo Lei, she’s quite nice really, even if she’s a bit sly.” “So what happens at the weekend, then?” Madeleine enquired. “Sundays we get most of the day off, but today we’re lucky to be left alone up to midday. You need to get yourself loose on a Saturday, it gets real busy round here especially if there’s a couple of clubs playing at home, like they are today. There’ll be some can’t wait to get their rocks off before the match, and a lot more after, and all lousy with beer, and stinking of Tandoori. There’s sure to be a mad rush around ten or eleven as the lads from the North want to get laid in a hurry, before they have to catch the coaches home.” Madeleine registered astonishment. “Football fans!” she said, incredulously, “I didn’t think Bertha took any one like that. I thought she only took men with money in their pockets.” “Oh, they have to have money, but otherwise she’s not fussy. After all,” said Maggie bitterly, “she doesn’t have to service the drunken bastards, does she? It’s we poor suckers have to take the abuse, not to mention the shit and the vomit. Actually,” she went on, “they don’t even have to have cash, Bertha takes credit cards. You know, all major cards accepted, just like Harrods.” “Credit cards in a brothel! You’re pulling my leg.” “God’s truth, I promise you. She has this caff called the Friar Tuck, and she puts them down as dinners and business lunches.” “Friar Tuck!” Madeleine found she seemed to be repeating everything Maggie said just now, “What sort of a name is that?”

“Very appropriate, actually.” Maggie replied, “try swapping the first letters. It’s a dump really, but the turnover is something quite amazing. I think she uses it for tax purposes to account for all the cash she puts in the bank, and give her some sort of legitimate source of income.” So that was it then, she was working for a greasy spoon. And now she could look forward to a mass of drunken, foul mouthed football fans, pawing her over and vomiting over her, if not worse. Before those delights though, she had a visitor. Without knocking, the ‘bouncer’, Pete, pushed open the door and walked in as she was standing at the basin washing, a genuine ‘whore’s bath’ as she observed to herself, wryly. “You might at least knock,” she said, glaring at him, “what do you want anyway?” The bouncer didn’t reply at once, but leaned his back on the door and looked her over, like a butcher assessing a beast in the market. He was not what she had expected. She had envisaged some hairy gorilla with a neck like a bull, and the face of a second rate battered boxer. This man was almost handsome, in a tall dark way, though his broad shoulders gave promise of strength, but his face had a look to it that made her shudder. There was something there that spoke of ruthlessness and cruelty, as clearly as if he wore a placard saying, ‘Don’t mess with me. I bite.’ As she stood mesmerised by the silent threat in his look, he looked her up and down, and she could almost feel his gaze as it travelled her flesh, from her bare breasts, exposed where she’d pulled down the now grubby, ‘body’, over the curve of her rump to the long bare legs beneath. At last he spoke. “I’m Pete, and I make sure no girl steps out of line round here. I get to have the new girls, as soon as they arrive, and I teach them respect. That way, I get no trouble later. Saves a lot of time and effort in the long run. I like hurting girls, and once you’ve learned that you won’t want to step out of line. Come here.” With a quaking belly, Madeleine dropped the face cloth in the sink, and walked over to where he stood. As she reached him, his hand shot out and took her across the face, sending her reeling back. “Don’t ask what that’s for,” he advised, “it’s for nothing. Just to show you how I am. You’re going to get hurt, hurt bad, so you’ll behave while you’re here, and because I like it,” he added, with an evil grin. Truly frightened now, Madeleine retreated to the bed. “I’m not meant to be getting marked while I’m here,” she pleaded desperately. “Don’t worry, I know all about that. I can hurt you real bad without marking your lily white arse. Anything I do to you will have faded by the time you can work your way out of here, though I reckon you’ll still feel some of the hidden bruises for a while.” She tried to draw further away from him. “Don’t be a silly girl,” he said in a voice that lost none of its menace, for the sweet reasonableness of his tone, “just come here and get it over with, and then you can have a good cry before you have to go to work.” She pushed herself up from the bed, and went half way across the room to meet him. He met her in the middle. His fist drove into her middle, driving the breath from her body as she collapsed, doubled up in a ball of pain, to lie gasping on the tatty carpet. “Get up, or I’ll kick you up.” She struggled to her feet, and he hit her again, exactly as before. Once more she struggled up.

“Hands on your head, let’s see those tits,” he commanded, when she could breathe again. Terrified, she made herself obey, expecting another punishing blow in her stomach, but it was her breasts this time, a lightening fast left and right with his open palms, slapping each soft globe with agonising force before her hands had dropped in a futile bid to defend them. She clasped her bruised and aching bubs in her arms, crouched over in her anguish. Her head rang as he slapped her, left and right again. A fist wound itself into her hair, and dragged her to the bed. “Hands and knees, bitch,” he growled, forcing her head down onto the bedcover, “get your rump up, thighs apart.” She struggled, half suffocating, to do as he ordered, then shrieked into the pillow. His thumb, thrusting unexpectedly and unlubricated, into her unsuspecting anus, caught her off balance; the shock and pain of his nail scoring the delicate lining of her sphincter making her cry out loud before she had time to suppress the scream. Her hips bucked as his forefinger thrust into her equally unready vagina. “Hold still, you cow or, orders or no orders, I’ll take all the skin off your back with a rhino hide whip.” Terrified, she tried to control her protesting body. “Now this,” he said, “is where you really get it. Feel free to scream. The others have all been there in their turn, and will know just what’s happening, so don’t be shy.” As he spoke his finger and thumb, deep in her nether orifices, closed like the claws of a crab, pinching the tender membranes that separated them. As his grip increased he turned in his thumb nail to sink it into the sensitive liking of her rectum. Now she shrieked again and again as he kept up the pressure with one hand, rotating his wrist to wrench her entrails the more cruelly, while his other hand kept her head thrust into the bedding. Her hands came behind her to claw uselessly at his more powerful limbs while her body bucked and writhed, but could not throw off the deadly grip which seemed to tear the very guts out of her. He kept up his wrenching torment of her tenderest parts for more than a minute, it seemed for ever that she thrashed and screamed, then, with no more warning than when he started the assault, wrested his fingers free and released her hair. Sobbing and moaning, she arched on the bed, a hand clasped to each throbbing orifice. “Have I made my point?” he enquired, “or would you like a further demonstration? You won’t have any marks to show for that, but I bet you feel it every time you take a prick, or have a shit, for days.” He started to undo his jeans. “Get on your back, bitch, and spread them. You’re about to try a prick for size right now.” Groaning, she rolled over and parted her legs. He made no concessions to her internal bruising. There was nothing gentle about his entry, just one quick thrust and he was home, battering her shrinking body brutally, while she moaned beneath him. When, after an age of torment, he came in great heaving spasms that testified to the lust his treatment of her had aroused, she could only lie half alive and sobbing brokenly. He had been right, the assault on her internally had left her so sore that any object in her vagina or rectum come to that, was going to be torture, even the male members for which she, like all women, was otherwise so perfectly adapted to receive. She hugged herself and thanked God it was over, but there was a small sting left still. “I wonder you get any satisfied clients at all,” he said, witheringly, “I’d have got more response from a dead sheep. Can’t ask for my money back, as I get you all free, but I’ll see that your first punter this evening gets his. Next time I have you, get some life in your arse.”

CHAPTER EIGHT ‘Johnny Come Lately’ The day turned out as Maggie had prophesied, a constant stream of coarse, rowdy punters. She’d have liked to have avoided them and their hard penises in her ravaged vagina, but then, the awfulness of her encounter with Pete, made it even more urgent to get out of this hellhole as quickly as possible, and she drove herself to satisfy the punters as quickly as she could, so as to phone through for replacements. In a haze of soreness and disgust, she endured twenty-one grinning, cursing, sweating oafs, stinking of beer and curry. Two puked over her as she lay beneath them, unable to avoid the revolting upchuckings. More than one cursed her for their own drunken impotence, and once she had to scream for Pete, as a berserk Glaswegian took his fists to her. Twenty-one stabbing pricks in her sore sheath, but only fourteen more to her tally, after Bertha had deducted her ‘rent’, and Pete’s vicious parting gift, plus three drunken idiots who laid the blame for their brewer’s droop on her. She rinsed out her now disgusting ‘body’ and dropped, exhausted, into her soiled bed. Sunday started quietly enough, though she still ached inside from Pete’s cruel grip and the succession of batterings she had received from her crude visitors. Then Lo Lei appeared to tell her she was wanted in the lounge, where the punters made their choice. Punters on a Sunday morning? She had understood that little or nothing happened on a Sunday, certainly not before evening. She arrived in the lounge to find all three girls waiting for her, plus Bertha. In her hand she swung the thick black leather snake. With a rush of horror she realised that Bertha’s threat on Friday had been no idle talk. She really meant to whip her cunt today, to punish her for not satisfying the ‘special’ guests. “Get that tatty rag off and come over here,” Bertha ordered, gesturing at her grey and frayed underwear. With a sinking feeling pervading her guts she obeyed, and went to stand by the obese Madam. “On your knees, bend forward and grip my ankles. I’m going to show you, and these bitches here, that my friends get the best here or you get the worst. You’ll going to pay with your cunt for that little exhibition on Friday, and I think you’ll think twice before you act like that again.” Then, as Madeleine grovelled at her feet, her buttocks in the air and her nose to the carpet, she gripped the swollen ankles that supported Bertha’s bulk, “Open your thighs, you’ll going to get four screamers just where it will hurt most.” Wide open now, her parted thighs leaving her much abused vulva totally vulnerable, she crouched trembling, waiting for the blow to fall. She had a good idea of what that strap could do from its impact on her soft palms. How much worse it was going to be on her sex, she didn’t dare think. When it came it was everything she had feared and more. It was a screamer all right, and scream she did, there was no way to contain the hurt of that blow. She clung to the thick ankles, her pelvis rocking up and down, as the unbearable agony pulsed through her. With deadly precision, Bertha swung the black snake down again, to land on the cleft of her buttocks, and whip round underneath her to impact on the swollen labia and the bruised clitoris, the ultimate tip digging a red triangle at the base of her belly. Again she screamed and bucked, still holding fast, but the third undid her, and she let go to clasp her wounded vulva and belly with both hands, rolling on the floor and squealing like a pig.

Only the threat of extra strokes got her back into position for the fourth, and mercifully, last terrible stroke, and even then she flinched away twice, her buttocks twisting desperately, before she could actually bring herself to hold her pelvis still and offer her vulva yet again to that atrocious tongue which licked it like a flame. She spent the afternoon in her sordid bed, nursing her wounded vulva. How much more was it going to have to endure? First scalded by Madame R’s baleful bidet, then almost perforated by Pete’s cruel pincer, now bitten by the black snake, and all the while used and battered and abused by a never ending succession of hard, unfeeling pricks. Her whole pelvic region was one mass of soreness; she doubted if she could ever enjoy sex again. In the evening she was summoned to the lounge again, where a thin trickle of visitors made their choices from the girls on duty. She could summon up little effort to attract attention, or please her suitors, and was only obliged to endure penetration of her aching cunt three times in the course of the evening. This did not even cover Bertha’s charges, for inevitably, she could give no satisfaction, and her tally went down one. There were forty ‘johnnies’ in her jar now, but the scoreboard only showed twenty-two, after three days. At this rate, she considered miserably as she sunk into her bed at last, she wouldn’t get out inside a fortnight. By morning she had worked it out, and went to see Bertha. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she told her, standing in front of the fat Madam as she lolled on a sofa, picking chocolates from a box, “and the only way I can do it is to step up my work rate. If I concentrate on the times when you’ve got more men than you can cope with, will you help me?” “Depends what’s in it for me,” Bertha replied, predictably, “what you want to do, anyway?” Madeleine took a deep breath, and plunged in. “I want the room next to mine, with the communicating door, and I want Lizzie to work with me peak times, say twelve till two and six to ten in the evenings.” Bertha lifted one plucked brow. “So what’s the idea then?” Madeleine told her. “That’ll cost you. It’s a hundred and fifty a day for the room for starters.” “But it’s only that for room and keep,” she protested. “Take it or leave it, it’s all the same to me when you get out,” came the callous reply. “You bitch!” Madeleine exploded, her feelings driven past boiling point by the greed the woman displayed. “Mind your manners, my girl, or there’ll be no deal at any price, and I’ll make sure you don’t get out of here for a month,” Bertha growled. “OK, OK, I apologise,” She’d grovel if she had to. Anything to cut short this nightmare. “A hundred and fifty it is, three tricks a day.” “And then there’s Lizzie, you’ll have to pay her wages. That’ll be another fifty for her, and fifty for me to get a replacement.” “But she doesn’t do anything when the punters are here,” Madeleine objected, “she puts out all the towels and rubbers before we start.” “You getting uppity again?” Bertha asked, menacingly. “I think we’d better call the whole thing off.” “No, I’ll take it,” she interjected, capitulating, “two more tricks for Lizzie.” God, this was getting expensive. Any more, and the scheme was not going to pay for itself. “Are there any more favours I can do you?” Bertha asked, sweetly. The cow, the rotten cow, she was squeezing her dry, and gloating over it. “There is one thing. We’re not allowed to wear street clothes here, and the only underwear I’ve got if this

disgusting ‘body’. I rinse it out every night, but it’s had so much vomit and wear and tear that it’s unwearable. Also I need a comb, a lipstick and some KY jelly. Can I send Lizzie out to get me some, and a clean slip or something?” Bertha fixed her with an evil grin. “She’ll have to be paid for her time, and where’ll you get the cash for her to pay for your little luxuries?” Madeleine looked at her in silence, then gave in. “All right, I get the message. A trick for her time, and another for the cash to buy what I need.” “It’s a deal. A pleasure to do business with you, Miss,” Bertha said, mockingly, “you can tell Lizzie what you want and send her to me for the necessary.” And I bet she doesn’t get a penny of what I’m paying for her services, now or later Madeleine thought, as she left the room, but took good care to keep the thought to herself. She put the plan into operation at once, and was ready for the noon rush. The communicating door was unlocked, and Lizzie made up the beds in both rooms, with adequate supplies of towels and rubbers, and a tube of KY in each nightstand. Madeleine freshened up in the basin, made up her face, lubricated her vagina, put on her clean slip and generally prepared for the fray, trying to make sure she made an attractive picture for her clients. She didn’t want to lose any more scores to complaints from disappointed customers. She collected the first from the lounge, and took him to one of the rooms, coaxed him out of his trousers, and into a condom, and fucked him enthusiastically. While she worked, Lizzie, in accordance with the instructions she had been given, selected another rampant male and took him into the other room, where she invited him to take off his pants, and make himself comfortable. As soon as Madelaine’s first client had discharged himself with piggish grunts, she helped him strip off the ‘johnny’, dropped it in the jar, handed him a towel, and went through the communicating door to greet her next client, waiting impatiently for her next door. While she serviced number two, Lizzie helped number one to clean himself up, and hurried him out to make way for number three. Ten minutes flat, and the time whittled down with every customer, as they got into the swing of things, and learned to work as a team. For two hours she kept it up, rubber, fuck and towel, with an occasional pause to relubricate as her cunt dried up from the repeated friction. At the end of the stint there were twelve ‘johnnies’ in the jar, and she was exhausted. As she flopped on the warm and steamy bed, Bertha came in grinning maliciously. “Two of your punters didn’t appreciate your mass production methods, and wanted a refund. Keep up the good work.” The lousy cow, she was making a pile out of this, with her fifty per cent on refunds. Madeleine totted up the score. Six tricks for two rooms and two for Lizzie, fat lot the girl would see of that, then two rejects and the two she owed for the shopping. God she’d worked her pussy raw for precisely nothing. Still, all her dues were paid, and everything this evening would count towards her release. She lay back, and gathered her strength to face the howling mob due at six. The evening brought its problems. Apart from some grumbles about being rushed, there were a couple of drunks who messed up the place, and she lost time while the room was cleaned, and one guy couldn’t raise a stand, but wouldn’t be moved. By nine she had enough. Sixteen new ‘johnnies’, but two refunds. Net score, fourteen. She’d done as well on Saturday. Mind you, there had been debts to pay, and she and Lizzie were only just getting into a stride. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she’d put in a full six hours, and really get things moving.

Tuesday started well. Fourteen satisfied customers, and six points in the kitty after paying the rent, but that afternoon, resting before taking on the evening punters, the screw tightened another turn. Summoned by Lizzie, she stood in front of Bertha again. “The girls aren’t happy,” the overweight procuress stated bluntly, “you’re taking all their trade with your high powered ways.” Madeleine seethed inwardly. She only worked her system when there were queues of punters, and nobody went short. What was Bertha up to now? “Seems to me they’re entitled to a little compensation, say one trick each evening.” One trick. Well, it could have been worse. “OK, one trick it is.” “One trick each, of course,” Bertha said airily. Oh, Jesus! The bitch had her over a barrel. She’d have to agree, though she didn’t see the others getting any of it, any more than poor Lizzie. This fat bloodsucker was bleeding her dry. Dumbly she nodded her head, and went back to her room to gear herself up for yet further effort to pay off the mounting tariff. That evening, with Lizzie’s backing, she took twenty grunting men between her spread thighs, now raw and bruised, but Bertha pocketed three ‘for the girls’ and declared another three were dissatisfied. She had no way of telling if there had indeed been complaints, certainly they’d all been happy enough when she’d last seen them, pulling on their pants, their lust slaked, but her score of ‘johnnies’ only yielded fourteen points. Still she’d advanced her total by twenty in the day, the best yet, and, at fifty-six, she’d passed the half way mark. Two more days like this and she’d be clear by Thursday night, one week, the target she’d set herself. There was some kind of transport exhibition at Earls Court, and some good mid-week fixtures; the punters poured steadily through the front door, and into her see-saw sex act. Wednesday she pushed herself and her aching body, and collected thirty-seven ‘johnnies’, but not only did Bertha collect eight for rent and service and three for the other resident whores, but she claimed that there had been four complaints. It was not true of course. She’d gone out of her way to please the unprepossessing males, who’d bounced their beer bellies up and down on her bare battered body, and she’d worked her tired mound to satisfy them, clenching her vagina on their flagging penises to bring them off, feigning orgasms to polish their egos. She bit her lip as Bertha listed her failures with ill-concealed relish, and went off to reckon up her tally. Twenty-two more clocked up, though it had cost her dearly. Seventy-eight on the board, but one hundred and forty ‘johnnies’ in the jar. Well, not a jar actually, she needed a plastic bucket now to keep the sordid relics of the pricks that seemed to be ploughing her night and day. Still, only twenty-two to go, and on past form she’d get through them comfortably tomorrow. Well, perhaps comfortably was not the best word, she thought, pressing a warm flannel to her sore and swollen vulva, but she’d done more in a day before, and Thursdays were busy, she was told. She put everything she had into it, and the punters put everything they had into her. Aching and exhausted, she drove on right to the bell, uncertain how many Bertha might rule out, and determined to get free tonight. The bucket had collected thirty-nine souvenirs when ten o’clock struck, and she lay back, done in more ways than one. Five minutes later Bertha entered, smirking all over her fat raddled face. “Oh, hard luck, Madelaine. Just didn’t make it. Never mind, there’s always tomorrow.” “What do you mean, didn’t make it,” she squeaked in her fatigue and dismay, “I fucked thirty-nine of the bastards today. Even with your eight, and three for the girls, that leaves twentyeight, and I only needed twenty-two.”

“It’s a pity your fucking isn’t as good as your arithmetic,” Bertha said, sweetly, “but as it is your performance was so poor, seven of my valued clients demanded their money back, so you’re just one short.” “You bitch, you’re lying through your rotten teeth. There were never seven complaints.” “I’ve warned you before about speaking to me like that,” Bertha hissed, “do you want me to send Pete to go over the figures with you, and teach you some manners at the same time?” Totally defeated, Madeleine turned over in the bed she thought she’d escaped from at last, and sobbed herself to sleep. Friday morning. Bertha smiled sweetly at her over her breakfast coffee. “I hope you’re in a better mood than last night, and prepared to give the customers value for money. Just one more for yourself but, of course, the girls and I will expect to be paid first, and if you don’t perform better than yesterday, you’ll be putting out your cunt for little reward.” Madeleine kept her thoughts to herself, and went to prepare for a final barrage of pricks. She wrapped herself round client after client, trying to give them complete satisfaction, and yet get through the door to the next eager prick as soon as possible. She got through the eight for the rent before Bertha put her head round the door, and made a thumbs down. The bitch, she was playing games again. Four more later, and she’d made up the refund, and the three for the ‘girls’ before Bertha’s grinning face and drooping thumb signalled another failure. She let the next pass, wiping out the sweetener for ‘loss of trade’, but failed the youth who should have been her passport out of here. Panic began to rise as the clock ticked on towards two. She couldn’t bear to have to go into the evening session too. The door opened, and the filthiest man she’d ever seen shuffled in. There was no difficulty placing him, a ‘methy’ from under the arches, his smell proclaimed him a mile off. One of Bertha’s sick jokes, obviously, there was no way he could have afforded her fifty pound price tag. Bertha must have lured him in on the promise of a drink and free sex, and she’d have to make damn sure he was fucked to satisfaction, or she’d have to come again tonight, and that she couldn’t face. Better these rotten teeth and stinking breath, as he forced his mouth on hers, the urine reeking underwear he lowered to force a dirty, but surprisingly large and active, penis into her shattered vagina. She kissed him back, she raised her hips to accept him, she squeezed with her muscles, and gasped in pretended ecstasy, though her senses reeled from his overpowering breath and her stomach heaved at his stench. She brought him to noisy, battering discharge just as two struck, and Bertha looked round the door one last time, and called, “Bullseye, one hundred up.” She staggered into the next room, and fell on the sordid bed, her shoulders and stomach heaving, but her rest was short lived. Bertha again, would the woman never let her go? “There’s a little ceremony all new whores have to go through, so if you want to leave today, you’d better get cracking, the girls have to be back on the job by six.” Wearily she followed her tormentor back to the lounge. The three girls sat around the table. In the middle stood the plastic pail she had near filled with used condoms, each knotted to retain the semen in the swollen tip, two hundred and one little rubber teats she’d had to endure the filling of, to raise the hundred needed for her ransom. With it another pail with even more of the disgusting little objects, presumably the ones that Bertha had told the girls to start saving on the day she arrived. “Welcome to the club,” said Carol, who seemed to have been elected mistress of ceremonies, “every new girl has to be ‘passed out’ at the end of her apprenticeship, and it’s your turn today.” She pointed to the table and the buckets of knotted rubbers. “Those are the

‘johnnies’ from everybody here, your first week. First you have to take a pin and prick the end. Not the first prick that’s been in them,” she laughed at her own weak joke. “You have to squeeze the spunk out through the hole into the glasses,” she indicated three tumblers at the side.” There’s well over five hundred all told, so you’d better get cracking, or you’ll be here all night.” Puzzled at what this might be in aid of, but anxious to do nothing to prejudice her escape from this hell hole, she sat at the table in her recently and dearly purchased, but now sweaty soiled and sordid slip, and began the painstaking process of collecting the thick seminal contents of the used rubbers. It was boring repetitive work, but she kept at it, piercing and squeezing six or seven teats a minute, driving herself to keep up her work rate, and bring nearer the time when she could get out of the brothel where she’d endured so much this last week. To the accompaniment of jeers and ribald remarks from the resident whores, she persevered, like a housewife shelling peas for a family gathering. It took her over an hour and a half of back aching work to drain the contents of over five hundred ‘johnnies’ and at the end of her unsavoury task, she had three tumblers, each containing about a third of a pint of thick viscous liquid. Carol took charge of the proceedings again. “As senior whore in this whorehouse, I declare you to be a whore through and through. Kneel up on the table.” Madeleine climbed up and knelt on the hard surface, facing them. “Now pour the first glass over your head, and spread it well on your face and hair.” Madeleine looked at them aghast. “You can’t make me do that,” she protested. “Can’t we just,” came the uncompromising reply, “you won’t get out of here until you’ve been properly anointed as a first class whore, and if you give any trouble, we can always get Pete to come and help. I’m sure he’d love to watch the proceedings.” Defeated again, she raised the brimming glass above her head and poured its revolting contents over her hair and face. It flowed in sticky rivulets onto her neck and shoulders. “Rub it well in,” Carol ordered,” make sure all your hair gets soaked, and smear your face with it. Behind your ears too.” No point in risking further imprisonment in the dreadful place. She’d poured it, she might as well spread it. “Done like a good whore should,” commented the whore of ceremonies, “now get on your back, and pour the next glass over your belly, tits and cunt.” She obeyed without protest now and when ordered, spread the glutinous substance over her body and rubbed it between her thighs. “Now sit up, and drink the last.” “I can’t, I can’t,” she wailed. “You can, and you will if you know what’s good for you,” Carol growled back, “Pete’s still in next door with Bertha. What’s more, if you spill it, or don’t get it all down, you’ll have to stay here until you’ve filled a replacement glass.” Heaving and choking, she put the loathsome brew to her lips, and forced it bit by bit down her nauseous throat. She stopped several times to control her rebellious belly, but, urged on by more threats, sucked and swallowed until the glass was drained, then turned and fled, to spew up the contents of her sickened stomach in the bathroom. As she leaned, retching, over the basin, Bertha spoke from behind her. “Stop behaving like a schoolgirl after her first blow job: you’re a time-served whore now, and you’ll stay one if you don’t shift your arse right now. The car’s waiting for you downstairs,

and he’ll be off if you don’t go straight down,” then, as Madeleine made as if to try and wash off some of the spilt sperm clotting her hair, face and body. “No, you haven’t time for that. Go as you are, or you won’t go at all.” “What about my clothes?” “Well, if you want to stay another week for a suit and a pair of shoes, that’s up to you, but if you want to catch the car before it leaves, you’ll go as you are, and leave your things for Maggie.” Soiled, sticky and sick, she tottered to the lift. Bertha pushed her inside, and reached in to hit the button for the basement car park. As the ancient machine sank out of sight, the fat Madam watched her go with a malevolent smirk on her face. Madame R had told her one week, no more, but she’d stretched it to the limit, if not beyond, and she’d squeezed the girl dry. Five grand she’d made her earn, with her reamed out pussy and battered thighs, and she’d made sure the ‘house’ whores hadn’t missed their quotas. It was all profit, and she’d no more intention of passing any of it on to the others than fly. In the basement, the chauffeur took one look at her spunk soaked slip and dripping body, and deftly shook a rug over his precious upholstery. She huddled on the seat until he deposited her at the lift, which took her up to Madame Ruskova’s luxury apartment. At the door she collected herself together, straightened her shoulders, and determined to carry it off, as if she’d done no more than spend a week-end in the country, brazening out her near nudity, her soiled flesh and her near exhaustion. “So how did you enjoy slumming it?” Madame R greeted her. “Not a lot.” “Do I gather you’re not keen to take up a career in Bertha’s house of joy?” “No. I think I’ll stick to my own line of work, Thank you” “Very wise. How many times did you have to put out to earn my five grand, by the way?” “Two hundred and one, if you must know. That cow, Bertha, made me pay through the nose, or rather the cunt, every minute I was there.” Madame whistled, softly. “So many. You must have worked night and day to get through that many in a week.” Madeleine explained how she’d set up the sexual see-saw, and the price Bertha had made her pay. “The greedy bitch. Well I’m not surprised, and I hope you have learned your lesson.” “Yes, Madame,” in a low voice. “Well, now you know how the other half lives, you’ll understand that your best interest lies in letting me run your career for you. Unless, that is, you’ve lost your nerve, and feel you can’t hack it?” Madeleine was stung into a reply. “I can hack it. I didn’t turn away from Maurice Helworthy because I was frightened of what he might do to me, it was just that he knew me, and we might meet in a work situation. I can take anything the clients want to dish out,” she declared.” “I’m glad to hear it as you’ll be going back to see Maurice Helworthy soon enough, and no doubt he’ll add a little extra for your letting him down on the previous occasion. I want no trouble from you this time, is that understood?” Again a submissive, “Yes, Madame.” “Very well, then. You’ve had a hard time, but you’ve learned your lesson. It may take me a little while to set up a meeting with Maurice, and you can have a few days’ rest. Go home now

and remove that disgusting mess from your person. I presume that they initiated you into the Sisterhood of Whores in the traditional way?” Madame grinned unexpectedly. “How many doses were there in your baptism?” “Over five hundred,” Madeleine shuddered anew at the thought, “They made me pour most of it over my hair and belly, and drink the rest.” “Well, at least Maurice won’t be that copious. Go home now, clean up, and have a few days off to recuperate. I’ll let you know when you’re to go to your missed date.” Glad to escape at last, Madeleine turned in her caked slip and set off for home.

CHAPTER NINE ‘Hell Worthy’ “Well, well! If it isn’t Ms. Fines. What a charming surprise.” Time to face the music. Madame had rung the previous evening to say that Maurice Helworthy was expecting her the next day. He didn’t know who she was yet, only that there was no limit set on what she would accept. For his five thousand, he was entitled to thrash her as much as his lust desired, and her body was his to use until the morning, if he was still not satiated. This was going to be a severe trial of her endurance, and she had arrived at his door with her belly churning and her diminutive knickers wet in the crotch. “This puts a rather different light on things,” he observed, darkly, “I’d bought you as a present for my wife, who’s waiting for you in her sitting room on the next floor, no doubt with her knickers soaking. I had intended handing you over unmarked but, now that I know who Madame R’s mysterious prize performer is, I’m sure Zena will understand if I warm you up for her first.” He turned to the cabinet behind the heavy desk and drew out something long, black and gleaming that sent spasms of fear rippling through Madeleine’s belly. “You caused me great embarrassment when you didn’t turn up when promised. Even more than when you declined my job offer, after I’d stood out against all my male colleagues to give you the post. This little toy is Black Beauty, the pride of my collection, genuine whalebone and made by an amateur craftsman who has researched all the old techniques to produce what our Victorian forefathers regarded as the ultimate penal rod. I only have recourse to it on rare occasions. Zena’s had it once,” he confided, “when she had a little too much champagne at a wedding reception, and tried to have the Best Man in a broom cupboard. I could forgive her lust, any young woman’s hormones will start jumping between little pink bubbles and a big red prick, but the broom cupboard had no class. It just wasn’t on, and I took her straight home and cut up her arse, to remind her that there are certain standards to maintain. Still, enough of such reminiscences,” he said, rapping the rod on the desk to get her attention, an unnecessary gesture as she was listening to every word with the attention of a rabbit hypnotised by a poised cobra, “you’re going to get ten belters for making my present late. Take down your knickers, and bend over the desk. I’m going to cut the arse off you.” There was nothing for it but to obey. She was bought and paid for, and there was nothing to stop him sharing his wife’s present any way he wished. With a sinking feeling in her guts she stepped forward to the desk. That black beast was long and thick. If it was genuine whalebone, and she had no reason to doubt that, it would be very heavy and very whippy, a combination that would indeed cut her arse and moreover leave her deeply bruised for days to come. This was going to be bad, and she still had a session with Mrs. Helworthy to look forward to afterwards. Trying not to look as frightened as she felt, she hoisted her skirt onto her hips, and stuck her thumbs into the waistband of her dainty briefs. She peeled them down until they rested on the tops of her thighs, then bent herself over the desk, reaching forward to grip the far edge, and cling on in mounting dread. The air on her bare buttocks brought home their vulnerability in this exposed position. Footsteps behind her, and then the cold touch of the rod on her bare flesh as he selected his aiming point. God. He was sizing up her crease, where the slight fullness of her taut round

buttocks met the smooth columns of her thighs. It was inevitable of course that a man of his experience would know that a woman felt the rod most keenly on just that tenderest of places. She flinched from the touch and a voice, thick with lust, growled at her to stay still, or get extra. The air ripped behind her, and a band of sheer white flame exploded precisely where he had laid out his mark. The cut was as hard as ever she’d estimated, when she’d put him down as a squash or racquets player, and his accuracy was perfect. This was going to be every bit as bad as she’d feared, and she groaned as the after pain surged into the rising welt, gripping the desk edge a little tighter. Again that bowel loosening sound announcing the next hellish cut was on its way, and a gasp as it bit. Oh! No! Precisely on its predecessor. She braced her legs to hold herself steady and gritted her teeth, awaiting the next in the doleful sequence. It fell as near as made no difference to the sufferer, on the same anguished line, and bathed in a fresh flood of agony, she renewed her resolve not to give in. For she was determined to fight him to the end, not just a matter of her usual search for satisfaction, but a personal thing between them. He knew her. He knew all there was about her in her previous persona, before the island, and she needed to show him that although she backed away from the job he’d offered, it was not from lack of courage to face the big time operators and stand up to them. It was not an equal contest, of course. He was armed with a man’s strength, an athletic wrist, and that appalling length of black whalebone. All she could put up against it was her soft female flesh, which was no match for that deadly accurate weapon, that was turning her once white flesh into purple pulp, but she was determined to keep it presented fully to the rod, and take her strokes without conceding by rising or crying out. Through four five and six, she writhed and gasped, hissed through her teeth, as the secondary wave swept her, or groaned in agony. She was aware that she was developing a single massive bruise, she could feel it swelling and throbbing in the intervals between strokes, for he was drawing out what she saw as punishment, rather than her normal impersonal service, letting her savour the full value of each cut before delivering the next. She could imagine a solid black bar across the underside of her haunches, overlapping onto her thighs, and raised as thick as a finger. As the seventh ‘belter’ landed in this tumescent mass she bit her lip to choke off the scream which rose in her throat and fought the rebellious body which wanted only to lift itself from the desk, and cease to offer the unprotected buttocks to the devastation inflicted by the supple rod. The eighth burrowed deep into the centre of the monstrous bruise: her legs bent, her knees fretting against each other as if this might somehow throw off the claws that seemed to be tearing into her nether flesh. She jammed her knees into the desk to still them and clung to the solid piece of mahogany, whining through her nose. There was a pause, and the growl told her to get her arse up where the rod could get at it. She gathered her forces to brace her legs back, and offer her riven flesh fully to the rod. She held on through nine and ten, and slowly, and very stiffly, rose and reached down for her knickers. Although even the touch of the delicate fabric was extra agony, she was determined to carry it off, and drew them, wincing, over her throbbing buttocks, carefully lowering her skirt and smoothing it into some order. She turned, and walked stiff-legged to the door. “Where do you think you’re going?” “I understood that Mrs. Helworthy was expecting me, and would be getting ... over anxious.”

“Quite right. I expect she’ll have creamed in her pants by now,” the lady’s husband agreed, “but you seem to be overlooking something. I promised you ten for delaying my wife’s present, but we still have to settle the score for the embarrassment you caused me by turning down the job without explanation.” There was a deathly hush. Madeleine looked at him for several seconds, without a word, then limped back to the desk. She bunched her skirt up round her waist again and paused with her thumbs under the elastic of her panties. “How many?” she asked. He told her, and she groaned inwardly, but drew the panties off as instructed, kicked off her shoes and parted her legs as far as they would go, unencumbered now by rolled knicker material around the thighs, and rose up on tip toe. He was not only cruel, but knowing. She was going to have to endure it all through again, the full ten strokes, but this time with her legs apart and staying on her toes. If she didn’t get her bottom right up to meet the rod, he wouldn’t allow the stroke, and she’d have to take another. He’d recognised her defiance, seen through her attempt to disguise how deeply she’d been hurt, and now he was calling her bluff. Well, she’d show him she wasn’t bluffing. She see him out, and take it, though her body cringed already, without a fresh blow struck. To peel the panties off that throbbing wound in her hinds, to strip them of their only protection, however illusory, and leave them vulnerable to those terrible searing cuts, had her belly squirming, and her nates clenching. She took up the prescribed position, and tried desperately to gather her resources to meet the renewed attack on her flesh, which she had thought safe, only to have her relief so cruelly destroyed. Maurice Helworthy surveyed the tempting target spread for his delight. Bent as she was, she might just as well have been naked, since all that part of the woman’s anatomy that was presented for his inspection was bare, save the dark stockings that accentuated the shapely columns of her long, tapering legs, contrasting with the pale ivory of her spread buttocks and thighs. The paleness threw into sharp and violent relief the violet bruise, two inches wide, dragging its throbbing length from one side of the underhang to the other. Between the spread cheeks pouted the plump purse of her sex and, above, the wrinkled brown dimple of her anus. He’d intended only to confirm that Madame Ruskova’s protege was as appetising as she’d promised before passing her on to his wife, not that he’d doubted for a minute that the old procuress would let him down but, when he realised that this was the woman who’d turned down his offer, he determined to have his revenge for what he considered a serious slight. Who did she think she was, refusing a chance to join his prestigious organisation? He’d spotted her worth at once; over-ruled his partners to secure her the appointment, and felt she had left him looking foolish. Well, she’d suffered for that. Those ten strokes were as ‘tight’ as he’d ever laid in his long experience of the rod, close, with plenty of wrist behind as wicked a stick as he’d ever met. They must have hurt atrociously, and he’d hoped, expected, that when he awarded her a repeat, she’d either rebel, or beg for mercy but instead she’d accepted his challenge, and bared her ridged and throbbing under buttock without protest. He intended that her challenge should fail. He’d put her into as difficult a situation as he could devise, the strained separation of her thighs together with the requirement to stay on her toes, would tax her physically and divert her concentration, besides leaving her feeling the exposure of her vulva and anus and the ever present threat that the tip of the rod might worry its way between her cheeks to lash those so vulnerable, and tender, spots. The black length felt good in his hand, he could feel its weight and suppleness, and a sense of it being a live creature, eager to feast on the tender flesh offered before it. All things being equal, he would simply use his dexterity and athletic wrist to unleash it into the tumescent

bruise he had already raised. That would give her something to digest, but he was conscious that this was a gift to his wife. If he let the rod loose on that blueberry band, it must surely burst. The skin over the pulsating swelling on the right looked ripe to part, and he felt that he should stop short of giving a present with the blood already flowing. Zena would no doubt take care of that herself. Well, there were more ways than one of skinning a cat, or a pussy come to that. He had no doubt that Zena would extend that little attention to her guest as well. He stepped forward to measure his mark on the bending female, and laid the rod, gently, on the very top of the thighs, just below the crease, and the swelling purple rope. The braced legs twitched involuntarily, and the knuckles of the small hands, gripping the edge of the desk, whitened. He drew back his arm, only to bring it flashing down again, to thrash the rod precisely into his invisible mark. He was rewarded with a gasp of pain, followed by a long drawn out oo ... oo ...oo… ooh, as the matching welts on each thigh top filled and darkened, and her hips swayed from side to side, as she rose and fell on her toes. But she held her position, and was firmly back on her toes, her buttocks raised to expose her thigh tops, by the time the next stroke was due. Inevitably it fell onto the spoor of its predecessor, and the gyrations and smothered cries were repeated. with interest. With great deliberation, he laid on three, four and five. Half way now and she was displaying extraordinary courage. Her gasps were a little more urgent, her cries showing somewhat more distress, the gyrations of her clenched haunches more frenzied, but she was holding on. He watched her as she fought for control, watched her steady her tortured body, rising on her toes to present again, despite nervous ripples down her thighs and a slight inward turning of the widely parted knees. These were mute testimony to the extremity she was in. He let her savour her pain before lashing her again. The extra wait, far from refreshing her, seemed to be unsettling, for she twisted to one side, groaning and seizing the opportunity to increase her suffering, he declared that she was not in position, that the stroke would not count. She groaned, but did not protest his not altogether just decision, and forced her buttocks up, and her darkly marked thighs back to receive the seventh stroke, though it would only be scored as six. To his surprise and chagrin, she took three more cuts without giving him any reasonable excuse to disqualify them, though she cried out at each in a strangled way, and her oohs had degenerated into muffled sobs. Only one more to go. He stood back, letting her absorb their bite to the full, and contemplated the ravaged flesh, wondering how best to employ the next stroke. In all honour it was all he had left, unless of course, he could force her to get up before ‘permission’. Should he lash it into the blue-black welts on the back of the thighs, or risk bloodying her by cutting into the old swelling plum under her right buttock? He watched the squirming flesh for a few seconds, as the cheeks clenched as far as the spraddled pose allowed, then made up his mind. Stepping slightly to the side to shorten the reach of the rod, he swept it down and up again, to land exactly on the crease and rising, the shortened tip grazing the inside of the right thigh, and flashing in onto the plump lips, parted slightly by the spreading of her legs. She screamed and her knees closed, as if she might yet squeeze out the terrible hurt to her innermost person. Her hips swayed from side to side as she wrestled with her pain, her belly thumping up and down on the desk, but she clung desperately to the far edge, fearful of incurring another such stroke, if she was judged to have risen. It took her several seconds to master the viper in her mound, but then she lay still, except for involuntary twitches, and the occasional sob. Reluctantly he accepted her victory, and gave

permission to rise. He watched her as she recovered her knickers and, for the second time that evening, eased them, wincing all the while, up her lacerated thighs, and onto her sore and swollen bottom. Well he’d not cut her after all, but he didn’t doubt that there’d be blood in her knickers by the time his wife dismissed her. “You’ll find Mrs. Helworthy on the next landing, second door on the left. Hurry up. She’ll be expecting you.” Trying desperately to appear unaffected by her terrible ordeal, and the fires still burning in her pussy and thighs, Madeleine stepped into her shoes, smoothed down her rumpled skirt, and walked as steadily as her wounded thighs would allow towards the door. She closed it behind her without a word, then grabbed her wounded hinds and tottered round the corner of the corridor, out of sight. She leaned one shoulder against the wall, giving way to the dreadful pain behind her and beneath her, her body arched in a bow of agony, her hands plucking at her bottom, hissing through her teeth as the pain mounted to an unbearable summit, and hung there interminably before, reluctantly it seemed, subsiding to mere anguish. Her thighs and buttocks ached and throbbed, while her body felt as if it had been cut open, sending stabbing pains throughout her body. She clung to the wall for a minute or more, sobbing and sniffing, then found a tissue from her sleeve and tried to clean up her face. She had survived the husband, but now she had the wife to face, and most people agreed that the female of the species is more deadly than the male. What sort of woman was Mrs. Helworthy? No coward, that was for sure, she had accepted the Black Rod. Madeleine had heard no talk of a wife during the approach by the headhunters, and supposed she must be a retiring woman of Maurice’s own age, content to let him keep his business and personal lives quite separate. Well, she’d be expecting her now, and she’d better not delay further, or she’d likely incur worse punishment still. She dragged herself off the wall and shuffled stiff-legged on account of the damage to her thighs and spraddled to ease her pussy wound. The stairs were torture, as she ascended to the next floor and sought out Mrs. Helworthy’s room. Outside the second door on the left she paused, and made what repairs she could to her hair and clothes, then drew a deep breath and tapped on the door. Immediately a sharp female voice bade her enter. It came as a shock that Maurice’s wife was little more than a girl, at least six or seven years younger than herself. Moreover she knew her! How could she have missed hearing of her marriage to so celebrated an advertising mogul? The name should have told her, Zena is not that common, and she should have thought at once of Zena Forbes, the poison tongued young witch of the advertising world, who’d clawed her way to the top via sundry backstabbings and half a dozen hot beds. So now she was warming Maurice’s, though it seemed she had to pay with her arse for the privilege. She closed the door behind her and faced the sharp featured little blonde seated on a couch across the room. “You’re late. Helworthy phoned ages ago to say you were on your way. What’ve you been doing all this time, having a quick wank to ease your greedy cunt, or just lost your bottle?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but gestured to the rug in front of the couch. “Come and let’s have a look at you. Hm, that suit’s got a look of Paris about it. Too good for a whore, even one as expensive as you come. Helworthy paid out a lot for you, I understand. Quite right too, he owed me a good treat after making me take the Black Rod. Anyway, I intend to see you give good money’s worth,” she said in a cold voice, “and you can start by getting those rags off.” Obediently Madeleine took off the jacket, and unzipped the skirt, folding them and laying them on a chair nearby.

“And the blouse, let’s see what your dugs are like.” The blouse and bra joined the suit. “Not bad for a woman of your age, I suppose,” was the disparaging comment. Madeleine felt a rush of colour behind her ears at the reference to ages, and the damning with faint praise of firm breasts that would be a credit to a teenager. “OK, get your knickers off. I understand Helworthy warmed you up for me a little. Let’s have a look at the damage.” Wincing at even the touch of the flimsy material of her briefs as she slid them over the bruises on her buttocks and the backs of her thighs, she bared her bottom to the sneering gaze of the young vixen, into whose hands she had now been given. “Well, well, Helworthy has certainly marked your fat arse for you. The black Rod, I assume from the look of those lovely blueberry marks. Tell me, did he whip in?” “Yes, just the last stroke.” “Yes MADAM,” snapped the younger woman, “and just answer the question, when you’re spoken too. I’ll ask, if I want to know more.” Madeleine swallowed. This was going to be a difficult evening, she could see. “Yes. Madam,” she said, submissively. “That’s better. You’re a whore, and a servant, and don’t you forget it. I’m going to make you wish you hadn’t an arse, or several other parts of your anatomy before you leave, but there’s always room for more.” She pointed to the carpeting beside the couch. “On your knees, bitch.” As Madeleine dropped to her knees and approached the couch, her sore thighs protesting at the movement, and the cut to her mound reacting to the rubbing, Zena swung her feet onto the ground and drew up her short skirt, spreading her thighs widely, revealing thick blonde curls, and an absence of underwear. “We’ll start by seeing how good your whore’s tongue is. Get licking.” Obediently Madeleine leaned forward, tongue at the ready, one hand on each slim bare thigh to support herself. The young Mrs. Helworthy slapped at her cheek with dizzying force. “Get your filthy hands off me, bitch! You keep your hands behind your back, unless they’re required for whatever you’re ordered to do. You only need your tongue for this exercise.” Madeleine clasped her hands behind her, and bent again to her task. It might have been not too distasteful under other circumstances, fresh sweet young woman flesh to tease into ecstasy, but this was rank. With a shudder of disgust, Madeleine realised that the woman was having her period, and, by the scent of her, had done nothing to freshen herself since morning. As with so many women, the last days of her menstruation were a time of easy arousal. No doubt her feelings had climbed steadily throughout the waiting, and the mixture of female heat with stale menstrual blood gave rise to a foetid aroma, matched by an unpleasant taste on her tongue. Zena seemed to sense her disgust, for she grabbed an ear painfully in each hand, and drew her head more firmly into the evil smelling crotch. “What’s the matter?” she asked, “never smelt a period before? Get your tongue moving, or I’ll give you some blood on your own cunt to make it even.” She was obviously quite capable of carrying out her threat, indeed, looking for a pretext to do so, and the older woman buried her head hurriedly in the steaming space between the parted thighs, and set to work frantically, licking at the already aroused clitoris until it swelled into a tiny rigid stub, and its owner leaned back, her breath quickening, her belly quivering, until, with a cry of triumph, she climaxed, mashing her crotch against the face still captive in her hands, and now nearly suffocating, as the hot acrid flesh pressed over her mouth and nostrils.

“I really needed that,” she declared, pushing away the half choking woman at her feet, “I’ve been building up all evening, waiting for my ‘treat’. Now we’ve got that out of the way, we can settle down to a nice long playtime, though I don’t suppose I’ll get through the rest of the evening without needing relief a few more times. Not with all the lovely things I have in store for you. Now stop gasping like an asthmatic cow, and fetch my cane from the stand in the corner.” The stand proved to be an elegant little carved ebony rack, very obviously designed specifically for the purpose, with small female nudes cradling the lean yellow length in their outstretched arms. Madeleine wondered if this elaborate ritual object was ‘my’ cane because it belonged to her, or because it was used on her. Probably both she decided, remembering that Zena submitted to punishment too, up to, and including, Black Rod itself. Well, this was no black rod, thank God, but it was going to be a problem, nevertheless, if this diminutive vixen decided to work the bruises left by her husband, and she was certainly capable of such calculated cruelty. Shuffling back on stiffening legs, limping slightly as her bruised hamstrings protested at having to work in their inflamed condition, she dropped on one knee, with an extra twinge, and presented the whippy stick. “The cane, Madam,” she said, as she laid it on her temporary mistress’s knees. “Good, you’re learning fast,” she was told, “now turn around and let me see your meat.” More twinges as she rose and turned to display her beaten behind, and again as she was made to bend and display her decorations more fully, stretching the already blistered skin, under pressure as it was from the swelling bruises beneath the surface. “Well, well, My dear husband certainly worked your best pieces. He said you were ripe to burst, and he wasn’t wrong. Still,” she mused, “it would be a pity to do it straight away. Don’t you think it’s always nicest when one makes oneself wait for one’s little treats?” Madeleine thought that a reply was not called for and help her peace, trying to control the shuddering caused by the thought of this vicious girl/woman splitting open her swollen welts, and then cutting into raw flesh. “No, I think we’ll have a much better time if I spin it out a little, so we’ll leave those lovely plummy stripes for later. Just now we’ll have you sitting on the bench, please.” She was made to sit on a plain low wooden bench, rather out of keeping with the rest of the Whore’s Boudoir furnishings. With her hands on the top of her head, she winced as her welts made contact with the hard wooden surface, stirring them into further agonised protest. She was made to put her bottom overhanging the edge of the bench, and lean forward, so that her buttocks protruded into fresh air behind her. Zena took up position to one side. “I’m going to cut down, so as to save your plums for afters, so keep leaning forward, and stick your bum right out. You’re going to get a dozen to start with and, if you flinch, I’ll give you an extra. I want it where I can carve it like bacon.” And carve it she did. The first stroke whirred through the air. This woman had an arm and a wrist that must be tempered by exercise, Madeleine thought, listening to the pitch of the parting air, then the thought was driven from her mind by the impact of the cane. It was unspeakably painful. Quite different from the strokes she was used to, this blow, cutting her on the top centre of her buttock cheeks seemed, as Zena had promised, to carve her open. It probably wouldn’t bruise so much in the long run, but that was small comfort now, and the glancing cut seemed to tear every nerve end in the pale skin the covered the crowning curves of her rounded bottom. The pain was atrocious, and her body jerked upwards but, terrified of incurring extra cuts like that, she bent

forward at once, presenting her haunches for the next slice, and emitting a series of sharp oohs to mark her distress. Two, three and four joined the shocking first, each as bad as number one and seemingly cutting her to the bone. It was a difficult position to maintain, far worse than clinging to a desk, or bent over a chair. Her body writhed and shook. She twisted from the waist, as if trying to shake off the sting in her tail, and, as her body threw back at each stoke, her gyrations set her breasts to swinging on her chest, and her hair whipped about her like a loose sail in a gale. All the time she whined and moaned, as she fought to retain her proper pose, hands on head, trunk leaning forward, and soft hinds protruding over the edge of the hard wood on which she sat, open and vulnerable to the thin yellow peril that sliced inexorably down, to add a fresh searing agony to the already burning mass. She wanted to clasp her hands to her stinging cheeks, and rub away the hurt but her pride, and her fear of earning extra, kept her from trying to ease the pain of five and six. Zena declared seven null and void. “You’re wriggling around too much,” she said, “I’m not getting at you properly. The cane is just skidding off your arse.” She poked at Madeleine’s knees and belly with the lithe yellow tip. “Sit further back. Further still, get your arse six inches over the edge. Put your hands behind your neck.” she ordered. “Now open your legs, and get your belly down between your thighs. Come on, lower than that. I want it all spread and stretched, so’s the cane can get right into it.” And spread and stretched it was, the extra strain on her skin exacerbating the soreness in her beaten buttocks, the bench edge pressing even harder into the dark bar of welts that adorned the rear of her thighs at their very top. She endured the six remaining of her promised dozen, gasping as each sliced her protruding rump, and moaning in between as her upper body twisted in agony as she tried to contain the pain in her hinds. After the last stroke Zena kept her in suspense for a very long count of ten, while she fought to maintain position. There was no way she was going to justify any more of those venomous cuts by getting up without permission. “Well, I must admit you can take it,” her diminutive tormentrix conceded. “Hardened slut! You should be beaten like this every day. OK, You can relax now.” Released from the invisible bonds created by the threat of extra, Madeleine tumbled forward onto the carpet and lay there, on her belly, writhing like a cut worm, her hands clasped to the fresh wounds on her backside. Zena stood over her, admiring her handiwork. “I’d say that complements Helworthy’s work admirably,” she remarked. “My dear husband scored middle and bottom, and now I’ve painted in top. Becoming quite colourful, your bottom, though not as rainbow as it’s going to be. I intend to add a touch of scarlet to those lovely purple and blue bits by the time you leave. Now stop blubbing like a baby, and follow me. Since you’re so fond of the floor, you can stay on your hands and knees while you do.”

CHAPTER TEN ‘Relaxing with Richard’ Crawling on hands and knees like a beaten animal, Madeleine followed her mistress for the night. Zena led her to a bathroom, and her heart sank. Bathrooms were always bad news. Bathrooms meant degradation or humiliation, disgust or discomfort, most often all these at the same time. In bathrooms you could be made to undergo regimes that sealed your bladder till it felt it would burst, that distended your bowels until you seemed in the last months of a painful pregnancy, and which led to your being soiled with your own urine or faeces, or even someone else’s wastes, to smell and stink and taste of corruption. Nor was she wrong. For an endless age Zena piled humiliation on horror. Madeleine’s belly swelled and ached from the vast amount of liquid forced into it. Her thighs ran with the remains of the revolting effusions she had subsequently been unable to contain. The opening of her urethra throbbed and ached with the soreness left by the cruel clamp that had sealed it while she had been forced to swallow the water poured down her throat. In a modern version of the ‘Question Ordinary’ and the ‘Question Extraordinary’, she had been strapped on top of a bench, on her back, her feet on the ground on either side, parting her thighs widely, her arms drawn back and tied to the front legs. First Zena had forced a Bardex nozzle, attached to a thin hose, into her unwilling anus. She had used a squeeze bulb to inflate the rubber bladder round the neck of the nozzle until it expanded into a hard balloon, about the size of a tennis ball, within her rectum, thus sealing in the nozzle against any attempt to expel it, or any liquid which might be injected through it. While she was trying to assimilate the discomfort of this gross intrusion into her gut, she was startled into a cry of protest at a sharp and tearing pain in her vulva. Zena had parted her outer lips and applied a powerful spring loaded steel grip to pinch up, and seal shut, her tender pee hole. As she lay gasping like a stranded fish under the influence of her stuffed bowel, and cruelly cramped urethra, her torturess forced the neck of a long stemmed funnel into her mouth, almost into her throat, certainly she could get no purchase on it to expel it, then clamped a clothes peg on her nose, effectively sealing her nostrils. Now she lay helpless, all her orifices filled, breathing through her mouth. She stared with bulging eyes as Zena came into her range of vision carrying a plastic bucket. The funnel filled, cutting off her air, and she swallowed quickly so as to be able to breathe. “Good, you get the idea,” said Zena, brightly, “if you want to breathe you have to swallow it all. Let me explain. In medieval times they punished criminals this way, especially traitors and poisoners. You want to read about it, there’s a terrific story by Conan Doyle, you know, the Sherlock Holmes man, called The Leather Funnel, all about how a woman in France was tortured. I’ve always wanted to try it out. Sorry we haven’t a leather funnel, actually hers had a silver spout with her initials on it, but she was a Countess or something like that. You’ll just have to make do with plastic, though I expect the effect will be much the same. Have another drink,” and she poured another generous dose into the funnel. When Madeleine had swallowed it, and could take in air again, Zena continued her explanation. “For a woman, the Question Ordinary, as they called it, was one bucket, and the Question Extraordinary was a second. I’m not sure how big their buckets were, but these will have to do.

According to the accounts I’ve read, your belly will swell up as if you’re about to give birth, and I’m told the sensations are quite unspeakably painful, but you’ll just have to go on swallowing if you want to breathe.” With this, she tipped the bucket again, and Madeleine gulped down the suffocating fluid, fighting to get air. Pinioned as she was, she was conscious of the utter helplessness of her position. Her whole being was at Zena’s mercy, she could only breathe when Zena let up on the flow of water into the funnel, and she had, inevitably, to go on swallowing and swallowing, feeling the pressure in her stretched belly rising as it became more and more distended. She could feel the pressure mounting in her whole abdominal cavity painfully as her stomach muscles could stretch no further, and her organs were crushed, and yet she guessed from the angle at which Zena poured, that she had barely drunk half the bucket. With mounting panic, she gulped the next rush of water, feeling the pain and pressure rising in her belly. The pressure on her bladder made it want to empty itself, the bitch had given her no opportunity before they started, no doubt a calculated move, but the clip at her orifice, besides causing her added pain, would not permit her to relieve herself. Her bladder shrieked in protest. She would have liked to shriek and protest herself, but the peg and the funnel ensured that all that issued were frenzied grunts and gasps between each new rush of liquid. Her bowels too were in distress, but here again she could only lie and suffer, for the Bardex nozzle effectively sealed her and her wrung bowel and colon could not discharge their trapped contents. By the time the first bucket was emptied she could barely move, so swollen was her abdomen against the straps that bound her to the bench, and she could only lie and groan. “That seemed to go down well,” observed Zena, “now, before we proceed to the Extraordinary, we’ll see if you’ve got enough control to hold your water, and the rest, or if you’ll wet yourself like a baby.” When the clip came off her urethra the pain was even greater than when it had been applied. The blood-starved tissue responded to the restoration of circulation by every nerveending screaming its own distress signal. As to holding her water, not a hope, and a golden rush flooded her thighs and the bench between, to be joined seconds later by the Bardex. As it deflated, her bowels expelled it with loud gaseous noises, followed by a noisesome extrusion. As she lay, gasping, in her own filth, Zena took up the second bucket. “What a disgusting exhibition! Still, it’s time for seconds, so you’ll just have to lie in your own muck,” and once more, the bucket tilted, and Madeleine was swept away on a tide of helpless pressure, pain and panic. The discharge of her bowels and bladder had, in truth, gained her but little internal space, soon made up by the first few swallows and the wracking pains in her guts, together the suffocating feeling of being stuffed to the gills. This mounted inexorably, until she floated in a red nightmare, part drowning, part sucking in blessed air, then panic fear as her supply was cut off again by the rush of water. It seemed to last for ever, but she began to be dimly aware that the flow had stopped and gradually her frantic gasps subsided into rapid shallow breathing, all her distended body would allow. A little while later she felt her straps loosened. As she was freed, she rolled off onto the cold tiled floor and lay there retching, great floods of bile stained water gushing from her throat, while below, wastes leaked from her orifices, to join the contamination in which she was already steeped. Despite the release of the pressure of the water filling her belly, the aches and shooting pains still convulsed her, her crushed organs all making their individual protest at the treatment to which they had been subjected, and she moaned aloud on her bed of hard tiles. It was more

than ten minutes before she could be said to have regained even the semblance of control of herself. “Very satisfactory, I must say. I’ve always wanted to know what it would be like.” A blast of cold water dashed onto her battered body as Zena emptied yet another bucket over her. “Come on, it’s time to finish off the evening. I promised you a bloody buttock, and a bloodied buttock you shall have.” Weak and trembling, the wretched woman got to her knees, then dragged herself unsteadily to her feet. Her bowels had turned to water, literally; the muscles in her belly had been reduced to pulp by the distension they had endured, and the retching which still convulsed her from time to time, but she managed to totter after the inexorable Mrs Helworthy, towards the culmination of her martyrdom. She was made to lie face down on the same hard wooden bench where her upper buttocks had been sliced so cruelly an hour before. She could not have maintained any other position, even if she’d had the will left to try, and Zena left her sprawled on her breasts and belly, her arms and her legs dangling on either side. “Now for the final act, to burst those lovely ripe plums Helworthy sent me,” Zena gloated, “first your arse, and then your thighs.” It took four hideous strokes before Zena declared that the blood was in full flow, and Madeleine could feel the warm trickle down the outside of her thigh. She could offer no resistance in her exhausted state, and screamed at each cut, her body jerking like a landed fish with each impact, heaving with unrestrained sobs between. Five more implacable cuts and the purple rope across the back of the thighs gave way, and a second rivulet joined the first. When it was over, the woman was obviously quite done, and the chauffeur had to be called to take her, wrapped in a blanket, down to the car, and back to her own home. When Madame Ruskova rang the next morning to hear her report, she was still in a bad way. “Stay in bed,” she ordered,” the nurse will be with you directly. Come and see me as soon as nurse says you can get up.” Two days later, she went to Madame’s apartment, still shaky, and limping from the healing wounds on her buttocks and thighs, but mending rapidly, thanks to the nurse’s healing touch, not least her cunning way with a distressed woman’s clitoris. She claimed this was better than any tranquilliser and once her patient had recovered from her initial physical exhaustion, productive of such paroxysms of pleasure as to astonish even Nurse O’Brien, a lady who was wont to boast that, “Nothing can surprise me, pet. I’ve seen it all.” Madame expressed herself gratified at the speed of her recovery. “I was very concerned at the possible effects of the Helworthy woman’s water treatment. The beatings were nothing. A woman’s buttocks are capable of taking any amount of beating without injury to her health, and the client was entitled to thrash you to the blood, and beyond, but that medieval ‘Question’ is unknown territory, and she should have checked with me first to see if it was safe. I would have got a medical opinion, and had you physically examined first, although you’re a fine strong female and seem to have come through all right. Never the less, Helworthy has been warned, and has already taken steps. That woman of his has had a bloody buttock herself, and made to drink a pint of castor oil after, and she’s got the same to look forward to twice more this month.” Madeleine expressed astonishment. “I didn’t think he would value membership so highly that he would agree to so severe a punishment for his new wife, or that she’d accept it. Anyway,

what concerns me most is not having her punished, after all I did boast that I’d take anything that came, so I really had no beef, but what he might say or do about me outside. After all, he does know me, and we work in the same business.” “I think it’s time to tell you some of the facts of life, “Madame replied, “It’s not so much fear of losing membership as fear of the membership that keeps them in line. Let me tell you a little story. We once had a member who recognised the girl he’d been sent, when he met her at a business lunch weeks later. He tried to blackmail her into granting sexual favours for free, and without the organisation being involved. Well, he used to be quite a good golfer, but his swing’s not so good these days. You see,” Madame explained,” shortly after he’d propositioned the girl, he had an unfortunate accident in the car park as he was leaving work. Some-one backed a car into him, pinning his leg to the wall, and it didn’t mend quite straight.” Madeleine shuddered. “That was a bit drastic, wasn’t it?” she said. “Pour encouragé les autres, as they say in France, my dear,” came the response, “I’m afraid there have been more drastic measures than that called for. We once had an African Head of State introduced to us. Very wealthy, lots of World Bank money stashed in Swiss bank accounts, rather than benefiting his people. We sent him a couple of girls, without incident, but with the third he went beyond all bounds. He told the poor creature that, where he came from, a woman’s clitoris was a shameful thing, and that real women had them excised, together with their labia. He tied the girl down, and cut out her clit and her labia, then raped her. She nearly died before we found her, and got her medical help, and the poor wretch was so traumatised that she had to leave the business. We organised a life pension for her, and set her set up in the country where she cares for mistreated animals. Ten days later, two masked men got past the President’s security, no one knows how, and put six bullets in his stomach. He died forty minutes later, on his way to theatre. They say, while he was still conscious, he was screaming like a girl. Of course, the press put it down as a political assassination, and the opposition party did, in fact, seize power. I understand they’re now as corrupt as he was but all the same, our members do tend to mind their P’s and Q’s. They know that they could lose more balls than the ones they play golf with. Anyway,” said Madame more lightly, to dispel the rather gloomy direction their conversation was taking, “you need have no fears about Maurice’s discretion, or reoccurrence of Zena’s potentially dangerous diversions. Meanwhile, you’ve had a pretty strenuous session with the Helworthy family, so take a little time off to make sure you are fully recovered, and I’ll try and arrange some suitable light duties for you in the meantime.” Ten days later, her split skin healing nicely, and her strained guts restored to something like healthy regularity, Madame sent for her again. “Nurse O’Brien seems to think you’re doing fine. Let’s have a look at you.” Madeleine slipped off her briefs, and hoisted her skirt above her waist, baring all before and behind. The three bars across her backside, top middle and bottom, showed as brown marks, tinged at their edges with all the colours of the rainbow. On the lower two, specially on the right, where Maurice’s black rod had bitten deepest, preparing the way for his vixen of a wife to lay the flesh open with excruciating cuts of the yellow cane, the last of the black scabs sealed the parts of the wounds, as yet unhealed. “Still tender? What about your belly?” Madame enquired. “Yes, still a bit sore underneath. The bruises went pretty deep, you know, and I can still feel them when I sit, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. As to my guts, they’ve settled down now, but there again, there are bruises internally, which I’m very conscious of when I’m on the loo, and I

know all about it when my bladder is full. But it’s getting better all the time. At least I can control myself properly now. To start with I had to have fresh knickers every few hours, and my sheets were foul every morning.” “Well I’m pleased that you’re feeling so much better. I’ve booked you some nice light duties for next week. I think you could even enjoy them in their own right and not, as you do, when it’s all over, and you realise you’ve come through. I’ve booked you out to Richard for the week. He’s really a very nice man, who I think you’ll like. You’ll be his slave for the week, to serve him sexually and domestically, night and day, in any way he wishes, but he’s not naturally cruel, and will only whip you if he feels discipline is needed. He’s agreed that you’ll only get the cane in sixes, tens at the most, and kept well off your existing marks. I believe he intends to take some kind of holiday, and you’ll travel with him. You won’t start your week until next Monday, so you’ll be another four days down the road to recovery by then, and quite fit enough to take that kind of discipline.” “It sounds great,” Madeleine admitted, “I’ll look forward to getting back into harness.” She did not realise at the time the irony of that remark. Richard turned out to be all that Madame R had promised. Good looking, rich, even considerate in a sense. From the beginning he made her a slave in deed, as well as title, and she was worked hard, day and night, running his bath, putting out his clothes, making sure he was fed, when not staying in hotels, waiting on him, hand and foot, even if they were. At mealtimes, even in restaurants, he ordered for her and fed her while she sat docilely, making no attempt to use her own knife and fork. At all times of the day she made herself available to him, a ban on underwear facilitating the service, but it was no hardship, and she found herself responding to him sexually, and enjoying orgasms at his hands, and sharing others with him, although she was very conscious throughout that this was secondary to her primary function of giving him pleasure. He subjected her to complicated codes of behaviour, governing when and how she should speak, what she should wear at any time, how she should deport herself in any given circumstance, and caned her for the slightest infringement, but she never felt he was being cruel for its own sake, but only playing by the rules of a very complex and strict game, and never resented the searing cuts laying fresh tracks on her tender hinds, for he was strong, skilled and accurate, and brought tears to her eyes on many occasions, even with the strictly controlled nature of the punishments she endured. Their tour took them to Paris and then back to England, staying in Country House hotels of the highest standard. They did all the things that tourists do, but everywhere she had to stay in her role of slave, obedient to his every whim. Indeed, it was a role not for the duration of the week, but a fact of her life. At one point he bought her a uniform, complete with peaked cap and polished leather boots, and she chauffeured him about on their tour. The climax of the trip came on the final week-end, when he took over control of the car again and drove her, blindfolded, to a house set deep in the country, somewhere west of London, and south of Gloucester, but otherwise lost to her behind the black pads over her eyes. A beautiful house in secluded grounds that seemed to go on for ever. Soft mellow stone, with gravelled drives, lawns, a park and, behind the main house, extensive stabling. Behind her blindfold, Madeleine was aware only of the swish of tyres on the long gravelled drive, until she was unhooded in the stable yard. Richard removed the handcuffs which had been holding her wrists so painfully behind her back to prevent her lifting the scarf which covered her eyes, and learning the whereabouts of the house to which she was taken. This was a

quite unnecessary precaution, as she would never have disobeyed his order if he’d simply told her she was not to touch it. “Strip,” he said, with no explanation and then, when she was nude as a slug, even her watch and earrings joining her clothes and shoes on the floor of the car, “From now on you are forbidden to speak, unless I, or someone in authority, orders it. Now, get out and go in through that door there.” He pointed to an opening into the stable block. She walked across the yard, the sharp stones pinching her bare feet, and entered a long whitewashed room, divided down both sides into wood panelled stalls. She stopped in amazement. Standing in five of the stalls, as naked as herself, were five young women tethered by lead reins attached to halters round their heads, their wrists cuffed behind their backs to broad leather belts around their waists, and their chins held high. At first she did not understand this pose but soon realised that each had a thin leather thong woven into her hair, which ran down between her shoulder blades to the waist belt, forcing her to keep her head held high. As she stood astonished, a rough male voice spoke behind her. “Come up now, lass. Next stall is yours.” She turned in amazement, to receive a searing cut across the front of her thighs from the switch the man, obviously a groom of some sort, carried in his hand. “Come up, I said, not turn and gawp. Into your stall smartish like, or you’ll get some more.” ‘Smartish like’ she did as she was bid, and the groom followed her in, producing belt cuffs and halter, and securing her like the other women in this curious stable. As she stood, obedient to his commands, he deftly plaited a length of leather into her own dark mane and adjusted it carefully until her chin was raised slightly, like her fellow ‘mares’ and ‘fillies’. For that was what she had been made into, a filly, a mare, a pony-girl. In the course of the evening she learned quickly how she would live for the next day or so. Tethered in her stall, forbidden to speak to her companions, she was to live as an animal, to eat from a trough, to drink from a bowl, to sleep on straw, to pee on her bedding and leave her droppings in the litter, to be mucked out by the stableman. She was groomed efficiently by him too, her hair combed out, and plaited like a mane, her body sponged, her feet and nails oiled. His touch was quite impersonal, even when he passed the sponge over her breasts or cleansed her soiled buttocks after she had voided her bowels. He trimmed her pubic hair carefully with clippers, as if preparing her for the show ring, all the while talking to her in the low comforting tone with which a groom ‘gentles’ a high strung blood mare. The care and control awakened an overwhelming response in her body and mind, both, as if she were the helpless, but happy, subject of a sinister mesmerist. The next morning she discovered the purpose of their care, keep and grooming. They were to race. After breakfast of cereals and milk, eaten from their troughs without the benefit of hands, came a thorough grooming and morning ‘stables’, when half-a-dozen men, Richard among them, and one very ‘butch’ woman, passed along the stalls, inspecting their occupants, and commenting on their physical attributes, as if they were indeed dumb animals. She was struck by one man in particular who displayed a palpable air of command, and appeared to be the owner of the estate. The other guests, who all seemed to defer to him, addressed him as Jack. After each mare had been intimately inspected, down to handling of her genitals and breasts, presumably to assess the overall health and fitness of the subject, they were led out into the yard. Here they were introduced to their ‘sulkies’ for the first time; light tubular metal carriages on bicycle wheels, a cross rail with a padded seat for the rider, and twin shafts between

which the ‘pony’ was harnessed, her hands still cuffed behind, her head still held high by the thong in her hair. The carriage was attached to the waist belt by light chains on either side, and the harness was completed by a bridle, complete with steel bit, which was forced into the girl’s mouth, and from which reins led back to the driver’s seat. Madeleine was not sure how the drivers and mounts were selected, she only knew that Richard had a tall, athletic blonde ‘mare’ in the shafts of his buggy, while it was the formidable female who took up her own reins. She suspected that, on this occasion at least, no ‘owner’ drove his, or her, own beast. Each driver carried a long thin switch, capable of reaching the exposed and vulnerable back and buttocks presented to him, and stimulate the ‘mare’ to further effort when the going got tough. It did not take much to work out that they would have to drag the buggies, and their riders, round some sort of track, and that any slacking would bring painful rewards. Madeleine’s rider flipped the reins, crying out, “Forward, mare,” and reinforcing her order with a stinging flick of the switch on her unprotected flank. She started forward, taken aback at first by the inertia of the loaded buggy, and then stumbling as it started to move, and the resistance dropped. “Clumsy cow,” growled her rider, catching her haunch with another flick of the switch, “pick your feet up, and keep your body straight. This is a trotting race, and I want to see some class form from you, or you’ll be sorry.” Spurred on by the rebuke, her pride stung by the reflection on her carriage, she straightened herself up, and set off with a high stepping gait. A tug at her bit brought her circling to the right until an opposite pull corrected her course back to the left. “Good girl. Now you’re getting the idea,” her driver said encouragingly, and she glowed with pride, trying to present herself to the woman’s satisfaction, and trotting steadily forward. It was not without its problems. The gravel of the yard, though rounded, was nevertheless painful to unhardened bare feet, while the wrist cuffs were hard and uncomfortable in themselves, and their position behind her back strained her arms and shoulders. The thong woven into her hair made its own contribution, in the form of stiff neck and sore scalp, and she had only just started. For half an hour the new teams exercised in the yard, learning what was expected of them, and practising control and the proper high stepping gait. At last the signal was given to move out to the track, a cinder oval about the size of a standard 400 metre athletics track, entirely surrounded and screened by a strip of dense woodland. Three of the teams, Madeleine amongst them, were drawn for the first heat, one to go through, as of right, plus the fastest second place. The track felt gritty under her soft soles, her shoulders and arms ached from their constricted position. She could feel the strain in her thighs from the unnatural lift she had to give them to achieve the correct gait, and her haunches stung from the application of the whip, but she stood at the starting line, full of excitement, keen to pit herself against the others, and proud of her rapid mastery of her role. The started dropped his flag, and they were off, spurred by the lashes of the whips on bare female flesh, a quite unnecessary stimulus in Madeleine’s case, as she threw herself against the shafts with all her weight and set off, high stepping in the approved manner and putting all she had into the race. For most of the first lap honours were pretty even, but as they approached the bell, the girl on her left visibly weakened; no amount of whip or words from her driver could get her up to the others, and it became a two horse race. Pride kept Madeleine going against a heavier, stronger girl, who she suspected had done this before, but the strain was telling, along

with the soreness of her feet and limbs. Her rider drove her on with more stinging blows to her back and buttocks, but she could make no impression on her opponent who crossed the line, sweating and panting, a scant few feet ahead. She was disappointed to fail at the first challenge, and surprised when the apparently ruthless female, who had whipped her unavailingly, around two laps of the punishing track, did not bawl her out for failing to qualify. “You showed a lot of promise, for a beginner,” she said. “We’ll do better next time, though I may have to take the skin off your back in the process.” She was still digesting this heady mixture of praise and threat when the second heat started. Again all three stayed close for the first lap, but then first one and then another went lame. Madeleine’s feet were already sore from the sharp fragments scattered throughout the track material, and the winner came home alone. It didn’t require a stop-watch to deduce that Madeleine would qualify after all as the fastest second place. A short break was called, to rest the winner of the second heat; the grooms moved among the ‘mares’ sponging them down and adjusting harness, before they were called to the line again. Madeleine’s driver came over to where she stood in the shafts. “I can see you’re making quite an effort, but I think we should have a little something to keep you lively,” she said, “bend over, and get your legs well apart.” Setting her feet as wide as she could manage, and bending as low as her harness, and the backward pull on her hair would allow, she felt her spread buttocks parted by the driver’s fingers, and something soft and greasy was thrust into her anus and deep into her rectum. At first it tingled, but then came the burn, a monstrous sensation that made her want to turn her sphincter inside out, a hot throbbing fiery furnace in her arse that made her dance on her toes, clenching and unclenching her buttock cheeks, fretting her knees against each other, as she tried to ride the caustic burn in her fundament. “Feeling a little frisky now, are we? Well, no time to lose, Gid up Gal,” came the order, “let’s get to that track while you’re hot to trot.” Almost grateful to be allowed to move and work off the irritant in her behind, she moved off to take up her place alongside the other two finalists. They all started fast, encouraged by the shouts of their drivers, reinforced by stinging cuts of the long thin switches. Once again, for most of the first lap there was nothing in it, then Madeleine found herself alone with her rival of the first heat, the winner of the second apparently flattered by the weakness of the rest of her field. Stride for stride they came down the back straight, and round the final curve. Down the home straight, Madeleine’s driver flogged her unmercifully, the whip criss crossing her back and buttocks with angry red lines. She pounded on, on feet cut and sore from the sharp cornered particles in the track, her back and backside almost raw now from the unceasing rain of blows, her arse burning and her breath coming in painful gasps. She put everything she had into it, determined to best the long strong girl racing alongside, but her rival was just too strong and experienced for her, and held on to cross the line a bare two feet ahead, as in their first trial. “Pity,” remarked the mannish female, who had just come close to making good her threat to skin her back, “I thought we were going to have our revenge there. Still, you did well to run Gilda so close. She’s good at this you know.” Madeleine didn’t doubt it, but retained her animal dumbness. “You’d be good yourself, with more experience. Your owner ought to have you properly trained, you know.” The mares were returned to the stable yard to be unhitched, watered and rubbed down. Humiliating as it was, Madeleine was grateful for the wet sponge worked round and into her

anus to remove some of the burning caustic still at work there, though the relief was only partial. Her driver had worked much of it deep inside, and the slow leakage continued to burn even after she had been washed. They had just eaten, ravenous after the demanding exercise, when Richard entered, carrying the black scarf she had worn on the way to the weekend ‘race meeting’. He blindfolded her again and led her out to the car, her hands still cuffed to the belt at her waist, her chin held high by the thong in her hair. “We’re going home now,” he said, “My lease on you is up in the morning, and I want to enjoy you one more night before I hand you back. By the way, I’m sorry you had such a rough time. I didn’t think you’d be driven so hard.” Madeleine was astounded to hear him apologising for her treatment. She had been contracted to him as a slave, and expected nothing less. Moreover, the experience of being controlled, of being made to put out her utmost, despite fatigue and discomfort, the feeling of being driven, far from being oppressive, had been the most exhilarating of her career to date. “Do I have permission to speak, Sir?” “Oh, yes. We’re outside the grounds now, and you can speak at any time, if you ask permission.” “Then I’d like to say, there’s nothing to apologise for. I’ve had an intensely satisfying time. Do you think there’s any chance you might take me back, some day?” “I don’t remember asking if you wanted an apology,” came the rather stuffy reply, “and no, there’s no chance. I think there are limits to what a woman should be put through, and that was over the limit in my book.” Wisely, she let the matter drop.

CHAPTER ELEVEN ‘Hard Riding’ She waited as butterflies fluttered in her belly, in time with the ringing tone, then a click as the receiver at the other end was lifted. “Morgan here.” “Hello. This is Madeleine, I was number three on last weekend’s card.” A long pause, then - “Yes. I remember you. Did you get my number from Richard?” “Yes, but he didn’t give it to me. I stole it. He didn’t tell me your name either, but you just did when you answered. I got your number from his diary while he was in the shower. I was meant to be keeping my position on my knees but I went through his pockets instead. Very disobedient but I wanted very much to find you. I knew it should be there somewhere, either under the day he took me to the track or the day he got the message to ring you. I was kneeling then as well but that time I was more obedient.” “He told you the call was from me?” “No. Still it was obvious from later events that the call referred to you and at the time he’d asked the caller to hang on while he got a pen, so when I found a number on that page I was pretty sure, even though there was no name, and now you’ve confirmed it for me.” “And why would you want to get in touch? I warn you, I would be a very dangerous man to blackmail.” “I wasn’t thinking of trying to work anything on you. Exactly the opposite in fact. I want to put myself in your hands if you’ll have me. Last weekend was my first experience of being a ponygirl and it did something for me. I want to do it again, but this time for real. Those girls worked quite well but we weren’t driven very hard, scarcely raised a sweat between us, and nobody got whipped enough to make them strain their guts out.” “And you want to be made to sweat, is that it?” “I would like someone to take me and train me and when I had acquired speed and endurance, drive me faster and beyond that endurance. I’d like to be made to take on, and beat all comers, or failing that, the clock. Would you take me on and do that to me?” “What does Richard say to that?” “Richard won’t play. He doesn’t think a woman should be pushed that hard. It’s something that makes any relationship out of the question. I had hoped that as he knew and understood me more he would drop his reservations and rule me more and more completely, while he, poor dear, has been hoping I think that I would ‘get over it. He refuses point blank to send me to you for training but then, he doesn’t own me, you know. I was only contracted to him for the week.” “Hmmm. I’ll think about it. In the meantime you’re never to call this number again. If I think something is possible you will be contacted.” After five days Madeleine began to feel that her gamble had failed. Several times she was on the point of ringing Jack Morgan’s number again but her common sense prevailed and she realised that if there was still a chance left that he’d agree to take her on, she’d blow it if she disobeyed his order not to ring. The next evening the stubborn instrument sprang to life. Someone she didn’t know said quietly

“Make arrangements to be away for a minimum of three weeks beginning on the 25th. You will be contacted then.” and rang off before she could reply. The 25th! That gave her over a week to wait. Was he testing her resolve, to see if the strain of the long wait would cause her to chicken out? If so he’d underestimated her. She spent the time getting her body fit for its coming ordeal. She stepped up her twice weekly visits to the gym to four and put herself on a rigorous regime every session and backed it with daily roadwork more akin to that of a heavyweight boxer than a weekend jogger. Putting her freelance work on ‘hold’ presented no problem, but she approached Madame R with more misgivings. “I’d like to take a month off, to recharge my batteries,” she said, “It’s not that I’m having second thoughts about the life, far from it, but these first six months have been very strenuous, and almost non-stop, and I’m frightened I’ll get stale. I thought a month in the country, among horses, would do me good, and I’d come back twice as keen to get back into harness.” Madame agreed it would be a good idea. She pointed out that the seriously rich abandoned London to the tourists at that time of year, and in would be good timing. Relieved to have satisfied Madame so easily, she gave herself over entirely to her preparations for the arduous sentence she had imposed on herself. The morning of the 25th found her fit and ready, showered and packed, on a high of anticipation and, she had to admit, just a little fear of what a man like Morgan might be capable of. He was certainly no pussy-cat like poor discarded Richard. She’d caught the look in his eye and the iron in his voice when he was addressing his pony and she’d seen the very professional equipment in his stables. That weekend may have been more symbolic and exhibitionist than serious pony-girl racing but she didn’t think it was always like that in Jack’s stable or on his track. Now she wondered how long she’d have to wait to find out just how far he was prepared to drive her. Her musings were interrupted by the phone. “There’s a Land Rover and horse box right outside the back entrance to your flats. Strip off every last thing you’re wearing including your watch, earrings, jewellery, the lot and use the emergency stairs. When you get to the trailer use the forward hatch. Kneel facing the post at the front of the box and put your arms round it with your wrists in the cut-outs you’ll feel behind it. Do it quick and do it now!” For one stunned second Madeleine stared at the phone, then slammed it down and tore off her clothes, her watch, her earrings, her bracelet, her ring. Totally bare, she abandoned her carefully selected packing and slipped out of her door. Thank God, no one was in sight as she fled down the stairs and slipped into the waiting box, closing the door behind her to shut her naked body off from prying eyes. She knelt in the thick straw covering of the floor and leaned her bare breasts against the solid timber that ran from floor to roof in the peak of the trailer. Crossing her arms behind the post she located two brackets with ‘U’ shaped cut-outs and placed her wrists in them as instructed. A second later a bolt closed each wrist restraint and she was helpless, held to the post by her own encircling arms. The journey in the trailer seemed to take hours. When Richard had taken her that first time she had no idea where they had gone as she’d spent the journey behind black eye pads, secured with a scarf. It had taken at least two hours then but they had been staying in the country overnight and now she was starting from the city and she could expect to be on the road for up to four hours. Why hadn’t she taken time to pee before she left? Because she had been told to ‘do it quick and do it now’ and she had run to obey like the slave she was. But now matters were

getting urgent. And soon they were getting more than urgent and then they were impossible and burning with shame she let fall a golden flood into the straw between her knees, like the mare she was. When they arrived at last, her body was stiff from kneeling, her knees sore, and she was just thankful that the jolting and jarring had stopped. The hatch opened and she turned her head to see a groom enter. He carried a rope bridle which he fixed about her head and neck before pressing a catch to release her wrists from the post. Her relief was short lived as he drew her hands behind her back and secured them there with fetters. “Come on girl.” Pulling on her bridle he led her from the box and across the yard into the stable she had seen on her previous visit. He drew her into a stall and tied her bridle to a ring by the manger. “Please. I’ve been on the road for hours. I have to go to the bathroom.” The groom unclipped the crop he carried at his belt and struck her hard across the top of her bare thighs, twice. She screamed at each cut. “The first lesson you’ll have to learn is that mares don’t talk. If you’re asked a direct question you can nod or shake your head but otherwise you stay schtumm. Forget that and you’ll not only get my crop but I’ll bit and gag you too. If you’ve got anything to do you do it in the straw like mares do. You’ll get your stall mucked out regularly enough, but for your own comfort I suggest you use the corner furthest from where you’ll be fed and where you’ll sleep. Sort yourself out. I’ll be back in ten minutes with a feed.” There wasn’t much point in holding out, she reasoned. He obviously meant just what he said, and the way she’d been treated, or rather neglected, in the box confirmed it. No way was she going to plead with him. She didn’t want a repeat of the agony in her thighs. The twin tracks across their sensitive fronts throbbed and smarted and she drew in her breath at the twinge of pain when she moved her legs to cross the stall. She felt her humiliation wash over her like a hot wave as she dropped the content of her bursting bowel onto the straw. But her degradation was not over. How could she clean herself with her wrists cuffed? She soon learned the answer to that one when her groom returned with her feed, which he put on the shelf where a manger would usually be. “Good girl. You’re learning. I’ll clean your arse for you when I muck you out after your feed. Get on with it then and make sure it’s all eaten. Your diet will be carefully calculated while you’re in training and I don’t want any wasted.” The feeding shelf ran at about the height of her breasts and on it, set in wire holders which prevented them being knocked off, were two large bowls. In one was what looked like a hot bran mash and in the other horse pellets. She would have tackled them with energy if that was indeed what they were but she found to her surprise that the ‘bran mash’ was in fact a very pleasant puree that she guessed contained liver, lentils and gravy, while the other bowl, though it did contain some unidentifiable ‘nuts’ of some sort, also held cubes of chopped carrot, turnip and hard cabbage. Clearly someone had designed a diet for her that was going to keep her fit to race. The only drawback was that her arms were secured and she had to endure further humiliation as she buried her mouth in the bowls to lift the food with her lips and tongue, smearing her face, and the make-up she had ill-advisedly put on that morning, in the process, and turning her long loose hair into a matted, greasy draggle. In the corner she found a drinking bowl where, by pressing her mouth against a flap in the bottom, she could get fresh water whenever she wanted. At least she wouldn’t go thirsty although she found she could do little to clear her sticky face.

Her groom returned and removed the bowls with an approving comment on how well she’d eaten. Then he ‘mucked out’ her embarrassing droppings, putting down fresh straw in the corner. “Now girl, let’s get you straightened up for evening ‘Stables’. The Boss will be along soon to see you bedded down for the night. Stand, girl, while I wash you down.” So saying he took a large sponge and began to wash her face with icy water from a bucket. “Hold still, lass, or you’ll feel my crop across your crupper. Now legs apart as far as they’ll go and lean forward and I’ll clean this shitty arse of yours. That’s better, now lift each hoof and you’ll be washed all over.” For a man of such rough appearance and coarse speech, he was surprisingly gentle with her, though she shied at first from his hands on her breasts and vulva, but stood her ground when he growled at her to ‘Stand’, and her humiliation was intense when she was made to bend and submit to having her soiled anus washed with the cold sponge. Still at least she was clean now until the next time. He oiled her feet, dried her with a rough towel and ran a comb through her long, wavy dark mane which he plaited loosely and tied with a thin leather thong. She realised that his gentleness and skills were just what such a man would use on a mare and that was how he saw her, not as a woman. No doubt his ways with women were rough and uncouth. She hoped she never had to find out the hard way. Fed and watered, washed and groomed, she stood in the deep clean straw. She did not have to wait long before the groom got to his feet and touched his brow. “Good evening Mr. Morgan, Sir. All present and correct as you ordered, and awaiting inspection.” “Thank you, Robert. Did you have any trouble with her?” “Not really. Had to give her a couple of touches so that she understood that mares don’t talk, but she’s been good as gold since then and beginning to find her feet I think. Ate all her feed and stood well to be washed and groomed. This one will train well, I think.” Morgan stepped into the stall and ran his hands over her body. He took her shoulders from behind and pressed her back muscles with his thumbs, came round to the front and tested her deltoids. He weighed her breasts and, when her nipples hardened under his touch, squeezed the turgid nubs between finger and thumb until she writhed and groaned but she did not pull away and kept her gaze straight ahead of her. Taking her face in both hands, he pulled open her mouth and looked inside. He thumbed back her eyelids and ran his fingers through her hair and behind her ears. His hands ran down her sides from armpit to hip, gripping folds of skin along the way and then she gasped and folded as his fist drove hard into her belly. Panting, she fought her way upright and stood once more open to his inspection. His hands moved to her buttocks where they shaped and squeezed the firm rounds before his thumbs parted the cheeks to expose the puckered brown anus. A forefinger traced the outline of the delicate rose, before plunging though the sphincter up to the knuckle in one swift motion. She rose on her toes momentarily, with a quick cry of pain and shock, but rallied at once, and sank back onto her heels and stood impassively as he moved the finger in her rectum. With a grunt of approval, he transferred his attentions to the front, running his fingers through the tight, glossy curls of her dark bush, and then those fingers were parting her labia and testing the soft inner lips. She blushed as she realised that she was wet and his searching

fingertips were now coated with her juice. He seemed pleased with his discovery, and in no hurry to move on, one hand stroking her rump as if gentling a nervous mare, the other sliding wetly over her swollen clitoris. Did mares have clits, she wondered? When her body began to respond with little spasms and heightened breathing, presaging an orgasm, he stopped, leaving her unsatisfied, and ran his hands down her fine legs, with their firm straight thighs, and gently curving calves. “Up, Girl.” and obediently she raised each foot in turn to be minutely inspected. Each toe separated and flexed, each instep squeezed, each ankle articulated, each sole gently massaged and tested for sensitivity. “And what do you think of her build, Bob? Will she make a racer?” “Yeah. Good legs and haunches, real thoroughbred I’d say. And a fine chest on her. See how it pushes her tits out, good lungs under those boobs. She’s not in bad condition now and a week or two’s hard work will bring her on nicely. She’s got spirit too, I can tell. Her stillness isn’t because she’s cowed. I’d say it’s because she wants to be here and be worked.” “You’re right there, Bob. Thoroughbred and willing. Put her down for the night now, and in the morning, hitch her up and give her as much road work as you think wise, and let’s see what she’s made of. I’ll probably drop in on you some time to see how she’s making out, and we can decide on her training schedule. I had her brought down now, when we’ve nothing booked for a few weeks, so that you can give her your full attention before we have a stable full again. ‘night Bob.” “G’night, Sir.” Bob slapped her bottom almost affectionately. “Settle down now, lass. Corner by the manger would be best. I’ve left you a good pile of straw there and you can wrap up in your blanket. There’s more straw in the other corner too, when you need to pee or make droppings.” She would have slept from the moment he closed and bolted the loose box door, she was so exhausted, if she’d let her need overcome her embarrassment and used the other pile of straw at once. As it was she struggled to control her bladder for an hour or more, despite the hopelessness of the attempt, and its inevitable failure. Once she had given in and squatted in the corner, her tired body took over and she was asleep in minutes. Morning brought Bob again with breakfast, or should that be morning feed now? Another kind of cereal ‘nuts’, this time with milk and sugar in the bowl. The momentary pleasure was soon dispelled by the order to ‘make droppings’. At first she couldn’t do it. Her body rebelled at the humiliation, but humiliation will always eventually give way to pain and fear, as Bob proved with his crop. When she finally squatted successfully, her stretched rump burned with six scarlet bars outshining the now fading warning against talking she had received the night before. Her morning motion passed, the humiliation was renewed when the sponge was again applied to her anus to make all clean. He fitted her with a bridle and secured her arms behind her, wrist to elbow, in a leather ‘muff’, fitted with elbow straps at each end. Leaving her tethered to a ring outside her box, he mucked out and laid fresh straw. In the covered area at the end of the row of boxes, stood one of the light buggies she’d met on her previous visit, and she was soon fitted with waist strap and harnessed to the shafts, her head pulled back by the inevitable thong woven into her hair. Bob took his seat and they moved off, through the yard and onto the track. Remembering her previous appearance there, she moved with a lively, high stepping gait, and circled the track a couple of times at a moderate

pace. Bob did not force her, and seemed content to let her set her own pace, while he sized up her possibilities. At length he gave what sounded like a satisfied “Humpff” and shook the reins at her, touching her lightly with his switch, not enough to hurt, just a sting to get her attention. “Geddup there, gal. Let’s see what sort of a goer you are.” She responded willingly, though her soft feet were beginning to feel the effects of the abrasive track, and struck out at her best trotting pace, throwing her weight against the buggy with its passenger, making a fast circuit, then another, and another. By the fourth she was beginning to ‘blow’, but her driver kept her at it with more compelling cuts of the whip than the touches he’d used to start her and between pride and pain she kept up the pace. Two more laps, and he pulled her up, panting and sweating, her back and buttocks crossed by a score of bright red lines that throbbed and stung. “Not bad for a first outing,” her driver commented. “You’ve a long way to go, and I’ll see that you do, but you’ve got the right idea, and good meat to go with it. We’ll make a racer of you yet.” “Mind you,” he added, “don’t think its all going to be as easy as this morning. This afternoon we’ll go out on the road and start to build up some mileage to harden you up, as well as the sprint work you’ll be getting.” Back in the stables she was rubbed down and given her mid-day feed. Before putting out her bowls, Bob took care of her feet, lifting them in turn to inspect them minutely and then, when he had washed then carefully, applying a strong caustic. At first it only tingled, warmly but then, as it penetrated into the myriad tiny cuts and abrasions left by the track, it burnt like liquid fire. She hissed and writhed, she would have stamped her feet on the straw if he hadn’t growled at her to stand still. As it was, she shifted her weight from foot to foot and stood, her chin still tied back at this stage, her arms behind her back, and fretted her bent knees together until the burn in her feet began to ease. She was to get to know this treatment well over the coming days and weeks. It was designed to harden her feet to withstand the rigours of the track, and Madeleine suspected that the strapping blonde ‘mare’, who’d defeated her twice that week-end, had the benefit of the toughening process, and could keep up her stride better as a result. Every time she completed an exercise session, the powerful caustic was applied and, after the first few days the results began apparent. That first afternoon she began to realise something of the extent of the enclosed estate around the house and stables. Bob drove her for what seemed like miles, on tarmac roads, along grassy rides through the woods and, excruciatingly, back up a long, long, gravel drive which seemed to cut her feet to ribbons, and reduced her to a hobble interspersed with bursts of trotting as Bob slashed at her unprotected haunches with his wicked little whip. It was a very distressed mare that was finally unharnessed and allowed to stand for a moment, head down, breathing still laboured, feet on fire with soreness and body stiff and aching. Though he had driven her hard, indeed almost to collapse, it had been to test her mettle, not out of any disregard for her well-being, and she found that the care and attention she received afterwards almost made up for the harshness on the road. Besides, that was what she was seeking when she had inveigled her way into this training. Though day by day she was driven harder and longer, further and faster, she basked in a feeling of contentment at what she was achieving, at being cared for, however roughly, but above all, at being controlled. She was pleased with her body, which was growing fitter and stronger every day. The only worm in this apple of content, she didn’t count the pain and

humiliations she suffered - they were part of the package, was the rising sexual tension which her mounting fitness nourished to unbearable heights. Her strict regime, and the cuffs she wore, made it impossible for her to assuage. Bob was not unaware of this seething pressure in her belly, the evidence was plain to see every time he groomed her, the turgid nipples, the erect little stub of her clitoris peeping from between her labia, and on those same labia, and sometimes extending well down the inside of her thighs, the sticky secretions of her hungry vagina. He pointed out the vital signs to Morgan on one of the latter’s regular visits to inspect her progress. “What do you think then, Bob? Healthy sign I would have thought.” “Yes, Sir. She’s in fine fettle, and it shows in her juices. I’d advise we don’t let her waste her energy by masturbation, or any other sexual release. Keep her keyed up and she be even sharper.” “Reckon you’re right, Bob. OK, then. Make sure she can’t get her hands on her clit, and keep her keen.” Madeleine groaned, although she’d had small hope that they would let her relieve her frustrations. What she feared was that her restraints might be tightened even further. “Very well, Sir. She’s cuffed already, of course, but just to be sure, I’ll strap her knees as well, in case she gets ideas of rubbing herself off on a post, or her bedding.” Madeleine groaned even more deeply. With her knees strapped she’d not only suffer considerable discomfort, but it would be impossible to avoid soiling herself when, as was inevitable, she voided her bowels and her bladder on the straw. Another increment notched up in her humiliation and helplessness. As her training progressed, she did less road work, and more laps of the track. Morgan now came regularly to watch her progress, stop-watch in hand, or took the reins and whip himself while Bob measured her progress against the clock. Her times were still improving, but she’d broken the two minute barrier, which they seemed to think significant and very satisfactory, and now they were putting her through two, four and even six lap bursts. With the increasing length, she still sweated and blew, but her feet didn’t trouble her anything like as much as when she started. The daily applications of caustic seemed to have done their work; she had grown leathery soles to the underside of her toes, and the balls of her feet. During her second week of training they had ‘livened her up’ in the same way as her imperious female driver had prepared her for the second heat. She had to bend while they forced burning caustic mixture between her rear cheeks and past her sphincter, making her dance and writhe. As she stood, legs splayed, bent uncomfortably from the waist, with her wrists cuffed behind her, and her head pulled painfully back by the thong in her hair, she hoped fervently that the caustic they were so enthusiastically thumbing into her recoiling anus hadn’t the same properties as that they applied to toughen her feet, or her little crinkled dimple would become more like the wrinkled shell of a walnut than a folded rosebud. That could prove awkward when she returned to her former life. Most of the men that bought her seemed, inevitably, to think only of buggery once they had her bare, bent, beaten buttocks before them. But for now her concern was her performance on the track, and her demanding trainers kept her at it twice, sometimes three times a day, extending her number of laps, occasionally interspersing her longer runs with fierce sprints over one lap only, and all the while checking her times as she pounded, sweating and panting round the course, the whip urging her on, the

burning suppository making her prance in the required fashion, while her neck ached, her scalp got sorer, and her legs felt as if they would drop off. By the end of the second week they seemed satisfied that her performance was approaching a plateau, beyond which improvement could be only slow and very limited. One morning, after Bob had put her through the usual routine of feeding, evacuation, cleansing and grooming, she found herself standing in her harness, without being taken out to be hitched to the buggy in the usual way. “Stand quiet there, girl,” Bob commanded, “the Master will be here in a minute, and he’s got something to say to you.” She stood submissively enough, but felt a certain apprehension as to what the unusual departure from routine might mean. She was not kept waiting long. “Well, girl,” said Morgan, a few minutes later, “you’ve made a good start. Your times are well up to what I had hoped for when I sized you up on arrival, and you seem to have developed the right attitude, but you’ve only just begun. You’ve shown what you’re capable of in simple harness, but now you’re going to do it the hard way. You’re going to pull the buggy with your cunt.” The part referred to, already overwrought by over stimulation and enforced abstinence, twitched, as he went on. “There’s two kinds of pony-girl racing, the straight stuff you’ve met already, and the elite version. There’s not many go in for it, it’s hard to find mares good enough, but there’s a few of us think it’s the only real sport, and the other’s just a game for girls. We call it riding the Devil’s Horn, which is a pretty fair description, as you will have a hook up your vagina with which you’ll pull the carriage, instead of the traces from your belt. The pressure on your vaginal wall, and your guts behind, is bound to bruise. I don’t suppose you’ll welcome a prick up there soon, even if you have become randy as hell, and I expect it will cost you a few groans to shit. I’ll make no bones about it, it’s going to hurt, hurt like hell, but you’re going to do it. You’ll be made to do it. We’ve established now exactly what you are capable of, and should you fall short of the times we know you can achieve, we’ll know it’s because you’re shying from the pain in your cunt, and we’ll make sure you keep up to the mark. Now come and meet the Horn.” They led her out to where she was normally hitched up. The buggy was there still, but the shafts had been replaced by a single pole, which was held horizontal by a strut hinged to the front end, and turned down at the moment to support the single shaft. A few inches back from the tip a polished metal stem, about eight inches long, curved up and back in a graceful arc, carrying on its tip an equally polished ball, nearly two inches in diameter, not unlike a bizarre caravan tow ball. “Swing your leg over the bar,” Morgan ordered, “and lower your cunt over the ball. If I know you, you’re probably pretty wet already, but you can rub yourself up and down on it a little first, if you like, and lubricate it with your juice.” Trembling slightly with the fear induced by his description of what lay in store for her, she swung one long bare leg over the pole, and positioned herself against the ball. With her head held back by the customary thong, she could not see the ball once she was astride the bar, but she eased herself forward until she felt the cold metal nudging at her labia, then flexed her knees, and worked her now dripping slit against the polished ball. Almost instantly her long neglected clitoris began to respond until she was panting through gaping mouth, her belly twitching, and her knees working frenziedly.

“That’s quite enough of that,” Morgan growled, “you’re not here to wank yourself off. Get the ball inside you.” Wrenching herself away from the imminent and desperately desired orgasm, she rose onto her toes, and got the ball to lodge between her labia, then wriggled her body down until the cold metal sank easily into the well wetted sheath. Its girth took her aback, distending her vagina as it sank deeper, until at last she felt the pole touch home between her thighs, and her feet sank back to earth. How was it to be retained? She had seen no other attachments to the bar, other than the strut that supported it horizontally, so she could mount it. She didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Bob reached down and took hold of the bottom of the strut, swinging it up in front of her, until it ran up her belly to her breasts. Though her enforced head high pose prevented her from seeing it at the time, the end of the strut opened out into a fork, on the tips of which were mounted spring loaded steel jaws. She became aware of their presence, though, when he fastened each to one of her nipples, her breath coming in with a prolonged hissing sound as the full bite took effect. They were serrated, with very strong springs and further, they were constructed in such a way that the harder the pull on them the harder they gripped, as she found out when he released the pole, its weight depended from her breasts, and in particular her stretched and pinched nipples. They’d already promised her pain to be overcome, in her pussy, but this was something she hadn’t bargained for. Bob was the first to mount up, the shifting balance alternately dragging on her already sore nipples, and thrusting the ball painfully up against her cervix. “Now, girl,” he said, “don’t rush it. Nice and easy now, until you get the feel of it.” He flicked the reins gently on her bare back, clicking his tongue to encourage her to take her first apprehensive stride in this new, and devastating, rig.

CHAPTER TWELVE ‘The Devil's Horn’ From the first stride she knew that Morgan hadn’t lied to her. It hurt like hell. Apart from the existing pain in her breasts and nipples, exacerbated by the motion of the loaded carriage, the ball in her vagina pressed into the tender rear wall, and onto her lower intestines as she leaned her weight forward cautiously to get the buggy moving. Gritting her teeth, she kept up the pressure and unlike her usual lively start to the day’s exercise, moved slowly and deliberately towards the exit from the yard. “Giddup, girl,” came the command, “you’ve taken the measure of it now, and know what’s in it for you. Time to put your courage to the test,” and he laid a searing cut of the switch across her bare buttocks. As usual, the shock of the cut drove her forward, involuntarily, and she felt the full effect of the ‘horn’. It seemed to claw her entrails like a crab, and she gasped at the pain in her belly. Resolved not to be judged lacking in courage, she struck up something nearer to a racing pace, though she moaned and gasped at every stride, and the perspiration which flowed down her flanks was the sweat of agony rather than the result of honest exercise. At the end of the lap, Morgan met them with his watch in his hand. “That’s the slowest she’s done since we started timing her, Bob. It’ll be uphill work to get her back to her best form, but we know, and she knows, what she’s capable of, and it’s up to you to see she bites the bullet and stretches her cunt on that horn until she’s got her times back to what they should be.” “Yes, Sir, Mr Morgan,” Bob agreed, “she’s going to have to show she can take the pain in her guts if she’s going to make the grade. I’d hate to think she couldn’t take it, she started off full of promise and I thought she was going to be a top performer. I hope we don’t have to put her down as an ‘also ran’ and take her out of training.” “Well, it’s all up to her,” Morgan replied, “either she fights the pain in her guts and pushes herself back into form, or I’ll have to consider sending her back. Take her out again, and let’s see if she’s got what it takes.” Back onto the circuit, grim faced behind the bridle and bit which framed her face and drew back the corners of her mouth, Madeleine launched herself at the unyielding steel that pressed her body and bowels, determined not to end her training prematurely, and in disgrace. The violence of the thrust drew a scream past the bit, and her body jerked momentarily, but she did not flinch despite the agony it induced, setting off at something more nearly approaching the kind of pace she had built up to over the long days of training that had gone already. Her nipples had gone numb, only responding dully to the jolting rhythm of her gait, but the bruising blows in her gut hurt just as much, even though she had mustered the will to overcome them, rather than admit defeat. She still moaned at every step, and at the finish stood with her shoulders heaving and tears running down her face. But it had been a much better time, not as good as her best, but clear evidence of her purpose and her determination to bear the pain it cost her to drive the buggy so briskly. Her training continued, relentlessly. Gradually they stepped up the distances again; two laps, then four, though at times she screamed when an ill-judged step caught her on a rough part of the track, and seemed to tear her guts, and she was often in tears at the end of the course. Bob

treated her with almost loving consideration off the course, washing and anointing her sore nipples, douching her bruised and aching vagina and rectum with an analgesic mixture, and even dressing with a soothing cream the stripes he had earlier laid on her back and sides with his slicing whip, but on the track he was merciless. Though she screamed at the effect of pot-holes on the training circuit, and moaned as the ‘horn’ gored deeper and harder into her, he never let up, driving her with his whip and tongue, letting her know she would only hold her place if her times continued to improve, taunting her with cowardice if she flinched from the ‘horn’. The first morning she went the full six laps she felt as if she had been disembowelled. Her guts ached, she screamed as the nipple clamps came off and the blood rushed back into the pinched and tortured nubs. She was still sobbing when he led her to her mid-day feed. When he came to tie the thong back in her hair, preparatory to hitching her up for the afternoon’s work, he told her that Morgan had not been satisfied that she’d tried her best on the six lap purgatory, and had given orders that she was to go through it again. It was too much. Her body rebelled, and she cringed from the pole towards which he was leading her, and refused to lift her leg over it to mount the horn. He cut her twice, sharply, with the switch, but she continued to shy away. Even in her extremity she refused to speak, that would have been the ultimate, and irrevocable, admission of defeat, but she whined behind the bit, the agonised ‘nnnnngh’ sound of a woman in extremis. “What’s going on, Bob? Having trouble with the filly?” “‘Fraid so, Mr. Morgan, Sir. Can’t get her to mount up again. Seems she doesn’t want to do those six laps again.” “Doesn’t she just? We’ll have to see about that. Give her a last chance, Bob. Let her go back to her stall and think it over. If she comes back by the time I’ve had my lunch, and gets her cunt over the knob ready to trot, we’ll say no more about it, but unless she got that horn right up, and puts in a good time after, she can forget it. She’s out.” Morgan turned away towards the house, then, with an after thought, turned back. “And to teach her not to balk at an aching gut, make her do an extra lap.” Well, she’d invited him to take her to the limit of her endurance, and then beyond, and he seemed to have taken her at her word. Standing in her stall, her pussy and belly still hurting from the morning’s punishment, she thought about her position, what had been done to her, what she had achieved. Could she take more? Could she achieve more? There was only one way to find out. Half an hour after she had balked at being sent round again, she was lifting her leg over the pole and pressing her labia against the now cold knob. When he came back from lunch, Morgan found her sitting as required, the ‘horn’ fully home in her bruised vagina, waiting patiently for what might befall. He watched as she winced while Bob hitched up the breast clamps, then took his stop-watch in hand to check their progress. Once she had committed herself, there was no going back. This was to be the point beyond endurance, and yet she had to endure it. Bob with his whip did not drive her as hard as she drove herself, though he left her back bleeding in a dozen places, and her will would not be moved, though her body was in torment. She ran with her head back, her agony leaving her throat in a strange intermittent honking in time with her steps. When at last her pain soaked body came to a halt, her knees collapsed under her and she foundered, lying on the pole with the terrible steel horn still embedded deep in her abdomen. But she had completed her seven laps, and when Morgan announced that the time at the six lap mark was little slower than she had recorded without the Devil’s Horn, the wave of pride and satisfaction which swept over her almost drowned the pain in her breasts and belly and the aching fatigue in her legs and neck.

Though they were pleased with her performance under stress, her trainers gave her only minimal time to recover. The next day she was out on the track again, light work it is true, but work nevertheless, and her training continued without interruption. One evening, at ‘stables’ Morgan came in to make his last inspection of the day, looking more than usually pleased. “Great news, Bob,” he said, “Folkstein has agreed to take us on. He’s bringing that Polish mare of his over at the weekend. We’re wagering a hundred grand a head on them, but what I’m really after is to beat the son of a bitch. He thinks that big yellow mare of his can’t be bested, now she’s gone unbeaten for a year, but our chestnut filly’s going well enough to take her, I reckon.” “True enough, Sir, and she’s got the determination to do it. Do you think the Polack has the same incentive, after being in training so long?” “Oh, she’s got incentive enough. Folkstein reckons she’s slipped a little lately, and he puts it down to too much sexual tension building up. With some, like our filly here, it can be a livener, if one keeps them from discharging it, but he reckons she’s got too much, and that she’d be better off with her clit out, so if she doesn’t win this one, she’s to be gelded.” Madeleine shuddered where she stood. Poor woman, to lose her sexual centre at an owner’s whim. She’d certainly not be an easy one to beat. The next few days were given over to last minute race training. No more long distance running, nothing over a lap, but endless starts and sprints where she was made to lunge against the ‘horn’ until she was impacting so hard she couldn’t resist crying out loud at the pain. Bob tended her with infinite care, examining every part of her body twice a day for cuts and abrasions, which he treated with astringent lotions to heal and harden her, washing and conditioning her hair, brushing it out until it gleamed, watching her diet and her droppings, massaging every part until she squirmed beneath his hard hands. By the fourth day she was sparklingly alive, and ready to go. That evening her opponent arrived, an immensely powerful blonde not above her own height but broader in every part, great thighs and shoulders, her belly a little rounded it was true, but no sign of any real fat on her, just solid purposeful meat all over. The match was set for the next day. A small knot of visitors had come for the event, and walked round the stables, inspecting the runners. Madeleine recognised several of them from her previous stay in the establishment, including the mannish looking woman who had driven her in the race. An older, military looking, man was accompanied by an attractive and athletic young woman of about twenty or so. Madeleine couldn’t decide if she was auditioning to be a driver or a mount, either way she took a keen interest in the proceedings, examining the runners in that day’s race, and questioning her escort minutely about their training, diet and equipment. The two mares were fitted with their belts and bridles, the bits set firmly into their mouths. Bob had plaited the thong into her hair, as usual, but had decorated his work with added scarlet ribbons, Now it hung down her back, waiting to be fastened to the waist band. He’d also included a light rubbing of oil on her breasts and body, an extra smear on the soles of her feet; her pubic hair shone and curled glossily, and he’d even thrown in a pedicure, complete with colourless varnish on her toes. He obviously intended that her turn out should be immaculate to impress this crowd of seasoned judges of female flesh. She’d made good droppings that morning, thanks to the high fibre diet she was on, and despite the curious stares of the bystanders, but Bob insisted on a further flushing to follow. “There’s some as says a gut full of dung will cushion the ball, but I don’t hold with that. In the first place you don’t want the ball pushing at a swollen bowel, and in the second, you’re

not here to have it easy,” and he thumbed home two horse-sized suppositories. Five minutes later she was entertaining the watchers with her riven face and writhing belly as she squatted on the floor making humiliating squirts of brown slime onto the straw. “That’s good, lass,” Bob observed, as she bent while he sponged her anus, “t’were best you were clean right through, now let’s be having you outside for the Scrutineers.” Both contestants were led out of their stalls, their hair thongs hanging loose, their arms not yet secured behind them, and taken to the end of the stable where two men, obviously appointed for the purpose, waited by a solid looking bench equipped with stirrups. First, each woman in turn had to bend while a Scrutineer pulled a rubber glove onto his hand and thrust two fingers into her anus, feeling around as high as he could reach in the rectum beyond. Then the Polish woman was ushered to the bench and made to lie on it, somewhat reluctantly, Madeleine thought, and put her feet into the stirrups, spreading her great thighs wide, offering unrestricted access to her body, where the watchers could see an engorged stub of clitoris protruding from between her labia, between which the Scrutineer thrust a polished plated speculum, which he then extended, bringing a grimace to the reclining woman’s face, and enabling him to see the interior of the vagina, right up to the cervix. The young woman accompanying her military escort, touched his arm. “What’s going on, and what is that probe for, the one the man’s holding?” “The man, as you call him, is one of the Scrutineers, agreed by the two owners, to see that there’s no funny business. The probe is actually a pencil point soldering iron.” “And why have they put that black cloth over her face?” “If you give me a chance, I’ll tell you. Seems to me you could do with a little discipline yourself.” The girl looked abashed. “I’m sorry, Major. I’ll try not to interrupt again, but it’s all so exciting.” The Major seemed mollified by her submission. “Very well, I’ll explain. The cloth is to make sure she isn’t given any surreptitious signals by her owner. She’s going to be tested for any artificial numbing of her cunt. Normally such things are not necessary. Apart from honour among gentlemen, the object of those who race women on the ‘horn’ is to watch the struggle between her weak body and her strong will, and see how long she can hold out until the former triumphs.” The girl by his side shuddered, whether in horror, or ecstasy, wasn’t clear. Perhaps both. “But this is a needle match. Morgan’s been trying to find a woman he can put up against that great Polish peasant of Folkstein’s for a long while, and now he thinks he can do it. They’ve got a hundred grand each riding on it too, but the game’s the thing, and under the circumstances it would be only human to try and get a little advantage somewhere. You saw them feeling up the women’s arses,” he continued, “that’s to see if there was any foam padding up there to cushion the drive. Very risky trick actually because even if you can get it far enough up to escape probing fingers, they’re to be ‘figged’ for this race, and it would mean disqualification if they shat out a length of polyurethane half way round the track. That caustic they get turns their sphincters inside out, and anything inside is soon outside. But back to the present. As you can see, she’s all opened up below, and cut off from contact above. The scrutineer is going to touch the hot iron onto the back wall of her again in a totally random fashion. His colleague has his hand on her belly and, if she’s ‘clean’ he’ll feel the involuntary spasm as she burns. If not they’ll know there’s been some monkey business.” Listening, Madeleine thought, Sweet Heaven, not only do I get my cunt battered to a pulp, but it’s going to be burnt first. The part in question twitched nervously.

Six times, at random intervals, the woman’s belly jumped, and finally she was given the all clear, and allowed to rise. Now it was her turn, and Madeleine’s stomach lurched as Bob gave a little tug on her reins to indicate she should take up the position just vacated. The bench felt warm from the woman’s body, no doubt she had sweated with fear just as Madeleine was doing now, but the air was all too chill on her vulva as she lifted her legs, bending her knees to spread her thighs and lodge her feet in the stirrups, reminding her of her openness and vulnerability. The speculum, expanding hugely inside her vagina, was warm from the previous cunt in which it had lodged, but not as warm as the fire that suddenly ignited in her own. Six times she spasmed, as the point, hot enough to melt lead, was laid on the tender membrane that lined her tunnel and then, blessedly, it was over and she was on her feet again, her vagina still signalling distress, but the Scrutineers satisfied she had not been got at. Mares, drivers, Stewards, Scrutineers and all, the little group moved out of the stable, to where the buggies waited by the track. Before the thongs were secured and arms put into their restraints, there was one more small formality. The Polish woman went first, as usual, placing her feet well apart and bending from the waist to touch her toes while a Steward gathered up a large sticky brown mass of caustic and thumbed it between the massive cheeks into the anus, past the sphincter, adding generously from the tray at his side, until she was well stuffed, Madeleine could assess the power of this strong and experienced opponent she was up against. Her great oiled buttocks sat atop the solid columns of the thighs. Seen like this, she seemed as large and powerful as any mare, and who could doubt her courage. Hadn’t she beaten all comers at this demanding sport for a year, and didn’t she have incentive enough, with the survival of her most intimate woman’s part at stake? This was going to be an epic battle. As the woman danced on her toes from the effect of the potent ‘fig’ in her fundament, Madeleine bent in her turn, and received the familiar burning caustic baptism of her anus, though it seemed an even stronger prescription today, and certainly the steward stuffed her fuller than she’d ever known. This was going to burn for the full six laps. Their thongs were drawn back tight to their waist bands, canting up their chins, and their arms secured in the buckled leather sleeves behind their backs. Before the women were allowed to mount, the Stewards inspected the shining metal stems of their impalement for analgesic substances, wiping them with a cloth soaked in surgical spirit to make doubly sure. The Polish woman mounted first, swinging her leg easily over the pole, and settling with an audible ‘schluck’ onto the rampant stem of the horn, the easy passage of the ball up her gaping cunt testifying to the truth of Morgan’s assertion of her constant sexual arousal. Well she wasn’t exactly dry herself, thought Madeleine, watching, and swung her own shapely thigh over the pole and nudged the ball between her labia. She had forgotten the spiritous bath it had so recently, and hissed at the sudden sting in the tender membranes at the mouth of her vagina, but bent her knees and sent the cold lump of metal deep into her belly. Sitting on her vulva, she watched the Stewards adjust the fork to her rival’s breasts, great firm udders which swung as she moved, but didn’t sag, crowned with teats like thumbs, rock hard it seemed, and dark red. Even the hardened owner of this exuberant pair flinched as the clamps were applied and tightened. The Stewards had no intention of the race being aborted because the fork had torn free of the nipples it gripped. When her own turn came, Madeleine realised why the woman had flinched. Her own breath was drawn in, a painful gasp, as the clamps were set to a strength she had not had to endure before, her fleshy nipples cruelly pinched right at their base. They felt as if they were slowly slicing through, and this was at rest: the strain

would be even worse when they were racing, with the bounce of the buggy translated into even greater pressure. Once again the Stewards stepped forward, this time to lift each foot in turn and scratch the sole with the point of a penknife to ensure no discreet extra lining had been added to give protection from the harshness of the track. The race must be run on fully bare feet, though Madeleine had no doubt that her antagonist had been as carefully prepared and hardened as herself. Now they were under starter’s orders, and the owners tossed for starting position. Madeleine groaned as Morgan called incorrectly, and she had to take the outside position. She could do without the disadvantage this conferred. This strapping peasant was going to be difficult enough without that. The flag went up, and then dropped. Madeleine hurled herself at the ravaging hook in her gut, regardless of the hurt, and tried desperately to snatch a lead that would enable her to cross onto the inside track before the first bend but, though she bought an early lead at the price of a cruel bruising in her guts, it was not enough to take them clear, and she had to round the bend on the outside, falling back again to her rival’s shoulder. Her only chance was to try a sustained attack all the way down the straight, but not this time, the first effort had been punishing, and she needed time to re-gather her strength. Bob seemed to sense her strategy, and made no effort to dissuade her from dropping in behind the other buggy, and following it for the rest on the first lap. On each of the next straights she made another attack, but, though encouraged by Bob’s whip slicing into her back and flanks, could not quite snatch enough distance to move across. A lap later she tried another tack, attacking on the bend, hoping to catch her rival by surprise, and be past before she could step up her own pace in reply, but the extra distance round the curve was too much for her. Besides, the other team were no novices, and not easily caught by such a stratagem, and the big strong blonde was keeping up a punishing pace throughout. She made a desperate try on lap five, then, as they entered the last lap, fell in behind again in a procession of two. Both women were showing signs of distress now. The continuous demanding effort, coupled with the need to inflict unceasing and unspeakable pain on their own bodies to keep going, pain in the deepest and most intimate parts of those bodies, was draining the strength of even these highly trained and motivated females. As they approached the last bend, before the finishing straight, the big Polish mare was rolling slightly. Her unsteady gait took her close to clipping the inside of the curve, where constant wear had left a rough patch. Her foot hit a worn spot, causing her to stumble and, as she tried to recover her poise, the nearside wheel of the buggy hit the pot-hole. The resulting jarring blow of the horn in her belly threw her off balance, so she no longer leaned in to keep the buggy running round the curve and for a moment she held a straight course, tangential to the bend. Bob saw the chance, and brought his whip slashing down again and again on the sweating white flesh in front of him, but he was too late. Madeleine had already seen the first stumble and, anticipating the outcome - it was her home track and she knew every painful inch of it - had hurled herself into the gap as it opened, screaming with the effort, and the tearing agony in her belly. One yard, two, and their hub caps were level. The Polish woman made an equally self-lacerating lunge to get back her position, but it was too late, the hubs had passed, the home team had the right to the inside track, and held the counter attack to the start of the final straight, which they entered with a bare yard in hand. Both women hurled their bodies at the hooks in their bellies, venting their anguish in screams of pain at every stride, their heads rolling, sweat pouring down their anguished bodies,

running for pride, for honour and, in one case at least, for a gristly finger of sensitive flesh where all her sexual nerve ends came to their ultimate zenith, the hub of all her erotic life at stake. Screaming and swaying, their drivers standing behind them whipping the flesh from their shoulders, they crossed the line, Madeleine barely, but indisputably in front. When Bob drew her up just past the post, there was blood coming from her vulva running down her thighs. Morgan waved off the congratulations of his party, and hurried over to lead in his winner. “Didn’t I tell you she had class?” he said, handing Bob down, “she’d beat anything on two legs if she kept in training. She’s got courage too, look at that blood. You’d better get the vet to her as soon as you can.” The vet turned out to be her old acquaintance, her driver of the previous visit. She was made to lie on the gynae bench again while the vet opened up her vagina and examined the walls with a penlight. “Just a small tear,” she announced, “nothing to worry about. I expect one of the blisters left by the soldering iron gave way under the strain. A bit too handy with that iron, those stewards. Two or three touches would be quite enough to establish the woman’s clean, but they like to feel the belly jump, and give her a few more for luck.” She took a small phial and a cotton swab from her bag. “I’ll just put on a bit of styptic to stop the flow; she’ll be as right as rain in the morning. Hold on girl, this may sting a little.” Sting, she thought, what’s a little sting after what I’ve been through, but she bucked and writhed all the same, hissing through her teeth as the astringent solution ate into the raw flesh of the open tear. At ‘stables’ that evening Morgan was in expansive mood, having basked in the glory of the winning owner and enjoyed a good dinner with like-minded afficionados of this most cruel and demanding variation of the sport of pony-girl racing. “You did well, the pair of you, and I’m damned glad, and damned grateful to you both. You beat them fair and square.” “The Pole was good,” Bob put in, “she held nothing back, and damn near had the beating of us. I expect she’ll get to keep her clit a little longer.” “Don’t you believe it,” Morgan replied, “Folkstein’s a stickler for his word. He said she’d be gelded if she lost this time, and lose she did. She’s to be cut in the morning, the vet’s staying over. By this time tomorrow she’ll be lighter by a nubbin, and from what we saw of the brute between her legs this morning, that’ll be a few ounces. It looked like a full quarter-pounder to me,” he guffawed, as he bade them good-night. During the night, she heard the sound of weeping from the stall across the way, where the blonde woman lay, perhaps out of fear of the ordeal before her, perhaps in mourning for the coming loss of something so dear to her. She would have liked to comfort the woman, but they were both tethered in their stalls, and even now she wouldn’t break the rule of dumbness that held here, partly from pride, partly because she wouldn’t put it past Morgan to set a watch on her, especially tonight when there would be another woman within earshot, and one in distress at that. She could believe his devious mind had set up the situation purposely so that he could triumph in the end by sending her back in disgrace, even at this late stage, for breaking a cardinal rule of the ponygirl. The Polish woman was ‘cut’ the next morning, after breakfast. She was led to the same bench at the end of the stables, where the veterinary woman awaited her. She whimpered as she was made to lie back and open her legs and, though she didn’t speak words as such, Madeleine could hear her making a piteous ‘nng..nng...nng’ as antiseptic was swabbed onto her exposed

vulva, and the labia retracted with clamps. Her cries became even more urgent as the vet took hold of the pulsating thumb like stub with forceps, drawing it out so that its full glistening length was exposed. More antiseptic round the base, then the swab exchanged for a scalpel. Two steady cuts, one either side, deep into the root from which it sprang, and the vet held the nubbly piece of intimate woman flesh aloft as the woman’s shrieks, echoing round the building. proclaimed the loss of her essential femininity. It set the listener’s belly to quivering as she cringed in her stall, trying to shut out the evidence of the horrendous deed. Could she, she wondered, ever be brought to submit to such a fate, if she gave her life to this terrifying sport? As the vet applied a swab of astringent to curb the flow from the wound, the woman’s cries ceased. Overcome by the stress of the day, and the traumatic last act, she had taken refuge in unconsciousness. “Just as well, poor bitch,” the vet observed, “and it will give me a chance to make a good job of sewing her up. She’ll be find when she wakes, if a bit sore between the legs, and a celibate future to look forward to, where she can give all her energy to racing and forget about this sex nonsense.” The next day the woman had gone, and two days after that, Madeleine herself was home. She was returned exactly as she’d come, naked, kneeling on the floor of the trailer. Outside her apartment block there was a short delay, she decided later, that the groom had gone to check the coast was clear, and then she was released to find her own way up the emergency stairs. The door was unlocked, she never discovered how they had got the key, but it was obviously no great matter to someone with Morgan’s wealth and connections. For the first time in four weeks she tasted the luxury of a bath, as opposed to a wash down with a sponge dipped in a pail of cold water and, lying in the warm scented water, her hands strayed gratefully to her clitoris. Morgan had kept her celibate to the bitter end. Even with her race won, and her gelded rival departed, she slept with her wrists cuffed, and her knees strapped together until the day he came to say farewell. He was effusive in his praise, and tried hard to persuade her that her future lay in the terrible sport of pussy racing, but she would make no commitment, mindful of her obligation to Madame R. Even in the trailer that took her home, she could not assuage the sexual pressure that had built through a long month of abstinence, exercise, diet and excitement, but now she could give free rein to her erotic yearnings, spasming again and again in her warm floating womb of a bath as her deft fingers played Eros’s tune on the delicate instrument between her labia, an instrument that might be at risk, she knew now, if she were to give herself over as such a racer. The unaccustomed feel of clothes on her body, bare this last month, aroused further sensual feelings, though she put on no more than a silk robe. It was too early for underwear. That evening Madame Ruskova rang. “So you’re back. Did you enjoy your time with the horses?” “It was more strenuous than I’d bargained for,” she replied truthfully, “but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” “Hmmph! That’s as maybe, came the rather stuffy response, “I’ll want to see you first thing tomorrow. Don’t be late,” and the line went dead. Madeleine took herself off to her bed, to spend the night in a welter of tangled dreams of racing, punctuated by repeated returns to her sexual stem, and the heaving orgasms the fond attentions she paid it induced.

EPILOGUE The next morning found her standing once again on the carpet in front of Madame R’s heavy desk, feeling even more like being up in front of the head than usual, and quite expecting the order to take down her knickers for ‘six of the best’. “So you spent your holiday riding in the country?” “Yes, Madame.” “From what I’ve heard, you were more ridden than riding, my girl. Just so that we understand each other, I should tell you that one of my particular friends is a certain female vet, in fact we are lovers from time to time, so I know all about you, down to where to look for the scab in your vagina, so let’s have no nonsense, shall we?” Madeleine looked her straight in the eye. “Very well, I admit it, I was economical with the truth. As you appear to know, I arranged to be trained as a pony-girl, and put through my paces, doubtless you know the manner in which I was driven, and just how far. I’m sorry I was not quite straight with you, but it was my business, and on my time. You agreed that I should have a holiday.” “I’m afraid it doesn’t end quite there,” Madame replied, “the whole episode was of a strongly sexual nature, and involved giving your body to others for the purpose. Everything of that nature falls within the terms of our agreement, and is subject to my control. I will not have you infringing my rights in you and especially I will not have you giving away what can be sold for a great deal of money. Jack Morgan can afford to pay heavily for you, and no doubt I will sell you to him in the future. In the meantime there is the question of what to do with you right now.” She stood, and walked round the woman standing submissively in front of the desk. “You realise that you’ll have to be punished?” Madeleine nodded in acceptance. “The last time you broke our agreement, you were sent to Bertha’s brothel for a week. I gather you did not enjoy the experience.” “No Madame.” Indeed she had not it had been one of the most disgusting and unpleasant experiences of her life, and one she didn’t want to repeat. Was Madame going to send her back for an even longer stretch? Bertha would see that she suffered for every second of her stay. “I have of course, considered sending you back for up to three weeks, but I have decided on a different course. I am sending you what I might call my Enforcement Officer, someone who is very experienced in making life unbearable in the most appropriate way for each subject, a very useful talent in your case, with your propensity for turning most kinds of pain into satisfaction, if not pleasure. My officer will call on you in the very near future. In the meantime you are to go home, where you will strip and stay stripped until further notice. You will not remove your make-up or fix your hair, you will not wash or look after your body in any way, and that means you will not wipe yourself after you shit, or mop yourself after you pee. You will sleep on the floor of your bedroom. You will instruct the porter that no messages are to be put through, your phone is to be disconnected, and he is to refuse all entry to anybody but my messenger, and while you wait for that corrective visit, you will live on a diet of bread and water only. Is that all quite clear?” “Quite clear, Madame.” “Then go to your apartment. You may spend your time in the submissive posture, traditional for women, reminding yourself of the nature of the agreement you have voluntarily entered into, and what price you would be prepared to pay for breaking that agreement.”

The following evening found her obediently in the posture of submission, sitting on her heels, her knees on the floor, her thighs wide spread, her wrists crossed behind her back, her head bowed. She had been in this position almost continuously since returning from Madame’s apartment, and stripping off her clothes, except for a restless night leading to a nervous day, the minimum breaks needed to use the lavatory, and fetch the meagre diet she had been prescribed. She had obeyed Madame’s instructions to the letter. Old tired make-up still showed on her face, her armpits and crotch were sweaty, her hair unkempt, fallen largely out of the elegant pleat she had worn to her interview the morning before. Above all she was conscious of the mounting stench of her crotch, uncleansed before and especially behind. The apartment was hot, Madame had said nothing about adjusting the temperature, therefore she didn’t attempt to touch the thermostat, and now she was very conscious of her body odour Obediently, too, she had concentrated her mind, as Madame had instructed, on thinking of her commitment to that lady, and what punishment she would accept, resisting the temptation to take refuge in erotic fantasies or to bolster her ego, and her arousal, by recalling the events of the last month, and her triumph on the track. What sort of man would Madame’s ‘enforcer’ turn out to be, and what degree of suffering would she receive at his hand? And what degree of suffering would she accept, without rebelling? The answer to the second was more easy, she would accept anything that Madame had authorised the ‘enforcer’ to deliver. She had given herself over into the woman’s hands, and she would trust her to do what was right, and safe. For the rest, she would bear it as best she could, regardless of what was done to her. It was not clear what form her coming discipline might take. Obviously for most of her ‘string’ Madame would simply order a flogging, and put the girl back to work as soon as she could stand, but she knew Madeleine and her sexual propensities, too well to do that. She’d made it quite clear she’d have no chance to sublimate her pain and degradation into eventual pleasure and satisfaction, however much she hated them at the time. Her time in the brothel had been carefully calculated to be as unpleasant as possible, while avoiding the possibility of later satisfaction, and it had worked. She’d hated every minute of it and, even now shuddered whenever she thought of it. She was lost in thoughts of what might be done to her that would be worse than Bertha’s establishment, for she was convinced it would be, when her bleak thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell. It must be him! She leapt to her feet and, naked, trailing a miasma of sweat urine and faeces, ran to the door. She opened it to find a small blonde young woman, probably five years younger than herself, standing by a black case of the sort used by door to door salesmen to transport their sample. Damn that porter, she’d given him very explicit instructions not to let anyone to her door. No doubt this Avon Lady, or whatever she peddled, had paid him handsomely, in cash or in kind, the sexual kind, to leave her free to roam the corridors of the expensive apartment block with its promise of rich pickings. Acutely embarrassed by her nudity and body odour, - would the woman offer her a free air freshener as a ‘come on’? - she glared at her uninvited visitor. “Go away,” she said, more aggressively than she intended, “Please go away at once. I don’t require anything you might be selling, and I’m expecting an important visitor at any moment.” Quite unabashed by this attack the tiny blonde said, in a sweet voice beneath which a touch of steel lurked, “Good evening, Madeleine. I’m Yvette, and I’ve come to make your life utter hell for a week. Don’t be put off by my appearance, I can do it, in fact, I’m very good at it.

Being a woman helps of course, one understands so much better than a man just what will hurt or humiliate most, and I’m very experienced. Above all, I like what I do, and that makes all the difference.” She stepped into the hallway. “Now that’s quite enough for introductions,” she continued. “Pick up my bag, and shut the door! Let’s set about making you wish you had never been born!” THE END