Branded Sanctuary (17 page)

Like Brendan, he had the voice training of a stage performer, his change in tone from amusement to seductive promise igniting the atmosphere with anticipation. Chloe tried to focus on that, rather than the sinking feeling in her stomach. As her gaze passed again over the tables, she noted many occupants had picked up thick, glossy program booklets, and were turning to already marked pages.

“Our gracious hosts, Master Tyler and Mistress Marguerite, mailed you your auction programs last month, so you should have had ample time to peruse the choices and make your selections. As you can imagine, having any one of these beautiful slaves as your own for two whole nights is a gift without price. Almost.” He quirked a brow to another wave of chuckles. “Master Tyler advises you to show your appreciation generously. Looking out at this assembly, most of you would have to pay dearly to get the chance at slaves as pretty as these are. I‟m of course referring to you Masters, not our assembly of lovely Mistresses.”

“Nice way to save your ass, Kale,” a call came from the crowd. The emcee grinned to the ripple of laughter.

“We‟ll start with Slave Number One. I‟ll run down the highlights to jog your memory. Slave Number One is a pain and punishment junkie, a real handful who requires the most extreme Master or Mistress. As you can see, we already had to take him well in hand.”

Chloe froze in her chair as two men, almost larger than Kale, brought a struggling male slave out from behind the large curtained area adjacent to the stage. His cock was in a similar harness to ones she‟d seen in the crowd, only this one appeared to have prongs that jabbed his sizeable erection. She could see the pressure of the points digging into the tender base and scrotum. He also had some sort of bridle on his head, and a blindfold.

“Slave Number One is wearing a scold harness. For those of you not familiar with this lovely item, there‟s a flat metal piece holding down his tongue until a Master or Mistress is ready to put his mouth to more creative use.” At a nod, they turned him.

When he resisted, Chloe gasped as one of the handlers zapped him with an electric charge from a prod. The sparks were blue. The slave bellowed but turned, displaying a muscular backside and broad shoulders, already reddened with stripes.

“He needed a good caning to settle him down, at least enough to get him up here.

Ladies and gentleman, he needs a great deal of your attention. Who wants the challenge of taming the beast? Who can make him serve as a proper slave should?”

“Three thousand,” came from the table next to her, the threesome. The woman in the white sheath made the bid as the other two males nodded. The football player leaned forward, his expression wreathed in determined anticipation.

Chloe‟s pulse fluttered, and she realized she had her fingers clutched in her lap. She wasn‟t sure what to think. Was it the elegant-coated brutality, or something she didn‟t consciously understand, that made her shamefully fascinated? The slave roared in protest around the metal piece in his mouth. The two men used strength and the prod to drive him to his knees. They shoved him to his elbows, making him face the back of the stage so they could knock the knees out wider and show the assembled the large testicle sac, cinched by the sharp prongs. With his ass high in the air, the anal region was clearly displayed. A plug was in it, held with another form of clamp that had more prongs, digging into the buttocks like fingers.

The bid was up to five thousand, but Kale wasn‟t done tempting the audience.

“Ladies, I know you‟re dying to put the largest phallus you can find up that stubborn ass. He takes fisting with barely a blink.”

“It couldn‟t compare to my monster cock, Kale. He‟d be begging for mercy.”

“Big words, Master Luke.” Kale shot a humorous glance in the direction of a slim male toward the front who looked like a barely legal Leonardo DiCaprio. Chloe thought he‟d be broken like a twig by the struggling behemoth. “Do you have the money to back it up?”

“Does Luke have the
cock
to back it up? Let‟s see
that.
” This came from a voluptuous black Amazon several tables back. She had auburn curls pulled back on her bare shoulders, a teasing smile on her wet lips. With admiration, Chloe saw she gracefully wore thigh high red boots with stilettos that should have mired her in the grass of Tyler‟s lawn like a croquet hoop. Her latex dress fitted her like a serpent‟s sleek skin.

Master Luke sent her a feral grin, pure sex and danger. Seeing that, and the intensity in his gray-blue eyes, made Chloe rethink her opinion that he could be so easily overpowered. Rather than accommodating the taunting Mistress, though, he lifted eight fingers toward Kale.

“Outstanding. A bid of eight thousand. Anymore? No? You all want to see the match between these two, don‟t you? Going, going, gone.” Kale brought down a gavel.

“Well, you‟ll get your wish. Master Luke already agreed that whatever slave he takes in hand tonight will be broken in public. Perhaps Mistress Regina will get the chance to see Master Luke‟s reputed endowments after all.” Over the approbation and more bawdy comments, Kale raised his voice. “Slave Number One will be shackled in the main tent for public viewing until Master Luke gets started. And remember, baiting and feeding
this
particular wild animal will be allowed, under supervision. Thank you, Master Luke.”

The slave was led off stage. Chloe jumped as a waiter poured a glass of water at her elbow. He was dressed in slacks and suspenders, no shirt, because of course it would have been sacrilege to cover up the smooth bronzed muscles she was seeing at point-blank range. She might have taken him for a Chippendale except, instead of a bowtie, he wore a slave‟s collar with an elegant silver tag on it that read
Marius.
His eyes warmed and sensual lips curved as Chloe glanced up at him.

“That‟s Caleb,” he murmured, nodding toward the recalcitrant slave. “He‟s done this five years in a row, Miss Chloe. Everything Kale said is true. He needs the fight, the pain, to truly let go of control and immerse himself in pleasure, surrender his emotions.

No one I know can do that as well as Luke Gant.”

“His mother must be a Thomas Wolfe fan.” Feeling like Alice in Wonderland, she looked toward the slim man again. “Are you serious?”

“It‟s not about physical strength, love.” When the waiter winked at her flirtatiously, she realized Caleb wasn‟t the only one who liked to test the boundaries. Particularly as Marius gave her a lingering appraisal. But his tone was serious. “It‟s about the will, and what the slave truly needs. The best Master or Mistress knows that. Case in point?

There‟s only one other Dominant here who has taken Caleb all the way to subspace, and held him there until he was ready to worship her for the rest of his life.” The waiter nodded toward the front table where Marguerite and Tyler were engaged in conversation with a couple who‟d joined them. “Mistress Marguerite.

Master Luke has some lovely shoes to fill.”

Thinking of the things she often felt from Marguerite, that inner strength and sense of command that belied her slim, feminine body, Chloe felt a little more credulity when she looked toward Luke Gant. Marius‟s hand whispered across her knee, drawing her attention back up to him as he squatted next to her.

“Course, she didn‟t tell me to tell you all that. She just said to come assure you, remind you, that everything you‟re seeing is consensual. But I can tell you these are some of the best Masters and Mistresses around, the ones who can keep sense in their world, when their slave can‟t. Hell, Caleb can get so lost in it he‟d let someone cripple him if they didn‟t know the right way to make him reach bottom.” The waiter gave her a casual shrug, ran a quick, ticklish finger over her knee under the silky viscose. “Safe words aren‟t any use with him. Most of us don‟t know jack shit about what we need.

We only know what we
think
we need.”

She gasped as he brushed the carafe of ice water against her leg, leaving a trail of condensation. Affecting an apologetic look, he efficiently slid the hand towel off his shoulder and caressed her bare calf beneath the hem to dryness. It couldn‟t help but make her lips quiver against a laugh, even as she pushed his hand away when it tried to drift upward again. “You are not a very well behaved waiter.”

“I‟ll take that as a compliment. You let me know if you need anything, Miss Chloe.” Giving her a wink, he rose and moved on, making it impossible not to take a surreptitious look at his ass, nicely outlined in those slacks, the play of muscle over his back. And of course he threw a look over his shoulder, catching her at it, before moving on to the next table.

Chloe shook her head, but whether or not Marguerite had sent Marius on purpose, knowing his playful effect, she did feel a little easier than she had a moment ago. The auctioneer was now offering a woman who, she was relieved to see, was far less volatile than Caleb. While the two men escorted her as well, it wasn‟t a prison detail. They each supported one of her hands as she ascended the steps to the stage. When she drew near Kale, she shrugged with perfect grace out of the diaphanous silk blue robe she wore.

The indrawn breaths were proper appreciation for a body that was pale cream, her well-proportioned and quite natural breasts tipped with pink nipples. She had no pubic hair, so her flushed and aroused clitoris was readily visible. She had a fall of ebony hair almost to her waist.

“She‟s the most delicate of hot fudge sundaes, Masters and Mistresses. Meant to be savored one creamy bite at a time. How would you like to be the one to redden these pretty buttocks with a spanking? Feel the wobble of that generous flesh beneath your hand. She‟s a level three pain threshold, but to use a whip on this one, rather than savoring the flesh-on-flesh contact, would be plain wrong. I know every man here is thinking what it would be like to slide into this already wet, needy pussy. Give Master Joseph in the front row a taste, Slave Number Two. He‟s already devoured you enough with his eyes to be three courses through dinner.”

The resulting chuckles didn‟t dissipate the edgy sexual tension in the air. The young woman smoothed one delicate hand down her body, her palm sliding with a courtesan‟s seductive skill over her breast, then her abdomen. As she reached her goal, she adjusted her knees open wide. Chloe saw quite a few members of the audience lean forward as she dipped two fingers inside herself. Moving slow, deep, she worked them several times so her knuckles glistened. In the hushed silence, they could actually hear the sucking sound of a well-aroused woman, if the parting of her lips and her tiny gasp didn‟t give her away. But after those several strokes, she withdrew her hand. Moving to the edge of the stage on her hands and knees, she kept those two fingers lifted so they didn‟t come in contact with the stage floor. Any other time, Chloe would consider moving on one‟s hands and knees crawling, but this woman moved with the sinuous grace of a feminine cheetah, her hips swaying back and forth in a way that had even Kale and the two attendants distracted.

As she reached the edge of the stage, Master Joseph rose from a chair. Like Tyler, he was in a traditional tuxedo, looking urbane and self-possessed. With brown hair clipped short, he was a ruggedly handsome Latino forty-something. When he closed his hand on her wrist, she visibly trembled. Chloe heard the audience give a soft sigh, an ocean of passionate response, as he took her fingers in his mouth and sucked them gently.

“Beautiful,” he murmured in a voice weighted with his Hispanic accent. He touched her hair. “I‟ll start at a thousand.”

Chloe realized it was no insult. Apparently Caleb, as one of the more seasoned subs, and because of his almost limitless tolerance for any type of play, commanded a larger price. However, this woman‟s presentation had engaged the interest of more than Master Joseph, so he had to bid forty five hundred at the end to win her for his own.

Several more were auctioned after that. As each moved off the stage, he or she went to their knees, and their winning bidder came to them. The Master or Mistress was offered a selection of collars and leashes from a display board. The pain junkie had been the exception. Caleb had been hobbled above the knees, so he had to follow his handlers in a shuffle, his tether attached to the bridge of the nose plate of the scold harness. She assumed he was taken to the tent that had been discussed.

Slave Number Two, in contrast, was collared by Master Joseph with a braided silver ribbon choker, a thin sparkling chain attached. As he‟d put it on her, his hands had caressed her throat, making Chloe swallow. The woman lifted her chin, keeping her eyes swept down. His palms had passed over the tips of her bare breasts, just a teasing contact. As the aroused woman swayed toward him, an involuntary movement, Chloe had felt her own nipples respond to the visual.

Chloe noted the age and sex of each subsequent slave varied, every one of them beautiful in some unique way. She was becoming intensely curious, despite herself, at those programs that were being liberally referenced by the potential bidders. From glimpses at those of her table mates, she saw Tyler and Marguerite had not spared expense. They‟d been bound with a silk clad hardcover, and appeared to have an elastic silver book strap to mark pages and hold a silver pen for making notes.

“Miss Chloe, we thought you might enjoy your own program.” Another waiter, as handsome as Marius, slid one onto her table, along with a chocolate truffle drizzled with raspberry sauce, presented on a crystal plate.

Chloe had only seen Marguerite glance toward her once, at the beginning of the event, to ensure she was happy with her seating and didn‟t want to join them up front, but she was beginning to think her boss was psychic. “Oh I can‟t bid.”