Discipline of the Private House (25 page)

She took several deep breaths and, when she felt able to speak, she peered under the covers to find Jem grinning at her.

'That was an orgasm,' Olena said. 'I've read about them, even though I know I should not have.'

'I guessed you hadn't had one yet,' Jem whispered, 'and it would have been wrong to waste the opportunity. Good, wasn't it?'

'It was -1 can't describe it,' Olena said. 'Wonderful. The best feeling I've ever had. I'll have to be very soundly punished when I tell Barat.'

'And you'll enjoy telling him, won't you?' Jem said, her voice betraying an intellectual curiosity. 'And you'll enjoy being punished.'

'Yes,' Olena admitted, feeling suddenly wretched. 'I'm hopelessly wicked.'

'But the orgasm wasn't bad, was it?' Jem said. 'It was very good. Orgasms always are. We must talk some more about this. It's important. But now you'd better come down here under the covers and refasten my chains, before anyone gets suspicious.'

Olena slid further into the bed, until like Jem she was completely concealed beneath the covers. Each woman knew that the other faced a day of trials and ordeals, and they embraced and kissed with passionate intensity in the warm, soft darkness. Eventually Olena, at Jem's insistence, refastened Jem's wrist-cuffs to the chains that hung from the back of her collar, and the two women emerged from the bed.

'Let's use those luxurious bathroom fittings,' Jem suggested. 'Of course, you'll have to help me. I can't very well wash myself.' She shrugged her shoulders, and the chains rattled.

The two women were able to wash in a corner of the bathroom where jets of warm water issued from a bell-shaped rose that hung like a drooping flower from an upright pipe of chrome and gold. Jem told Olena to pull the faucet as far open as she could, so that the water fell in a steaming torrent. As they stood together, gasping in the needles of water and giggling when their nipples touched, Jem explained. 'We can talk now,' she said. 'Even if someone's listening, the noise of the water will obscure our words.'

'Of course,' Olena replied. 'How very clever.'

'And while we're talking, you can wash me. Use that sponge.'

Olena stepped from the curtain of water, picked up a large, irregularly shaped sponge, and re-entered the steaming waterfall that had Jem at its centre.

There was something indefinably enjoyable about sponging Jem's body. It was a very attractive body, of course, and Olena was full of gratitude and affection for Jem, but there was more to it than that. Finally Olena had to admit that it was the fact that Jem's hands were chained behind her that made washing her so exciting. Olena could use the sponge to caress Jem's neck, or to scrub her breasts, or to stroke her thighs, and Jem was powerless to prevent any of it.

Not that Jem appeared to mind. Olena was delighted with the squeals of pleasure that she was able to extract from Jem, and with the dreamy, eyes-closed expression that illuminated Jem's face when Olena used the sponge gently. Olena found that more and more she was concentrating on washing Jem's breasts, which were smaller than her own but very prettily shaped, with pink nipples that crinkled into hardness at a touch.

'Listen to me, Olena,' Jem said. 'While I'm still able to think properly. Come closer; let me kiss you while we talk.'

Olena pressed herself against Jem; she felt Jem's nipples sink into the softness of her own breasts. The water covered them like a sheet, but it was warm and moving and trickled between their bodies.

'Put the sponge between us,' Jem said, punctuating her words with hard kisses on Olena's lips. 'Hold it just there. Have you got it between your legs? Is it touching the right spot?'

Olena pulled back, nodded quickly, and returned Jem's kisses. She guessed what Jem intended them to do. The sinful feelings were returning, stronger than ever, and Olena found herself actually hoping that someone was watching them: it would be even more disgraceful, and she could depend on receiving punishment. Perhaps Nicole was about to rush into the bathroom and punish her and Jem immediately. The thought of being watched and of being whipped while kissing Jem made her thoughts fragment into shards of wonderful sensation. The sponge, with one end wedged into the gap at the top of her thighs, and the other held similarly by Jem, moved maddeningly as she and Jem embraced and pushed their hips against each other.

Jem was beginning to gasp as she writhed her hips, but she seemed determined to talk to Olena. She removed her lips from Olena's and pressed herself hard against the other woman. 'Remember, Olena,' she said, 'that you are blessed. You are lucky. You have a gift. Don't ever stop being ashamed. It's so valuable.'

Olena was beginning to feel the pulses of sensation that she now knew could take her to an ecstatic climax. 'What do you mean?' she managed to gasp. She ground her hips against Jem's, and both women shuddered as the sponge between them pressed into their vulvas.

'Your shame adds to your pleasure,' Jem said into Olena's ear. 'Most people just have the physical feelings. You have them, certainly, but also the feelings that make you ashamed. And being ashamed adds to your pleasure. Which makes you even more ashamed. And so you want to be punished. But being punished is shameful, so just thinking about it makes you feel more excited.' She paused to take a breath.

'Yes,' Olena said, and felt her knees almost give way as another spark of sensation stoked the furnace of lust in her loins. 'And being punished makes me excited. I can't help it, I like to feel my bottom being smacked. But that's even more humiliating, particularly when people can see that I'm excited.'

'I think we're both close to coming,' Jem said quietly, so that Olena could hardly hear her above the jetting of the water. 'Let's see who can come first, shall we?'

Olena almost overbalanced as Jem pushed against her. But she was a little taller than Jem, and had the advantage that her hands were not chained behind her back. She pushed back, forcing Jem out of the tent of streaming water until Jem's back was against the ornately tiled wall. Gripped by desire and a desperate love for Jem, Olena crushed her breasts against Jem's and ground her lips on to Jem's gasping mouth. Olena, without thinking, was thrusting her hips against Jem's, driving the sodden sponge into Jem's secret place more and more rapidly as the pulses of pleasure accelerated in her own body.

'Olena,' Jem cried out in the brief gaps between kisses. 'Olena, Olena, you're so lovely. I'm coming, my love.' She began to pant; the movements of her hips matched Olena's. 'Remember: you're* fortunate. Learn to enjoy your shame. Don't ever lose it. Olena -' Jem could say no more; as Olena's sensations blurred once again into a fountain that carried her upwards, she heard Jem's voice, as if from a great distance, crying out gutturally. And then Olena too had reached her summit, and was held breathless as exquisite stillness seemed to fill her and expand outwards from her. She gasped and gulped in air, crying hoarsely as wave after wave of pleasure swept over her, and then began to recede.

T think you like your sexual climaxes,' Jem's voice said. Olena shook her head and opened her eyes. They were still pressed together against the wall, although they were now both beyond the reach of the cascading water. The sponge lay on the floor between their feet.

'Mm,' Olena said, and then was suddenly filled with dread: not at her own sinfulness, for once, but on behalf of her new friend. 'Jem! I mean, slave. If we are being watched, your climax will have been seen. And you're not permitted to do that.'

Jem kissed her. 'I just couldn't resist you. And it
was
lovely, wasn't it?'

'Oh yes,' Olena breathed. 'I think I'm going to enjoy being a bad girl from now on.'

By the beards of the elders, they were going to do it under the shower! Barat, crouching in the confined space of the tunnel that ran along the interior of the cell wall, could hardly believe his eyes. As he fumbled beneath his robe to grasp his hardening member he kept his face pressed against the eye-slit, one of many that cast narrow beams of light into the darkness and allowed him, by shuffling from one to another, to see every part of the cell and its attached bathroom.

He couldn't decide which of them to concentrate on.

Olena, of course, looked magnificent. Her long, dark hair, made sleek by the rushing water, clung to her shoulders and her back like a black silk shawl. Her coffee-coloured skin gleamed. The jetting water bounced from her jutting breasts and dripped from her nipples; as she moved, her shining buttocks rolled together and looked as though they had been oiled.

But the other woman also merited his attention. Although she was scarcely shorter than Olena, the delicacy of her elfin features, and the paleness of her skin, and the fact that Olena's breasts and bottom were so generously proportioned, made her look diminutive. The former Supreme Mistress, now the least of all the slaves, naked and bound in chains, was a sight to engender desire in anyone. Barat imagined squeezing her breasts in his hands; he pictured her chained to the foot of his bed, gazing up at him with those sea-green eyes as she was now gazing at Olena, anticipating the fall of his whip on her small, round buttocks.

And they were kissing as if they intended to devour each other. Barat had seen women kissing before, but never had he witnessed such a display of naked lust. He saw how Olena's breasts engulfed the slave's, and he tried to imagine how the meeting of nipples might feel. He saw their hips pressed urgently together, rocking back and forth as they excited each other with the long sponge. If only he could have them under his command; he would tie them together in this very position, and make them pleasure each other as he whipped their wriggling arses.

His eyes were drawn to Olena's face. She never looked less than pretty, with her large, dark eyes, her wide cheekbones, and her pouting lips, but now she was transfigured. Olena's eyes, with their lids half shut, were glowing with desire; her mouth was open, and her lips were twisted into an expression that was almost ugly but that was also more alluring than any he had seen. He suddenly realised that she was on the verge of a climax, and watched transfixed as she thrust herself repeatedly against the slave's pinioned form. He heard her cries above the sound of the rushing water. He watched her face recover its animation and register shocked delight, and then break into an unutterably winsome smile.

Only then did he stand upright. He had to struggle to suppress a shout of rage. This was not supposed to happen. Olena was not to be permitted to achieve ecstasy other than during her punishments, and not until Master Robert considered her ready. Above all, Olena was to be trained in Barat's presence; the Chatelaine had guaranteed it.

His manhood had already shrivelled. All thoughts of pleasure and excitement had been driven from his mind by an overwhelming sense of outrage that things were not going to plan. And he felt fear. In order to pursue and possess Olena he had long ago throttled his conscience and abandoned his holy principles; he had risked his standing in his community; and he had allowed himself to be humiliated here in the Chateau. He had perverted his life to obtain Olena, and now he sensed that she was slipping from his grasp.

He pressed his fists to his forehead. He wanted to scream, but knew he would be heard by the women in the bathroom. He set off along the dark tunnel, leaving behind the excited chatter of Olena and the slave. He would demand to see the Chatelaine. He would demand to be given Olena immediately.

As Jem and Robert made their way from the dungeons to the north range of the Chateau, Robert's right hand roamed continuously over the curves of Jem's bottom. She was naked but for her collar, matching leather cuffs around her wrists, the chains, and a tightly fitting leather helmet within which her hair was contained. From time to time Robert would pull on the leash and laugh when Jem stumbled. With the movement of her arms restricted by the chains, on occasion she almost fell; each time this happened Robert grabbed her roughly, pinching her nipples hard as he righted her, and gave her six lashes for being clumsy.

As he led her through the lamplit corridors he maintained a steady stream of muttered invective: 'Not so high and mighty now, are you, little whore?' he said, over and over again. 'My Mistress has got you, and she'll never let you go. She'll keep this pretty little arse so sore you'll never want to sit down again. And if she ever takes pity on you, you can be sure I won't.'

Jem succeeded in maintaining a subversive cheerfulness as she dutifully thanked Robert for his consideration, but she could not help feeling apprehensive. It was clear that

Robert had an ordeal prepared for her in the Chateau's kitchens, and that he expected her to be unable to remain subservient throughout it.

They had reached the wide passage that ran down the spine of the north range of rooms and separated the dining hall, with its tall, south-facing windows, from the cryptlike kitchens, sculleries and storerooms of the Chateau. This was one of the oldest parts of the building: the ceiling vaults rose from semicircular arches that were supported by thick, round, age-pitted pillars, and the flagstones had been worn by centuries of feet scurrying from hall to kitchen and back again.

Robert led Jem past the pair of vast swinging doors which led directly into the main kitchen. He stopped instead a little further down the corridor, in front of a single, plain door. Jem thought that behind the door was one of the smaller rooms devoted to food preparation: the bakery, perhaps. The main kitchen, of course, was so cavernous that the blackened ceiling was difficult to discern; the bakery, buttery and sculleries were therefore small only by comparison - each was much larger, for instance, than the spacious cell that Jem had shared with Olena the previous night.