Judgment II: Mercy (16 page)

Her breasts heaved as her breathing quickened. "Do ... do you like them ... better?"

"Who?" he asked gruffly.

"Them," she said, even more softly. "Are they ... better somehow?"

He stared down into her eyes for a long moment without answering. Then he snorted and shook his head. "If you aren't the damnedest woman I've ever known." He eased his 143

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weight over her until they were chest-to-chest and very nearly nose-to-nose. "I can honestly say, out of all the females in my barracks, you're my favorite. You're sure as hell the only one I've ever brought to my bed. Does that suffice?"

Mercy couldn't help but smile. "Yes."

"Good." He nodded once. "Now get your legs open. And since you lied to me, if you come one second before I tell you you may, I'll tie your tits to the ceiling."

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By morning, her eyes were bloodshot and very nearly swollen shut. And what little bit that Mercy could open them didn't matter anyway since Shipe promptly blindfolded her.

She straddled his lap, her knees to either side of his hips, naked but for the collar he'd fastened around her neck—a narrow strip of black lined by metal rings to which her cuffed wrists were individually attached. She felt Shipe carefully touch the sharp point of a pen next to the stiffening tip of her right nipple, inking a small dot to first one side and then the other. He then put the pen aside.

His fingertips touched lightly beneath both breasts and he shifted away from her before grunting with grudging acceptance. "That looks about even."

She felt the cold swipe of a damp cloth passing over first one rosy tip and then the other, and though she couldn't smell it, the strong alcohol of the antiseptic flavored the air.

She could almost taste it as she breathed the smell across her tongue.

"Hold still," he said, and her stomach tightened when he fastened a clamp over the tip of her nipple to line up the dots.

"I'm sorry." She ducked her head, not liking the feel of the clamps but trying her best not to move.

"Your sorrys are like your thank yous," Shipe said distractedly, and she felt his breath brush her chest as he leaned closer. "I don't need to hear either. But I do need you 145

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to hold still, or these are going to be lopsided. And I," he turned the clamp slightly to the left, "will be very cross."

Mercy felt both his hands come to rest on her breast: one holding the clamp and the other, she knew, holding the needle.

"I do this for all the girls here," he said, making a last adjustment with the clamp before shifting away from her so that he could better see both dots at the same time. "Any time a master wants his Personal pierced, I do it. It's a fun hobby that just happens to fit in really well here. Good thing, I suppose, that you're not really mine. Otherwise God only knows how many holes you'd end up with."

She felt the prick of the sharp needle against her nipple.

"Ready?" he asked.

And in a trembling voice, she said, "Yes, sir."

The needle punched through her flesh in one quick, practiced stroke. She winced at the sound more than she did from the minute puncture of pain. In truth, she barely had time to do more than catch her breath, and then it was done.

"Perfect," he said. "Now you're going to feel a little tug."

Now Mercy did gasp as he quickly pulled the needle through the hole, looping a surgical steel ring in its place, slipping in one side and out the other before she had a chance even to hunch her shoulders. A drop of blood splattered down upon her bare stomach, and the metal clamp took hold of her left nipple.

She whimpered. A dull, burning ache suffused her right breast, and the building heat overtook her until she barely felt the clamp.

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"Absolutely beautiful," he said, and paused what he was doing to cup her chin between thumb and forefinger and press the gentlest of kisses upon her lips. "In a few months, when these have had time to heal, you're going to look even more pleasing walking with these two lovelies on the end of my leash."

Praise from him was so rare. Despite the pain, his words made her blush. She almost missed feeling the prick of the second needle at her left nipple.

"One more. Ready?"

His praise also gave her courage, and she drew a deep breath. When she nodded, the second needle immediately punched through her flesh. This one hurt worse than the first, and her muscles accidentally spasmed, her legs squeezing around his hips, her shoulders hunching as if she could pull her breast out of his hands. She caught herself and quickly pushed her chest back out again, biting her lip and fighting herself to hold still.

"Not bad," he said, a note of admiration in his voice. "I've had hardened Personals kick and cry while I did this to them."

Mercy managed a weak smile and panted through the worst of the burning pain.

"Here's the tug." He pulled the needle through her nipple and quickly followed it with the ring. As he sat back, his fingers lightly touched the outsides of both breasts and he examined his work. "Absolutely beautiful." He covered each of her nipples with a bandage and fondly kissed her lips one last time. "You're going to make every Lesser in the Pit as green as your tunic. Your first assembly, too. And contrary to 147

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popular speculation, it's not going to be you on the block.

Now isn't that a stroke of good luck."

Mercy didn't need to ask who was slated to suffer the most feared punishment in all of Judgment. Her eyes were swollen shut and she could barely breathe through her nose, but there was nothing wrong with her mind. Mahogany was going to be punished for what she'd done.

True to his word, Master Shipe cut the front from her tunic, leaving her with sleeves and a thin pea-green barrier between the corset and her stomach. But as he led her to the dining hall—blindfolded, collared and her hands still bound and fettered to a leather leash before her—her newly-pierced breasts were covered by naught but twin bandages just large enough to blanket each burning and aching nipple.

Because Mercy took each step by feeling her way, they arrived for breakfast quite late. Within the first few steps out of the doorway, she heard the clatter of utensils on dishes come to a smattering halt and all conversations died. Even without the blindfold she knew she wouldn't have been able to see what was going on, but she felt her face flush hot and her belly erupt into a nervous storm of butterflies as Shipe coaxed her right down the middle of that ocean of gawking Lessers and the masters who had to have been watching from their dais.

She thought that he would take her to her table and leave her to fumble her way through the morning meal. But it wasn't until Shipe took hold of her collar and said, "Step up,"

that she realized what he intended.

Deaton drawled a lazy, "What are you doing?"

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"She can't see and I'm old," Shipe snapped. "Leave us the hell alone." He swatted Mercy sharply. "There's nothing wrong with your damn ears, get your skinny ass up the stairs!"

She stumbled on the first step, but his hands on her collar and arm kept her from falling. Mercy could feel eyes on her—

envious, curious, resentful—and she swallowed convulsively.

It perched on the tip of her tongue to beg to be allowed to eat at her table, but there was little compromise in his hands when he led her to his place at the long masters' table and even less in his tone when he ordered her to her knees.

The fabric caress of a tablecloth fluttered at her back and she sagged partly under the table, grateful to be hidden from everyone's sight.

"This is new," she heard Tane say, and she started. It was the first time since she'd been here that he'd ever taken breakfast in the dining hall.

Deaton chuckled, "He's hardly the first to do something strange before taking a—"

"Say it," Shipe growled, "and she won't be the only one with blackened eyes." He sat down heavily in a chair beside her. Unclipping one of her hands, he promptly slapped a warm biscuit into it. "Here."

"I don't want to cause trouble," she said hesitantly. "I can eat at my table."

She quickly snapped her mouth shut though when Shipe rapped the top of her head with one knuckle. "Did I say you could talk?"

"N-no sir!" she stammered.

"Then less talking," he snapped.

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"More screaming," she whispered and bowed her head over the bread. Nobody appreciated her attempt at a joke, and her mouth ran so dry that every swallow felt as though she were choking.

"If you want her for your own..." Tane began, and Mercy jumped when she heard Shipe slap something down on the table.

"I didn't goddamn want her in the first fucking place," he snarled. He pulled her hair when he ripped the blindfold off her face. "She can't fucking see! How can she eat when she can't see?"

To go from dark to bright hurt her eyes, and she blinked rapidly. Tipping her head back, she glimpsed several masters staring back down at her through the sliver of her swollen eyelids.

"She's got a broken nose, all right," Moulton said, and turned his attention back on his plate.

"I am merely pointing out that you could have had breakfast brought to you in your quarters," Tane said. "It's a rather possessive gesture, bringing her to eat at the masters'

table."

"Kneeling her at your feet," Deaton added from directly behind her, and Mercy turned her head, blinking up at him.

"Feeding her from your fingertips as though she were a Personal."

"It's a gesture that might be open to misinterpretation,"

Tane finished.

"And eating with her in my quarters wouldn't?" Shipe demanded. "This is what you wanted from the start, isn't it?"

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He abruptly shoved his chair back. "I never wanted a damn Personal. I don't need the aggravating bitch! And if that's what you've got planned, you can goddamn well give her to somebody else!"

He stood up, leaving her behind as he stalked angrily off the dais and stormed from the dining hall. Mercy sat in stunned disbelief. Though the sound of his leaving still echoed in her ears, she dropped her bread and reached out to feel his empty chair. Her eyes weren't lying; he really had abandoned her. Her stomach lurched sickly and she started to get up but bumped into the top of the table.

"Look at these." She hunched her shoulders when impersonal fingers cupped and lifted one of her naked breasts. She began to shake, a winding panic shivering out through her limbs, urging her after Shipe. She started to rise again, but Deaton covered her eyes with the blindfold. A hand caught hold of her collar and kept her from retreating under the table. She began to cry instead.

"She's got Personal tendencies," Deaton said.

"Cobb," Tane said.

A man's deep voice said, "I've got her," and Cobb took her collar from Deaton. He led her, crawling on her knees, down to his place on the dais. "Here." He handed her a cup of orange juice. "If you spill any of that, I'll take you over my knee right here. Now, drink."

She couldn't breathe, drink and cry at the same time, particularly not with a nose that wouldn't work. And so she knelt with her head bowed in shameful disobedience, simply holding the cup.

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The echo of a slamming door rolled faintly through the dining hall.

"Well," Tane said mildly. "That backfired miserably."

"She's more than just a natural submissive," Boyden said.

"She's a natural Personal."

Spilling the juice, not caring if she was punished for it or not, Mercy curled into a tight ball and just sobbed.

* * * *

"Can you see?" he asked, taking a moment to make sure her blood-shot eyes were as wide open as she could manage.

It was an immense room, with huge black marble fireplaces at each end and elaborate chandeliers that reflected the firelight upon the walls and ceiling via crystal-shaped tears. Almost the entire floor was covered by two huge swaths of royal red carpeting, leaving narrow paths of bare stone between the two sections of carpet and around all the walls. The only chairs were those upon the raised dais that occupied the entire front of the room. Directly in front of this was the Block.

Some three feet high and wide, it looked every bit like a butcher's chopping table—except for the liberal supply of straps down all four sides and across the top—but there was no mistaking its purpose. It even had a padded ledge in front, allowing its victim some small measure of comfort when ordered to kneel upon it for a 'legs together' type of 152

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punishment. Mercy shuddered, at the moment very grateful that that victim wasn't about to be her.

"We'll sit back here," Cobb said, as he replaced her blindfold and led her back to the far wall at the very back of the room. "It's not like you can see the action anyway."

She could feel the warmth of the crackling fire as Master Cobb eased himself down to sit cross-legged with his back to the wall. He then pulled her into his lap, into the cradle of his thighs.

"It's been a while since we've had to call an Assembly," he said. "I was looking forward to taking a turn at Mahogany, but..." his voice trailed away as he cupped her bare breasts, his fingers circling the bandages over her breasts, before skimming lightly down over her corset to slip beneath the bib of her skirt. "This is almost better than wielding the birch."