Safe Word: An Erotic S/M Novel (18 page)

They got bored pretty quickly though, and drifted away.
I felt stupid and embarrassed to be left alone with Sylvie there. We listened to each other's sobs until the guy in khakis came
and cut her down, kissing her gently, and carrying her off.

I had to wait a little longer for Annie to come get me,
and of course she was too small to carry me. She was professional about taking care of me, though-she didn't flaunt the
happiness in her eyes. She was sweet to me, too, gently rubbing salve into my wounds, cleaning the makeup off my face,
kissing me goodnight as she put me to sleep in my stall. But I
could tell that she wanted to get back to Kate. And I couldn't
blame her. Anyway, I thought, I should sleep-it had been
an exhausting day, and who knew what was going to happen
tomorrow? Annie had said she'd tell them to let me sleep
through breakfast. Good, I thought, I'd need it. But I was too
excited to settle down. I tossed and turned, the straw in the
stall tickling the bruises and welts on my ass. And the sky, I
could see through the half-open stable door, wasn't entirely
dark anymore, whenever it was that I finally drifted off.

So I was pretty wrecked when I woke up the next morning.

And of course I hadn't really been able to sleep through
breakfast. The stable was far too noisy, ringing with the clatter
of pans of food and galvanized buckets of water, the banging
of doors and the creak of hinges, and the brisk, loud voices
of grooms and trainers preparing for the day's events. Still, I
was glad to be allowed just to lie there for a while. And then
it got later and the sun got brighter. And I got a lot hungrier.
Hungry and thirsty and tired and thrilled and nervous. But
mostly hungry. Had they forgotten me?

I heard Annie's nasal little voice, cutting through the
din. "...biting off more than she can chew. I mean, it's really
all about him, you know?"

And a lower voice, a man's voice that wasn't as familiar to
me. I couldn't make out all the words. "...he's not so bad...."

And Annie, a bit shrill this time, "Yeah, I know, he makes
her happy. But he doesn't deserve...." And then, opening the
door to my stall, "Oh, shit, she's up already"

I struggled to my knees, catching a glimpse of them
before I remembered to lower my eyes. The guy who'd cut
Sylvie down looked accusingly at Annie, and then relented a
bit. "It's okay," he said, "you didn't really say much."

All of which would normally have inflamed my curiosity. But at that moment I was much too hungry to be curious,
so I was soon gratefully-and literally-eating out of Annie's
hand. She'd brought me an apple and, even more exciting, a
banana, and I was quite beside my self with enjoyment. The
guy disappeared, reappearing with a little trough of water for
me to lap at, while he and Annie watched me wordlessly.

And after I came back from the latrine, Annie punched
me lightly on the arm. "Okay, asshole, go with Steve now,"
she said. And to Steve, "Well, back to work," hurrying out
to Tony and Randy, leaving him to take care of me and me to
wonder about him. He had a thick mustache, and he was very
muscular, wearing precisely ironed khakis again, and a light
blue shirt. I could feel him looking coolly and steadily at me.
Perhaps he was still angry at me, I thought, for having won
yesterday's race.

I'd be an extra girl in Kate's scene, I thought, as Steve led
me to a car with dark-tinted windows, closing the door after
me. Which probably meant that Sylvie and Stephanie would
be there as well, and probably they weren't going to be any
friendlier than Steve. Well, you couldn't blame Sylvie, of course,
but I wasn't looking forward to Stephanie either. Because when I'd first gone for pony training, she'd been there, in the same
stable. And I'd loathed her, snooty little goody-goody with
her flawless manners. My friend Cathy and I used to whisper
through a knothole between our stalls at night. We'd giggle and
make spiteful fun of Stephanie, like bad kids at summer camp.
And Stephanie must have known, I thought. The kids who get
made fun of at summer camp always know.

We were driving through the stone gates of an estate
now, down a dense, overgrown narrow back road, the dappled
sunlight flickering through the trees and the tinted car windows. 1 stared curiously up at the big story-book house Steve
had parked in front of, and followed him up the stairs and
through the silent entryway-graceful polished stairway to
the right, lace-curtained double doors and large ferny houseplants in front of us and to the left.

"Two flights up," Steve said briefly to me, "first door on
the right."

He watched as I walked silently up the thickly carpeted
stairway, light from the stained-glass windows painting mottled, vivid designs on my naked skin. I climbed the
second flight of stairs. First door on the right. The ceilings
were high, the doors at least ten feet tall. I knocked, feeling
like a small child.

I had hoped that it would be Kate behind that door, but I
wasn't too surprised to find Stephanie, all tumbling black curls
and huge blue-violet eyes, peachy skin and single dimple in
her cheek. All smiles, too, but not friendly ones. She looked
shrewd and calculating, nodding curtly and motioning me
into the large room.

It was a nursery. Well, that's what it looked like,
anyway-like that enormous Edwardian dormitory where Wendy, John, and Michael Darling had slept, in Peter Pan.
I guessed that whoever owned the house had hired a decorator
to create it for their kids, in a fit of upscale retro Anglophile
whimsy. It wasn't a fancy sort of room; it was big and clearly
expensive, but the decorator had gone for a sort of shabby,
aristocratic, cold-showers-and-beef-tea asceticism. All the
more dissonant, then, as a setting for Sylvie and Stephanie
and me-naked in our collars and cuffs. Sylvie was lying
on her belly on one of the small white iron beds, carefully
making up her face in a mirror propped against the pillows.
No smiles from her, not even evil ones. Just calm concentration on the mirror, a brief glance at me, and a determined
glance at Stephanie, who nodded firmly, shutting the door
behind me. The children's hour, I thought, gulping.

The room was full of toys, too, though not the kind
the original owners had imagined-these toys were made of
leather and latex and brass and iron. There were big wicker
baskets filled with whips and restraints of various sizes and
shapes. There were high-heeled shoes lined up at the scuffed
powder-blue baseboard, and black corsets and garter belts
hanging from hooks on the wall that once must have held
sweet little smocked pinafores from Laura Ashley and overalls
from Baby Gap and OshKosh B'Gosh. There were latex cocks
on harnesses, too-a large selection of them, in all the colors
of the rainbow. There were two-tone jobs, marbled ones. And
some were translucent as well, with glitter embedded in the
latex. All sizes and shapes-I mean, besides your traditional
naturalistic ones, there were twists and bumps and spirals. I
watched warily as Stephanie chose a handful-a bouquet-of
them, strapped one on, and tossed another to Sylvie.

"I'll go first," she said to her, blowing her a kiss, "unless
you really want to."

"No," Sylvie answered, coolly, "you go ahead."

But first Stephanie just walked around me, critically.
"She's really not all that terribly pretty, is she?" she asked.

"Oh no," Sylvie answered, "but, well, she does have
something, you know Even Kate says so."

"Attitude, Kate says. Makes people want to hurt her."

"Umm, well, I can see that, yes. Too bad we only have
permission to fuck her."

"Well, her ass is her best feature, after all."

I started to look around nervously, for the grease. I mean,
they were going to grease that cock, weren't they, before
Stephanie stuck it up my best feature? And I wasn't at all reassured when Stephanie positioned herself squarely in front of
me, her voice icy. "Suck it, Carrie," she said.

I hesitated for a heartbeat. Did she mean that the only
lubrication I'd get was my own saliva? And then, just before
she had to push me down to my knees, I got down quickly,
opened my mouth, and inhaled the monster, watching its
shaft, in its obscene fuchsia color, disappear down my mouth
to my throat.

Sylvie had gotten off the bed and was watching closely.
"Deeper," she said to me. She smacked my ass with the cock
that she hadn't strapped on yet. "Don't imagine you can hold
back on us."

No, I didn't imagine I could. And yes, she was right.
I could open my throat a little more widely. I could keep from
retching, if I tried, if I gave it everything I had. I felt the latex
fill my throat, in hollows that nobody usually touched. My
eyes filled with tears, but I kept going down on that cock as though it were my life's work. I was frightened, disoriented. I
mean, I'd known I wasn't their favorite person, but this didn't
seem like Sylvie or Stephanie at all-more like their evil top
twins. It was like getting to see the dark side of the moon.
And then they blindfolded me-in soft, thick black velvetand I couldn't see anything at all.

A hand grabbed the ring in the back of my collar ("sillylooking collar," I heard one of them sneer) and dragged me to
one of the beds. I scrambled onto it, banging my shins, and
raised myself up on my knees. And I breathed an enormous
sigh of relief when one of them shoved some grease up my
asshole.

They took turns fucking me-speeding up and slowing
down, squeezing and slapping my breasts, and commenting
dryly from time to time on my form, my looks, my performance. "Well, she can do this okay, anyway," I think that
was Stephanie, very grudgingly-and from Sylvie, a giggled
"I should hope so, or I'd lose all my respect for Jonathan."
They tried different cocks, commenting on some of the more
exotic ones, and giggling about how they looked in them.
They kissed and stroked each other, too, I think, though I
could only feel and hear it, rather than see it. I began to cry
out-it was painful, and it was also arousing-but when I felt
the tears soaking the blindfold, I knew I was crying because I
was lonely. I wanted one of them to kiss or stroke me.

They didn't, of course. They left me kneeling on the bed
and I guessed that they'd gone to one of the other little beds,
where I could hear them giggling and kissing, hugging and
poking and playing. And then deep moans, and I supposed
that they'd taken off the cocks and were happily eating each other, crying out, and then ending with creamy sighs of
contentment.

And whispers, then. "Oh, well, she took that pretty
well, anyway," and "You can't really blame her for winning,
I guess." More ominously, "She's probably not going to have
an easy afternoon, after all," and then lots of stuff I couldn't
hear, until Stephanie called out to me, "You can come into
bed with us if you want, you know."

I tore off the blindfold. It was difficult not to take a flying
leap, and it was delightful to have them touch and kiss me.
"Kate lets you make love to each other?" I asked.

Stephanie laughed. "Well," she said, "not all the time.
But for treats, yes, she does. Because, you know, Sylvie was
so miserable last night, losing to you. We never expected that
to happen, after all. Well, nobody did." I forbore to say that I
had. I mean, no point messing up this good thing I seemed to
have going with them all of a sudden.

She continued, "And, anyhow, Kate says that it's a male
thing, that business of being so stingy with a slave's sexuality.
Because it seems to us there's always enough to go aroundwell, we never have any problem with it, anyway"

And Sylvie added, "And neither does Randy"

They giggled at that, and so did I. The evil twins had disappeared, leaving me rolling around in bed with Marcia Brady
and Laurie Partridge. It was goofy, silly, a little like being part
of the Babysitters' Club, but it was fun anyway. We messed
around a while longer and then we took showers, toweling
each other's backs. We did each other's fingernails; this was
serious business, they had to be short and their edges silkensmooth. A maid-part of the staff that came with the rented
house-brought us lunch, little troughs of food and water. She was terrified, uncertainly putting the troughs down on
the floor, as Steve must have told her to do, and skittering out
the door.

The food was as wholesome and charmless as any food
I'd gotten anywhere. Stephanie and Sylvie assured me that the
food Kate gave them at home in California was a lot better,
though they admitted that it was also pretty bland and healthy.
They talked a lot about Kate-and home-beginning at least
half of their sentences with, "Kate says...." They seemed to
feel that living with Kate was their real home-their real life,
and not some kind of fantastic intermission from it. Happy
families, I thought. Wow-they're not alike at all.

"But, you know, even the others at home get to have sex
with each other, sometimes, for treats," Sylvie was saying.

"The others?" I asked.

They pouted a little at my question. But then they
patiently explained. It seemed that Kate owned the both of
them and Randy outright-her name was on their papers.
But the other six slaves at the place in Napa were owned by
Kate's corporation.

"Well, she might fuck one of them, there's nothing stopping her. And we're all trained together in the mornings and
disciplined together in the late afternoons. Steve takes care
of a lot of the details, but it's really Kate that everybody tries
to please. Still, it's different with us three, because we keep
her satisfied on a daily basis. We bathe her, do her nails, and
she takes us to bed with her. Mostly, they take care of clients.
Which we do too, of course. But she's our mistress. I'd hate it
if I didn't have one mistress, or a master, I guess, to please."

"Well, there's Marco," Sylvie said pensively. "Sometimes,
I think that if Kate didn't own me, I'd want..."