Safe Word: An Erotic S/M Novel (26 page)

"Do you like it?" she asked me nervously. "Is it a good
present?"

The papers were meticulously drawn up, written in that
half-pornographic, half-legalistic style that Brewer and his
troops could do so well. The slave called Carrie... to be purchased by Ms. Clarke and certifiably owned by Mr. Keller... under
the direction and tutelage of Ms. Clarke's corporate agents.... -

"You'd do that for me?" I breathed.

She nodded, averting her eyes, looking small and
defenseless, behind her knees.

"Hey," I said, "come here. Look, it's okay. You don't ...we
don't... have to do this."

She lifted her chin. "You do still want her, don't you?"

I was ashamed to admit how much. Even though life had
been so full those past few months, I'd still feel the yearnings
from time to time. I'd find myself thinking of you, wondering
how you were doing, and wanting to hear you tell me about
it. Well, wanting a great deal more than that, really Most of
the time, I was able to ignore these feelings, but not always,
not completely.

"I do," I said sadly, "but...."

"Just what were you planning to do about it, then, come
next March 15th?"

I'd avoided thinking about it. Go to Avignon and wing it,
I supposed.

She supposed so too.

She stood up, opened the French doors that led to the
deck, and walked out into the chilly night. I heard a sudden
rush of wings. An owl, perhaps swooping down on a mouse or
a hare. It was a wrenching sound, and a slightly arousing one.
I followed her outside, pressing myself against her back, feeling her rotate her ass upward just a little bit toward my cock.
That rotation was second nature, a way of adjusting for the
difference in our heights. I took her breasts in my hands. Her
naked skin was icy, the flesh below still warm.

"What do you want?" I asked. It sounded adolescent,
the way I said it-a silly, portentous, metaphysical question
about absolutes and the meaning of life.

And she answered me back like another adolescent.

"Everything," she said.

I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't help it. "Everything?"

"Everything," she repeated.

I remembered the last time we'd spoken like this-when
she'd broken up with me, when we were teenagers. It had made no sense at all to me then. Well, she hadn't been very
articulate, and I'd been stunned and enraged by loss.

"Everything," she said now, turning around and pressing
her front to me. "As many pleasures as one has the will, and
the energy, and the desire for-and the patience and talent to
arrange."

And this time it seemed quite reasonable, out there on
her deck, in the midst of the little empire that she'd built. I
didn't need to feel guilty and dismayed by my desires for you.
With enough patience and talent-and money-it could all
be arranged.

"I'm having a very happy birthday," I whispered, my
voice a little unsteady. We were holding each other tightly.
"Thanks again."

We talked more the next morning, as we finished breakfast.

"You'll have to go to Avignon and get her to come back
with you," she said. "She has to want to do this, and she has
to understand-fully-what the terms of the deal are, and
what she can expect. I'll keep her as exercised and disciplined
as she needs to be, on a daily basis. I mean, you can't just
stash her away like a princess in a tower, times when you're
not using her."

"I've seen her," she added. And I guess she'd have told
me the whole story, if I'd insisted on it, right then. But I let
the moment pass, and she smiled, and continued.

"She's had an excellent trainer and she's quite acceptable
now. Not quite on the level of my particular three, but she'll
be able to hold her own, more or less, among the other six.

"She's become a pony, you know," she said then. She
knew that I didn't know that. "She's had a good season, win ping a few prizes I thought Sylvie would take easily. They've
been sharing most of the big purses between them this
summer and fall."

So that's what you'd been doing. I remembered the
first time I'd seen you bridled, the thick bit distending your
mouth, the fear and humiliation widening your eyes. I've
never been much for the racing circuit-I know how cruel it
is. So they'd been as cruel as that to you... interesting to think
about. Breathtaking, actually.

And, even more interesting, the rapt look in Kate's eye.

"She's really," and she paused for a moment, "an unusually
charming pony"

I thought at first that she was teasing me, flaunting
the fact that she'd seen you-perhaps used you-sometime
during the racing season, and that I hadn't. And then I realized that she wasn't thinking about me at all, she was treating
herself to a hot memory of...something, I didn't know what.
And the rush of jealousy almost knocked me over. Well, I
guess I'd be jealous of anybody who made Kate lick her chops
like that. But envying you that way, Carrie-well, it took me
by surprise. It was a new sensation, a strange taste in my mouth,
like tobacco or vodka or foie gras, one's first time. A dangerous taste. Rich and poisonous and strange and addictive.

Kate and I looked at each other, evenly, for a minute.
I know that you know. And same here, love. And then we
looked down at the table. I poured us a little more coffee.

"Of course," she offered, "she still has some untapped
potential-she could be polished to a much higher gloss."

I nodded. "If you paid her a little personal attention, you
mean."

"I don't know where I'd find the time." Now she was
teasing me. And herself. "But there are a few things I could do
that would, um, make all the difference."

"Oh, well, please," I said. "I mean, if you could find the
time."

"And you'll let me race her, won't you?" she asked.
"She'll be a good project for Ariel."

I nodded.

"And come with me to watch her run?"

You bet I'll come watch you run. I'll wear my goldbuttoned blazer, with Kate next to me in the stands, wearing
a pale peach linen dress and a slightly silly hat that I love.
We'll hold hands and pass the binoculars back and forth.
We'll scream along with the rest of the crowd, and we'll bet
big money on you. And you'll win for us. Well, especially
with Ariel driving you.

I nodded again. Yeah, definitely the pony races.

"And sometimes," I asked, "you know, once in a while,
I mean, you and I could use her together, maybe. Share her,
you know?"

She smiled at me over the rim of her coffee cup, "Thanks,
sweetheart," she said, "I'd like that."

I could handle the birthday present part, I thought. Well,
it beat jumping out of a cake, anyway. And it made an odd
kind of sense, her wanting him to have me-at her place,
where she could keep an eye on things. He makes her happy.
And she wants him to be happy, too. Although (I couldn't help taking a little pleasure in the thought) she must have
had some not-so-happy moments while she waited for him
to come around. But he had come around. As we all would,
in a complicated protocol that was obviously delighting
him, and which I was having some difficulty grasping at the
moment.

Still, I didn't really have to understand it all at once,
did I? I supposed that all I really had to understand was that
everything could be arranged. I thought again of Kate's foot
parting my thighs, her fingers tugging at the straps of my
bridle, her careful attention while Sylvie punished my breasts
with the little whip.

And I thought how, when 0 first comes to Roissy, one of
the girls asks if it was her lover who brought her. Yes, 0 says,
and the girl tells her that she's lucky, because they'll be much
harder on her that way. And if it was the boss lady's lover who
brought you, how hard do you think they-how hard do you
think she-will be on you?

I decided I'd better ask a question. Keep it technical.

"Well, but, Jonathan, how are these things managed?
I mean, the contract, and my, uh, price? I mean, well, if the
sale doesn't happen at an auction, you know?"

He laughed. "You don't have to worry about your price."

"It'll be substantial," he added. "Annie's very highly
regarded, and after all you've done so well in those races and
competitions."

But the decisive thing, really, was that Kate was buying
me for him. Because slaves exchanged between lovers were
considered extremely valuable.

"You'll get to read the papers that Brewer drew up. Of
course, we still need to dot the is and cross the t's. And get
you entered into the system."

He meant the association's new online information
system. It was up and running now, he said, and I'd be measured, examined, filmed, and photographed, so that I could
be accurately classified and represented on the databases, the
Web pages.

Yeah, I thought, whatever. And then I felt my eyes widen,
as an idea began to take shape far back in my brain.

He nodded, pleased that I seemed interested. "It's very
impressive. Holds an astonishing density of information.
Numerical, of course, about the, uh, population. But there
are also graphical representations, film-clips. Well, you
must have been on there at some point, now that I think of
it. Didn't you tell me Kate said they'd filmed you winning
that first race? Graphics take a lot of computing power, of
course-a picture's worth considerably more than a thousand
words online. But the hard part, it turned out, was building
the security system. And we were lucky there, in a sense,
because a hacker got in late last summer and showed us the
weak points of the version we were running. He found a very
subtle bug, and it took a long time to fix it."

Hmmm, I thought.

"Well, we probably shouldn't have put all that live auction and competition data up there quite yet," he said. "The
hacker was on for about an hour, just looking around, it
seems. Jerking off, I guess. No clue as to who he was. People
who understand these things were very impressed with how
cleverly he got in and out. They speculate that he could have
covered his tracks completely, but didn't want to. Wanted to let somebody know he'd been there. Sorry-he or she, I guess
I should have said."

I had to smile a little at that fastidious, PC touch. But it was
a he, I thought. Because I know....-And I thought that maybe
I should tell....-But surely, I thought, Jonathan can read it in
my face, and will demand to know what I'm not telling him.

But he was drifting somewhere, still far away in the land
of his story. He caught himself now, apologetically, willing
himself back into the here and now.

"It was interesting," he shrugged, "to see how they put
together something like that. Kate and I had fun learning
a little about the technical stuff. But it's probably a lot less
interesting to hear me tell about it."

"Oh," he smiled now, "and we'll make sure you get real
books to read this time. We'll get that into the agreement as
well."

I blushed as I thanked him. I was pleased that he'd
thought of it.

"Which reminds me," he continued, "that book you
were reading before the auction-and it was a cyberpunk
book, too, wasn't it?, how appropriate-anyhow, which of the
stories did you like?"

Well, why not talk about books? After all, we'd gotten
all our business affairs out of the way. And maybe, I thought
then, I didn't really have anything to tell him after all. Turned
out we'd enjoyed the same stories in Mirrorshades, too.

He continued, "We could go to the movies, tonight, if you'd
like to. We can probably find some interesting American film
that won't open in the States for another month or two."

"Sure," I said eagerly, "uh...Jonathan." He nodded,
enjoying the way I'd said it, the two rhythms superimposed. The casual chatty rhythm of a man and a woman planning
an evening out-and underneath it, the fetishes speaking in
their own measured cadences. He smiled at the angle of my
shoulders, the little arch in my back that kept my breasts
displayed to him, the stiff nipples outlined by the dress's soft
red wool.

"They were right," he said, contentedly. "Kate and all
those professional types. I didn't know how to train you,
didn't know at all what I had. But I did find you, after all,
which ought to count for something. And I've got you back
now, that's the important thing."

We checked the movie listings. Easy to agree on one-the one
with Isabelle Huppert as a sentimental pornographer. Not bad,
either. Hip and knowing, if not quite coherent, we agreed,
walking out of the theater into misty, light rain. And we do like
the same movies (same books, too), I thought briefly, though
I didn't suppose it really mattered any more. The sidewalks
were slick, and I had to walk very carefully in the fetish shoes.
We went to a nightclub, to slow-dance for a while. The shoes
made me as tall as he was; my head was on his shoulder, one
of his hands on my ass. I could feel his cock hardening.

"Enough," he finally whispered. "Let's get out of here."

And in the little gilded elevator, riding up the six flights
to our hotel room, he said softly, "Play with yourself, make
yourself come."

Obediently, I put my hand up my dress. I moved my
finger slowly. I finished in the hotel room, standing up,
teetering on the heels, while he watched intently.

"Take off your dress and hang it up," he said, after
I'd gotten my breath back. "Leave on the shoes and stock ings." And when I turned back to him, he was balancing
the new riding crop in his palm, frowning in perfectionist
concentration.

He took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and fixed a gag
very tightly to my mouth. It was the kind with a rubber ball
in it; he'd bought it at the store where we'd gotten my shoes.
It would work well. It even stifled the sound of my gagging.

The room had a little alcove, in front of the window.
He nodded for me to stand there. I could see the lights of
Montmartre over the rooftops, through the thin curtains and
the mist.