want to know me, this woman. She wanted only to use me and that was why I was here.
Yet we were looking at each other over the distance of the little bathing place, oblivious to the racket from the ring where the same drama was being reenacted, and I was scared of her again, just as I'd been scared for hours, scared of what was going to happen next. When she beckoned to me, there was a stirring in my loins that I could almost hear. I had a real premonition, that it wouldn't be any more macho antics right now. I rose and walked over to her, the anxiety getting worse. 'You're very good at wrestling,' she said calmly. 'You can do things that a lot of new slaves can't. But it's just about time to whip you again, don't you think?' I stared at her boots, the tight fit around her ankles. Back to her room, please, I thought. I could take anything if we were alone there again. Just thinking about it ... I knew I was supposed to answer her, but I could not make the proper words come out. 'Blond slaves give everything away with their faces,' she said, her curled finger stroking my cheek. 'Ever been whipped at a real whipping post?' she asked. 'For a nice large and appreciative crowd to watch?' So here it comes.
'Well?' 'No, Madam,' I said dryly with a little cold smile. Not ever for any crowd. And God, not for this crowd, not in this place! I had to think of something, something that wasn't an out and out entreaty. But again, nothing came out. A handler appeared behind her, flash of hairy wrist, the de rigueur strap. She said: 'Take him to the whipping post. Let him walk with his hands at his sides. I like the way he looks that way, better than the other ways. And fully shackle him for the whipping. The works.' Total absence of discernible pulse. And the cold realization that if I said no and refused to move, the son of a bitch would whistle up his assistants and probably drag me to it all the same. Well, that wouldn't happen. 'Lisa ...' I whispered, shaking my head just a little. Her hand came towards me again with a distinct whiff of perfume -- flashes of the bedroom, the sheets, her naked under me -- and closed warmly on the back of my neck. 'Shhhh. Come on, Elliott,' she said, her fingers massaging my neck muscles. 'You can take it, and you will, for me.' 'Merciless,' I whispered, clenching my teeth and looking away from her. 'Yes, exactly,' she said.
Chapter Fifteen
15 -- Lisa
The Whipping Post
He was getting a little scared for the first time now. All the good humour had drained out of his face. And the anger wasn't there either, the way it had been right before the wrestling match. No, something was really working finally. He didn't like the idea of being shackled, whipped in front of spectators. The nerve had at last been touched. And what a laugh it would be if he knew how scared I was of disappointing him, how damned panicky I was that I just wasn't giving him his money's worth. I mean all this bull about the slaves existing purely to please the master and mistresses was just that: bull. We had to give everybody in this place what he or she bargained for, and we knew it. The system absolutely depended on satisfaction all around. What the hell was wrong with me that I couldn't really grind him under, give him what he came here to get? But now with the whipping we had something. Okay. I told the handler to lead him in front of me because I didn't want, for just a minute or two, to see his face. I had to break away from him. I had to get myself under command again. When you train slaves you learn to watch everything, the slightest change in expression or respiration, all the little signals of distress that vary enormously from punishment to punishment, motif to motif. Ideally, you are also involved.
Impassioned. But you learn to do it so well that you don't need to be burning anymore. And sometimes the burn is so steady and so continuous that you're not aware how powerful it is until you start to bring it to a close. But something else was going on