As She’s Told
: Chapter 27

My punishment felt days long: a minute for every one of the ten thousand nerve endings in my tongue. But I was out and forgiven, relieved of weights both outward and inward, by the time they all came back.

They towered, tall and self-assured, and sat down to a talkative and convivial dinner. The conversation was mostly in Danish, with random English sentences thrown in. I couldn’t follow these odd scraps, which were mostly about people I didn’t know. Karl and Ria’s English originated in the U.K. rather than America by the vowel sounds: half Copenhagen, half BBC.

Karl seemed to have the more extensive vocabulary, but Ria had the English word order down, which he didn’t, quite.

The occasional glance my way was ominous; something told me it was going to be a long night. Apprehension in my belly crowded out all appetite as I knelt over my bowl, dutifully forcing the food down.

Coffee finished, they got up, chatted some more, went out. Drawer and cupboard sounds that I knew well. Before I knew it I was teetering spreadeagled beneath the track light beam, balancing on my toes up on the coffee table, ankles parted by a spreader bar. Heart thumping, I watched as they sorted through and discussed Anders’ collection of striking implements.

Then they blindfolded me and tried things out one by one, making me name each one, giving me additional samples to go by until I got it right. Along the way they paused to confer on the results both visual and aural, now speaking a mixture of Danish and English.

‘What a lot of ways to put marks on a beautiful butt,’ Svend commented. ‘I’m starting to see why you need a house. Somewhere to put it all. Can I try?’

Half a blow ensued, and some mild cursing in Danish. Svend complained that the chastity belt caught too much of the impact.

‘Aim better,’ said his brother unsympathetically. ‘You’re up too high.’

Leather strands lashed hard, right across the lower curve of my ass and a dozen previous stripes, and a small scream escaped me.

‘That’s better.’

Ria’s smooth high tones jarred down my spine. ‘He just wants to see more of your little doll. Isn’t that so, Svend?’

Svend laughed. ‘So do you, Madame Ria. Can’t that thing come off?

She’s not in any position to play with herself.’

‘Oh, it can come off,’ said my master. ‘As long as it’s understood. No contact without my supervision. One careless grab could take her over the edge. She doesn’t come without my say so.’

The discussion that followed was solely in Danish. Apparently their agreement was sufficient to convince him; the belt came away, and open air caressed the swollen leaves of my vagina, which I could feeling pouting nakedly for that one careless grab.

More incomprehensible discussion. Fingers lightly tracing the shape of my public bone, making me shudder. Other fingers. They made me guess whose. Anders and Ria were easy, the one through utter familiarity, the other by way of fingernails. Svend and Karl were harder to distinguish. They got to punish me when I got it wrong.

My arms and calves were aching by the time they let me down. I blinked into the light beyond the blindfold, focusing on the beautiful, complex planes of my master’s face, the tree root muscles of his neck as he lifted me down, the denim blue of his shirt.

‘All right, hunhund, since our guests want to be able to see your needy snatch, we’ll just make sure you contain yourself.’ He attached a handle he used sometimes when he wanted especially tight control of me. This was of heavy-duty metal, riveted to a long metal plate along my backbone that he belted over the corset, around my ribs. The effect was of a solid handle along my spine, with which he could move me around like luggage. Then he crossed my arms up high behind my back on either side of the handle and fastened them there, so tightly that I couldn’t mistake the pre-emptive, punitive warning.

I was shifted down the stairs and kept in a close grip as he showed off his workshop. It may have been a longish tour, or it may have been cursory for Ria’s sake; I was too preoccupied with my state as a slab being shoved around to know for sure. I was a thing, so controlled that the leeway at the end of a leash would have been freedom in comparison. There was almost an illusion of his grip being inside my body and round my spine, as if my backbone itself was the handle. Not painful, just – luggage.

Language was filling the space around me, crisscrossing the air above my head, a network of meaning that overlooked me completely; none of the verbal lines had me as their anchor. The only communication for me was the push and pull at my spine, forcing my legs to move to stay under the rest of me. My head felt denser and denser, a Pinocchio turning back into wood.

Then suddenly words chimed high, the meaning clanging like a church bell air raid warning. ‘Can we tease her?’ I knew the English had been used on purpose. No, no, no! Not in front of her; please not…

I found myself propped on the work table, the handle fastened to something behind me, ankles tied wide but loose. Whimpering at the sight of these tall pillars, capricious gods converging between my legs. Svend was arranging lights. Karl helped my master tie back my labia, rings to thighs, and suddenly there were four sets of light eyes staring. I tried to look anywhere but at those eyes. I saw them anyway. Then there were three pairs, and footsteps on the stairs. Then four again, and a slippery slide into my gaping vagina. Vibrator on low, forcing a moan from my throat in a matching frequency. Nipples clamped painfully, tied by cords to ankles.

Two floggers taking turns on my inner thighs, one harsher than the other, making me kick painfully. My helpless hands writhing behind shoulder blades; tears starting. The vibrator’s hum, turning my flesh only semi-solid, ready to liquefy at the touch of the catalyst.

There was a stroke along saturated inner tissues. And then gone.

Another touch; gone again. I ground my ass against the table and wailed.

Long fingernails scraped down, perpendicular to the sore stripes on an inner thighs, circling lightly over pubic bone and up the other side. Hard pinches and pulls on stretched outer labia.

Anders and Karl conferred, heads together. Now Karl was standing over me, his voice caressing. ‘You want more, girl, don’t you?’

I blinked to clear the blur, stared up, breath coming hard. Whispered the truth. ‘Yes, please, sir.’

‘But all this is not enough, is it? Your clit is very rude, you know; it thrusts itself forward. It is red and shiny, and displays itself shamelessly. As if it was entitled to some attention.’

Unbearable words. Beyond assimilation. Words that would lash me, far into the foreseeable future. I turned my face away, and my body writhed, trying to disappear from view. Silence, and the ring of eyes pressing in on me, my master’s among them, insisting on a response. I squeezed my own eyes shut to block out the view. No use. Blindly I whispered, ‘No, sir. Not entitled. But…”

“Open your eyes, slave. You want me to touch it?’ Obeying, voice shaking, I said, ‘Yes, sir.”

“How much do you want it?’

His thumbs stroked the area around the vibrator, and I whimpered. ‘Oh, god … please ….’ The required words were stuck in my throat, about to choke me. It was impossible to say them, more impossible not to. ‘Please touch – touch my clit, sir.’

Karl obliged with a hard flick, too painful and brief for pleasure, and observed me as I winced and cried and thanked him. My clit throbbed harder, and I almost hoped that the aftermath would take me over the edge, but it wasn’t enough. There were some amused exchanges above me. The flogging started again, nipples were yanked to soreness; there were more brief touches, pinches, fingernails. The vibrator twisted, shoved. More painful flicks. Guttural groans from deep in my belly, unstoppable.

My master took over then, with fingers gentle and sure, closer and closer. Then the touch of his tongue, and then another, taking me instantly to the brink of madness, making me shriek and arch desperately, and pray and beseech…. He straightened, and I howled, frantic, ‘Please master! – more –

please – please let me – please don’t stop, I beg you, please! – ‘

To my despair he turned away. There were snorts of laughter, spontaneous applause. My ears sang. I heard Ria’s mock-soothing voice as she mopped my tears.

‘Happy, Ria?’ said Anders.

‘Very nice, thank you. That was delightful. How long can we keep her like this?’

‘As long as you like.’

Svend said, ‘What, that close?’

‘Not that close continuously. But very near. Back and forth to the edge.’

Then they were elsewhere in the room. A sound of metal scraping on concrete. Language again passing me by. Cool air drying my pulsing cunt.

More salty tracks drying on my face. I was truly a thing, an organic machine engineered for purposes of recreation. Existing there on the bench, running on idle until required again. On power saver mode.

Eventually my master was back, workmanlike over the removal of labia ties and nipple cords and vibrator. Taking me again by the handle, off the table and across the room. Then I was folded at the waist, right angled over the Workmate table, pushed down by the handle, my breasts trapped between the slats, which got cranked together until I squeaked.

Exclamations, laughter, long incomprehensible discussions while taut and painful tits were fingered. Big hooks in the rings, and then something heavy hanging from the hooks, making me groan. Light footsteps up the stairs, then down. Slender fingers on my already-sore behind. My head turned as far away as it could from those fingers. And then the whistle and the crack and the fiery river of pain. What had I done? I sobbed through the calm discussion behind me, screamed at the next blow, and at the one after that. Then the dreadful pulsing. Tears and snot dripped to the floor, while the gods walked and talked above me.

Hands on my hips. More hands in my hair, under my jaw. Four hands.

Cold, long dab on my asshole, making me whimper. Voices: Karl, Svend.

‘Open up, hunhund.’ Not easy to relax for one while tensing lips and jaw around the other. Slaps, making me cry around the latex-covered cock in my mouth, forcing me to try harder. Moaning past the exquisite pain, giving the man in front of me the benefit of those vibrations. A heavy hand pressing me down by the handle into the table, and despite this, feeling the vice grip around my tits challenged by every thrust.

And my vulva ached, wide, empty. A famished mouth open, begging for food. Receiving only the occasional slap of a heavy ball sack. A painfully engorged clit still throbbed desperately against nothing but air. Growls and urgent thrusts; more pain. My need for one single touch so great my unblocked howls would have shuddered the roof beams.

And then it was my master’s cock before my face, making use of an eager and tremulous mouth and throat. Then withdrawing, still hard, and using my ass to come.

Empty, completely empty, head hanging. Waiting for the gods’ next whim. After a while the release came, and my master god manoeuvred me to the stairs. I wanted to crumple at his feet and beg, but I was instead propelled upward, half bent over by the grip at my back, watching my feet mount the basement stairs, trying not to stumble. He wasn’t going to let me sink down. One contact of heel to clit, and the careful discipline of months would end in shameful, howling ecstasy.

No such luck. I was hefted almost off my feet, moved along like a slightly unwieldy appliance that was too tippy to be left to stand on its own.

‘Here you go,’ I heard him say. A change in grip. Karl shoved me down to my knees and held me tight between Ria’s long, slender legs. She took a handful of hair at the crown of my head and tipped my face down into her crotch. The thin film was already hot and soft beneath my lips. I obeyed every minute direction, feeling a phantom tongue on my own inflamed flesh, and felt my own hollow clench and empty shudder when she came.

Anders voice came from behind me. ‘Okay, hold her, please. Ria, you want her plugged, I presume.’

‘That won’t make her come?’

‘No. Just keep her on simmer.’

‘Good.’

Hands held my hips. Twin probes from behind, carefully aimed and slow, slow. Sliding through my liquid flesh, which contracted in helpless, hapless waves. Inner shield pressing over rings. Outer shield up. Lock clicking. And finally my arms were released and the handle was unbuckled.

I was back on hands and knees, feeling the dismissing slap on my welted rump, and crawling, weeping, for my cage.

Inside, I curled up, rubbed my arms and then wrapped my head in them.

The teasing scene was already replaying itself, moment by excruciating moment. My naked, obscenely swollen clit on display. The ultimate indecent exposure. Karl’s excruciating words. My pathetic, pointless pleading for mercy. They were round the coffee table now, laughing, and the sound made me want to sink through the naugahyde and metal plate and basement and bedrock and the whole earth’s crust, straight into hell. Thighs and inner muscles clenched, my hand was cupped secretly over metal. Oh, god, if only I could come!

***

Anders observed the frenzied small movements in the cage across the room. His slave was rubbing her tits on the floor now, and her fingers were scrabbling desperately at her crotch. Amazing that she would risk this in full view. The sight had him hard as a rock again. She looked up, saw him watching, and buried her head in her arms. He could see her ribs heaving against the corset. Poor baby. What a gorgeous display. What could be sweeter than pushing her past every vestige of reticence and self-control?

The four of them wound down with yawns and a little akvavit passed around. It was Sunday, and he had to be up the next morning. And so, of course, did Maia. But Karl and Ria were just getting their second wind; they were planning to go off and sample the Toronto scene. He got them a key.

Ria toyed a little more with the girl in the cage, stroking her and pulling on her nipple rings, before she went up to the guest bedroom to change. By the sounds that emerged, she and Karl were nowhere close to being finished for the night. Anders walked his slave into the bedroom and watched her face at each cry of female fulfilment from the next room. ‘Do you wish you were Ria, little girl?’

She looked up, eyes flashing. ‘At this instant? I – ‘ She paused for a long moment, looking at him, and then shook her head. ‘No, master. Never.’

He leaned down and ran the tip of his tongue up a salty line.

She swallowed. ‘I want to be – what I am, just – if I could just come – ‘

The last word came out as a whimper. Anders smiled.

He wasn’t finished yet either. The noises through the wall were like fresh cayenne, on top of the feverish suction of his slave’s mouth, and the tiny, urgent convulsions of her body. Anders tucked her up in bed and held her close, allowing a few more broken, murmuring pleas before he muzzled her. Luxurious with approaching sleep, he sucked her nipples for a while, stroked the welts on her ass, and listened to his guests going quietly down the stairs and out the door. Stilling his slave’s desperate squirming, he murmured, ‘My sweet little hunhund. So juicy and rare. Go to sleep.’

Once or twice he woke to the sound of her moaning and whimpering in her sleep. Did she ever get to come in her dreams? From the sound of her voice, he thought not.

***

‘So. Maia doesn’t seem to – uh, like Ria much, does she?’

They were on the Gardiner Expressway, Ikea boxes stacked in the truck bed behind them. Svend’s wrecked furniture was finally being replaced.

Anders didn’t much respect the quality, but then he wasn’t going to have to live with it. He glanced at his brother and shrugged. ‘Not much.’

Svend scratched his chin, glanced back. ‘Or Val, come to think of it. Is that – ethical?’

Slowly, Anders nodded. ‘An interesting question.’ He came up behind a slow cube van, glanced over his shoulder, changed lanes.

‘Well?’

‘Depends how you look at it. It’s well within our agreement, which is that I do what I like with her without consulting her wishes. And being consulted is something that she’s always been frantic to avoid. So sometimes she gets what she doesn’t want.”

“Or doesn’t get what she does want. As in orgasms.”

“Right.’

‘Are you just as frantic to avoid consulting as she is being consulted?’

Anders considered this bait, then left it lying. ‘Consulting would turn the whole thing sour as far as I was concerned, yes.’

‘And you like letting people use her without her consent.’

‘I do. But if it bothers you, you can stick to the mandelkager.’

‘No, no. I’m fine. She likes me well enough.’

‘You wouldn’t use her if she didn’t like it, huh?’ said Anders

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘But you’ll participate when it’s happening.’

Svend thought about this. ‘For the time being, yes. She’s much too fun a toy to pass up.’ He cracked his knuckles, stretched, and flicked a glance at Anders. ‘And I must have a few of those dom genes; I’m really starting to get off on this stuff. But if she didn’t want me to fuck her I wouldn’t fuck her.”

“You’re only responsible for what your own cock does.’

‘You asshole! All right, I was just as in on it as everyone else, if I didn’t stop it I can’t complain, yadda yadda yadda. Can’t I have second thoughts? I ask you some ethical questions and you turn around and attack me. Classic defensive manoeuvre. I’ll tell you who’s got ninety percent of the responsibility, buddy, and it’s you.’

‘Ninety-nine at least.’ Anders glanced at the simmering figure in the passenger seat. The jaw was set at an angle familiar to him, ever since Svend had thrown his first punch at him at the age of two. Things with his brother could start simple, but they rarely stayed that way. Nor could Anders resist his own dig. ‘Since when do you judge, huh?’

‘Huh. That was different.’

‘No.’

A speeding Camaro was coming up in the rear view mirror, weaving between lanes to get an advantage. No signals, the asshole. When it was up beside him he let it in and kept an eye on it as it wove three more times before it was out of sight. Fallout from the accident; Anders couldn’t help being more wary on the road than he had been.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘There’s wanting and wanting. A relationship like this means pushing boundaries. I take my time, and I introduce new elements as I think she can deal with them.’

Svend nodded, still angry, but listening. ‘Maia’s too straight to enjoy women sexually, and she resents them when they tell her what to do. I’m forcing her limits on this one. She doesn’t like it. Accepts it but doesn’t like it.’

‘What’s the point, then?’

‘I like it.’

‘Jesus. And it’s what you like that counts.’

‘Yes. That’s our relationship. That’s what I need, that’s what she needs, that’s what she agreed to. With every warning beforehand that I could give her.’

‘You like making her do something she hates?’

‘Yes. Up to a point, and strategically, yes.’

‘I guess it goes with the rest of the sadistic territory.’

‘I am what I am, brother. You don’t like it, stay home. I’m not playing any games to appease your conscience.’ There was an irritable gesture in the seat beside him. Anders took the next exit, steered onto Lakeshore and pulled up at a light. ‘Don’t imagine she’d thank me if I did, either. The masochistic territory is the same landscape in reverse.’ He put the truck in gear, ready for the green. ‘In the long run, this is right for her. She’ll go deeper. Wait and see.’

***

Karl and Ria stayed with us for a very long four days. In the early evenings they sat around the living room with Anders and Svend, talking and arguing in Danish, amusing themselves with me, watching movies, going over a package of papers and pictures: some kind of real estate material with pastoral photos of fields and stands of trees. I served, hyper-vigilant for signals, on edge and vulnerable. I was at everyone’s whim and mercy, my every nerve stretched and exposed. It was a relief when Anders used me for a footstool and I got to have all four limbs firmly on the ground, with his legs a weight and a shelter.

Our visitors dropped in on me at work one morning, and chatted and browsed the shelves. Though my hands shook for an hour afterwards, I handled the visit itself with sufficient aplomb, having had practice with Val and then Svend, with their wicked glances and double entendres. Karl and Ria came in professing to need directions, and stayed to look through the materials and to shake their heads over Canada’s pathetic investment in renewable energy.

That night they took us and Svend out to dinner; a Thai place on Danforth. Anders made sure I had every possible kind of bondage beneath my clothes, including two plugs and his remote control arrangement, plus vibrating clips on my nipples. The remote went round the table. My usual facility with chopsticks failed me. I didn’t manage to get much to eat, but my appetite was so limited, and my harness so very tight that it hardly mattered.

When my trembling hand missed my water glass and knocked it over, Anders put his hand into his pocket, handed me a small bristly object, and bent his head to my ear.

‘Hold that between your thighs, naughty girl. Press hard. I’ll expect to see marks later.’ It was an old-fashioned roller, the kind made of springy wire mesh with nylon bristles sticking out all round. Where had he dug that up? Gingerly I pressed it between my thighs, and winced. His hand was on my lap, his long fingers pulling my knees together. ‘Harder. Hold that. Now eat your dinner.’ The vibrator buzzed. Which one of them had it now? I managed to get a couple more mouthfuls to my lips.

The waiter came over, asked whether our meal had been satisfactory, and got an unusually enthusiastic response that puzzled, though it pleased him. He described the desserts. The vaginal vibrations leaped to full power, and I stared in front of me, trying not to pant. My thighs relaxed momentarily and then I made myself press them together again. The damned thing hurt. A silence. They were all looking at me.

‘Sorry.’ I sat up, attempting normalcy. ‘No dessert, thank you. Um, no tea, either, please. Nothing more to spill.’ They laughed in a friendly way, good companions who relished a little self-deprecation. The nipple clips vibrated harder. They asked me difficult questions, fastened me down with their eyes until I answered, watched me blush. Anders found my thighs slackening and gave me a jolt in the rear that brought tears to my eyes. Like a scolded child I sat, head lowered, hands in my lap. Squeezing my thighs for all I was worth.

Another night Val came over with her guitar, and I was hung up with the bells, just as I had imagined. The instruments came out, and they traded songs and stories, ate and drank all round me, tried out tunes on me. Karl had a good rough voice, and Ria did a little drumming. Val talked her way through some hilarious stories with guitar accompaniment. I swung, bridled and gagged, and had my ass used as a rhythm section. I had a sneaking hope that someone would get forgetful and play my clit along with the bells, but my master used the first two piercings to lock it up under a little metal hood.

Enough to prevent careless contact, to my grief. On Karl and Ria’s last night, I knelt beside their bed and watched as they grappled and straddled one another like a pair of wrestlers. Anders had handed my leash to Karl, and now the end was looped over the bedpost. Karl managed to pin Ria on her back, and she snapped and bit and he bit back. I stared into the wet filmed slit in front of me, wished myself away. Legs surrounded my head. ‘Suck, girl.’

My own cunt was as locked away as ever, heavily plugged. Hands fastened behind my back, I was an adjunct to their lovemaking, an extra tongue; extra buttocks and breasts available for the punishment that both delighted in inflicting but neither wanted to receive. I absorbed the blows and yanks, served my function, and watched breathless the conjunction of hands, mouths, cock and cunt, all free and forceful, both bodies with every right in the world to reach for their desire, to take and thrust and revel.

When they were done Karl, still naked, took me by the collar and walked me on my knees out into the hall. ‘Hey. Anders.’

My master’s tread on the stairs, head rising into view, grey eyes sharply etched, looking me over.

‘Done with her?’ he said.

‘All done.’ Karl handed the leash over.

‘How did she behave?’

‘Fine. A good girl tonight.’

‘All right. You want to be up by seven?’

‘Yes, please.’ Karl yawned. ‘We need an early night for once.’

‘Good idea. Helps you steer. Get some sleep.’

***

Anders helped load the car in the morning. The couple stood in the kitchen with their coats on, and offered him a box. ‘A gift to thank you,’

said Ria in Danish.

‘Though now your house is not really so new, think of it as a housewarming present,’ said Karl.

Anders pulled long rectangles of brown tooled leather out of the box, linked with a few straps, others dangling.

‘We thought you could use a magazine rack. Why should your footstool have one use only? Drape this over her back – so, and strap it on beneath.

Here are spaces on each side for books, magazines, whips to keep handy, whatever you like.’

Anders looked it over, grinned and thanked them. ‘How well you know me.’

‘Ria said we should get some spike heels for her as a tease, but I said no, he is a practical man, get him something useful.’

Ria gave Karl a shove. ‘That was you who said high heels! And you were going to buy a mask! Feathers and all!’

They tussled, laughing. Then Ria glanced at the clock, released Karl’s head from beneath her arm, straightened her coat. ‘So glad you like it, Anders dear. It’s not so easy to replace something for the dom who has everything, or can make it better himself if he does not.”

“I could use it for tidying up around the house, too. Very handy.’

She ran her hand over the leather. ‘It has the look of saddlebags, which could also be useful, if she was not too small for you to ride.’ They glanced at the crouching figure in the corner, cleaned up after her breakfast but still tethered. ‘I thought of getting you some pretty tack – but that is so expensive

– or a dressage whip. Shouldn’t you be training her?”

“Hmm. Not with feathers and circus tricks, madam. She’ll serve some actual purpose besides display, and do an honest job of work.’

She snorted. ‘Well, one kind of work, anyway. Some practical man you are. Not to use available slave labour. All right; thank you again for so much kind hospitality. We’ll see you in July.’ She gave him a hug and a kiss, tweaked Maia’s nipples in farewell, and went off.

Karl squatted next to the slave, ran a gentle hand over her breasts, then rested his palm on a striped haunch. ‘So, little hunhund. You have had a bit more suffering since we arrived.’

She said in a small voice, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘This was very pleasurable to watch. I hope also your master will let me see you come some day. That will make an amusing spectacle, I think.’

My punishment felt days long: a minute for every one of the ten thousand nerve endings in my tongue. But I was out and forgiven, relieved of weights both outward and inward, by the time they all came back.

They towered, tall and self-assured, and sat down to a talkative and convivial dinner. The conversation was mostly in Danish, with random English sentences thrown in. I couldn’t follow these odd scraps, which were mostly about people I didn’t know. Karl and Ria’s English originated in the U.K. rather than America by the vowel sounds: half Copenhagen, half BBC.

Karl seemed to have the more extensive vocabulary, but Ria had the English word order down, which he didn’t, quite.

The occasional glance my way was ominous; something told me it was going to be a long night. Apprehension in my belly crowded out all appetite as I knelt over my bowl, dutifully forcing the food down.

Coffee finished, they got up, chatted some more, went out. Drawer and cupboard sounds that I knew well. Before I knew it I was teetering spreadeagled beneath the track light beam, balancing on my toes up on the coffee table, ankles parted by a spreader bar. Heart thumping, I watched as they sorted through and discussed Anders’ collection of striking implements.

Then they blindfolded me and tried things out one by one, making me name each one, giving me additional samples to go by until I got it right. Along the way they paused to confer on the results both visual and aural, now speaking a mixture of Danish and English.

‘What a lot of ways to put marks on a beautiful butt,’ Svend commented. ‘I’m starting to see why you need a house. Somewhere to put it all. Can I try?’

Half a blow ensued, and some mild cursing in Danish. Svend complained that the chastity belt caught too much of the impact.

‘Aim better,’ said his brother unsympathetically. ‘You’re up too high.’

Leather strands lashed hard, right across the lower curve of my ass and a dozen previous stripes, and a small scream escaped me.

‘That’s better.’

Ria’s smooth high tones jarred down my spine. ‘He just wants to see more of your little doll. Isn’t that so, Svend?’

Svend laughed. ‘So do you, Madame Ria. Can’t that thing come off?

She’s not in any position to play with herself.’

‘Oh, it can come off,’ said my master. ‘As long as it’s understood. No contact without my supervision. One careless grab could take her over the edge. She doesn’t come without my say so.’

The discussion that followed was solely in Danish. Apparently their agreement was sufficient to convince him; the belt came away, and open air caressed the swollen leaves of my vagina, which I could feeling pouting nakedly for that one careless grab.

More incomprehensible discussion. Fingers lightly tracing the shape of my public bone, making me shudder. Other fingers. They made me guess whose. Anders and Ria were easy, the one through utter familiarity, the other by way of fingernails. Svend and Karl were harder to distinguish. They got to punish me when I got it wrong.

My arms and calves were aching by the time they let me down. I blinked into the light beyond the blindfold, focusing on the beautiful, complex planes of my master’s face, the tree root muscles of his neck as he lifted me down, the denim blue of his shirt.

‘All right, hunhund, since our guests want to be able to see your needy snatch, we’ll just make sure you contain yourself.’ He attached a handle he used sometimes when he wanted especially tight control of me. This was of heavy-duty metal, riveted to a long metal plate along my backbone that he belted over the corset, around my ribs. The effect was of a solid handle along my spine, with which he could move me around like luggage. Then he crossed my arms up high behind my back on either side of the handle and fastened them there, so tightly that I couldn’t mistake the pre-emptive, punitive warning.

I was shifted down the stairs and kept in a close grip as he showed off his workshop. It may have been a longish tour, or it may have been cursory for Ria’s sake; I was too preoccupied with my state as a slab being shoved around to know for sure. I was a thing, so controlled that the leeway at the end of a leash would have been freedom in comparison. There was almost an illusion of his grip being inside my body and round my spine, as if my backbone itself was the handle. Not painful, just – luggage.

Language was filling the space around me, crisscrossing the air above my head, a network of meaning that overlooked me completely; none of the verbal lines had me as their anchor. The only communication for me was the push and pull at my spine, forcing my legs to move to stay under the rest of me. My head felt denser and denser, a Pinocchio turning back into wood.

Then suddenly words chimed high, the meaning clanging like a church bell air raid warning. ‘Can we tease her?’ I knew the English had been used on purpose. No, no, no! Not in front of her; please not…

I found myself propped on the work table, the handle fastened to something behind me, ankles tied wide but loose. Whimpering at the sight of these tall pillars, capricious gods converging between my legs. Svend was arranging lights. Karl helped my master tie back my labia, rings to thighs, and suddenly there were four sets of light eyes staring. I tried to look anywhere but at those eyes. I saw them anyway. Then there were three pairs, and footsteps on the stairs. Then four again, and a slippery slide into my gaping vagina. Vibrator on low, forcing a moan from my throat in a matching frequency. Nipples clamped painfully, tied by cords to ankles.

Two floggers taking turns on my inner thighs, one harsher than the other, making me kick painfully. My helpless hands writhing behind shoulder blades; tears starting. The vibrator’s hum, turning my flesh only semi-solid, ready to liquefy at the touch of the catalyst.

There was a stroke along saturated inner tissues. And then gone.

Another touch; gone again. I ground my ass against the table and wailed.

Long fingernails scraped down, perpendicular to the sore stripes on an inner thighs, circling lightly over pubic bone and up the other side. Hard pinches and pulls on stretched outer labia.

Anders and Karl conferred, heads together. Now Karl was standing over me, his voice caressing. ‘You want more, girl, don’t you?’

I blinked to clear the blur, stared up, breath coming hard. Whispered the truth. ‘Yes, please, sir.’

‘But all this is not enough, is it? Your clit is very rude, you know; it thrusts itself forward. It is red and shiny, and displays itself shamelessly. As if it was entitled to some attention.’

Unbearable words. Beyond assimilation. Words that would lash me, far into the foreseeable future. I turned my face away, and my body writhed, trying to disappear from view. Silence, and the ring of eyes pressing in on me, my master’s among them, insisting on a response. I squeezed my own eyes shut to block out the view. No use. Blindly I whispered, ‘No, sir. Not entitled. But…”

“Open your eyes, slave. You want me to touch it?’ Obeying, voice shaking, I said, ‘Yes, sir.”

“How much do you want it?’

His thumbs stroked the area around the vibrator, and I whimpered. ‘Oh, god … please ….’ The required words were stuck in my throat, about to choke me. It was impossible to say them, more impossible not to. ‘Please touch – touch my clit, sir.’

Karl obliged with a hard flick, too painful and brief for pleasure, and observed me as I winced and cried and thanked him. My clit throbbed harder, and I almost hoped that the aftermath would take me over the edge, but it wasn’t enough. There were some amused exchanges above me. The flogging started again, nipples were yanked to soreness; there were more brief touches, pinches, fingernails. The vibrator twisted, shoved. More painful flicks. Guttural groans from deep in my belly, unstoppable.

My master took over then, with fingers gentle and sure, closer and closer. Then the touch of his tongue, and then another, taking me instantly to the brink of madness, making me shriek and arch desperately, and pray and beseech…. He straightened, and I howled, frantic, ‘Please master! – more –

please – please let me – please don’t stop, I beg you, please! – ‘

To my despair he turned away. There were snorts of laughter, spontaneous applause. My ears sang. I heard Ria’s mock-soothing voice as she mopped my tears.

‘Happy, Ria?’ said Anders.

‘Very nice, thank you. That was delightful. How long can we keep her like this?’

‘As long as you like.’

Svend said, ‘What, that close?’

‘Not that close continuously. But very near. Back and forth to the edge.’

Then they were elsewhere in the room. A sound of metal scraping on concrete. Language again passing me by. Cool air drying my pulsing cunt.

More salty tracks drying on my face. I was truly a thing, an organic machine engineered for purposes of recreation. Existing there on the bench, running on idle until required again. On power saver mode.

Eventually my master was back, workmanlike over the removal of labia ties and nipple cords and vibrator. Taking me again by the handle, off the table and across the room. Then I was folded at the waist, right angled over the Workmate table, pushed down by the handle, my breasts trapped between the slats, which got cranked together until I squeaked.

Exclamations, laughter, long incomprehensible discussions while taut and painful tits were fingered. Big hooks in the rings, and then something heavy hanging from the hooks, making me groan. Light footsteps up the stairs, then down. Slender fingers on my already-sore behind. My head turned as far away as it could from those fingers. And then the whistle and the crack and the fiery river of pain. What had I done? I sobbed through the calm discussion behind me, screamed at the next blow, and at the one after that. Then the dreadful pulsing. Tears and snot dripped to the floor, while the gods walked and talked above me.

Hands on my hips. More hands in my hair, under my jaw. Four hands.

Cold, long dab on my asshole, making me whimper. Voices: Karl, Svend.

‘Open up, hunhund.’ Not easy to relax for one while tensing lips and jaw around the other. Slaps, making me cry around the latex-covered cock in my mouth, forcing me to try harder. Moaning past the exquisite pain, giving the man in front of me the benefit of those vibrations. A heavy hand pressing me down by the handle into the table, and despite this, feeling the vice grip around my tits challenged by every thrust.

And my vulva ached, wide, empty. A famished mouth open, begging for food. Receiving only the occasional slap of a heavy ball sack. A painfully engorged clit still throbbed desperately against nothing but air. Growls and urgent thrusts; more pain. My need for one single touch so great my unblocked howls would have shuddered the roof beams.

And then it was my master’s cock before my face, making use of an eager and tremulous mouth and throat. Then withdrawing, still hard, and using my ass to come.

Empty, completely empty, head hanging. Waiting for the gods’ next whim. After a while the release came, and my master god manoeuvred me to the stairs. I wanted to crumple at his feet and beg, but I was instead propelled upward, half bent over by the grip at my back, watching my feet mount the basement stairs, trying not to stumble. He wasn’t going to let me sink down. One contact of heel to clit, and the careful discipline of months would end in shameful, howling ecstasy.

No such luck. I was hefted almost off my feet, moved along like a slightly unwieldy appliance that was too tippy to be left to stand on its own.

‘Here you go,’ I heard him say. A change in grip. Karl shoved me down to my knees and held me tight between Ria’s long, slender legs. She took a handful of hair at the crown of my head and tipped my face down into her crotch. The thin film was already hot and soft beneath my lips. I obeyed every minute direction, feeling a phantom tongue on my own inflamed flesh, and felt my own hollow clench and empty shudder when she came.

Anders voice came from behind me. ‘Okay, hold her, please. Ria, you want her plugged, I presume.’

‘That won’t make her come?’

‘No. Just keep her on simmer.’

‘Good.’

Hands held my hips. Twin probes from behind, carefully aimed and slow, slow. Sliding through my liquid flesh, which contracted in helpless, hapless waves. Inner shield pressing over rings. Outer shield up. Lock clicking. And finally my arms were released and the handle was unbuckled.

I was back on hands and knees, feeling the dismissing slap on my welted rump, and crawling, weeping, for my cage.

Inside, I curled up, rubbed my arms and then wrapped my head in them.

The teasing scene was already replaying itself, moment by excruciating moment. My naked, obscenely swollen clit on display. The ultimate indecent exposure. Karl’s excruciating words. My pathetic, pointless pleading for mercy. They were round the coffee table now, laughing, and the sound made me want to sink through the naugahyde and metal plate and basement and bedrock and the whole earth’s crust, straight into hell. Thighs and inner muscles clenched, my hand was cupped secretly over metal. Oh, god, if only I could come!

***

Anders observed the frenzied small movements in the cage across the room. His slave was rubbing her tits on the floor now, and her fingers were scrabbling desperately at her crotch. Amazing that she would risk this in full view. The sight had him hard as a rock again. She looked up, saw him watching, and buried her head in her arms. He could see her ribs heaving against the corset. Poor baby. What a gorgeous display. What could be sweeter than pushing her past every vestige of reticence and self-control?

The four of them wound down with yawns and a little akvavit passed around. It was Sunday, and he had to be up the next morning. And so, of course, did Maia. But Karl and Ria were just getting their second wind; they were planning to go off and sample the Toronto scene. He got them a key.

Ria toyed a little more with the girl in the cage, stroking her and pulling on her nipple rings, before she went up to the guest bedroom to change. By the sounds that emerged, she and Karl were nowhere close to being finished for the night. Anders walked his slave into the bedroom and watched her face at each cry of female fulfilment from the next room. ‘Do you wish you were Ria, little girl?’

She looked up, eyes flashing. ‘At this instant? I – ‘ She paused for a long moment, looking at him, and then shook her head. ‘No, master. Never.’

He leaned down and ran the tip of his tongue up a salty line.

She swallowed. ‘I want to be – what I am, just – if I could just come – ‘

The last word came out as a whimper. Anders smiled.

He wasn’t finished yet either. The noises through the wall were like fresh cayenne, on top of the feverish suction of his slave’s mouth, and the tiny, urgent convulsions of her body. Anders tucked her up in bed and held her close, allowing a few more broken, murmuring pleas before he muzzled her. Luxurious with approaching sleep, he sucked her nipples for a while, stroked the welts on her ass, and listened to his guests going quietly down the stairs and out the door. Stilling his slave’s desperate squirming, he murmured, ‘My sweet little hunhund. So juicy and rare. Go to sleep.’

Once or twice he woke to the sound of her moaning and whimpering in her sleep. Did she ever get to come in her dreams? From the sound of her voice, he thought not.

***

‘So. Maia doesn’t seem to – uh, like Ria much, does she?’

They were on the Gardiner Expressway, Ikea boxes stacked in the truck bed behind them. Svend’s wrecked furniture was finally being replaced.

Anders didn’t much respect the quality, but then he wasn’t going to have to live with it. He glanced at his brother and shrugged. ‘Not much.’

Svend scratched his chin, glanced back. ‘Or Val, come to think of it. Is that – ethical?’

Slowly, Anders nodded. ‘An interesting question.’ He came up behind a slow cube van, glanced over his shoulder, changed lanes.

‘Well?’

‘Depends how you look at it. It’s well within our agreement, which is that I do what I like with her without consulting her wishes. And being consulted is something that she’s always been frantic to avoid. So sometimes she gets what she doesn’t want.”

“Or doesn’t get what she does want. As in orgasms.”

“Right.’

‘Are you just as frantic to avoid consulting as she is being consulted?’

Anders considered this bait, then left it lying. ‘Consulting would turn the whole thing sour as far as I was concerned, yes.’

‘And you like letting people use her without her consent.’

‘I do. But if it bothers you, you can stick to the mandelkager.’

‘No, no. I’m fine. She likes me well enough.’

‘You wouldn’t use her if she didn’t like it, huh?’ said Anders

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘But you’ll participate when it’s happening.’

Svend thought about this. ‘For the time being, yes. She’s much too fun a toy to pass up.’ He cracked his knuckles, stretched, and flicked a glance at Anders. ‘And I must have a few of those dom genes; I’m really starting to get off on this stuff. But if she didn’t want me to fuck her I wouldn’t fuck her.”

“You’re only responsible for what your own cock does.’

‘You asshole! All right, I was just as in on it as everyone else, if I didn’t stop it I can’t complain, yadda yadda yadda. Can’t I have second thoughts? I ask you some ethical questions and you turn around and attack me. Classic defensive manoeuvre. I’ll tell you who’s got ninety percent of the responsibility, buddy, and it’s you.’

‘Ninety-nine at least.’ Anders glanced at the simmering figure in the passenger seat. The jaw was set at an angle familiar to him, ever since Svend had thrown his first punch at him at the age of two. Things with his brother could start simple, but they rarely stayed that way. Nor could Anders resist his own dig. ‘Since when do you judge, huh?’

‘Huh. That was different.’

‘No.’

A speeding Camaro was coming up in the rear view mirror, weaving between lanes to get an advantage. No signals, the asshole. When it was up beside him he let it in and kept an eye on it as it wove three more times before it was out of sight. Fallout from the accident; Anders couldn’t help being more wary on the road than he had been.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘There’s wanting and wanting. A relationship like this means pushing boundaries. I take my time, and I introduce new elements as I think she can deal with them.’

Svend nodded, still angry, but listening. ‘Maia’s too straight to enjoy women sexually, and she resents them when they tell her what to do. I’m forcing her limits on this one. She doesn’t like it. Accepts it but doesn’t like it.’

‘What’s the point, then?’

‘I like it.’

‘Jesus. And it’s what you like that counts.’

‘Yes. That’s our relationship. That’s what I need, that’s what she needs, that’s what she agreed to. With every warning beforehand that I could give her.’

‘You like making her do something she hates?’

‘Yes. Up to a point, and strategically, yes.’

‘I guess it goes with the rest of the sadistic territory.’

‘I am what I am, brother. You don’t like it, stay home. I’m not playing any games to appease your conscience.’ There was an irritable gesture in the seat beside him. Anders took the next exit, steered onto Lakeshore and pulled up at a light. ‘Don’t imagine she’d thank me if I did, either. The masochistic territory is the same landscape in reverse.’ He put the truck in gear, ready for the green. ‘In the long run, this is right for her. She’ll go deeper. Wait and see.’

***

Karl and Ria stayed with us for a very long four days. In the early evenings they sat around the living room with Anders and Svend, talking and arguing in Danish, amusing themselves with me, watching movies, going over a package of papers and pictures: some kind of real estate material with pastoral photos of fields and stands of trees. I served, hyper-vigilant for signals, on edge and vulnerable. I was at everyone’s whim and mercy, my every nerve stretched and exposed. It was a relief when Anders used me for a footstool and I got to have all four limbs firmly on the ground, with his legs a weight and a shelter.

Our visitors dropped in on me at work one morning, and chatted and browsed the shelves. Though my hands shook for an hour afterwards, I handled the visit itself with sufficient aplomb, having had practice with Val and then Svend, with their wicked glances and double entendres. Karl and Ria came in professing to need directions, and stayed to look through the materials and to shake their heads over Canada’s pathetic investment in renewable energy.

That night they took us and Svend out to dinner; a Thai place on Danforth. Anders made sure I had every possible kind of bondage beneath my clothes, including two plugs and his remote control arrangement, plus vibrating clips on my nipples. The remote went round the table. My usual facility with chopsticks failed me. I didn’t manage to get much to eat, but my appetite was so limited, and my harness so very tight that it hardly mattered.

When my trembling hand missed my water glass and knocked it over, Anders put his hand into his pocket, handed me a small bristly object, and bent his head to my ear.

‘Hold that between your thighs, naughty girl. Press hard. I’ll expect to see marks later.’ It was an old-fashioned roller, the kind made of springy wire mesh with nylon bristles sticking out all round. Where had he dug that up? Gingerly I pressed it between my thighs, and winced. His hand was on my lap, his long fingers pulling my knees together. ‘Harder. Hold that. Now eat your dinner.’ The vibrator buzzed. Which one of them had it now? I managed to get a couple more mouthfuls to my lips.

The waiter came over, asked whether our meal had been satisfactory, and got an unusually enthusiastic response that puzzled, though it pleased him. He described the desserts. The vaginal vibrations leaped to full power, and I stared in front of me, trying not to pant. My thighs relaxed momentarily and then I made myself press them together again. The damned thing hurt. A silence. They were all looking at me.

‘Sorry.’ I sat up, attempting normalcy. ‘No dessert, thank you. Um, no tea, either, please. Nothing more to spill.’ They laughed in a friendly way, good companions who relished a little self-deprecation. The nipple clips vibrated harder. They asked me difficult questions, fastened me down with their eyes until I answered, watched me blush. Anders found my thighs slackening and gave me a jolt in the rear that brought tears to my eyes. Like a scolded child I sat, head lowered, hands in my lap. Squeezing my thighs for all I was worth.

Another night Val came over with her guitar, and I was hung up with the bells, just as I had imagined. The instruments came out, and they traded songs and stories, ate and drank all round me, tried out tunes on me. Karl had a good rough voice, and Ria did a little drumming. Val talked her way through some hilarious stories with guitar accompaniment. I swung, bridled and gagged, and had my ass used as a rhythm section. I had a sneaking hope that someone would get forgetful and play my clit along with the bells, but my master used the first two piercings to lock it up under a little metal hood.

Enough to prevent careless contact, to my grief. On Karl and Ria’s last night, I knelt beside their bed and watched as they grappled and straddled one another like a pair of wrestlers. Anders had handed my leash to Karl, and now the end was looped over the bedpost. Karl managed to pin Ria on her back, and she snapped and bit and he bit back. I stared into the wet filmed slit in front of me, wished myself away. Legs surrounded my head. ‘Suck, girl.’

My own cunt was as locked away as ever, heavily plugged. Hands fastened behind my back, I was an adjunct to their lovemaking, an extra tongue; extra buttocks and breasts available for the punishment that both delighted in inflicting but neither wanted to receive. I absorbed the blows and yanks, served my function, and watched breathless the conjunction of hands, mouths, cock and cunt, all free and forceful, both bodies with every right in the world to reach for their desire, to take and thrust and revel.

When they were done Karl, still naked, took me by the collar and walked me on my knees out into the hall. ‘Hey. Anders.’

My master’s tread on the stairs, head rising into view, grey eyes sharply etched, looking me over.

‘Done with her?’ he said.

‘All done.’ Karl handed the leash over.

‘How did she behave?’

‘Fine. A good girl tonight.’

‘All right. You want to be up by seven?’

‘Yes, please.’ Karl yawned. ‘We need an early night for once.’

‘Good idea. Helps you steer. Get some sleep.’

***

Anders helped load the car in the morning. The couple stood in the kitchen with their coats on, and offered him a box. ‘A gift to thank you,’

said Ria in Danish.

‘Though now your house is not really so new, think of it as a housewarming present,’ said Karl.

Anders pulled long rectangles of brown tooled leather out of the box, linked with a few straps, others dangling.

‘We thought you could use a magazine rack. Why should your footstool have one use only? Drape this over her back – so, and strap it on beneath.

Here are spaces on each side for books, magazines, whips to keep handy, whatever you like.’

Anders looked it over, grinned and thanked them. ‘How well you know me.’

‘Ria said we should get some spike heels for her as a tease, but I said no, he is a practical man, get him something useful.’

Ria gave Karl a shove. ‘That was you who said high heels! And you were going to buy a mask! Feathers and all!’

They tussled, laughing. Then Ria glanced at the clock, released Karl’s head from beneath her arm, straightened her coat. ‘So glad you like it, Anders dear. It’s not so easy to replace something for the dom who has everything, or can make it better himself if he does not.”

“I could use it for tidying up around the house, too. Very handy.’

She ran her hand over the leather. ‘It has the look of saddlebags, which could also be useful, if she was not too small for you to ride.’ They glanced at the crouching figure in the corner, cleaned up after her breakfast but still tethered. ‘I thought of getting you some pretty tack – but that is so expensive

– or a dressage whip. Shouldn’t you be training her?”

“Hmm. Not with feathers and circus tricks, madam. She’ll serve some actual purpose besides display, and do an honest job of work.’

She snorted. ‘Well, one kind of work, anyway. Some practical man you are. Not to use available slave labour. All right; thank you again for so much kind hospitality. We’ll see you in July.’ She gave him a hug and a kiss, tweaked Maia’s nipples in farewell, and went off.

Karl squatted next to the slave, ran a gentle hand over her breasts, then rested his palm on a striped haunch. ‘So, little hunhund. You have had a bit more suffering since we arrived.’

She said in a small voice, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘This was very pleasurable to watch. I hope also your master will let me see you come some day. That will make an amusing spectacle, I think.’