Captives of Cheyner Close (9 page)

She shuffled forward and deliberately swung her hips from side to side, wiping the dry mop over the patch of floor she had just scrubbed, savouring the way the improvised dildos moved inside her, aware of the slick wetness beginning to flow about the carrot. Over at the bucket, she didn’t try to avoid the holly ring, but pressed her swollen nipples into the spines as she neatly re-wetted the brush, glorying in the hot pinpoint pain on such sensitive flesh.

Returning to the next patch of floor she began to rock slightly forward and back as she scrubbed, pumping the mop handle and carrot deeper into her. She’d never tried anal sex. Perhaps she’d been missing out on something. It’s just a game, she told herself.

Scrub, rinse, more burning pricks to her breasts, the water growing increasingly dirty, splashing over her as she worked making her feel soiled and menial as she never had before, which only roused her senses further. She was dripping juices from her vagina and rubbing them into the floor.

Tara came hunched over, rubbing the scrubbing brush to and fro in a frenzy to grind her burning
nipples
harder into the floor, even as her anal ring clenched the mop shaft in an iron grip and she gave the carrot stuffing her vagina a dressing of her most intimate discharge.

For a few moments the Khans were silent, then Narinda said dismissively: ‘These spoilt brats are all the same. Anything for a new thrill.’

Four

AT ONE O’CLOCK
, again concealed within bins and barrows, they were taken to Number 9: Gerald Spooner’s house. Their named bowls had been set out in a circle on the back lawn and filled with a mash of potatoes and chopped vegetables. Water was provided in bottles with straws. From his chair under the shade of an apple tree, Spooner watched them eat, as before, with their bare bottoms in the air. Out of the corner of her eye Tara glimpsed him beaming at them in satisfaction and congratulating the other residents on their handling of the girls.

Tara turned her attention back to her food. Exertion and nervous tension had genuinely left her ravenously hungry, but also, with her gag removed, eating steadily excused her from answering questions about what she had undergone that morning.

Tara’s brief sense of triumph had melted away with the afterglow of her orgasm, leaving sullen resentment in its place as a sense of reality returned. She still hated these people and feared what they might do to her. For the next week she was their slave and the shame of that would linger all her life.

Fortunately the other girls seemed equally preoccupied with their food and few words were spoken during the meal apart from the odd mumbled ‘You
okay?’,
which received non-committal grunts in response. But their eyes were busier than their mouths, searching for any clues as to how they had been used. Were they all so embarrassed by what had been done to them? Tara wondered, hoping the pinpricks the holly had left across her breasts were not noticeable. Perhaps she should speak up while she had the chance and be open about what she had suffered and how she had coped. It could be made to sound like a perverse sort of victory. But what if the others had undergone even worse indignities? In the end she said nothing.

After lunch they were allowed a brief rest and then put to work. Their confiscated footwear was returned and they were provided with gardening gloves and tools. Their gags remained off but they were warned not to speak, which suited Tara.

‘You’re all going to do a proper afternoon’s work,’ Warwick told them. ‘Mr Spooner’s garden needs some attention and it seems appropriate that you supply the labour, since in the past you’ve been responsible for tearing up his plants and desecrating his lawn. If this week achieves nothing else you will have performed, however unwillingly, one worthwhile service … and perhaps learned what honest work feels like.’

Hazel and Daniela had their wrists cuffed to the handlebars of a push-mower and were started mowing the lawn. Sian, with her ankles hobbled by a short length of chain, shuttled between them and the compost heap at the bottom of the garden emptying the grass box. Tara and Cassie, their left and right ankles joined by a long chain, were set digging and weeding, while a hobbled Gail took the buckets of weed away. When in due course they needed to pee,
they
were each made to squat on the compost heap and do it before the watching residents, encouraged by flicks from holly canes. Gerald Spooner cheerfully applauded each display.

Tara felt assailed by a renewed sense of deep shame and indignation, but this time without any means of arousing herself as a diversion. But at least gardening was straightforward and less unpleasant than she had imagined. If she could ignore the chain round her ankle only her nudity was out of place, and in the enclosed garden in the warm summer air even that seemed less unnatural than it had at first. She vaguely recalled hearing of people who regularly gardened in the nude. Perhaps there was something in it.

At teatime they were fed again, then taken back to Number 2.

Six blankets had been laid out on the living room floor. On each of them had been placed a pillow and two thick planks of timber standing on their edges, connected at their ends by two longer but thinner battens to form roughly bed-sized frames. The battens were secured to the lower plank by a metal sleeve and pegs so that the separation of the top and bottom planks could be adjusted. These planks had been sawn lengthwise and the two halves joined by hinges at one end and a latch and padlock at the other. Large circular holes had been drilled through them in the manner of medieval stocks. The top plank had a larger hole in the middle to accommodate the neck and two smaller ones at each end for the wrists, while the lower one had a pair of intermediate-sized holes at each end for the ankles.

These horizontal stocks were hinged open and the girls laid down in the lower halves with their heads on the pillows, legs spread and arms bent at the
elbows
so that their wrists were level with their necks. The side battens were adjusted to suit their individual heights and then the top halves were swung back and locked into place.

In momentary panic Tara strained against the woodwork that had close about her neck, wrists and ankles. The edges of the holes had all been carefully bevelled and sanded, but it was impossible to slip her wrists free. She was almost completely immobilised and helpless, with her legs spread as though in invitation. If anybody wanted to use her right now she could do nothing to stop them …

Tara forced herself to relax. Her new position made no difference to the likelihood of sex, and it seemed they were going to be allowed to rest ungagged. The imprisoning frame and blanket it rested upon was no feather bed, but it was less uncomfortable than she would have imagined. After her labours in the Khans’ kitchen and then the garden, it was actually a relief to lie on a firm surface with her back straight. Of course it did not allow her to touch herself or any of the others, which presumably was the idea. Only their captors had that privilege.

‘I suggest you try to get a few hours’ rest,’ Warwick told them when they were all secured. ‘We’ve devised a rota to ensure everybody who wishes can have the use of each of you in turn through the week, from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. This is going to be the first of six long nights for all of you.’

He went out, turning off the light and locking the door behind him. Daylight filtered in around the boarded window, dimly illuminating the six naked bodies splayed out in their stock-beds.

For some moments nobody spoke. Then Sian said quietly but passionately: ‘I hate you, Tara! I want you to know that. Really hate you!’

Tara flinched at the venom in her words, suddenly grateful for the solidity of the frames confining them. She had nothing to lose by asking: ‘Why do you hate me, Sian? I thought we were friends.’

Sian almost shrieked: ‘After the way Warwick handled me in the garden, after what Curry made me do … what they’re going to do tonight!’

‘And what did Curry make you do?’ Tara asked.

‘It – it doesn’t matter.’

‘I didn’t have a picnic either, but I’m not complaining,’ Tara countered.

‘But it’s all your fault we’re in this shitty mess!’ Sian shouted.

‘She’s right,’ Cassie interjected. ‘You said Fanning was just some electronics nerd. You didn’t say he was a fucking surveillance expert!’

‘Nobody said anything about that when I asked about him,’ Tara countered. ‘Maybe he was just being modest or had to keep it secret. It doesn’t matter now.’

‘No, ’cos we’re all screwed … or going to be screwed,’ Sian said wildly. ‘But when we get out of this, I’m going to – to –’

‘Do what?’ Tara said. ‘Tell everybody what happened to us? The police’ll ask why and then you’d be in as much trouble as me. I didn’t force you to raid the Close. You enjoyed everything we did to these people.’

‘And now they’re doing this to us,’ Cassie hissed, rattling her frame futilely. ‘We’re the Elite, the best. It’s not fair!’

‘We did do some pretty nasty things to them,’ Gail said quietly.

‘Shut up!’ Cassie snapped.

‘I hate Cheyner Close and all the people in it, but most of all I hate you, Tara!’ Sian persisted. ‘I’ll get even with all of you somehow.’

‘That goes for me too,’ Cassie added.

Tara was beginning to wonder if she had misjudged Sian and Cassie. She’d always thought of them as stronger-willed than Hazel, Gail or Daniela, but now they didn’t seem to be able to handle a setback.

‘And how’re you going to do that?’ she asked sarcastically. ‘Run me down in the street? Wait for a dark night with an iron bar? Of course, if you really hate me that much you can always hire a hit man …’

In the gloom she heard Hazel sniggering at the idea. The absurdity of it briefly silenced Sian and Cassie.

Tara continued: ‘Anything you do to hurt me in public, people will want to know why. Then what’ll you say? You’ll get no sympathy doing it for a reason you can’t give, and you can bet I’ll say nothing. And before you try to get back at the residents, remember they’ve got us on camera admitting what we did and begging to serve them. What will that make all of us look like if it gets out?’

There was a long silence as Sian and Cassie digested this possibility. Then Sian said, beginning to sound more worried than angry: ‘Can we trust them not to show it around?’

‘You can trust Warwick, and he’ll make sure the rest of them stick to the deal,’ Tara said.

‘But you said he was a stupid prick of an old soldier –’

‘Maybe he is, but I never said he wasn’t honest,’ Tara cut in, a little surprised at her certainty. ‘His sort never break their word.’

There was another silence, then Daniela said: ‘So you’re saying we’re safe if we stick to the agreement and let them do what they want with us.’

‘Don’t talk about it,’ Cassie groaned miserably.

‘Daniela’s right,’ Tara said. ‘If you two haven’t got the sense or guts to see this through, that’s your
problem.
You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to show them I can take it by getting pleasure anyhow and any way I can!’ She hadn’t planned to say more but she was getting carried away with the desire to put Sian and Cassie in their place. ‘You know what the Khans made me do? They stuffed a mop handle up my bum, a carrot up my cunt, put a brush in my mouth and made me scrub the floor with water from a bucket surrounded by holly, so I stabbed my tits on it every time I used it. And you know what I did? I worked myself off on it all and came right in front of their eyes!’ She was high on perverse elation. Her nipples were erect and she was feeling almost boastful about her ordeal, savouring their awed attention. ‘So you see they won’t break me. Why don’t you try it?’

‘I came too,’ Cassie blurted out, then choked off in silence.

Tara sensed they were all twisting their heads round trying to see Cassie, as she herself was.

‘You what?’ Sian said, her voice edged with incredulous contempt.

‘It’s true!’ Cassie snapped. ‘The Jessops made me hoover with a vibrator stuck up me. I couldn’t help it.’

‘Oh,’ said Gail quietly. ‘Didn’t you enjoy it at all?’

‘No … well, a bit …’ Cassie sounded confused. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Next time try to enjoy it,’ Tara advised.

‘Are you a masochist or what?’ Sian said. ‘None of this is any fun!’

‘Well, what did Curry do to you?’ Tara asked.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Sian replied defensively.

‘Come on. Cassie and I have owned up. Or are you too embarrassed?’

Sian realised she was trapped. ‘He – he made me sweep out his workshop …’ Haltingly she described how she was turned into a living dustpan. ‘There was no way doing that could get me excited,’ she concluded defensively. ‘It was just humiliating and painful. My nipples are still sore.’

‘You had a hand free,’ Gail said. ‘You could have wiggled the dustpan about in your slot. That might have got you going.’

‘With him watching?’ Sian said aghast.

Gail surprised Tara by persisting. ‘It might even have been more exciting that way. I mean, there’s no prize for feeling worse than we have to. I’m still scared about what they’re going to do to us, but I think it makes sense not to fight it. They’re trying to humiliate us sexually, right, so there’ll probably be something – intimate we can use for pleasure, if we let it.’

‘So what did you have to do?’ Sian demanded. ‘I suppose you came ten times!’

‘No … but it wasn’t so bad after I got used to it. Even sort of fun …’ She described washing the conservatory windows for Hilary and Rachel, and how she had to work the pump. ‘Of course my boobs were like prunes when they took the cloths and bands off, and they really smarted as the blood came back, but they massaged them better.’

‘You had your tits rubbed by a pair of dykes!’ Sian said contemptuously.

‘They weren’t nasty,’ Gail said. ‘Yes, they wanted to see me suffer a bit. I understand that now. But they could have made it a lot worse.’

‘You wait till it’s their turn to have you in their bed, then see how much you like them,’ Sian said.

‘Well, we’ll just have to compare notes on that after they’ve had you,’ Gail riposted neatly, reducing Sian to fuming silence.