Carrie's Story: An Erotic S/M Novel (10 page)

Best regards,

Jon

He had Mrs. Branden tie a big white satin bow around my
ribs, with the riding crop placed through the knot at an artistic
angle, its loop just brushing my right nipple. Needless to say,
giving Uncle Harry permission to use the riding crop was like
giving the Republicans permission to cut the capital gains tax.
But that was my polite Jonathan, ever the solicitous nephew.

Sometimes he'd bring girlfriends home. No matter what
their names were, I always thought of them as Muffy. They
seemed to be the daughters of the ladies in the garden-party
dresses at the dressage shows. Perhaps they'd be those ladies
someday. They were pretty, slender, tanned, and they always
had streaky blond shoulder-length hair. And most of them
were as cruel as you could possibly imagine, making Uncle
Harry look quite gentle and dear in comparison.

I could understand why, though. Here they'd spent this
absolutely fantastic evening with this guy who was a great
catch (plus fun and sexy and entertaining) and he'd bring
them home and want them to make love with his girl slave
while he watched. I mean, it wasn't presented that way-at
first I'd j ust be some exotic spice added to the scene, not much
more than an extra tongue. They'd be flattered and titillated. But at a certain point he'd draw back, being polite as always,
but you couldn't really miss the message-he wanted to watch
and he wanted it to be good.

He'd come back in for the last round, of course-send
me scurrying away as though somehow it had all been due
to my randiness, and then he'd do the requisite heroic male
fucking number. But it always was a little beside the point,
and they knew it. So the evening would end up with them
showing me how they felt about it. Jonathan would let them
punish me, and they'd really get into it-anything to prove
that it had only been me who'd been used, and not them.

These were the most difficult scenes I had to play, and
not just because of the painful beatings. It was the sneaky,
fucked-up psychology. I remember the first time I realized
that Jonathan was being sadistic, and how silly I felt using
that word, under the circumstances. But it was true-I
didn't really feel that what went on between him and me
was sadism, because we'd, as he'd said, made a deal. But the
Muffies were getting something different from what they
signed on for, and I thought that was cruel and gratuitous. It
wasn't fun for them-all of the other people he threw at me
got to indulge their pure and simple demands for obedience,
but not the Muffles, who really didn't want me there at all.
I wished he wouldn't make me do it; he was showing me a
part of himself I really didn't want to know about. Which was
part of what I was trying to explain to Stuart the night after
Jonathan had told me about ownership and auctions. Although
he was as fascinated as I was with the buying and selling
part -and especially the big bucks -he was heartbroken that
Jonathan wanted to sell me.

"I thought that eventually he'd realize that it was you
and only you he loved," he wailed. He was, in fact, deeply
smitten with Jonathan, whom he'd finally gotten a glimpse
of. We'd been at the Castro waiting for Lei Ezzfazzt; du ParacV i
to start. I'd insisted we arrive early to get terrific seats, and
while I was buying us popcorn and the organist was finishing his Edith Piaf medley, segueing from "Milord" to "San
Francisco, open your Golden Gate," I spotted Jonathan way
in the back and sent Stuart to get a good look. Jonathan was
alone, reading something. I don't think he noticed us.

"Yeah, and marry me. Like Mr. Rochester, right? And
we could raise a houseful of little perverts. God, Stu, sometimes I think you're in love with him-you're certainly
his most swooning and faithful admirer. You deserve to be
treated like he treats the Muffles."

"That's avoiding the question," he said. "Are you really
going to tell me you started in with him just because you're
such a brave adventurer? Didn't you have a big, big romantic
thing for him when you met him? At least till you met Uncle
Harry, who seems to have changed your life."

"Uncle Tom, Dick, and Harry," I boasted, "and just
about every fraternity brother Jonathan ever had. Probably
a few who didn't make it into the fraternity, too. And then
there's Muffy, Buffy, and..."

"Cottontail."

"Cottontail. Right. The thing is, it really does change
your perspective. It's certainly changed my ideas about what
turns me on. I think it's the voice. That command voice.
Jonathan's great at it, but just about all of them can do it
some."

"Except the Muffies."

"Well, that's because of Jonathan's mindfuck. He creates a situation where they can't demand what they want. But
even they sometimes hit the voice, sometimes just by accident. The thing I've been trying to explain, Stuie, is that I've
started to think of the voice as kind of a transpersonal thing.
It's made up of lots of voices. It's beyond Jonathan."

I thought I was being quite impressive, until I heard
Stuart snort. "Can it, Car," he said. "I don't believe you. I mean,
I can see how it would be a turn-on to be, like, doing it with
all of them in front of him. And sometimes, if he's not there,
he makes you tell him about it afterward, right?"

"Yeah, sometimes," I said impatiently. "What's your
point?"

"Well, it's still him , " he said. "Muffles or Uncle or whatever, so I don't believe you that it's suddenly so, uh...what
was the big word you used, the one that sounded sort of like
transgressive'?"

"Oh, fuck you,,, I yelled, suddenly feeling like I was
going to cry. "It's my damn life, not yours, and I am not going
to center it around somebody who, on the one hand, has
this strange cruel streak and, on the other, has his life really
together and doesn't have to worry about stuff like whether
he's really smart or talented or just kidding himself. I mean,
he's like fifteen years older than I am-he can probably
remember where he was when Kennedy got shot-and he's
rich, male, smug, and successful. And I think getting emotionally tangled up with him-like if I cared about that-would
be a lot more dangerous than anything I'm doing right now.
So fuck you ... and... and..."

And I stopped before I could say something like "get a
life," which was on the tip of my tongue, but which-given how I'd depended on Stuart this whole year-would have
been so cruel and unfair that I never could have forgiven
myself. And probably he knew that, since the look he threw
me was partly shamed, partly grateful, and also somewhat
serious.

"Right," he breathed. "Okay. He's giving you your start,
but it's your adventure through life and sex, and he just disappears after a while. That's cool. But aren't you at least sad
that he disappears?"

"We'll always have Paris," I said, recovering my equilibrium. "Anyhow, I want to see what happens next. I want that
more than anything."

"And how about him?" he asked. "Why does he want to
sell you? Is he bored?"

"Maybe," I said, "but I don't think so. I think it's a
Pygmalion thing. I think he wants me to go up on that auction
block or whatever it is and be the way coolest bottom anybody ever saw. This whole business, from picking me up at
the party to turning me into an actual slave and showing me
off in public-it's like an aesthetic act. So he's got to complete
it, create, you know, closure."

"Aren't you scared?" he asked.

"Stuart," I said patiently, "I am alrs'ay.i scared."

didn't think Jonathan would tell me any more about the
. selling idea for a while, and he didn't. Things went on as
they had been-quiet days in pornotopia-for a week or two
more. And then, late on a Saturday afternoon, when Mrs.
Branden led me into the study, Jonathan was already there,
drinking wine and talking and laughing with the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. She was about Jonathan's age and
she was, well, perfect. Red gold hair, cut in an achingly pure
straight Louise Brooks bob that fell to her jawbone. Big pale
transparent green eyes. A black linen suit, tight jacket with
no blouse under it, short tight skirt, long, long legs. Decidedly
nontrashy red shoes that cost the earth. Short, flawless,
bright red fingernails. The little Mercedes I'd noticed parked
outside must have been hers, too. This was not a Muffy, and
I knew, absolutely-I mean, after all I do know Jonathan
very well in some ways -that she and Jonathan had had a
wonderful, expensive lunch at some place like Zuni and then
had come home and fucked their brains out. It didn't matter
that she looked so absolutely perfectly groomed, like she'd
been born in that suit about an hour ago. They'd fucked and
fucked and then she'd quickly gotten her perfect self all back
together again, because that's the kind of person she was.

Was she why he wanted to sell me? All my bravado began
to wobble. I was scared and jealous. I tried to look completely compliant and impassive, as I was supposed to look, and I
suspected that I wasn't succeeding very well.

Jonathan took the leash and unhooked it, unhooked my
hands from behind my back, and did a quick little gesture that
I understood perfectly. I kneeled down and kissed her shoe (I
knew how to deal with the lipstick by now). Then I stayed on
my knees in front of them, staring foolishly at her.

He turned to her. "So, what do you think?"

She laughed a little more and scooped up my chin in
her hand, tipping my face up so she could look into my eyes.
"Just wait a minute," she said. She had a lovely, husky voice,
the kind I'd seen described in some novel as "thrilling." She
looked at me hard.

"My god, Jon," she said now, "the little slut seems to
think,ihe owns you. Where's your cane?"

He handed it to her, and she whacked me, really painfully. I started to wail. She slapped me in the face. "Stop that,"
she said quickly-and amazingly, I was able to.

"Now look, Carrie," she said briskly, "I'm not interested
in whatever you think is happening here, so please show a
little self-control and don't communicate anything except your
desire to obey us." Then she poked the toe of one of her beautiful red shoes into my cunt and gave a witchy laugh. "You're
right, by the way, about these. They are too expensive, even
for me. Now go get that stool." She pointed to a little wooden
stool about a foot high, in the corner. "Put it there," she said,
pointing to the middle of the room, "and stand on it."

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"Ms. Clarke," she corrected me, lightly flicking the cane
on my ass again.

"Yes, Ms. Clarke," I agreed. Oh Stuart, I thought,
scratch everything I said about the voice. It's an entirely different thing when it comes from someone like this. I hurried to
do what she said, climbing up on the stool. She stood up and
slowly walked around me, looking at me hard, nudging me
from time to time with the cane. I tried to interpret her nudges
as signals, how to stand better, how to look more graceful.
She wasn't very tall, I realized for the first time, maybe even a
little below medium height. But you just assumed she'd be tall
because she had so much presence. I was very frightened of
her, and it took everything I had just to be still. I didn't want
her to think Jonathan had trained me badly. Somehow, that
seemed very important.

She put down the cane, squeezed my breasts, fluffed my
pubic hair. Then she put two fingers in my mouth and parted
it a little, while her other hand did the same thing to my cunt.
I felt terribly warm and weak. I wanted to come, but I knew
that that would be a disgraceful thing to do. I just concentrated on breathing, on not trembling too much.

She let go and walked around me again. "Well," she
finally said, "she's pretty enough, just barely. Of course you
know that she's not a great beauty, and you also know that
in the long run that's what they want to pay their money for.
She stands reasonably well, though she's clearly a novice. You
could have trained her for dressage, but I know that's notyour
kind of thing to do. Too bad, though. If she were mine, I'd use
a bit and bridle on her. There's just so much training she hasn't
had, and it shows. As does her attitude. You're charmed by
how bright she is, and you clumsily indulge her, as though she
were a precocious child. Sweetheart, are you going through a
midlife thing about becoming a daddy? Because we all know that there are pretty girls lined up around the block, each of
them willing to tolerate a little, ah, strangeness on your part,
in return for marrying you and getting knocked up and putting in an early application at Presidio Hill School. But please
don't lay any of that on Carrie, who still, I think, has some
decent instincts about elegant sex.

"Because she does have a quality, I'll give you that,
Jon. She does have a bruised innocence that some of them
will want, and a lovely pear-shaped rump, especially one that
marks so easily, never hurt anybody's salability."