Marketplace (41 page)

“They used you,” Grendel
said. She snapped her head to one side. She hadn’t seen him
standing in the doorway!

“They used you like a piece
of property can be used, Sharon.” He leaned against the jamb, and
looked down at her with the patience of a good teacher. “They broke
no rule or code of conduct that we apply in this house, and they
stayed within the parameters you set yourself.”

“What do you mean?” Sharon
asked, her voice almost a shriek. “That this was just a
test?
”

“Don’t you dare take that
tone with me, missy!” Grendel drew himself up. “That was no test,
my dear, it was just Alex being generous and hospitable to two
business associates. And before I go and let Chris get on with the
punishment you just earned yourself, I’ll just let you in on
something interesting. Both Mauro and Jules are single men. Either
of them would be eligible for the special rider in your
contract.”

Sharon pushed herself up
onto her knees. “At least punish me yourself, you son of a bi—!”
she screamed. Chris cut her off with a vicious backhand slap which
threw her back to the floor.

Grendel stopped without
turning back. He said, “Double it!” and left.

* * * *

That night, Sharon had to
be helped up the stairs. Her ass and the backs of her thighs were
black and blue, and her back was tender throughout her shoulders.
She whimpered when anything touched her nipples, and couldn’t find
any way to lie down without leaning on something that
hurt.

Her condition was massively
sobering. Even the cuts on Robert’s back weren’t that bad. He was
able to walk away, go back to work, and even sleep on his back
without much of a problem. But Sharon had been beaten methodically,
heavily, and with the sole purpose to cause her amounts of pain she
would never forget. Claudia whispered to Robert that she had seen
Chris carrying several rubber implements back to Grendel’s side of
the house when he had finished with Sharon. Rubber, they both knew,
hurt more and marked less. Whatever had marked poor Sharon had
probably been nightmarish. She, of course, refused to talk about
it.

Chris had drawn their
attention to Sharon and her condition when she didn’t appear for
dinner. “Sharon is being severely disciplined,” he had said. “I
would advise you all to give the condition of her body some serious
consideration. What has been done to her is something none of you
may escape. For your edification, the reason for the severity was
clear and profound disrespect for Master Grendel, in the form of
her address toward him and her demands for his attention. I hope
you will all learn from her example.”

They looked at her and they
all did. To the pits of their stomachs and curling through their
sex, it hammered home one thing for sure. That could have been any
of them.

While Sharon groaned and
shifted to find some way to lay down, Robert sighed with her.
Finally, he got up and walked over to her bed, carrying his pillow.
“Sharon,” he said softly. “Here. Sit up a little, and let me show
you how to do it.”

Sharon shifted up on one
elbow and looked at him. Her eyes looked black from all her crying,
and her lip was swollen in one place.

“Listen,” Robert said. “I
used to come home like that a lot. You have to give yourself
different places to support your body.” He showed her how to fold
his pillow up and lean against it, her body on its side, the pillow
raising her belly just a little bit, so she could wrap herself
around it. When he was finished, she did actually feel a little
more comfortable. She whispered “Thank you,” as he went back to his
bed.

“You’re a good guy,” Brian
said, leaning back on his arms.

Robert shook his head.
“I’ve never seen anyone work a woman like that.”

“Hey. Equal opportunity
slave training,” Brian said lightly. “They’ll beat and fuck us all
to death, regardless of gender, race, creed, color or sexual
orientation.”

“Let’s not talk about
that,” Claudia said, sitting up. “I think it’s about time you told
us your story, Brian.”

“Yeah,” Robert agreed. “If
it’s as long and boring as you’ve made it out to be, maybe it’ll
help Sharon fall asleep.”

“Hmm. More likely give her
nightmares,” Brian quipped. But he looked at his fellow slaves, and
saw that they were serious, so he pulled himself up to sit
cross-legged, and thought about it for a little while. Then, he
began to speak.

Chapter Nineteen: Brian's
Tale

I suppose that my story
begins back when I was a kid. I grew up in Brooklyn, in this nice
neighborhood with lots of kids and trees. Very residential, very
middle class. I was best pals with a kid named Nick, and we played
together for, hell, years and years. Up to high school, I guess.
But when we were about ten or something, we got into comic books,
like all kids do for a while. But we liked the weird stuff. Not the
pumped-up guys in their leotards, no, that was for the regular
sissies. Everyone read those. No, we went for the different ones,
like war comics and horror magazines with pictures of vampires and
gore on the covers. And westerns. Can’t forget the westerns,
because that’s where I first saw this hero.

He wasn’t even like any of
the others. Cowboy gunslingers were pretty standard. They were all
waspy looking fresh-faced pretty guys who wore neatly pressed jeans
and chaps and had names like The Something Kid. But there was this
one book that was about an Indian hero. Thunder, Native Warrior,
was his name and the name of the comic. And he was so hot. He was
taller than the other Indians, and bigger. He could run faster, out
fight a whole battalion of cavalry, and then saunter into town to
beat up the red-necks in the local saloon. He had this drop-dead
gorgeous Indian maiden who was really hot for him, and every couple
of issues, some white girl would fall for him and cause some plot
twist, but he didn’t have any time for them. He was always out with
the guys, hunting, or discovering hidden treasures before some
greedy white guy took it all, or saving innocent people from cattle
stampedes or some other happy shit. And without fail, every issue,
he’d be on the cover in one of two poses.

Either he’d be standing
triumphant over a fallen enemy, gazing off into the distance, or
he’d be in some kind of weird bondage with this filthy, leering
cowboy holding a whip or a branding iron that looked like it was
aiming for a tit or for his loincloth.

He was the ultimate switch.
He was either stomping heads and getting them to beg for mercy, or
he was getting beaten up by a gang of clod-busters. And all of this
dressed in nothing more than this decorated strip of leather
between his legs and a pair of high lace up boots. I guess he got
me as hot as a little kid can get. Nick and I would fool around
sometimes, and I’d play the evil Nazi to his Captain Victory, and
he’d be the mad scientist to my monster or werewolf, and then I’d
get to be Thunder while he was a raging horde of cowboys with yards
of clothesline and sticks that we pretended were branding
irons.

Now, I figure if you grow
up with memories like this, you gotta know what you want when your
body tells you to go out and find it. I sure did. I just didn’t
exactly know how to get it. So for a lot of years, I played around,
dating girls, reading cheap porn, trading dirty stories with the
guys, you know, typical stuff. When I was working full time, I
found a girlfriend who was willing to be a little kinky with me,
and we had fun for a while. She and I would buy these dirty
magazines and read these fake letters to each other, or we’d rent
X-rated videos, and then we’d decide what we wanted to do. If we
liked it, we’d do it again.

Soon, we had a regular menu
of kinky sex scenes. We’d say, “oh, let’s do the teenage virgin
scene tonight,” or “the jailhouse scene.” It didn’t take her too
long to figure out what got my engine going. The thing I liked best
was “new man in the cellblock,” where she’d tie me to the bed, or
over the back of her couch and use her vibrator to fuck the hell
out of my ass, telling me how many men were raping me in one night.
Sometimes, I’d come without even knowing it! In the beginning, she
thought it was really hot. I mean, all her girlfriends had these
jerk asshole boyfriends who had too much macho and slapped them
around or treated them like dirt. But she had a guy who was so
open-minded, he liked to have her fuck him up the ass. She seemed
to get off on it, and I always tried my best to satisfy her
fantasies when she wanted them.

I can’t say that anything
exactly went bad with our relationship, except that we both might
have wanted something different and were killing some pretty
pleasurable time with each other. I don’t think we were ever in
love, but we were sure in lust! I noticed that she was getting a
little bored before she did, and I started looking for something
else to do. We both started seeing other people, and we just kind
of drifted apart. The best thing about it was that we remained
friends. I’d always call her when my night went well, and we even
did phone sex for a while. She still calls me when she wants to
chat.

After her, I just hung out
and wandered around for a while. The memories of the sex we had
kept gnawing away at me, though. The image of a real man fucking me
became a regular part of my jerk-off fantasies. Sometimes, he would
be dark, and have long black hair, just like Thunder. It was only a
matter of time before I hit my first gay bar.

New York is heaven for a
gay guy. You can find anything in the community there. I hit bars
for dancers, for crossdressers, for young punks, and for Latino
boys. I shook it down with the party crowd, who went to after-hours
clubs, and I stood for hours in crowded, smoky bars with older guys
in leather and denim. It didn’t take me long at all to figure out
where I belonged.

At first, I was totally
lost. I didn’t know a thing about keys, hankies, tops and bottoms,
or anything. Let’s face it, my entire education came out of
magazines designed for straight, middle-aged white men. So I just
shut my mouth and drank and listened and watched. It was at one of
these bars, The Shaft, I think it was, where I met Ron. Ron was my
first master. He’s older than me, a real old guard leather man. I
am so glad I couldn‘t afford a leather jacket that year, because he
once told me that if I had been wearing one, he would have never
taken me seriously. You see, the way he was taught, bottoms had to
earn their leather. And I was the lowest of the low, inexperienced
and raw, and if I was wearing some stuff I just bought off the rack
because it looked good, I would only be good enough to play around
with.

The way I figure it,
whether he was right or wrong, he wore his leathers like he was
born in them. And never all shiny and gaudy with studs, like every
Mr. Leather Whatever who figures he’s big and tough. No, Ron
dressed plainly but with style. Black chaps that were custom made a
long time ago. Black T-shirts when he wore shirts, skin tight over
his nicely developed chest. The man had pecs that would knock your
eyes out! Levi 501’s, always. A plain bar vest with no colors or
club pins on it, and maybe an armband across his left bicep. Black
motorcycle boots, no chains and no spurs or shit like that. And
when it was cool enough, his leather jacket.

Some guys called him plain.
What he was, though, was austere. Dignified. He didn’t need twenty
pounds of silver studs to let you know he was a top man. When I
asked him if I could buy him a drink, the line I had used to some
success on other men, he declined. I was a little confused then,
because they always took a free drink, so I tried to think of
something else I could offer. Finally, I said, “Is there anything I
can get for you?”

“Sure,” he said back. “Your
ass, over that barstool.”

I guess I fell in love with
him that minute. It was so hot, getting spanked by him in that
crowded bar, other man laughing and making comments, or just
standing around watching intently. And when he pulled me up to face
him and breathed smoke in my face, I realized that I had actually
cried. He gripped the front of my shirt tight in one hand, and told
me that if I wanted more, I’d have to get down and kiss his boots
and follow him out without another word.

It was a long way to the
door on my hands and knees. I lost sight of his legs in a sea of
black leather, and men parted for me so I could catch up. The
bouncer laughed as I passed him, but I didn’t care. When I got out
onto the sidewalk, he pulled me up again and said, softly,
“Piss.”

And without thinking, I let
go, and my hot piss streamed down my pants legs, covering the tops
of my boots and dripping gradually onto the ground.

That was the first time I
saw him smile. “You’ve got potential, boy,” he said. And then, he
dragged me home and fucked me silly.

Now, I didn’t move in with
him or anything. I had a full time job, and I was taking civil
service exams, and I had a life I just couldn’t leave behind. But
that was OK, because Ron had a lot of other boys he played with,
and one special one that I guess was his favorite, so he didn’t
need me around day and night. But any chance I could, I’d see him
and he’d put me through my paces. He was the one who insisted that
I join a gym, and he was the one who pierced my nipples. That was
an incredible thing, let me tell you. I screamed like a drag queen
who missed a sale at Bloomingdale’s! But he liked the way they
looked, so I kept them. In time, the pain went away, and now,
they’re just hot decorations. A lot of men like them.