Marketplace (9 page)

Her tears landed on them
and glistened. This was not the elegant domination she was used to
at all!

“That will be enough,
Claudia. Now, we will proceed to the north wing of the house,
Master Grendel’s wing.” He walked away from her while she was still
on her knees, and she scrambled to catch up with them.

The tension was making
Robert shake as they proceeded through the archway that led to the
north wing. The sound of Chris’s voice describing the rooms that
they passed through became a steady drone. None of it registered.
He gazed at the paneled walls and looked wherever Chris directed
their attention, and tried to remember what his Mistress (the newer
one) had told him before she left.

“These people can make a
real slave out of you,” Ali had insisted, petting his head. “If
they can’t, no one can. Listen good and do everything they tell
you, and you’ll be on your way to a real mistress in no
time!”

And as he padded obediently
behind the group taking this tour, he knew that deep in his heart
being owned was a dream of immense magnitude. But maybe he just
wasn’t cut out for it. He was such a failure at everything! He
certainly couldn’t take a beating like Brian did, so manly and
strong.

They had reached the end of
the wing, where Chris merely showed them a closed door. “This is
Master Grendel’s workshop, where you will not have any need to go.
Beyond is the garage. Robert, please remove your trousers, brace
yourself on this door and present.” The strap appeared in Chris’s
hand once more, and the other three got out of the way.

Robert unfastened the
drawstring of the loose gray pants and lowered them, blushing all
the while. He hurried over to the door, hoping no one could really
see his nasty thing, and leaned over, placing his broad hands
against the oak finish.

Chris said, aiming the
first blow, “For Sharon’s lack of manners,” and then struck. It was
a wide, even swing that brought the length of the strap neatly
across Robert’s extended cheeks.

As he felt the sharp pain
and the thudding impact, Robert gasped. The second blow brought out
a whimper, but his arms stayed where they were put. He twisted his
ass slightly, and the third blow landed more on one side than the
other. Immediately, Robert began to react the way he had been
taught to. He started to cry.

“Oh, oh dear!” He managed
to whine between shots. His voice was high pitched again, strained
by his posture. “Oh, p-please! Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Uph!” He
bit his tongue as the strap hit him lower down.

Abruptly, the strapping
stopped. “Be silent, Robert.” Chris ran the edge of the strap
across the larger man’s back. “Your ass is not the only place on
the body I may pay attention to.”

Robert bit his lip and
tried to be quiet through the rest of the beating, but whimpers,
whines and squeaks came through his lips with every blow. Oh, he
tried, tried so hard, but it was so frightening! And with everyone
watching, it was ten times as bad.

Finally, it was over. And
when Robert straightened up for a moment, the state of his nasty
thing was yet another embarrassment. He crouched down to kneel at
Chris’s feet and tried to hide the awakening of his cock, but he
knew that they all saw it. When Chris turned away to lead them to
the east wing, Robert deliberately stayed behind a moment more so
that no one could look at him pulling the pants back on.

“This is Mistress
Alexandra’s wing,” Chris said, when they had passed through the
main house again. “It was added on in 1977, but the architecture
and construction are consistent with the Dutch Colonial design of
the main house. Her studio is, as Master Grendel‘s workshop, off
limits to you. Here,” he opened a set of wide double doors, “is the
solarium and exercise room. Some of you may be assigned to tasks
here. It is also one of the three places where you may spend your
free time, if you have any.”

They looked around, curious
and impressed. The long, narrow room seemed to have an entire wall
made of broad windows. Light poured in and bathed an assortment of
gleaming equipment. A bar was on one end of the room, and a curving
staircase going down was on the other. Chris pointed.

“The stairs lead to the
pools. We have a small swimming pool and a jacuzzi, both of which
are off limits to you.” Sighs and one barely audible “aww” answered
that announcement. Chris smiled briefly and then showed them the
various equipment. When they followed him out of the room, they all
glanced at each other. Surely, Sharon should have been punished
there?

But the tour continued,
through the media room (off limits), and then to Alexandra’s study,
and then a brief nod toward her own master suite. The third floors
of both wings held guest bedrooms and store rooms. The third floor
of the main house had servants’ bedrooms, the dorm they slept in,
and the shower room. They hadn’t seen anything that looked or
sounded like a dungeon, or playroom.

And when the tour ended,
Chris glanced at his clipboard and said, “Brian, to Master
Grendel’s study. Claudia, to Mistress Alexandra, in her studio.
Robert, to the kitchen, to be directed in duties by the cook, and
Sharon...” He looked up at her for a moment. The slaves felt a
moment of tension start to build.

“Sharon, to the main
library. There, you will find a binder containing the standard
rules of decorum for
property
.
You will begin to study it.” Chris snapped his fingers.
“Go!”

They obediently ran off in
different directions.

Chapter Four

“But can’t you do anything
else?” Alexandra asked. She glanced briefly down at the folder on
the table and shook her head. Obviously, no matter how many times
she asked that question, the answer was always going to be that
pathetically perplexed face and a shivering shake of that pretty
little head. The interview was already an hour and a half long.
Claudia was simply a slave with very, very limited uses.

But she was a cute thing.
Standing in the slanting morning sunlight, her body free of that
shapeless gray dress, she looked like a little doll, pink, smooth,
and sweet enough to want to sweep up and take home. But then
what?

“You know all the rituals
of various teas. You can squirm delightfully when you are teased
and you can take a formal caning with some panache. You can do
light housework, such as dusting, but your Mistress never insisted
that you do the real work.” Alexandra reviewed the salient points
again, expressing her amusement with every line. “After all,
washing dishes might ruin your nails. Vacuuming was just too
strenuous and inelegant for a delicate little thing like
you.”

Claudia squirmed, just a
little bit, and lowered her head, blushing.

She does that very well,
Alexandra thought. The mistress of the house took a step closer to
the girl. “In other words, Claudia, you have been spoiled rotten,
haven’t you? You did practically no labor, performed no meaningful
task other than to carry a tray every once in a while and manage to
do it with some grace. Your other skills, if we can call them that,
are blushing, simpering, being obsequious to the point of
saccharinicity, and looking cute in an erotically designed maid’s
costume. Is that an accurate evaluation?”

Claudia lifted her head a
little. “If... if Ma’am says so,” she said softly.

“Well, you can be voice
trained,” Alexandra mused. Voice training was valuable in a
property. It meant that the slave would never answer a question or
voice a comment which would indicate a personal desire. Some owners
liked that, it could add to the value of an otherwise uninteresting
or limited offering. Alexandra realized that she was already
assuming that they would have to sell Claudia. That wasn’t fair,
not to Claudia, not to Madeleine, and certainly not to the
house.

“Tell me, Claudia, did it
ever occur to you to ask for more duties or
responsibilities?“

Claudia shook her head.
“No, ma’am. I did what my Mistress told me to do.”

Alexandra smiled at that.
“Oh really? That’s not exactly true, is it?” She stepped in closer
and ran one light, gentle finger along Claudia’s shoulder. It
produced a shudder, a nice, rippling response. “You did have
trouble obeying her whenever she tried to take you out of these
limited areas, didn’t you? For example, when she wanted to see you
play with yourself?”

“Oh!” Claudia lowered her
head again, so fast her hair flew around her head. “Mistress...
told you?”

“Yes, of course she told
me,” Alexandra replied. “Pick up your chin, I don’t like talking to
the top of your head.” Claudia did so, her cheeks red with
humiliation.

Alexandra walked back to
the table and pulled a sheet of paper from the folder, scanned it
and read from it. “You couldn’t perform when she commanded you to,
instead you burst into tears. On a later occasion, when she honored
you by taking you to bed, you did the same thing when she gave you
a dildo and told you to use it on yourself.” Alexandra looked up
for a moment. “Did you end up staying with her that night, or did
she send you away?”

“I stayed, ma’am,” Claudia
whispered.

“Spoiled rotten,” Alexandra
muttered again. “In fact, any time your Mistress decided that you
should be more interesting sexually, you rebelled, didn’t you? You
used your tears and your whimpering and your charm to manipulate
your Mistress into letting you dig yourself this rut of a role,
where you expected to stay for as long as you continued to like
it.”

“No!” Claudia gasped as the
word escaped her lips. “I mean, please, ma’am, it wasn’t like that.
I loved... I love my Mistress! But some things are so very hard for
me!” Tears had started welling up in her eyes.

“That’s not going to work
here,” Alexandra commented, indicating the tears. “Grendel loves it
when slaves cry, and it doesn’t affect me in the slightest. Not
from you or from Robert.”

“I’m sorry,
ma’am.”

“Don’t be sorry. Stop it.
Your first charge is to stop crying every time something unpleasant
happens. Learn to express your emotions with your posture, your
attitude, and your mouth. For the rest of the week, whenever you
cry, you will be given additional work to do.” Alexandra beckoned
and Claudia came to her, frantically blinking away
tears.

Alexandra ran her finger
along Claudia’s body again, this time over her throat and along her
arm. Her skin was soft, and a little pale. “You’ll also start
spending some time in my solarium. I’ll tell Chris to put some
sunblock on your shelf tomorrow. You’ll find a work out regimen
prepared for you every day at... four o’clock. Don’t make it
necessary for me to watch you.”

Claudia said, “Yes,
ma’am.”

The finger continued its
journey. Alexandra traced a line from Claudia’s hip to one small
breast, circling the erect nipple and then gently pinching it. That
elicited a slight moan from the girl, and Alexandra smiled gently.
Slowly running her finger down Claudia’s belly, she was not
surprised to find that the shivering little maid was hot and very
wet between her thighs.

Claudia gasped slightly and
arched her back a little bit. She was blushing again, how sweet.
Alexandra flicked her finger across Claudia’s swollen clitoris and
then eased two fingers between the folds of her damp lips. When she
brought them out, they glistened.

“Clean me off,” Alexandra
said, holding them up. Claudia licked at them with tiny cat-like
strokes, tasting herself and her excitement, and continued to lick
until Alexandra took her hand away. Her body shifted slightly, her
hips moving just a little closer. But her hands remained at her
sides, where they were during the entire interview. Still, every
inch of her begged to be drawn into an embrace.

Alexandra stepped away
suddenly, leaving Claudia to sway slightly on the balls of her
feet. “Get dressed. That will be all for now,” Alexandra said.
“After lunch, Chris will assign you some duties. You may go
directly to the kitchen and see if Cook needs any help.” She
watched the girl pull the dress over her head and slip her feet
back into the shoes. Claudia gave a polite nod before exiting the
room, but her face was still flushed with erotic
expectations.

Altogether, it was not an
unpromising interview. Despite the fraidycat exterior, there was
some strength and discipline in the girl. It took practice and
dedication to create art from a form of service, and it took some
strong resolve to take regular canings. And she did have a kind of
enticing sensuality, that little pout in her lips and her delicious
reaction to being humiliated. It was just a little difficult
imagining what to make of her after one interview. I need to see
her working, really working, Alexandra thought, and then see what
kind of a sexual plaything she could be. That’s something to look
forward to...

But she’s the best of the
four, Alexandra reminded herself. And as promising as she might be,
she was still far from Marketplace material.

* * * *

Sharon was starving by
lunchtime. Not that she was ever a big eater (keeping slim and fit
was a very large part of her life up to now), but being denied
breakfast made food her predominant thought while waiting in the
library. All alone for hours! She had found the binder after about
twenty minutes of looking around, flipped through it and scanning
the pages of lists. There were literally hundreds of little details
in there, and some of them only applied to types of slaves and some
of them only applied to certain situations, and some of them were
just so silly that she giggled out loud. Reading through them
wasn’t even a turn-on, although some of them sounded hot. She got
bored and started examining the room, spinning a large globe
around, looking in the drawers of the two desks (nothing
interesting), and then actually looking at the books. The topics of
most of them didn’t meet with her standards of ‘interesting’. And
once again, as in Grendel’s office, there weren’t any books about
bondage and SM and slaves and masters.