Mind Guest (29 page)

“little slave” and other ickiness of the same sort, all despite the fact that the names didn’t fit. I might not have had his shoulder width, but he didn’t have more than a couple of inches on me.

“You must be clean and sweet-smelling, else our masters will not be pleased,” she said, taking the worn, sweat-stained poncho away. She stopped to look closely at my now bare body, then smiled a sweet smile of remembrance. “How well I recall my own time of beginning,”

she sighed, glorying in the memory. “My body was as young and innocent as yours, and when I was given reward by our masters, I imagined the pleasure to be the most a woman was capable of experiencing. How foolishly, happily wrong I was! Are you unbroached?”

“No,” I answered, already blushing as I was expected to do. “My-engagement was formally announced and consummated.”

“Swiftly and with singular lack of skill,” she nodded, clearly dismissing the point. “Your first experience would be even greater if you had not been opened, yet will you nevertheless find it unforgettable. Kneel down and I will remove the device from you, and then you may relieve yourself.”

Bellna was awed by the beautiful older woman and would have obeyed without question, so I had no choice but to do the same. Once I was on my knees she unknotted the leather both front and back, drew out the device more slowly than I liked, then directed me to the more distant bucket that was half full of water. I let Bellna’s distress keep the blush on my skin, but I didn’t let her repugnance keep me from using that bucket every way I could. The woman bustled around in a graceful way until I’d finished, and then she directed me to the other bucket.

“I will speak as I bathe you, and you have naught to do save listen,” she said, gesturing that I was to kneel again. She knelt too, right near me, and I decided it was time for a legitimate question.

“For what reason am I not to freshen my own body?” I asked, watching as she took a soft, clean cloth from the pile and dipped it in a bucket of clean water.

“In future you will be required to do so,” she answered, paying attention to squeezing out the cloth. “For this one time I am commanded to bathe you, and we may not question the will of masters.

Lean a bit more toward me.”

I leaned toward her, and had my face, neck and ears washed; with that done she wet the cloth again and smiled her lovely smile.

“You are among those who are incredibly fortunate, sister and child of chin,” she murmured, moving the cloth over me. “Not many are chosen for our lot, for we are those who are allowed the blessings of ecstasy. Merely by obeying without question and thinking of no other thing than giving pleasure, we are given ecstasy beyond the knowledge of any other woman. Our masters will punish failure, yet even with punishment do they bring us to our ultimate goal. You must strive ever harder to he perfect in your obedience, for in such a way will reward be constantly yours. And when you are at last allowed the ultimate ecstasy, you will know that you must continue striving so that it will he yours forever.

“Earlier we spoke of pretending to childishness, and you were unable to understand the need for this. The answer lies in pleasing our masters, of course, for this is the sole road to our ultimate goal.

Our masters are pleased to be given service by the very young and innocent, therefore do we perform the acts which please them. When you are permitted to beg for a thing, do so as though you were a small girl asking a thing of her father. You are even permitted to pout and wheedle to some extent. Do so, and your rewards will be richer beyond even your own expectations, and will quickly lead to your ultimate reward.

“The ultimate reward! Ah, how I wish you might truly know of it before it is given you! Although you have experienced the presence of a man within you, the ultimate reward is so far beyond that small, abortive experience that there is no comparison. You will be used as a slave, will know yourself a slave, and will know that no free woman will experience the ecstasy that you do. You must be fully a slave before this is given you, therefore must you strive with all your might to achieve perfect obedience and the giving of pleasure. I am filled with great joy that you have already come so far along the road, and will surely advance even more rapidly now. Lie on your belly now so that I may wash the back of you.”

I flattened out face down as she asked, glad that I had absolute control over my expression. The propaganda she’d fed me made me want to look around for a shovel or hip boots, but the. part about pretending to be a child made me want to throw up. Those sadists calling themselves masters liked the idea of messing around with little girls, but they also wanted women’s bodies. Catch a girl young enough, train her to continue acting like a child, and when her body matures make sure that her mind doesn’t. Perpetual little girls to tickle the perverted pleasure of so called men, helped along in their training by female slaves ordered to act the part of mother figures.

That was what that bathing routine was all about, a young girl being told the facts of life by a helpful, sympathetic, approving mother who has already gone through the same herself and wants nothing less for her beloved daughter. More conditioning of a particularly vicious sort, the sort that took advantage of peoples’ basic natures. I despised those slavers for what they were doing, but all they would see was that I was going along with it. Maybe, if I got very lucky, one or two of them would try getting in my way when I was ready to leave that place.

The propaganda lecture went on as long as the washing did, and all of me was washed except my hair. My scalp was rubbed with a cloth and then allowed to dry, and while it was doing so some of those bottles and jars were used. The bottles held unscented body lotions, unscented so that the odors of desire coming from me would be clear to “our” masters and add to their pleasure. I was nothing if not ardently eager to get on with pleasing everyone in sight, but the contents of one of the jars put a strain on the authenticity of my eagerness. I was told it was a salve designed to ease the irritation in my private parts caused by the device and all the handling I’d had, and that part of it wasn’t a lie. The salve did ease me, but a little gentle rubbing by the woman after it was put on me showed that the salve was also a sensitizer, designed to make my flesh even more sensitive to caresses than it had been. I was made to bend over on my knees so that my bottom could be taken care of, and it was all I could do to follow instructions with the trust of innocence. Bellna wouldn’t have known what the salve was doing so I couldn’t know; I just had to bend over and take it. After that my hair was brushed out, and then I was told I could rest until the masters came for me.

I lay down on the spot indicated and closed my eyes, but the woman knew damned well I wouldn’t rest. I’d been faintly aroused again, but all I could do about it was wait for the man who could choose to make it go away-if he was pleased enough to do so.

A good twenty or twenty-five minutes passed before anyone showed up, during which time the salve took my faint arousal and slowly increased it to squirming level. Every minute that passed made Bellna more and more anxious, a clear indication of what my own actions had to be. I was being forced to think of nothing but the arrival of the masters, and also what I could do to please them enough to ease me.

Everything done in that place was an aspect of conditioning, a conditioning that would probably have broken down even my defenses if it had been kept up long enough. Some people, like me, are trained to take high levels of pain, but no one, trained or not, can avoid being affected by constant positive and negative reinforcement of the pleasure reflex. The human mind is made to resist pain whenever it can, but pleasure? Hell, that’s what we’re built to try for!

When my golden-shirt finally showed up, the woman went to her knees to him and I wasn’t far behind her. I made a real production out of it, sitting up fast in relief, ready to blurt out my need, suddenly seeing what my “mother” was doing, then quickly doing the same. My eagerness to please had been increased as much as they’d wanted it to be, and the indulgent smile on my golden-shirt’s face was covering a good deal of satisfaction.

“How refreshed and lovely you look, little slave,” he said, stopping a few steps into the room. “Rise to your feet so that I might see all of you.”

The blush covering me as I stood up made him chuckle, and that naturally increased Bellna’s blush output. Having her there was becoming handier and handier; I can blush on demand, but not from head to foot. I turned slowly at his gesture, making an inexperienced stab at moving as gracefully as the woman had, and when I turned to face him again there was real amusement in his expression.

“Your eagerness pleases me, slave,” he said, and so help me my body reacted to that verbal stroking in a way that was horrifying. “Go and fetch your device now, and I will reinsert it.”

Morale dropped down to the floor at that, but I felt no urge to argue him out of his decision. Instead I hurried over to where the woman had put the device and quickly brought it to him, desperate to do everything he asked and please him again. If he wasn’t pleased I wouldn’t be rewarded, so I had to do all I could to please him. The reactions and straight line logic were all Bellna’s, who would have been three-quarters of the way into full slavery if she’d really been there. I handed over the device with a small and fear-filled pout, and my golden-shirt chuckled even more.

“You dislike this device and yet you obey,” he said with such obvious approval that Bellna nearly purred. “Your obedience will be remembered. Down to your knees now and brow to the floor.”

I knelt and bent over as ordered, trembling with anticipation at the thought of being touched by him. The situation was as frightening as it was infuriating, but I couldn’t do anything about either emotion except thrust them away. I was being conditioned more than I wanted to be, and that was the danger; my only edge was that I was aware of it and therefore in a position to negate the worst parts of the condition. Or I’d damned well better be able to negate most of it. I intended going for the break as soon as it got dark; I’d find out then how good a job I was doing.

The golden-shirt took his time putting the device back in, playing around until I’d moaned and squirmed enough to suit him. The Bellna part of my mind found the torture highly arousing; it had come to her that the man was getting pleasure from what he was doing, and she very much wanted to give him pleasure. She was sure he would decide to reward her after that, but once the device had been inched in as deep as it could go and had been tied in back, I was ordered to my feet again.

“Your lessons will continue immediately,” golden-shirt said as he tied the leather in front, somewhat tighter than it had originally been. “I feel certain that you wish to achieve the highest level of obedience and skill as soon as you possibly may.”

“Oh, yes!” I breathed, looking into his face with all the’ ardor I could muster. “I feel a-need to obey that I have never before felt.”

“Excellent,” he nodded, showing only a small smile of satisfaction.

“You will be given ample opportunity for obedience. Your slave-shift may be left here, for you will not require the use of it for a time.

Precede me out of the room.”

I gave my poncho one agonizing glance, then turned immediately toward the room’s exit. Bellna was mortified at the thought of walking around naked, but she didn’t want to disobey. After all, there were very few people in the tent complex, so it shouldn’t be too embarrassing.

No one was in the small room-corridor or in the between-rooms corridor, but when I followed directions into the room directly across the way, Bellna’s shock stopped me short with a gasp two steps through the doorway. There were more than a dozen green-clad slave females, all in their twenties, three dark-goldshirted men with swords and whips, and a naked, staked-down male slave. The slave females giggled when they saw me even as they got to their knees to the golden-shirt behind me, and all Bellna wanted to do was run and hide. She was absolutely crushed at being the only naked female in the room, but when I took one involuntary step backward, I bumped into my golden-shirt.

“You must move forward, not backward, little slave,” he said, putting his hand to me. I gasped again and found myself doing as I’d been told to do, but I couldn’t escape his hand guiding me across the floor. The female slaves were giggling almost nonstop, and Bellna would have been happy to curl up and die.

“You will use this slave to show me the extent of what you have learned,” golden-shirt told me when we’d reached the staked-down male slave. “Should your obedience and learning prove sufficient, you may be rewarded.”

“I am to do this before them?” I whispered back, indicating the female slaves with a desperate glance. “And what of those others who were with me? Are we not to await their arrival?”

“You will no longer be training with those others,” he said, again highly amused. “Their progress will be slower, and need not hold you back in yours. Also is your training to be somewhat different from theirs. Are you prepared to begin?”

I opened my mouth to answer him, but nothing came out. I was being ordered to arouse the male slave, a strange male slave, in front of an audience that was horribly and embarrassingly intimidating for the Bellna presence. She was an awkward little girl being commanded to perform naked in front of other females older than she, commanded to an act she had never even conceived of before that morning. The agony of wanting to obey but fearing failure and ridicule was terrible for her, but thanks to our link-up it was almost as bad for me. The tears formed in my eyes as I began trembling, but my golden-shirt didn’t let me go all the way to hysteria.

“It seems you will require a small amount of encouragement before you begin,” he drawled, then pointed to the floor and snapped, “Kneel!”

His tone stopped Bellna short in her misery and sent her cringing back, giving me enough breathing room to keel before I was accused of disobedience. I had enough time to notice that the floor mat in that room was a good deal softer than the one in the first room, and then golden-shirt had me by the hair. The encouragement he gave was of the expected sort, the key word “serve” being used at the same time to reinforce it, and it wasn’t long before I was writhing and begging to obey the orders I’d been given. He let me beg for some time before he magnanimously allowed it, and then he stayed close and started up the encouragement again any time he thought I needed it. It was able to stay just unrattled enough to remember what I was and wasn’t supposed to know, but it was a close thing.