On the Auction Block (6 page)

She kneeled on the pads and stretched across
the bench, extending her arms on either side toward the cuffs that
were attached to the frame. “You’re going to have to fasten me. I
can’t work the buckles by myself.”

Dodge rose from the bed and padded over to
her. She was naked; he wearing only pants.

He examined the whips and paddles. “These
look like they could do some serious damage.”

She turned her head to look at them. “I am an
expensive piece of property. You own me and you can damage me as
much as you want, but you will lower my value if you disfigure me.
I’d recommend the wooden paddle on my ass. I think you could hit me
pretty hard without breaking my skin. It would be enough to cause
severe pain, and complete humiliation. You can make me suffer more
than enough to drive home your point.”

“I guess I should do it, then.” He bent to
secure her right wrist, then walked around and secured her left.
After buckling cuffs around her ankles, he buckled another strap
across the small of her back.

She could barely move. She sucked great
breaths and waited.

It took forever for Dodge to get the paddle
from the wall, examine it, swing it through the air a few times to
get a feel for the heft and balance, and then position himself at
her rear.

She couldn’t stop trembling in fear. This was
going to hurt. She already regretted her casual bravado.

He didn’t pull the first stroke. A sharp
crack echoed through the pleasure room.

Her buttocks flared in pain and she yelped in
shock.

He paused to examine the effect of the stroke
on her flesh.

Her yelp was replaced by kittenish
whimpering. Then her whimper was punctuated by a second crack of
the paddle.

The second stroke fell on the bruised and
tender flesh left by the first.

Her howl was sincere.

She jerked her wrists and ankles but the
cuffs were unyielding.

The third stroke in the same place left her
butt quivering uncontrollably. She was barely aware of her screams
as she desperately tried to escape.

He did not stop until he had delivered ten
strokes exactly. He must have been counting them.

Flame’s ass felt like it was on fire. Her
hair was soaked with tears where it had stuck to her face when she
had flailed her head about.

She slumped on the bench and sobbed
uncontrollably.

“That was surprisingly satisfying,” Dodge
said as he hung the paddle back on the wall. “We’re going to have
to do that again.”

“Any time you want,” Flame replied through
her sniffles. “Any time you want.”

“What I want is to fuck that hot red
ass.”

Paddling Flame had resurrected his
manhood.

The whipping bench included a mechanism that
Flame had not noticed. Dodge turned a crank that was concealed
underneath and the pads that secured her lower legs separated and
swung apart and up, pulling her thighs wide open.

Dodge stepped between her legs, dropped his
trousers, and thrust himself deep into her.

It was the second time that he had taken her.
Both times from the rear when she was restrained. She saw a pattern
emerging.

To her surprise, it was also the second time
she climaxed in harmony with him. In one evening she had
experienced more orgasms than in the past three years of marriage
to James.

Enslaving herself to a stranger had been a
mistake, but it did have its compensations.

He locked her in her cell before going to the
house to spend the evening with his family.

It was dark in the windowless room. There was
a light fixture on the ceiling, but the switch was outside the
door. The owner, not the slave decided if she were allowed to
see.

She spent the night sleeping and waking, on
and off. But she had nowhere to go and nothing to do but stay on
her cot until she dozed again.

* * *

When Flame opened her eyes, she found a
stranger standing in the doorway to her cell.

“Who are you?”

“Barry. Kennel service. I’ll be here at seven
every morning. There’s soap and shampoo in your wardrobe. Get
showered now.”

Barry openly appraised her naked body when
she climbed out of bed. She supposed that it didn’t matter. She was
property. She no longer decided who could see her naked, her owner
did.

She had not been able to look in the wardrobe
before because it was dark in the cell. Now she opened it and found
a few toiletries. There was nothing else inside. No clothes. Not
even a robe or slippers.

She retrieved the soap, shampoo, toothbrush,
and toothpaste.

Apparently Barry found her pleasant to the
eye because he kept staring at her until she had left the room.

Lady Irene’s husband had never appreciated
her naked body as much as every casual stranger who saw Flame
now.

When she returned, sopping wet and dripping
on the floor, he was still in her cell, waiting for her. There was
a towel lying on her bed.

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay.” Her ass was sore. It felt like it was
bruised to the bone. Walking hurt.

“No sniffles? Sneezing? Coughing?”

“No.”

“We don’t want any kennel cough. Let me know
immediately if there’s any change in your health.”

She nodded. “Do you provide food?” She was
hungry. Her last meal was lunch the previous day. Lady Irene ate
lightly but regularly. She was not accustomed to missing meals.

“Not unless instructed. We’ve received no
instruction about nutrition yet.”

“Is there any chance that I could get a book
to read?” The prospect of spending the day in her windowless,
featureless cell was bleak. The light was on now. She hoped that
Barry would leave it on.

“That’s your owner’s prerogative, not
mine.”

A television would clearly be out of the
question.

There was a moment of silence, then he said,
“I heard a rumor that you volunteered for slavery. Is that
right?”

She nodded. “It was an impulse.” A
self-destructive impulse, akin to jumping off a bridge or stepping
in front of a train.

“You were a lady? In the peerage? Married to
a lord?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“Me, neither,” she said. “It was an
impulse.”

“I have to lock you in,” he said. “We have to
leave a slave as we find her.” Presumably that meant that he would
turn out her light, too. He stepped toward the door.

“Wait,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if you could help me with
something.”

“Maybe. What?”

She lowered her eyes and stared at the floor.
“I… I don’t have much experience. I want to please my owner.”

“That’s a good idea.” His voice was dry. He’d
seen the bruises on her ass and assumed that she’d already failed
to please him.

“I don’t know how to… How to please a man …
service him … with my mouth. I’ve never had to do that and I heard
that men like it.”

“You want to know how to give him a blow job?
Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“What’s to know? Don’t bite him. And don’t
blow. Kiss and lick and suck until he comes. Use your hands, too.
Jerk him off into your mouth. It’s way harder to get him to come if
you don’t jerk him off. And swallow. Don’t gag or spit it back out.
Just swallow his jizz and lick him clean afterward. That’s a nice
touch, cleaning him up.”

“That sounds easy enough.”

“I guess it is. Even stupid girls figure it
out.”

“Can I try it?”

“What do you mean?” He stared at her and
raised an eyebrow. “With me? Now?”

“Yes. Please.”

He looked around as though the owner might be
standing behind him. They were alone.

“Okay. Make it quick, then.”

She dropped to her knees in front of him and
unbuckled his pants. He was erect already. She didn’t know if he
were bigger than other men or not – she had never seen a cock this
close – but he looked enormous. She grabbed him tentatively and
licked his shiny purple head experimentally.

He tasted a little salty, but not too
bad.

She tried again.

“Tighter,” he said. “Hold me tighter and put
some spit into it. A blowjob should be sloppy. It’s all right if
saliva is running down your chin and dripping on your tits. It
shows enthusiasm. You’re letting a man know how great his dick is.
You can’t go wrong as long as you’re making him feel like a
stud.”

She threw herself into the task, licking him,
shoving him as far down her throat as she could take him, sucking
with gusto.

He began groaning and his words grew
effortful. “Good…god!… You… natural… wonderful… pump me… with fist…
fast… Goooood-God! … God! … God!”

She was the one on her knees but he was the
one praying to God.

She felt him begin to pulse with her hand
first, and then against her lips, and then he was spraying great,
thick gobs across her tongue. She thrust all civilized thoughts out
of her mind and began swallowing and swallowing.

His contractions continued sporadically for
longer than she expected. She always thought that a man spurted
into a woman and that was the end. Now she realized that a man’s
orgasm was a prolonged process.

Too late, she understood why James had wanted
to keep lying on top of her for a while after he was done. It was
because he wasn’t.

When Barry’s cock began to soften in her
mouth she remembered what he’d said and licked him clean.

When she released him, he sagged against the
bed.

“Thank you for the instruction,” she
said.

It took a moment for him to stop gasping.
Then he said, “You’re welcome.”

He rested for a couple of minutes.

She waited on her knees – the picture of
subservience – and thought about a different meaning for the words,
kennel service
.

“You never did that before?” he asked.

“Never. I just did what you told me.”

“Are all ladies such quick studies?”

“I’m not a lady. Just a slave.”

He grinned. “Yeah, right. Well, don’t worry.
You’re going to do fine with old Dodge.”

Dodge wasn’t that old. Maybe in his early
forties, but he was more than a decade older than the
kennelman.

“I still have to lock you in,” he said. “And
I can’t give you any books or food.”

“That’s all right. I understand.”

“I don’t think that you’ll have much problem
getting treats from your owner, though.”

She felt a surge of pride. She’d done well.
“I’ll see what I can do.”

He left her light on. She didn’t know if that
was standard procedure or a treat in gratitude for the blowjob. She
liked the idea that she had earned a boon.

She brushed out her hair and applied makeup
using the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door.

The woman slaver had told her that slaves
should wear their makeup heavy, but Flame decided to maintain her
lady face until Dodge indicated that he wanted something
different.

He could have bought one of the more
experienced slaves, but he’d paid a lot to get a lady that he could
fuck. She felt obliged to give him his money’s worth.

* * *

“I could kill you, you know. I could handcuff
you and then get a knife from the kitchen – the big butcher knife –
and carve you into pieces. Nobody would stop me.”

The woman standing at the door of Flame’s
cell was petite. No slave; her grey-speckled, curly hair was pinned
on the top of her head, baring the nape of her neck for the world
to see that it was unmarked. The corners of her eyes were wrinkled
into crow’s feet. She was no older than Dodge but she had not aged
as well as he had. Women seldom aged as well as men.

“I could slice your tits off and spill your
bowels over the floor and wear your scalp for a wig and I wouldn’t
be arrested for it. Nobody would care.”

Her husband would care. He would lose a piece
of property that was worth a hundred-thousand plaqs. But the
authorities wouldn’t lift a finger. Mrs. Dodge was right about
that. Flame’s well-being was of no more concern to them than if
Mrs. Dodge took a sledge hammer to her own china cabinet.

She pulled half a loaf of bread, a chunk of
cheese, and a meaty hambone out of a sack and threw each of them at
Flame. The cheese bounced off her breast onto the floor and the
bread missed her completely and bounced off the wall onto the bed.
The hambone almost nailed her in the head but Flame managed to get
a hand up and deflected it onto the floor with the cheese.

“Maybe I poisoned your dinner. Think about
that when you’re eating it.”

The woman slammed the door when she left.

Flame didn’t hear the lock click closed. Most
likely Mrs. Dodge was hoping that she would avail herself of the
opportunity to escape and flee back to Calam Shire.

She would not. Everyone knew that runaway
slaves never got far and Flame had no desire to be nailed akimbo to
the jailhouse wall. Those poor wretches took days to die.

She wasn’t that self-destructive.

As she picked the bits of dirt out of the
cheese and ham, she thought about Mrs. Dodge.

She didn’t blame Mrs. Dodge for hating her.
Every lady hated her husband’s slaves. When she had been Irene, she
had hated James’ slaves with as much passion as Mrs. Dodge hated
her. But a lady didn’t express her hate. Not like Mrs. Dodge did.
Doing so would lower the lady to the slave’s level while
simultaneously giving the slave a degree of humanity that she
didn’t warrant.

If you hate your husband’s car, you don’t
abuse it, you ask your husband to buy a new one.

It was a trial for a lady because most
husbands required that their slaves perform routine chores around
the house. It was a necessary part of the fiction that the slaves
were purchased for the house rather than to satisfy the husband’s
lust.