The Slave (19 page)

But it was so nice having a woman near!

* * * *

Two days passed in a blur of pain and
humiliation and constant erotic agony. Chris ran her ragged,
setting her alarm for pre-dawn hours so that she could exercise
before he woke up, and keeping her up late at night, asking her
questions about her previous experiences and her feelings. When
there really weren’t chores that had to be done, he was the master
of make-work, and Robin knew that when the owners of this place got
back, they would be coming home to an apartment that had literally
been scrubbed and polished from floor to ceiling and back again.
Every shoe or boot in the closet, every toy on their racks, every
piece of artwork, every dish, glass and pot, every inch of wood
floor and furniture and every piece of metal in the house would
have been personally and perfectly cleaned, polished and buffed to
within an inch of its life.

Chris would make sure of that, even if it
did make Robin’s body into a striped work of art. It didn’t take
long for the bruises to start showing through the constant pink and
red of the beaten flesh, and Robin could never remember being so
carefully and perfectly marked.

Nor could she remember the near constant
pain of a body under such treatment. Her movements from waking to
sleeping were all accompanied by sharp stabs and thrumming
aches―all reminders of her mistakes, both recent and
aged.

On Monday, a thick envelope was delivered,
which Chris opened and examined while Robin was kept busy. In the
afternoon, he summoned her and placed the folder of documents
before her, neatly spread out.

“
These are most of the results from
the examination you underwent on Saturday, plus the medical records
you requested for me. You need to read them and check for accuracy,
and then sign a release form allowing the Marketplace to keep them
as part of your records.”

Robin grinned at the pile of papers before
her. “You folks certainly are thorough, sir.”

“
We’ve learned to be. If there is
anything in there that you want removed, let me know. You are
released from protocol to discuss the contents. Will two hours be
enough to examine everything?”

It was. Robin went through her history from
childhood up through the previous Saturday with slow amazement.
Everything was there, from her early childhood diseases to shin
splints to the first time she had a yeast infection. Plus
breakdowns of all sorts of tests run on her blood and urine, and
notes concerning the availability of the test results from a few
that would take a bit longer. There was a rather long and involved
psychological report which, when she got through all the big words,
came down to this:

“
Subject has a series of finely
developed paraphilias for behavior which suits her placement within
the Marketplace.”

“
It means that selling you should be a
great turn-on,” Chris commented.

“
No kidding,” Robin replied. “I could
have told them that years ago. In plain language, without all these
tests. Chris. . . may I ask you a question?”

“
You may always ask.”

“
What was so special about
Greta?”

He raised one eyebrow, and looked mildly
pleased. Robin had already gotten so dependent on his approval that
she blushed even at that faint sign of it.

“
Do you mean besides being a highly
skilled physician whose value is extremely well rated?” he asked,
leaning back.

“
You know what I mean,” Robin answered
softly. “There’s something different about her. I would have known
it if I passed her on the street. Is it that she’s so
happy?”

“
I suppose that’s part of it. Happy
slaves do tend to give off an aura of contentment which usually
serves only to confuse people. Our culture is not used to dealing
with any individual who is so comfortable with their station in
life. Leon, for example, is constantly asked what he has going for
him which makes him so happy; outside of the Marketplace, there is
no answer that will suffice, and he is often forced to shrug and
offer some lame excuse. But Greta is, as you noticed, somewhat
different.”

He paused, looking thoughtful for a moment.
His eyes seemed to focus on some spot out the front window,
hovering so many feet from the ground. Robin waited patiently.

“
Greta spent six months training with
Anderson,” he finally said, as though that would explain
everything. “And what you felt is the mark of such training. You,
however, lack the opportunity for the same, and therefore must do
your humble best to get the most out of what I can offer you. Which
today, after you sign and initial these papers where necessary,
will consist of a lot of fetching and carrying. You need to work on
rising in one fluid motion and stopping with grace.”

And when she wasn’t demonstrating her skills
at all kinds of domesticity, she was being tested for all the
movements, postures, and the nuances of service. During the day, at
any time, Chris would come up behind her and ask things like, “Two
guests at your owner’s house each request something of you. One
wants to see you clothed, and the other does not. Assuming that
your standing instructions are to obey any reasonable request of a
guest and that both of these requests fall into the category of
reasonable, what will you do?”

When he wasn’t giving her verbal problems,
he was running her through the ritual positions that all
Marketplace slaves had to know, and making sure that she was
perfect in them. When she commented that she felt like a show dog
being posed for the judges, he replied, “Yes! That’s exactly the
image you should think of. Sleek, still, disciplined. You want to
be a possession worthy of acquiring, worthy of training and
grooming and showing off. And at the same time, you want to be
available, open for every touch and caress.

“
Ready to be examined, poked and
prodded. Braced for any sort of pain, whether it’s erotic or not.
Owners may do as they like to you, and need not seek your consent,
approval, pleasure, or even your reaction. And they will not owe
you explanations or words of encouragement or comfort or praise.
You will just be a person who belongs to them, and nothing
more.”

“
Oh God,” Robin had murmured,
stretching her muscles and bending into the posture demanded. She
was dizzy again, flush with the excitement that Chris brought up in
her whenever he spoke of such things. And when he beat her shortly
after, braced against his knee, she had to verbally beg him to
choose some other method, because she was ready to come the next
moment he touched her.

Naturally, he listened, and chose to punish
her with some more stripes, leaving her standing, cuffed and
blindfolded, for at least two hours. Tears streaked her pretty face
and filled the blindfold.

Leon came and went, bringing food for them
both and bits of advice for her. She soon came to look forward to
her appearances, eager to taste his culinary delights and more than
eager for his encouragement and gentle corrections. He was the real
thing: he was a slave, purchased and owned and completely happy.
Whispers in the kitchen informed Robin of the life he led, his
daily chores, and his master’s passions. She envied him and sighed
appropriately when he spoke of the love he had for his owner and
for his life. She also blushed when Leon enthusiastically described
his frequent sexual uses, and the state of his body when his master
was in a particular mood.

It was a very sore issue with
her. Because except for the touches she received as part of her
training, Chris never used her.
Or, to be precise,
she would remind
herself,
Chris has never fucked me.
Never asked for as much as a blow job,
despite the explicit sexuality of her position. Being gay was one
thing, she supposed.
But if he’s interested enough to train me, why
wouldn’t he at least try me out?
He had enthusiastic sex with Rachel, after
all, so he apparently wasn’t all gay, despite the evidence she had
gathered during their brief introduction in the leather bar. So if
he could get off on screwing women, why was he keeping such a
distance from her?

The question shamed and infuriated her, and
she tried her best not to think about it.

But in the one day she had been given to go
back to attending to her business, she could barely concentrate on
what she had to do. Even while she visited her bank and locked up
her small valuables, when she called the storage facility and made
her arrangements for pick-up and storage and paid the fees for
three years, and when she packed up the list of clothing that Chris
had given her, all she could think of was eight o’clock that
evening. When she was due back on the Upper West Side. When she
could get out of these clothes and get back into what was real. Her
Rolodex remained by the phone, untouched. Her answering machine had
several messages on it, one a clear job offer from a major auction
house. She erased them all with a casual tap and left the apartment
without looking back. Tonight, it was time to tell Chris about
Troy.

Robin’s Story: Troy’s Real Thing

Robin was on the floor, paddle in hand, when
she realized that the gentleman in the tan blazer was staring at
her. She didn’t allow him to distract her from her duty; she was
already far too much a professional to take such frank appraisal as
unnerving. There would be time enough when her business was
complete to find out what his problem was. She focused on what was
in front of her, keeping her ears and eyes sharp, and raising the
paddle with a swift confidence that intimidated lesser creatures
around her.

Finally, interest wavered, and one man’s
hesitation got tangled in the rush to complete the transaction, and
Robin heard the auctioneer call out her number, pausing only to
take a breath before starting to describe the next item in the
catalog.

All in a day’s work,
she thought,
jotting down her final bid with satisfaction. That last fake Goya
would seal up the exhibition contract she had signed last year, and
all brought in under budget. It was hardly standard to purposefully
seek out forgeries for exhibitions, but it had been a fun contract
to fill. She got to spend a lot of time in restoration rooms,
watching artists use solvents and neutralizers and all sorts of
sophisticated methods to expose what some owners had truly thought
were original Goya works. It was a pity, for some of them. But it
had been a bonanza for her. A staff of three people had worked for
almost a year, tracking them down and talking, begging,
threatening, and once bribing the various owners to allow the
testing. Robin had been personally to over twenty places which had
offered genuine articles for sale just on the supposition that they
might have sifted through known fakes in order to verify their true
finds.

It was exhilarating. Fascinating. And just
the thing to show her employers how valuable she really was.
Putting this exhibition together (or, she reflected, just getting
the pieces in one place) was quite an accomplishment. But she
hadn’t wasted her time out of the country; whenever her Goya
searches came up empty, she was always purchasing assorted other
pieces and lots and having them shipped to the prestigious New York
auction house for their eventual arrival in the next season’s
catalogs.

The irony of the entire search was that the
final two pieces she needed to fill the contract came on the block
at the auction house of her chief rival. Well, she tried to get
them to deal exclusively with her, but they chose to put the fakes
up on the block. Now, she had them both, for just slightly less
than the original offer she made them. In fact, this was such a
simple transaction that she could have sent one of her assistants
to finish it up, or simply called her bids in from the comfort of
her office, but it gave her a sense of satisfaction to come out and
handle this last little detail in person.

“
You’re good, kid, you’re good,”
Taylor murmured as he handed over the paperwork. She knew him from
way back; working for different employers didn’t stop art people
from socializing in the same circles. And she liked him. He was
always friendly and never took on the snobby air that most of their
fellow workers put on to protect their egos and keep the rivalry
sharp.

“
Well, this seals it for me, Taylor,”
she said, signing her name and clipping the shipping instructions
onto the sheets. “I’ll see you next month? At Ray’s
party?”

“
Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Be
good!”

Yeah, right
, Robin thought, a sudden cool
wave of sadness passing through her. She turned her paddle in and
went to claim her coat with a sigh of frustration. It had been a
long time since someone had told her to be good and really meant
it.

Breaking up with Maria had taken a horribly
long time. Robin had struggled with her discontent for months,
wavering back and forth through all sorts of convoluted arguments
with herself.

She had loved Maria, and there was no doubt
about that. But as their relationship slipped further and further
away from mistress and slave and deeper into the state of lovers,
Robin never knew what to feel. It was secure to be so loved, to
have a stable partner who was interested in pleasing her and being
pleased, who was supportive and nurturing and had just the right
amount of personal interests and projects to keep her away from the
borders of clinging over-protectiveness.