The Slave (33 page)

I don’t believe
this
, Robin
giggled to herself.
Here I am, about to become human chattel, enter the
Marketplace and leave the real world behind, and I’m being
entertained by a nelly hairdresser in the Village. There has to be
some meaning to this. And one day, I’m going to have to find out
how Chris knows these people.

When Glen finished, he dusted her shoulders
off and led her to a mirror. She glanced into it with some
trepidation, but when she saw what she looked like, she almost
cried with relief. He was right. Glen had taken some of the weight
of her last hairstyle away, and created almost a waterfall effect
of hair that rose around her crown and flowed down her neck to lie
in soft waves over her shoulders. The short sides seemed to make
her face seem less full, and the wisps of hair that he left long
did indeed act as an attractive frame. And what was more, one of
his mysterious bottles had apparently added to or enhanced her
natural highlights, which were little shots of tawniness among the
darker tresses.

“
I did everything I could but make you
blonde,” Glen said with satisfaction.

“
It’s beautiful.”

“
Of course it is! Now go back
upstairs, it’s time for more torture.”

More torture turned out to be another
energetic massage, which made her moan and grunt until Teralia
began to ease off. Then, soft soothing touches turned down the heat
on her skin and got her purring again.

When Chris came to pick her up, she felt
brand new. Even the faint twinges of pain from her beatings during
the week seemed to feel good. And she was flexible, felt light on
her feet, and any trace of stiffness had been banished. She almost
blushed with shame for her outburst yesterday, but Chris didn’t
bring it up. He just nodded with satisfaction, and shook Teralia’s
hand, and without another word, took Robin back to the
apartment.

* * * *

In the afternoon, she had a pasta lunch,
eating with Leon in the kitchen. He seemed as proud of her as she
felt, and complimented her on the new hair. It was hard sometimes,
thinking of the Leon who had been so supportive and friendly and
the Leon who had roughly fucked her from behind, smacking her ass
cheeks and thighs and dragging her head back with the horse bit he
had shoved into her mouth.

But, before he left to go back home, she
hugged him warmly and accepted his best wishes with a smile.

Chris packed her belongings and her file
copy into a special little case, even while she packed his things
for him. She heard him on the phone, talking to Rachel, arranging
to be picked up that evening at the house where the auction was
taking place. They were leaving the borrowed apartment spotlessly
clean, and Chris had two champagne bottles chilling in the
refrigerator along with some nice delicacies he picked up while
Robin was being “done.” Two bottles of twenty-five year old Scotch
had already been tucked away in the liquor cabinet.

How odd that this strange apartment had
become more familiar and harder to leave than her own. She felt
mild regret that she had not met the owners.

“
What are they like?” she asked Chris
as she watched him seal up a note to them.

“
They are good people,” he replied,
tucking the note in between the bottles of champagne. “Friends of
my employers.”

“
Yours too,” Robin added. “It’s nice
of them to loan you this place for so long.”

“
Yes. But they’ll reap benefits.
They’re in the market for a new slave, and they know that I will be
available for training or touch-up work if needed.” He turned to
her and his eyes looked a little less piercing than usual. “You’re
terribly nervous, to ask such a social question and forget all of
your training. Or are you doing this knowing that I won’t do
anything so drastic as to muss your hair?”

“
No, sir!” Robin protested. “But
you’re right, I’m extremely nervous. I feel like I want to throw up
or faint, or run away.”

“
Don’t do any of those. Breathe, like
you were taught. Take a nap if you like.” But he smiled at that
thought, acknowledging the impossibility. He looked at her
thoughtfully as she nodded and tried to take a long deep
breath.

“
Poor slave. Comfort yourself with the
thought that in less than ten hours, it will be all over, and
you’ll have a completely new set of fears and anxieties to deal
with.”

Robin stared at him. “Thank you, sir. I feel
much better now.”

“
Oh, good. Now go finish packing and
put all of my things in the front hallway.”

* * * *

The afternoon seemed to drag, and Robin
found herself looking at a clock every ten minutes. Finally, Chris
called her to sit beside him while he read over her file, examining
it for the slightest errors. She sat on the floor and leaned her
head against his leg and tried to concentrate. All of her remaining
questions and insecurities struggled within her, and knowing that
this would be the last chance to get them out only made it harder
to mentally address them.

“
It’s time to get ready,” Chris
announced suddenly. She looked up in panic; had that much time
passed? Yes, it had, thank God. She darted off to the master
bedroom, where she had laid out a very nicely tailored dark suit.
Chris went off to shower and shave, and came back into the bedroom
already in his T-shirt and trousers.

Robin had never even seen his bare
chest.

She helped him dress in silent valet
fashion, but he put his tie on. Her traveling clothes were the same
ones she wore to the party last weekend, and he watched her dress,
smoking a cigarette with what seemed like great fascination. In his
dark suit, with the steel-rimmed glasses and his short, almost
stocky body, he now looked less like a terrorist and more like a
gangster.

“
Tell me,” he said suddenly, and Robin
flushed even as she smoothed the little black dress over her
body.

“
How do you know?” she asked, not
looking at him.

“
It’s part of my job. Get it out of
your mind, or you’ll think about it all night.” Another slow drag,
followed by a thin stream of blown white smoke.

She faced him and knotted her
fingers together behind her back. “Sir. I’m sorry sir, but you’re
right, I can’t stop thinking about it. Please, was there some
reason why you never...” Words suddenly failed her.
Made love to me?
Used me?

“
Fucked you?” he offered. He smiled as
her blush deepened. “It’s simple, girl. If I had, you would have
misunderstood our relationship. I am your trainer, not your lover
or master. You haven’t had enough experience to understand the
nature of the distinctions, so I made it easier for you by denying
you the one thing that you really do expect of your lovers or your
future owner.”

“
I’m sorry,” she repeated, looking
down. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“
No, but you’re excused. This one last
time. Just remember; very few people in the Marketplace will behave
as your logic or your fantasies expect them to. We are truly a
breed apart. We are neither the royalty of fantasy nor the
pragmatic poseurs of your comfortable old S and M scene.” He used a
tone strikingly like Ken’s when he mentioned her origins. “It has
become a cliché to advise someone to expect the unexpected. But you
will learn in time. Now gather what is left and prepare to leave,
the car will be here presently.”

In the car, he lit up another cigarette, and
smoked it with the same thoughtfulness he used in the bedroom.
Then, with a final deliberate gesture, he ground the butt out in
the ashtray and crumpled up the empty pack.

“
That’s it for that,” he
sighed.

“
Giving it up?”

“
Hmm. Yes. My employers are very strict―”
he paused again, and that wry smile tugged at the corner of his
mouth, “about their non-smoking policy.”

“
But why did you take it up?” Robin
couldn’t help but grin. It seemed ludicrous. “You work there most
of the year, don’t you?”

He nodded. “I do. But I like to smoke. So
when I take a vacation apart from the house, I do.” He turned
toward the window, and watched as the limo pulled up to a toll
booth.

Robin folded her hands in her lap and tried
to keep calm. But she kept sneaking glances at her trainer with
puzzled looks. No, there was still plenty about him that was a
mystery. Somehow, that seemed a little comforting.

Robin knelt on the sturdy, padded surface of
the altar-like stand that bore the same number that now hung around
her throat instead of the elegant silver lock. Chris had taken the
old chain and lock away just before leaving her, accepting her
desperate kisses on the palm of his hand before he soothed her back
down into position.

“
Do not look at the other slaves,” he
had cautioned her. “Do not turn your head, raise your eyes without
command, or show that you are eavesdropping. Under no circumstances
should you even react to the sound or sight of someone reading your
file.” He had posed her, firmly and with a demanding expertise, and
looked her in the eye one last time before he left her to kneel in
silence. “If you embarrass me,” he whispered, trailing one finger
down between her breasts, “I’ll never forgive you. Do you
understand?”

“
Yes, sir,” she had whispered back.
Trembling seemed about to overtake her entire body, but his careful
“shushes” and calm stroking worked their perversely appropriate
magic on her.

When they had arrived at the house and she
stripped, they had been surrounded by dozens of people, some
slaves, some free, running around in last minute preparations.
Muscular men, stripped to stylized jock straps, wrestled podiums
into position and set up tables and chairs in the bidding room.
Chris had some paperwork to take care of, and she was given a
cursory look-over by the man that Chris identified as the regional
director before she was allowed to enter the viewing room.

There, she saw the special
stands for the slaves to be displayed on, and froze. The reality
hit her like a freight train.
How could I have ever believed I was ready for
this?
She
asked herself this question over and over again as Chris registered
her for a number and was told where her spot was. And when he
snapped his fingers, she found herself moving forward out of some
automatic response.

There, he made the final preparations. After
affixing a pair of nipple clamps to her, he examined her for the
last time, smelling her body and breath, touching her skin, and
smoothing it with lotion where it was dry. He gloved himself and
had her bend over so that he could lubricate her asshole, putting a
cool salve into her so that she could be easily examined there. He
had smiled briefly when he discovered that she needed no such aid
for her cunt, which had already begun to open in its own
transformation. In fact, by the time he finished with her asshole,
she was thoroughly wet in both of her nether regions. Then, after
he discarded the gloves, he fixed her hair, put her on the stand
and posed her in the proper position. The last thing her did as he
packed the gear away was remove the clamps, leaving her nipples
erect and tingling.

She had not been the first slave positioned
for the sale. On another stand, to her left and ahead of her, was a
young man, dark-skinned and wiry. His head was shaven, and gleamed
in the bright light of the room, and he was pierced with silver
rings in his nipples and through the head of his cock. He knelt
tall, with a straight back and tautly held legs and arms, a study
in tension. He reminded her of a track runner, poised for the
starting gun. His trainer, or perhaps owner, rubbed his skin down
with a soft cloth, as though he were polishing a statue.

Robin had her back to the wall, and within
her vision could see two stands without turning her head. On her
right, just beyond her field of vision, making it necessary for her
to turn to see it, was a podium that held her portfolio. People
could read it without her knowledge, if she remained in the proper
position.

Hanging from the side of the podium was a
thick leather paddle.

The room filled quickly. On one combined
stand, a pair of twins posed, pale-skinned redheads with dancing
bright eyes and playful, wide mouths. To Robin’s right, another man
was posed, this one in his forties, his hair cut in a standard
business style and his body a network of decorative body
modifications. Tattoos wound up his back and around his legs, and
the clean lines of old cuts in his skin showed as pale scars and
raised white skin, marking off patterns of careful, painful
artwork. She could see some of the pictures: a woman’s leg, wearing
thigh-high boots, a chained tiger. Like the man on her left, he was
also pierced, but more extravagantly, with two rings in each nipple
and several barbells under his cock, with rings placed around his
heavy ballsac. His belly button had two rings, one on each
side.

But dress him in a suit, and he would look
like any other businessman on the street. Robin wondered if he was
something dull, like a tax accountant. Or maybe something like a
banker, or an estate lawyer. And he would do his work and come home
to his master or mistress, strip off his power tie, and have all
those wonderful places on his body that were made to be tormented
and played with, admired and altered yet again.