The Shame Gambit

by Emily Tilton

  “Means,” said Jules Herrier, turning around from where he stood with Sebastian Fredricks at the green cubby, “that my enemies at Selecta, as Kevin has been good enough to inform me, like to pretend they’re Roman officers. It’s very quaint, no?”

  Henry felt his eyes widen. Had Gordon known that this Kevin Logan would be here at Herrier’s chateau? Who was he?

  “Well,” Henry tried, “should we play it, then? I don’t know about Herrier Industries, but my own firm—”

  Fredricks turned his own face over his shoulder to look over at Henry, from where he sat in front of the green cubby. He finished tying the string on his own pants, and now he stood up and completed his turn, unashamedly but casually displaying his sizable endowment.

  “Oh, you should,” the Englishman said. “Especially given Logan here’s intentions in bringing the game to France. But, Jules, where is our Red player?”

  Henry had always felt comfortable in locker rooms, not so much because of the soundness of his tall, muscular body and his own considerable cock as because he had always found in the unique masculine camaraderie of sportsmen an enjoyable sort of low-stakes rivalry. Henry didn’t always think himself the top dog, necessarily—especially in company like that here in Herrier’s unique dressing room for the game of Discipline. To know, however, that in any locker room he belonged in the running for the honor, though, made it pleasant to undress in the presence of other semi-clothed and naked men, and to don whatever outfit might suit the coming more serious contest for bragging rights.

  He pulled on his own player’s pants, now, smiling at the novel sensation of being covered around his penis and scrotum but not over them. As he tied the drawstring of the black twill garment at his waist, Herrier answered Fredricks’ question.

  “Mr. Mercator should—”

  The door of the dressing room opened, and a thirtysomething Frenchman—the very look in his eyes would have told Henry the man’s nationality, if the trim of the beard on his handsome, angry face hadn’t done it—entered, followed by one of Herrier’s security staff, propelling him by the elbow. The newcomer had obviously undergone more duress, and probably at the hands of more men, than simply being hauled by the elbow: his disheveled clothes, together with his muscular frame, made Henry think it must have taken several more security heavies to bring him along to this point.

  Mr. Mercator, as Henry presumed the man must be named, gave the broad-shouldered bodyguard a contemptuous look, and then spoke in rapid French to Herrier. At the same time, he seemed to notice the unusual character of the outfits being donned by Henry, Kevin, and Fredricks, and his forehead wrinkled even as he made his protest to the tycoon of whom it seemed he was an unwilling guest.

  “Monsieur,” said Herrier. “I believe your English to be excellent. May I trouble you to use it here? Your fellow players all have it as their native tongue.”

  Watching Mercator’s eyes, Henry thought he could see the barest suggestion of hesitation, as if for the fraction of an instant the man had felt the foundations of his knowledge shift. He replied in still more rapid, angrier French. Henry thought he caught comprends pas—I don’t understand.

  “Jean Mercator,” Herrier said, accenting the name as if it were English rather than French, “you are the former boyfriend of my slut Barbara Edwards, are you not? You are a fellow at the School of Economics, and my slut ended the affair with you a few weeks ago. At the time, you spoke perfect English.”

  Mercator’s face turned sullen. “So what?” he asked, conveying through the inflection even of the two monosyllables that, yes, his English was indeed excellent.

  “So, though I am bound to resent your making your way through my security patrols with such a lack of courtesy, not to mention a failure to observe basic property rights, I must admire your persistence in coming here. I would like to invite you to play a special game, in which you will be reunited, briefly, with the lovely young woman whose cunt and rear end now belong to me.”

  Despite his comfort in locker rooms, Henry had little savor for ‘locker-room talk.’ He had in fact not heard much of it since leaving the locker rooms of his prep school more than twenty years ago. The few bits of it one did hear at the country club—scurrilous references to the physical charms of prominent public figures, mostly—he tended to find boring and beneath contempt.

  Jules Herrier’s matter-of-fact sexual mastery, on the other hand, lay in a different realm. Henry wouldn’t have used such words for Jenny, even here in this unique dressing room for the even more singular game of Discipline. But he himself had seen Barbara and Jessica in their collars serving Kevin’s cock, and he had enough experience as a dominant to know that Barbara, though she might not feel much more comfortable than Jenny with having her pussy and bottom talked about that way by her wealthy, powerful master, might well need the sort of treatment only a man like Herrier could provide. Henry couldn’t have said he admired Herrier for it—but he could certainly appreciate the man’s alpha behavior.

  Plus, the news about Kevin Logan’s purpose in coming to stay with Herrier and its relationship to Selecta had piqued Henry’s interest even if it confused him. He had supposed that Gordon and Maia’s request that he make contact with Herrier and secure an invitation to one of the French tycoon’s special evenings had stemmed from a desire to build a bridge between Selecta on the one hand, and Herrier Industries and the Groupe Synergistique on the other. Given that Henry wanted to steer Relicorp on a middle path between the two sides anyway, the only stumbling block had seemed the need to make Jenny comfortable with the deepening of her sexual submission such a visit involved.

  Now, however, it sounded as if Herrier—and Kevin Logan and Sebastian Fredricks—might want to enlist Henry’s help in doing exactly the opposite. As the CEO of Relicorp, Henry had a fiduciary responsibility to listen, one which he now had to juggle alongside what he considered his responsibility to his friends at Selecta.

  Did the presence of this Jean Mercator have anything to do with any of that? Henry found he couldn’t discount it, for Herrier seemed to have incorporated the man’s arrival into his plan for the evening. What Mercator had to do with Relicorp, on the other hand, remained entirely a mystery.

  “What?” Mercator asked, now, looking around again at the other men.

  “Kindly step over to the red cubby,” Herrier said smoothly, “and get dressed. Mr. Granby is also playing Discipline for the first time, so you needn’t feel too out of place.”

  Mercator turned his eyes in the direction his host had pointed, and Henry watched him take in the red robe, the unusual pants, and the chair. He said something in French, in the general direction of Herrier, that Henry could easily tell must mean, “You’re insane.” Then he turned toward the door, where the bodyguard still occupied most of the corridor just outside the dressing room.

  “If you really wish to depart, Mr. Mercator,” said Herrier, “I can put a driver at your disposal, who will take you straight to the police.”

  The unintentional guest turned to the magnate with an angry glare.

  “Look, mate,” Fredricks said, clearly trying to ease the tension. “You’ll like the game, even if you’re not very good at it. You must want to punish the girl who dumped you, right?”

  Mercator turned on the Englishman with a stare Henry found unreadable, except to the extent that it most assuredly confirmed Fredricks’ assertion that the newcomer wouldn’t mind giving Barbara Edwards’ young bottom a sound spanking.

  “Well, that’s what this game is all about,” Fredricks continued.

  Mercator looked at Henry for confirmation, as if appealing to his fellow neophyte. Henry raised his eyebrows.

  “As far as I know,” he said, “that’s true. I don’t know what you’re into, but I’ve taken my wife in hand, as we say in America, and she gets regular whippings, the way I think a young bride should, to learn her place—so I’m looking forward to this game because I’ve heard Monsieur Herrier knows how to give girls like my Jenn
y the discipline they need but can’t ask for.”

  Now the uninvited guest turned back to Herrier, and spoke in accusatory tones.

  “That’s the sort of thing you put in Barbara’s head, no?”

  “Indeed,” the older man confirmed. “And tonight you will see how true her words to you were. I have decided to give you a precious opportunity, my boy. I am afraid that I will not let you have Barbara back even if you manage to show her you are able to discipline her properly, but at least you may depart—with your liberty, I should add—knowing how thoroughly my little slut belongs to the man who has taken her well in hand, and perhaps even wishing to find a slut of your own to master. You seem a fine young man despite your inexperience, and I would like to make sure you have the chance to fuck as a young man should.”

  Again something in Mercator’s eyes seemed to Henry unfathomable, but he supposed any man lovesick enough to follow his ex-girlfriend to the chateau of a billionaire probably had romantic depths that would serve him much better in a healthy relationship.

  “Fine,” the newcomer finally said. He turned to the cubby and walked over to it, his steps still a little hesitant. Then, decisively, he began to unbutton his shirt.

  “You may go,” Herrier said to the bodyguard, closing the door behind the security man. Then, after a glance at Mercator’s progress, he turned to Kevin. “Shall we continue with the lesson about the history of the game? You have two pupils, now.”

  Mercator snorted from his cubby, shaking his head, but Henry turned attentively to his fellow American with raised eyebrows.

  Kevin chuckled. “I think I was saying that the pants could be adapted from Persian trousers, along with the cult of Mithras itself.”

  Mercator, whose muscular back Henry happened to have glanced at, stiffened.

  “The what?” he said with another snort.

  “The cult of Mithras,” Fredricks contributed, as Mercator stripped off his own pants and extremely tight French briefs to reveal that he didn’t lack anything in sexual anatomy vis-a-vis the three other well-hung players. “Which the higher-ups at the Selecta Corporation seem to have brought back to life.”

  As Mercator sat down to pull on the pants that left his manhood exposed, he turned to the Englishman with an unexpectedly inquisitive expression.

  “Selecta’s a research focus of mine,” he said. “That made it especially difficult when Mr. Herrier here took my girlfriend. I didn’t know anything about this Mithras thing.” He stood up and took the robe from its hanger, running the silk through his fingers appreciatively.

  “It’s not well known, certainly,” Kevin said in a tone of understatement.

  Definitely not, Henry thought: he had felt certain until a few moments ago that he knew everything there was to know about Selecta’s executive suite.

  Herrier opened the door. “Let us claim our cunts, gentlemen,” he said. “Mr. Fredricks knows the way, I believe.”

  Henry followed the Englishman down the hall with Kevin beside him. Mercator trailed behind, and Herrier came after, as if ensuring that the newcomer in the red robe would stay with the invited guests.

  After some turns in the hallways they came to a door behind which, to the stirring of his cock beneath the fold of his blue robe, Henry could hear the unmistakable sound of a whipping in progress. The crack of leather across a feminine backside and an answering cry of discomfort and distress greeted his ears with such a familiar note that he felt certain—rather to his indignation—Jenny Granby was the girl undergoing correction.

  When Fredricks opened the door, the sight of four shapely bottoms, one of them under the ministration of the punishment strap wielded by Madame du Gare and two others already well-reddened by the housekeeper, made his cock stiffen still further. Restrained over the blocks with their knees apart, all four girls had no choice but to display the smooth, pouting clefts of their young pussies below their pert, sweetly rounded bottom-cheeks.

  “Ah, Mr. Granby,” said Madame du Gare, turning and catching sight of the arriving men. “Your Jenny has been disobedient, I fear. I am certain you do not allow her to dawdle at home and so I have taken the liberty of correcting her for you, just as I know I have Mr. Logan’s and Mr. Herrier’s permission to do with these others.”

  “Go ahead, Madame,” Henry replied. “I hope she will profit by the lesson.”

  “I have just finished with her, in fact,” the housekeeper said. She turned to Herrier. “Shall I begin whipping Cynthia?”

  “Mr. Fredricks,” the magnate said, “may I present your cunt? Her name is Cynthia Mancini, and she has come back to my chateau tonight after a lengthy absence.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The kidnapping of Cynthia Mancini had taken even Sarah Bennett by surprise, Maia could tell as they reconvened their conference call, with David now in place of his absent wife. He had a stoic look on his face: he had understood the risks to him and Cynthia both of the job and of this specific operation. He also knew as well as Maia did that Herrier would almost certainly not harm the Ostia agent; even if he had figured out, perhaps with Kevin Logan’s traitorous assistance, that she belonged to a multinational conspiracy bent on thwarting him, enough evidence tied Cynthia to him and his chateau in the past that as a risk-averse tycoon he wouldn’t take the chance.

  Still, to feel utterly powerless in the face of the snatching of your beloved wife, for a dominant man accustomed to exerting his will upon the world in the unique fashion of a Guardsman—Maia could see in David’s eyes, in the lower right of her monitor screen, that it had taken its toll.

  “Give me something, Maia,” he said, his tight mouth voicing the plea that his even tone refused to allow into the words.

  Erin, in the upper left, piled on—though with the best of intentions, Maia knew, despite the sarcasm in her voice. “Yes, please. Isn’t there anything you can do with all that technology we look the other way about?”

  Sarah tried to deflect some of the First Lady’s exasperation. “Ma’am, we’re doing everything—”

  “For God’s sake, stop ma’aming me!” Erin said, glaring into her camera.

  “Erin Metz,” Charlotte said, from the lower left of Maia’s screen, in a voice that sent a shiver up her back.

  The First Lady’s eyes went very wide, and Maia thought she could tell the same sensation had just traveled through Erin’s petite, red-haired body. Erin and Jessica Logan had gone through the Institute’s unusual reform school, of which Charlotte served as headmistress. The memory, perhaps, of what a visit to Miss Charlotte’s office had entailed, or what had happened on a dorm-room inspection, haunted the eyes of the still-young occupant of the East Wing.

  “Yes, Miss Charlotte,” Erin said, and then looked down.

  Maia took the opportunity to deliver to David what she thought would also constitute good news for Erin.

  “We think have drones in the garden that are about to turn on. They flew in from high altitude and drifted in across Herrier’s detection barrier.”

  “Think?” Sarah asked.

  “They should be there, but we won’t know for...” Maia looked down at her laptop, to find the clock at the bottom of her screen. “Thirty seconds or so.”

  The expression on Sarah’s face told Maia that she should probably have waited until she had definite confirmation that the drones had turned on, and lay in a useful position, before informing the First Lady of their existence. Maia, however, though that David deserved to know what the Guard’s tech division had put together.

  “And we have Jean Mercator in the chateau as well as Barbara,” David said. “We know Cynthia is there because her tracker went dead at the end of Herrier’s driveway an hour ago.”

  “Charlotte,” Sarah asked, “how is Barbara doing, do you think? Anything from your assessors?”

  “I have three people on it, updating me every day on what the models say despite the lack of data. Cultural trends especially as reflected in reality shows can have subtle effects even if a girl
is in a social bubble... anyway, the needle hasn’t moved in my people’s estimates; she’s at moderate risk of turning, because of—”

  Maia’s involuntary exclamation, as the connection from the drones in Herrier’s gardens popped into life on her laptop screen, cut Charlotte off.

  “What, Maia?” Sarah asked.

  Maia looked up, giving her puella patris—girl of the father, the highest degree of the Order of Ostia—a little smile, then glanced down quickly to make certain of what she would say. Then, looking up into the camera, she reported.

  “We have two drones near the game board. One of them is in a tree overhanging the board and the other is in the grass, near the players’ pavilion.”

  She paused, and clicked the toggle to get sound first from one drone and then from the other. The picture on the hanging drone showed about a third of the torch-lit chessboard grid, a hundred feet or so on a side. The image from the other one had many blades of grass and the leg of what could only, Maia thought, represent some kind of spanking bench.

  The sound from that drone’s mic, though, which undoubtedly filtered out into the garden from a room inside the chateau with outside access, perhaps through French doors, based on the upper register Maia observed on the wave pattern, caught her attention.

  Looking up, she saw that Sarah had her own eyes fixed below her camera: she must have found the feed, as had David, who also looked down.

  “Well?” Erin said. “Do I get to see?”

  Sarah raised her eyes to the camera. “I’m afraid not, Erin,” the puella patris said. “We can’t have this going into the White House.”

  “Maia?” David asked as Erin made an exasperated noise of protest. “Are you hearing what I’m hearing on mic two?”

  “Yes,” Maia confirmed, and Sarah nodded as well.

  “What?” Charlotte asked, her eyes going wide.