Flame took the cone and examined it. It seemed light enough without any weights attached. She didn’t think that it would be too challenging so she spread her legs and inserted it between her lower lips.
It slipped back out into her hand.
She pushed it back in and squeezed her muscles. This time it stayed inside when she removed her fingers. Retaining it was more difficult than it looked because the flanges kept her from inserting it far enough to be secure and the cone didn’t offer much for her to grip.
She tried walking a few steps. As long as she kept concentrating on keeping her muscles tight, she could keep it in place. She was keenly aware of her cunt every second.
Barry smiled. “That’s pretty good. You keep working at that and you’ll be the star of every orgy before you know it.”
Was that what she wanted? To be the most popular slave at the orgy?
People always said that you had to be careful what you wished for because wishes come true.
* * *
It wasn’t long before the cuts healed and the scabs flaked off Flame’s ass. It was no longer raw, only criss-crossed with reddish welts.
She could sit and lie on her back comfortably again. Though, in idle moments, of which a slave has many, she would unconsciously run her fingers back and forth across her backside, feeling every ridge and groove that the cane had molded into her flesh, until that unnatural fleshscape was more deeply embedded in her tactile memory than any other part of her body.
She found it interesting that Mr. Dodge hadn’t scheduled a single dinner party during her convalescence. She didn’t believe that he had inconvenienced himself out of any consideration for her welfare. She could easily have been made to perform. Her act didn’t require much sitting. And if she suffered some extra pain during the evening, that wouldn’t cause any permanent damage so it would be no problem for Mr. Dodge.
Rather, she believed that Mr. Dodge had wisely paused his entertainments to take the temperature of his insertion into polite society. He’d been inviting a lot of people to his parties and had received few return invitations. That was not a good sign. It was time for him to find out if people appreciated his company or if he were merely being exploited.
He hadn’t asked Flame for advice; he made his own decision to wait for return invitations before hosting another round of parties. She applauded him for his keen strategy.
And it worked.
His parties were popular, to no small degree because a slave who had the unique feature of being the former wife of a lord was offered as entertainment. So it was gratifying but not surprising when the knights and baronets who had attended his dinners began extending more frequent reciprocal invitations to him and his wife.
During this brief hiatus, Mrs. Dodge continued to treat Flame with considerable contempt – she was never slow to deliver a swift kick – but she also asked her advice about fashion and comportment. She never failed to follow Flame’s advice to the letter.
After attending a fair number of dinner parties and some other events – a couple of balls, a concert, and a stage play – the Dodges resumed hosting dinners for two or three couples at a time.
Flame noted that Drake wasn’t completely excluded, but he was on the guest list far less often. Mr. Dodge had begun inviting a better class of knights and baronets. He was on one of the lowest rungs of the social ladder, but he was already climbing to the next one.
She was setting the table for Mr. and Mrs. Dodge’s dinner one Thursday evening when Mrs. Dodge came into the dining room and said, “You’re going to be loaned out on Saturday.”
Flame paused in laying out Mr. Dodge’s place setting. Her heart skipped a beat. She had become well enough known for her solo entertainments that wives should have been asking to borrow her for some time. But this was the first time that it had happened. It seemed that the wives of aristocrats weren’t eager to be in a commoner’s debt.
The fork in her hand hovered over the table as she looked up at her owner’s wife. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I believe you know Lady Hoffman.”
Flame put the fork into place with careful deliberation before speaking. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Their driver will pick you up at five tomorrow. Be waiting.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
There was no clock in the kennel so she had no way to tell the time. But that was her problem, not Mrs. Dodge’s.
To ensure that she wouldn’t miss the car, she began waiting at the kennel door early – by her estimate, some time between three and four. She was wearing her housedress and carrying a plastic bag with makeup and a set of erotic red underwear.
The household that borrowed a slave was expected to supply the clothing that they wanted the slave to wear for the entertainment, if any were required, but Flame thought that it would be safest to bring a minimal set of her own just in case.
She waited for more than an hour. It gave her a long time to think about Linda.
Her thoughts broke her heart. She wasn’t deluded – she knew that Linda couldn’t be friends with a slave. Automatically losing all her friends was part of the deal when she had decided to enslave herself – it was as certain as losing her husband. She had understood and accepted that before she mounted the stage to give herself to the auctioneer.
But she had hoped that some of her former friends might still care about her. Linda had been her closest friend. If anybody had any sympathetic feelings for her, it should be Linda.
It had been ten weeks since Mrs. Dodge had borrowed Sapphire. Linda had had ample opportunity to borrow Flame back before now.
Flame had counted the weeks. She had expected to be borrowed within three weeks. A month at most. When six weeks passed without Linda requesting the favor that Mrs. Dodge owed, Flame had begun to feel safe. After two months had passed, she had been sure that Linda still cared enough for her that she didn’t want to see her old friend wantonly ravished by a gang of gentlemen who still remembered her as Lady Irene Fortson.
But now the call had come. Linda had taken her time, but had finally decided to toss her helpless body to the wolves.
Flame had no right to complain. When she had climbed onto the block, she had told the whole world, in the most certain and public way possible, that this was what she wanted.
But she dearly wished that Linda had cared enough to let someone else do the tossing.
Flame spent too long waiting and feeling sorry for herself. By the time the Hoffman car arrived, she was fighting to hold back her tears. That wouldn’t do. No gentleman wanted to be entertained by a melancholy slave.
As she was being driven down Norbit Hill, she told herself that it was time to toughen up. She was a lusty slave, not a forlorn lady. She forced herself to stop thinking about Linda and focused her attention on the imminent entertainment.
She had no idea what was coming so imagined the worst possible case – that she would be asked to entertain a large number of men alone. Sapphire once said that she had entertained eight men by herself. Maybe Linda– No, not Linda. The hostess. She had to maintain the right mindset. Maybe the hostess expected her to exceed Sapphire’s feat. Maybe she would be asked to entertain ten gentlemen – or a dozen – by herself.
She was becoming known for her performance in which she transformed herself from a lady into a slave. How could she adapt that to accommodating a dozen men?
She mentally rehearsed her act, arranging it in her mind so that she would offer her cunt first. The proper sexual parts would better be able to accommodate a lot of men than her asshole. Even with her sphincter well-stretched and her anus heavily lubed, her asshole could be damaged more easily than her cunt. Especially if she could keep the men from ramming against her clit. Rear entry was much easier on the cunt than missionary, but she couldn’t just bend over. That would make her asshole as available as her cunt. If half a dozen men decided to use her ass, either exclusively or switching between the two holes, and they each got it up three times, she woul
d be bleeding like a slaughtered pig before the night was over.
By the time the car entered the Hoffman’s rear gate, she had a solution. Lay a man on his back and ride him. That would let her control both the depth and the force. She would alter her patter. She would describe herself as a slut who had been so desperate for sex that she had enslaved herself just so that she could get into every billiard room in the county.
All her planning was for naught, thankfully. When she was escorted into the kennel, she found herself in a crowd of a dozen slaves.
She was sure that Lord Hoffman didn’t keep many more slaves than her own husband – not more than four.
For this entertainment, then, Linda must have borrowed every slave that she could get her hands on. She hadn’t singled out Flame. In fact, she had probably borrowed Flame only after she had borrowed from everyone else that she could.
That happy thought was soon smashed to smithereens.
One of the slaves was old. Older than any pleasure slave that Flame had ever seen. At least forty-five.
She introduced herself. “I’m Thorn. I assume that you’re Flame.”
Flame nodded.
“Help me up here.” She held out her hand.
The Hoffman’s kennels were considerably larger than the Dodges’, and the pleasure room was larger and better equipped in proportion.
Thorn was standing by a low table, the size and height of a coffee table, but with steel reinforcement so that it could withstand robust use.
Flame offered Thorn a hand up.
When she was standing on the table, Thorn addressed the crowd. “Slaves, your attention. I’m Thorn. I’m the director of tonight’s entertainment. For those of you who’ve never worked with a director before, I’ll just say that it is my job to create the entertainment and ensure that it is executed flawlessly. What that means is that I know exactly what each and every one of you is going to have to do tonight. You don’t know yet, so you are going to have to listen to me and obey me exactly. My orders to carry the same weight as your masters’ orders. If you fail to do exactly as I say, I have the authority to punish you. My punishments leave no marks and do no permanent damage but they are severe. A couple of you have worked with me before and can testify to that. If I punish you, you’ll be wishing that your master had taken a cane to you instead.”
Flame saw three heads nodding emphatically.
“The entertainment tonight is different from anything that you have experienced. But it is simple so none of you will have any excuse for failing to perform. Do you understand?”
All heads nodded.
“Okay. To begin with, let me introduce Flame.” She gestured to the slave standing beside her. “Flame’s unique history provides the motivation for the entertainment tonight. You need to be familiar with it so that you will not be surprised in front of the gentlemen.” Thorn explained how Flame had been the wife of a lord and had submitted herself to slavery.
The other slaves looked at her with a combination of puzzlement and disgust.
“One of the most important aspects of Flame’s history is that she will be acquainted with many of the gentlemen that we are entertaining tonight. There are twelve of you and thirty-two gentlemen. That works out to fewer than three gentlemen per slave–”
This elicited happy murmurs from the slaves.
“Be quiet or I’ll start putting you in restraints right now!”
The slaves shut up.
“I was saying that there are not a lot of gentlemen for the number of slaves but you can expect that all of the gentlemen will be paying particularly close attention to each one of you.”
She proceeded to explain the nature of the evening’s entertainment in detail.
The more Flame heard, the worse she felt.
There was no way that this was going to turn out well for her.
If Lady Linda had a hand in this, she had really screwed her ex-friend.
* * *
When the slaves were ready to leave the kennels, a black leather hood covered each slave’s hair and most of her face. There were no eyeholes; the masks served as effective blindfolds.
Wide collars wrapped around their necks to cover their tattoos. The zippers that closed the hoods were securely covered by these collars and the buckles on the collars were locked by a small padlock.
Thorn had the key to the locks. The slaves’ heads would not be free until she unlocked them.
The only part of the head that was left uncovered was the slaves’ mouths and nostrils. Even the space between the upper lip and the nose was covered by a band of black leather, as were the lower jaws.
Before being blinded by the hood, Flame had seen that each hood had a different brass letter on the forehead. Though the slaves had different bodies – some shorter, some taller, some with fuller breasts, some more boyish, and so forth – unless someone was intimately familiar with every slave’s body, he would be able to identify them only by these letters.
Apart from the hoods, the slaves were naked.
When Thorn led the blind slaves into the Hoffman billiard room, each had to keep her right hand on the shoulder of the slave in front of her to guide her.
Flame, second from the last, shuffled along between two slaves that she didn’t know.
When the slave in front of her stopped, she stopped, and the slave behind her stopped.
The hood muffled her hearing but didn’t deafen her. The room was filled with low-pitched chatter from the guests.
“Gentlemen,” Thorn said loudly, “may I introduce your entertainment for this evening. Your host has arranged a very special and unique treat for you. A game that has never been played before and will likely never be played again.
“You see before you, thirteen blind, mute slaves. In a few minutes, you will be invited to acquaint yourselves with them. Touch them, give them orders, use them how you wish, within the usual parameters of an entertainment. But do not expect them to speak to you. They have been ordered to remain mute. They will not say a single word, under penalty of severe punishment.
“One of these slaves is special. You may have heard of the highborn lady, the wife of a lord, who voluntarily sold herself into slavery three months ago. I believe that many of you knew this lady personally – invited her to dinners, danced with her at balls, engaged in stimulating conversation. Maybe you even played card games with her and her husband.
“Your challenge is to examine these slaves and try to identify the only one in the room who was a titled lady before she sold herself into slavery.
“These slaves are masked and have been ordered to remain mute for the evening so that you may not see their faces nor hear their voices. If you ask them questions, they will not answer. But they are not deaf. You may give them orders and they will obey.
“If you believe that you have identified the highborn slave, we ask that you write your name on the slave’s stomach with the permanent markers that have been distributed. By the end of the evening, every one of you should have marked your name on one and only one of the slaves.
“In three hours, we will reveal the identity of the highborn slave. Every man whose name is inscribed on her stomach will be given a prize.
“These slaves have a strong incentive to act like perfect slaves and not like privileged ladies. The slave who has the most gentlemen’s names written on her stomach will considered to have behaved inadequately and will be punished publicly in this room. We have devised an ingenious and amusing punishment for the unsatisfactory slave.
“If the slave who gathers the most names happens to be the one who was the highborn lady, then her owner has approved a second, additional punishment that has been designed especially for her. She doesn’t know what it is, but I have advised her to work as hard as she can to blend in with all the other slaves so that she will not have to endure that additional cruel treatment.
“Does anyone have any questions?”
Someone asked, “Can we order the slaves to nod if th
ey were highborn?”
“Of course. And the highborn one will shake her head that she was not, just like all the others. In this game, there is no penalty for a slave lying to you. And she certainly isn’t going to volunteer for the punishment that awaits the loser by telling the truth.”
Someone else asked, “Do the slaves know how they will be punished if they lose the game?”
“No. They will be as surprised as you. Though I think the loser will be far less amused than you will be.” There was a round of approving guffaws.
Another man had a question. “Sometimes titled ladies are adjudicated into slavery. There might be more than one highborn slave here.”
“No, there aren’t. To be fair to you, I personally checked the records of every slave in the room. All the others were born to slavery or were adjudicated into slavery more than five years ago. The highborn lady enslaved herself only three months ago. Not only did she come from different stock, but she is also the least experienced slave in the room by far.”
“Any more questions?” Another pause. “No? Then let the game begin. Gentlemen, enjoy your slaves.”
Flame stood for a minute with her hands at her sides, listening to the gentlemen shuffling around and chatting quietly to each other. She didn’t know if men were already standing around her, looking at her, or if they had started with the slaves that entered first. All she could know is that she hadn’t been touched yet.
Slave of the Aristocracy: Book One – On the Auction Block Page 14
