A League of Ladies (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 5)

by Ashley Zacharias

  “How’s Jim doing?” Jim was another mechanic, Jack’s former employer.

  “All right. He’s still in business. Working night and day, trying to get out from under his debts. I don’t know for sure – we don’t talk much – but I think he’s going to make it.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Anyway, we can’t keep jawing all day. I better get you out of here before Hans arrives.”

  It was too late for that. Even as Jack was speaking, a gruff-looking man in his mid-forties came through the front door. He stared at the beautiful, if somewhat battered, naked slave sitting in the chair behind the desk.

  “Speak of the devil,” Jack said, turning to look at him.

  “You got a new mechanic?” Hans asked.

  “You think we should buy her to be our new receptionist?”

  “She could entertain the customers while we work on their cars.”

  “We could triple our rates.”

  “And our business,” Hans said. “You wouldn’t have enough bays to handle all the customers. Guys would be getting their oil changed every fifty miles just to get their dipsticks greased.”

  “Sadly, gentlemen, I’m not for sale,” Irene said.

  “I heard that a knight bought you in the auction,” Jack said. “Paid a fortune for you.”

  “You guys made a good investment when you bought me,” Irene replied.

  Hans looked startled. It seemed that Jack had never told him that he’d owned one twelfth of a pleasure slave for three months.

  “I have to admit that the windfall from selling you helped me get this business of the ground pretty damned quickly,” Jack said. “How does he treat you?”

  “Oh, not at all. The knight sold me a couple of hours after he bought me. At a considerable loss. It was a forced sale.”

  “Poor guy.”

  “No. It was Sir Drake, the knight that tried to enslave George’s niece. He got what he deserved.”

  “So who owns you now?”

  “That’s complicated. I kind of own myself. Not legally, but for all practical purposes.”

  “I never heard of a slave owning herself.”

  “Apparently it’s never happened before. I’m unique.”

  “In more ways than one.”

  “That’s for sure. Anyway, we better get you out of here.” He turned to Hans. “I’ll be back in an hour. There’s a new car out back under the tarp. Leave it alone. It doesn’t need any work. I’m just storing it for a customer for a couple of days and he’s particular about nobody messing with it.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I got enough to do without wasting time messing with a car that doesn’t need fixing.”

  Jack took Irene back to his own apartment in his own car. She was still naked, so she hid on the floor in the back to keep from shocking other motorists.

  At his apartment, Jack went in first and returned with a sheet that Irene could wrap about her, toga style, to keep from offending the neighbors.

  “I’ll call a kennel service and get a dress for you.”

  “I’m not particular about that,” she said. “Any dress will do. I’m a standard size four, but if the dress doesn’t fit, it doesn’t matter. I just need it to get back to the manor. I have money there. I’ll pay you back.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I made enough profit from selling you that I can afford to give you a dress. Besides, you don’t have to leave right away if you want to stay here for a while.”

  “I better not. I see a few feminine things in here. You have a girlfriend now.”

  He grinned. “Gloria. We’re getting kind of serious. I can thank you for that, too. You taught me a lot about what women are really like. I’m more practical now.”

  “I guess that means that you don’t want to fuck me when you bring me back a dress.”

  “You want to fuck me out of gratitude?”

  “There’re a lot worse reasons for a woman to want to fuck a man. And, just because there’s a good reason doesn’t mean it won’t be good fun for both of us.”

  “I’ll be back at lunch time.”

  “I’ll be here. If I’m sleeping, just wake me up.”

  He returned with a dress at eleven-thirty.

  She was still sore from the physical effort of killing Geoffrey and disposing of his body, tired from lack of sleep, and terrified that she would be arrested and crucified before the day was over.

  Even so, she found joy in fucking Jack for a good hour before he drove her back to the Cranford’s manor. It was a celebration of life – a life that she had expected to lose in the city dump less than twenty-four hours earlier.

  In the peaceful afterglow of their shared orgasm, she decided that fucking should always be a celebration of life over death because nobody is ever so alive as when they are physically joined to another human being. And that was the act, the only act, that could bring new life into the world.

  Irene had wanted, for a long time, to create a new life. Now she was more determined than ever to do it. But first, she had to level some mountains.

  * * *

  “We missed you last night, dear,” Lady Annabelle said. “We weren’t sure if you had left us or not.”

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t have a chance to let you know that I was lending myself out to someone else for a day. A former owner needed my service. Let me know what I can do to make it up to you. I’d be happy to take a flogging if it would please you.”

  Lady Annabelle looked at the bruises on the naked slave. “It looks like you’ve already suffered considerable punishment. Besides, the lord and I don’t much enjoy beating slaves. We have better uses for them.”

  “I’m happy for you to use me however you like,” she replied.

  “I’ll let Lord Cranford know that you’d like to be of service. I’m sure that he’ll have some suggestions.”

  Irene suspected that most of the Cranford’s depraved fun came from Lady Annabelle’s wicked imagination rather than her husband’s but she would never say such an indelicate thing.

  Lady Annabelle and Lord Cranford introduced Irene to a new toy that evening. The lord had purchased the vibrating massager the previous week but had not yet had a chance to try it. The thing was a handle with a wide rubber protuberance. When plugged into the wall, a motor in the handle vibrated the protuberance at a speed and intensity determined by two control knobs.

  Lady Annabelle spent the evening strapped to her bed with her legs spread wide. Irene used the massager on her cunt to keep her on the edge of an orgasm without letting her tip over into ecstasy.

  After more than an hour, Lady Annabelle’s voice was horse from begging for release and Irene’s hand was numb from the vibrations that were transmitted through the handle.

  Only after the third time that Lord Cranford jerked himself off into Lady Annabelle’s gaping mouth, did he allow Irene to turn the intensity of the vibrations to maximum and bring Lady Annabelle to a roof-raising climax.

  They left the exhausted lady strapped to the bed, weeping with relief, for another twenty minutes while they all recovered.

  Irene began to think about ways to incorporate the device into gentlemen’s entertainments. Some day soon, she would purchase her own massager and start experimenting with it, both on herself and on any willing gentlemen that she could find.

  If she didn’t get arrested and crucified first.

  She’d thrown Geoffrey’s butcher knife far into the dump, but early that afternoon, as soon as she had a dress and could go shopping, she’d walked downtown and bought a straight razor. She kept it in her pocket or on her bedside stand, always within reach, so that if the sheriff or his deputies came to arrest her, she could cut her own throat before they took her into custody.

  She spent the next three days inside Lord Cranford’s kennels. Between times when she was servicing the Cranfords, she fretted about being arrested, relived the horror of being kidnapped by Geoffrey, and agonized about having had to kill him.

  As m
uch as he needed killing, she couldn’t help but suffer guilt from taking a human life. At times, she felt like it was crushing her.

  Over and over she tried to imagine what she could have done to have kept from arriving at this point. She could have let Adele Bishop be enslaved rather than intervening. That was it. Once she had decided to save Adele, her course was determined entirely by Sir Drake’s hunger for revenge and Lord Fortson’s determination to save her. The outcome was inevitable. The only other choice that she had made between Adele’s bankruptcy hearing and now was when she chose to attack Geoffrey rather than allow him to butcher her at the dump.

  Maybe she should have accepted death when it was offered. She had intended to. Hogtied in the back of Geoffrey’s car, she had made peace with her fate and had resigned herself to being butchered.

  If he had simply cut her throat as soon as she had stepped out of the car, he would be alive and she would be at peace, her lifeless husk being consumed by rats and maggots in the town dump.

  Instead, Geoffrey was being consumed by vermin in her place while she was being consumed by fear and guilt.

  Why? Because of their primal bestial natures.

  Geoffrey was a young man seething with hormones. His lust had prevailed over his desire to please his father by killing her immediately. When he had a beautiful, epically desirable woman in his power, he had been driven to eke one last sexual service from her before ending her life. And he had chosen to humiliate her by forcing her to her knees to service him rather than simply throwing her on her back and forcing her thighs apart.

  Irene, though, had behaved even more bestially. Though her mind had been resigned to death, the deepest part of her brain, the part that had evolved before the species had become human, insisted on survival. Given a chance to sink her teeth into her enemy’s flesh, all thought and reason had been swept aside and was not allowed to reassert itself until the life had been torn from her enemy’s body. Fury was too weak of a word to describe the hurricane of primal emotion that had swept through her brain when Geoffrey had thrust his cock into her mouth.

  Now, she was alive and, though filled with fear of civilized society’s response, the deep regions of her brain still howled their praise of her bloody triumph.

  She might never again be entirely free of the bloodlust that had been released within her.

  She saw no reason to regret that. The law said that a slave was property. She had heard academics argue that a slave still had a human spirit.

  She knew better.

  A slave was a slathering beast, barely restrained by rope and chains and threats of crucifixion.

  * * *

  Irene had to maintain her usual habits. If she didn’t, then she’d look suspicious, and suspicion was enough to get a slave nailed to a wall.

  On Monday morning. She went to the university and engaged a quiet, reasoned discussion about the significance of the collar that she wore. She learned a new word from Professor Cable: torc. In some ancient cultures, a collar made of precious metal indicated status and was called a torc.

  She liked the word. It made the collar sound less like something that an animal would wear. It would help her disguise her bestial nature.

  She gave him service again after their meeting. Now, every time she fucked a man, she felt more alive than ever before.

  For a full week, she heard nothing about the Drakes.

  Then, on the following Friday evening, Lord Cranford sought her out in his kennels and said, “Come on up to the manor. Someone has come for you.”

  Gentlemen didn’t run errands for slaves. Lord Cranford would come out to the kennel only at the behest of someone important.

  She slipped her housedress over her head as she followed Cranford out of the kennels.

  As she followed Lord Cranford across the grounds, she thrust her hand into her pocket to grab her straight razor, ready to cut her own throat at the first appearance of a sheriff’s badge.

  The sheriff wasn’t waiting in the foyer; Lady Linda Hoffman stood there. Linda had been Irene’s best friend before Irene had enslaved herself.

  “You’re a hard person to find,” Linda said.

  Irene took her hand out of her pocket. “Slaves don’t participate in society. We stay in the background with the rest of the furniture.”

  “Some furniture.” Lord Cranford laughed lightly. “It’s nice to see you, Lady Hoffman, but with your permission, I’ll take my leave and let you two retire to the library. Take all the time you wish. Irene can show you out when you’re finished.”

  When they were seated in the library, Linda said, “Have you heard about Geoffrey Drake?”

  “No.”

  “He disappeared a few days ago. Took one of his father’s cars and drove off. Everyone is wondering where he went.” Linda was looking carefully at Irene.

  She shrugged. “He wasn’t very old, was he? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Boys that age have strong desires and weak judgment. An idea pops into a young man’s head and off he goes on some wild adventure. Maybe Geoffrey got tired of school and decided to go swimming in the Eastern Sea. He’ll probably wander back in a month or two with a fresh tan and a new girl on his arm.”

  She thought about rats chewing into his cold, decaying guts in the town dump.

  “Maybe. But some people are saying that there’s bad blood between you and the Drakes. They’re wondering what you were doing when he disappeared.”

  “I was probably right here getting fucked in the ass. That’s what pleasure slaves do. They stay in their owners’ kennels waiting to be called on for service.”

  “As I understand it, you don’t have an owner. I’m surprised to see that you’re here in Lord Cranford’s kennels instead of in your own apartment.”

  Irene shrugged. “I’m on long-term loan to the Cranfords. It’s safer for a slave to stay in someone’s kennels than to be wandering around free.” Irene paused. “I don’t like hearing talk about me having something to do with Geoffrey disappearance, Stories like that will get me crucified. My bones will be rotting on the courthouse wall when he shows up in a couple of months with his new tan and his new girl and nobody will bother feeling sorry about their mistake.”

  Linda reached out and put her hand on Irene’s. “Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to crucify you. Not unless they have solid proof that you did something to Geoffrey. Earlier this week, Sir Drake started telling people that he thinks that you’re responsible for Geoffrey’s disappearance and Lord Fortson and Lord Snow went right to his office and told him never to breath a word of accusation about you again unless he has solid proof. They put the fear of the Assembly into him. I heard that they also had a private word with the sheriff about not jumping to any conclusions without having a case that he could present to a committee of lords first. You aren’t just a regular slave, you know. You’re still Lord Fortson’s wife. Nobody is sure if that makes you Slave Lady Fortson or Lady Slave Fortson, but it sure makes you more than just Slave Irene.”

  Irene fingered the collar – torc – around her neck and smiled. “Thanks, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m just Slave Irene. Available for service on loan.”

  Linda drew a deep breath, visibly steeling herself. “About that. Service.” She paused and looked like she didn’t know exactly how to broach the subject that was on her mind.

  Irene raised an eyebrow. “You want me to loan myself to Lord Hoffman?”

  Linda started. “No! He’d love that, but I sure wouldn’t. I don’t want you in our kennels even for a minute. No way.”

  “Then I never will be. I can keep that promise now that I own myself.”

  Linda smiled, then quickly lost her smile. “What I wanted to say is that my husband already has enough pleasure slaves in his kennels to keep him happy. And that’s my problem.”

  “That he’s happy?”

  “That he’s not as happy with me as with them.”

  Irene sighed. “I know exactly what you mean. I thought that I had a solution for that.
I sold myself. I hoped that my husband would buy me and keep me in his kennels so that I could be the woman who was making him happy. That didn’t work out at all like I expected. As a strategy for a lady, I don’t recommend it.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to sell myself into slavery. I’m not that desperate.”

  “Good.”

  Linda cocked her head. “Just out of curiosity, why did you lend yourself out to Lord Cranford? Why didn’t you lend yourself out to your husband?”

  Irene didn’t dare tell Linda that Geoffrey had tried to kill her on the street. And that was the reason that she didn’t dare be seen at the Fortson manor. She was still at risk of being killed if Sir Drake or his agents found her. That story would make her look like the murderer that she was. Instead she said, “James never asked me to lend myself to him.”

  “He can’t ask. It’s not like asking you to marry him. How can a man ask his wife to be his slave?”

  “Just like that. If he asks me to be his slave, I’ll say, ‘Yes.’ There’s no question about that. And I’ll be happy to do it. It’s what I’ve wanted for a long time.”

  “He won’t ask and you won’t offer. If one of you doesn’t bend, neither of you are ever going to be happy.”

  “I know. But the time isn’t right. There are a few things that I have to do first.” Not the least of which was to stay alive long enough to accomplish her agenda.

  “Like what?”

  “I want to change some of the conditions of slavery. Not just for me, but for all pleasure slaves. I’m allowed to manage the trust that owns me. I think that all pleasure slaves should be allowed to keep a trust fund and, when they are too old for pleasure and are being sold on the labor market, they should be allowed to bid on themselves. I’ve met a lot of pleasure slaves. Being a pleasure slave isn’t such a bad life, but it’s always a short one. Pleasure slaves deserve a chance to live to old age just like any other human being.”

  “I don’t know anything about pleasure slaves living short lives, but it sounds fair that they should be able to buy themselves when nobody else wants them.”