by Pat Powers
Jack stepped up close to her and whispered in her ear. "You're going to enjoy the biz more if you have a horny/danger edge to you while you do it. Nod 'yes' if you've read the sign next to the slave near us."
Cindy nodded 'yes' immediately. She had already read the sign. Good eyes.
"OK, I want you to pull up your skirt and stand in front of her, as close as you can, close enough that your pussy ring bumps up against her o-ring gag. But don't let her touch you, or lick you. Just torment her."
"What are you going to be doing while all this is going on?" Cindy asked.
"Tormenting you," Jack said, grinning. "In a much more direct and physical way."
"You know I'm not into women," she said.
"I know," Jack said. "Don't do her. Torment her. There's a difference."
"Why, yes there is," Cindy said, grinning suddenly.
Jack had a couple of binding cords in one of his vest pockets, and when Cindy has hiked her skirt up he casually seized her wrists and tied them behind her. They'd done that often enough that it was almost a reflex. Now he stood behind Cindy and shoved her forward until she was standing directly forward, her shorn pussy almost touching the slave's nose.
The slavegirl inhaled deeply and looked up at Cindy, her face unreadable but her body language plainly showing relief, with maybe a little gratitude.
Cindy moved her chained pussy back and the woman's head followed it, like a hypnotized snake. She swiveled her hips from side to side and the woman's head moved from side to side.
Jack could almost see Cindy swell with the realization of her power over the woman, and she began to really dance with the woman, rolling and twisting her pussy before the alleged lesbian slavegirl, who now writhed in her bonds, straining at them desperately in an attempt to get some portion of her face in contact with the beautiful set of pussy lips that danced just out of her reach, though at times they seemed to approach her as if ready for contact.
Frequently, the woman's tongue protruded obscenely from the O-ring gag, a questing pink thing that was impressively long and limber.
After a time Cindy grew tired, and stepped back from the slavegirl, whose head bowed forward and whose shoulders slumped in dejection at not reaching the femaleness she'd been deprived of for so long. But it was to be worse than that, for her, because some new patrons had entered the club and a lot of them were men, men who'd been watching Cindy twist and writhe in front of the helplessly bound slave girl, and a couple of them already had their flies unzipped. It was going to be a busy time for the little lesbian now, so Jack patted her head consolingly as he dragged Cindy past her.
"If you don't take me into a side room and let me suck your dick dry, I'm going to be SO mad at you," Cindy whispered as Jack untied her wrists.
"Later, after the biz maybe," Jack said. "I've got that horny edge, too, and I want to keep it."
Jack stuffed the binding cords back in my pocket -- it was a sure bet he'd need them later -- grabbed Cindy's leash and led her past the woman lying chained spreadeagled on the floor with a butterfly strapped into her pussy, writhing slowly under its relentless buzz. She was blindfolded, and could not see whether or not there were patrons about to drop some wax from all the candles on the floor around her.
They got to the Saudelli room about five minutes late and found Melissa and her friends already ordering from a waitress in a French maid outfit that was cut so high you could see about as much as you wanted to of her bottom poking out from under it. We joined them, ordered a couple of glasses of Merlot and some onion strings and held introductions, though they were barely necessary.
With Melissa was a brilliant redhead with gorgeous almond eyes who'd appeared in a lot of late night cable channel sex films, Linda Shaw. The blonde to Linda's right was also familiar, a scream queen who'd done her share of horror films as well as some mainstream dramas, Bunny Stephens. And there was also a major star, Shirley Lang, who'd been the female lead on a hit sitcom for years before going off to star in a string of first, mainstream flop comedies, and then, successful B comedies.
Melissa, Linda and Bunny were generally accounted to be rising stars in the Hollywood community, just one hit away from becoming household names in mainstream films. Problem was, there were hundreds of women in Hollywood who could fit that description, and only a couple of dozen slots for "household names."
Shirley's career as a young ingenue for comedy leads was essentially over, though she was still quite beautiful. But if she wanted it, she still had a long career playing moms and business executives and such. Jack had the impression that was what she was doing.
This was getting interesting. Suddenly Jack was as hot for biz as Cindy was.
"Oh, it is so nice to finally meet you," Shirley said when she was introduced to Cindy and Jack. "Melissa has told me so much about you. And she said you were big Jack, but her eyes didn't bug out quite enough to do you justice when she said it."
Jack grinned. Schmoozing was as free as the air in Hollywood, and worth as much.
"I'm extra-large," Jack admitted, "but in a friendly sort of way."
"Like a big old comfortable sofa!" Cindy declared.
Everybody laughed at the idea that Jack was like a big old comfortable sofa. Their drinks and snacks arrived -- the gals were eating sliced carrots, broccoli florets, that sort of thing, while Jack downed his onion straws guiltlessly. If you worked in Hollywood and didn't eat in front of actresses, who never ate, you could starve to death in no time.
"I hear you are just incredibly good at your job, Jack," said Shirley. "And Melissa, I hear that you are quite the promising actress."
"It's wonderful to hear that coming from a star like you, ma'am," said Cindy.
"Oh, please," Shirley said in a voice that was dismissive but at the same time flattered. "My days as an actress are pretty much numbered. I'm more of an executive producer now. Melissa, Linda and Bunny are the stars today."
"No doubt," said Jack. "I know a lot of guys who would envy the living daylights out of me, just for being in the same room with as fine a group of actresses as you."
"Jack, you must have learned to pour that honey on pretty heavy back in Tennessee," said Melissa, laughing.
"Notice that I am no longer in Tennessee," Jack said, grinning. "I also learned to smell biz in the air, and something tells me that you ladies have a very interesting project in mind."
"Well, yes we do, Jack," said Shirley. "Would you like to hear about it?"
"I'd love to," said Jack and Cindy simultaneously.
"I'm the executive producer of Desert Industry Dreams, or DIDs," said Shirley. "It's a firm that has been put together specifically for the purpose of taking advantage of demographic and media changes we see coming about currently and over the next few decades. Generation X is taking over the reigns of culture, as the baby boomers age enough to no longer influence it.
"Just as the baby boomers sexually liberated American culture from the moral straightjacket that the World War II generation kept it in, so the Gen X generation will liberate sexuality. Specifically in the area of sexual bondage play. Just as the boomers grew up understanding that sex was natural and good, so the Gen X kids grew up knowing that getting pierced and tattooed and tying up your lover was just good fun.
"So there's been a general liberalization of the rules about bondage over the past few years, and it'll continue for at least another decade or two, until the Gen Y kids bring their sensibilities to the culture.
"As you're also aware, Net broadcasting and the rise of timeshare supercomputers has meant that the market for entertainment has fragmented far beyond what it used to be, and that some surprisingly good product can be turned out by talented kids working in garages who aren't worried about copyright laws. Now, what does that mean to us, as creative professionals?"
"Means it's gonna be harder than ever to make something everyone wants to see unless you got the marketing muscles of one of the big boys," said Jack. What Lang had said about the fra
gmented markets was old hat. The stuff about Gen X wasn't exactly breaking news either, though he'd never heard the bondage issue addressed so directly. She was right, though. Club Gwen and all the places like it were proof enough, along with the huge increase in bondage content on websites, adult and otherwise. Anyone with any sense could have seen it, way back when Fifty Shades of Grey broke all the bestseller lists earlier in the century.
"Right, exactly," said Shirley. "Right now the big boys are using their economic power over what remains of the mass media to grab eyeballs en masse. But there's another approach to that, another strategy. What if you take a product and customize it for several different niche markets?"
"What do you mean?" asked Cindy. "Customize how?"
"Well, for example, let's take romantic comedies," said Lang. "Right now, the primary demographic for them is women between 18 and 40. You can attract a sizable portion of the male audience if you bother to make it funny, and you can also attract men if you make it sexy, though if you go too far along that axis you lose female eyeballs. But suppose you wrote a basic romantic comedy script, and then wrote a second version of it that was really sexy, and marketed each version to its target audience via the fragmented Net channels? That is, you'd put up a banner ad for a Net broadcast of "Wild Bahama Nights" on all the websites frequented by women who fit our target demographic, and the version that everyone who clicked through on that ad would see would be the relatively tame version, though of course there'd be some sex, because women like sex, they just don't like it in massive quantities.
"Men like it in massive quantities," said Lang, "so we'll write a version that will be much sexier, hotter and nakeder than the one we advertise on sites that appeal to women. It will only increase our costs by a small increment, but it could double our market share. Everybody gets what they want, and we get the money. Are you with me so far?"
Sure, but how you gonna keep the director from screaming bloody murder when you change his art for the ages?" Jack asked. "They're sensitive enough as it is."
"Every director that we hire will know the deal going in, and will sign away his rights to see a penny beyond scale if he gives us any grief along those lines," said Lang. "We may not get the top directors under those terms, but you're right, we've got to have directors we can work with."
" "All right," Jack said. "So where do Cindy and I come in?"
"Well, I've already told you how interested we are in getting the Gen X demographic interested in our movies," said Lang. "It has occurred to us that we can grab them by working in the thriller/action adventure field with stories that have bondage potential. It's always been commonplace to have the heroine tied up by the bad guy in mainstream films, but it's generally badly done. Well, there's no reason you can't do those scenes right in the first place. And there's no reason you can't do two versions of the film -- one with bondage scenes whose appeal is primarily dramatic, and another with more extended bondage scenes that have a much stronger sexual appeal -- but not so extended that they hurt the storyline.
We have three reasons for wanting you and Cindy," said Lang. "First, Cindy is into bondage as the submissive, and she can give us valuable insights into how submissives feel and what they want, which is important because we think most of our female audience is submissive by nature and will find submissive scenes appealing. And since she's an experienced stunt woman, she can help with some of the more difficult tie-ups and perhaps double in them as well. Second, you have developed a reputation as not only a prop master who knows how to tie actresses up, but as one who is very careful of their safety and comfort. This is TREMENDOUSLY important to us, as we face huge liabilities if we screw up and injure an actress. But the word we have from the insurers is that we can save a lot of money in premiums if we'll hire you and give you "cut" authority any time you think a scene may be dangerous."
"Really," said Jack calmly. He'd had no idea.
"Apparently, you were working on a set where one of the leads was insured to the hilt and you saw something you didn't like going on and you just plain shut down the set until it was fixed," Lang replied. "When you explained what it was everybody looked kind of sheepish because you were obviously right -- they would have endangered the actress. Well, you know how word gets around in this town, and apparently now you're gold, like Stu McNamen."
"That works for me," Jack said, grinning. Stu McNamen was a stunt coordinator who was noted for not injuring his actors. Having him on a set took insurance rates down, so he was always in demand.
Come to think of it, it had been a long time since Jack had had to actually look for work. Work always found him. He'd thought it was just because he was becoming generally known in the industry.
"We're willing to pay you and Cindy top dollar for your work," Lang said.
"Where will you be getting your top dollar?" asked Cindy. "A project like this will take some backing."
"We'll be getting most of our backing from several major adult web site owners who wish to remain anonymous at present," said Lang. "That's the beauty of this operation, and the reason we've bought into it. The adult web sites are desperate for content that will make them really stand out, now that every guy with a girlfriend has her performing all sorts of wild sex acts on his website just for the fun of it."
This was true. Some of Jack's geekier friends had said as much -- there was no point in going to a pay site when there were so many amateur sites out there offering the same stuff the pay sites did, only they did it for free, just for fun.
"We'll provide our more adult versions of our movies on their websites first, before there's any release to theaters or video," said Lang. "If you want to see the adult version, you'll have to join their site and download it. They figure it will get them a lot of subscribers and a lot of publicity from the mainstream media, something else they think they could use."
"You sure these movies are going to be just R?" Cindy asked. "I've seen some of these sites, and believe me, there's nothing they won't show."
"I've personally visited all of the sites of our backers," said Lang. "They're filthy, just as you say. But we're all going to have a quit clause that says any demands for penetration, barnyard animals or kiddie stuff and we're out with our full salary plus a very large indemnity fee. In fact, our contracts forbid US from doing such things."
"We plan on keeping it very R, but a very hard R, right up to the very edge of a XXX rating," said Bunny. "Our goal here is to get some visibility -- to make a breakthrough that'll have studio execs thinking of us the next time a good project comes down the pike. If we do XXX, we won't get that, because the studios are still a little skittish about it, even with the success of Jenna Jameson and a few others. So we're sticking with R."
"There's another reason for sticking with R, too," said Lang. "The XXX mills have got hard core down cold. There's nothing we could do to really distinguish ourselves as being superior in any way to their work. So we won't compete directly with them on those grounds. We'll compete in the areas they are weak in -- plot, characterization and production values."
Jack and Cindy both relaxed a lot on hearing those words. So many filmmakers, over the years had figured that they could do sex films better than the people who did them all the time, and they always created these dull if different sex films that nobody watched, because it had never occurred to them that pro XXX filmmakers did things the way they did them for a reason -- because they worked. The news that Lang and associates intended to compete on the grounds they were strongest in was good news indeed.
"So, what do you think?" Lang asked. "Is it a deal you want to be a part of?"
Now Lang and her gang looked at Jack and Cindy and smiled. The ball was in their court.
"Can we talk privately for a minute?" Jack asked.
"Sure," said Lang. "We'll go out and tour the club. I've never been here before. Should be good research."
After they left, Jack turned to Cindy and asked her, "Whaddya think, darlin'?"
&nbs
p; "I like it," Cindy responded.
"I like it, too," Jack.
"Well, of course you do, they are inviting you to make a career of tying women up," Cindy said. "I'd take you to a shrink if you DIDN'T like it."
"OK, that's part of the reason I like it," said Jack amiably. "Now, why do you like it?"
"Because I understand it," said Cindy. "I can see where all of the players are coming from, except Lang. The sites are looking for content, Melissa and her friends are looking for a breakthrough, and everybody else is lookin' for a paycheck."
"I think I've got Lang played," said Jack. "I think she's playing at this ... literally playing. I've heard that she's been pretty shrewd with her bucks and even her projects folded, she still came out of them with a couple million sticking to her here and there. She doesn't need the money, but she wants to keep her hand in something hot, if not as an actress, at least as an exec. And this is her way of doing it."
"Plus there might be a few roles for older dominatrixes here and there," Cindy said softly.
"You're probably right," Jack said, seeing a sudden vision of Lang in a bustier. "And speaking of roles, let's get you some. So far all they've offered us is top dollar, but you know, we both get that nowadays anyway. So let's see if we can't get you some speaking parts."
"I wouldn't object to that," said Cindy.
"Didn't think you would," Jack said, grinning.
"I am going to suck your cock so much tonight," Cindy said.
"Yes you are," Jack agreed.
A few minutes later Lang and friends filed into the room, and upon seeing them Lang immediately smiled. Like most actresses, she was expert at reading body language, and she could tell the deal was going to work.
"So, what's the verdict?" Lang asked when they were all seated.
"We like it," Jack said, "but we want a little more than top dollar..."
An Excerpt From Book Two of The Prop Master
Cindy crawled out from behind the curtains. She was naked. She wore a thick leather collar around her neck. A leather belt with several iron rings in it circled her waist. She wore leather cuffs and anklets with rings set in them as well.
