Down, down, then the footsteps changed as Aidan reached level ground. Angela hung there like a puppet, limp and helpless. It was a nightmare, or perhaps the life she had thought she was carving out for herself was merely a dream and this was the grim reality. Only Aidan could do this to her, stripping her of everything, humbling her, subduing her, and a part of her, that dark part that responded so strongly to him, rejoiced and could not wait for the next bout of pain-pleasure.
His footsteps echoed now and she sensed they had reached their destination. A cellar? A vault? This was the impression that played on her senses. She was aware that they were not alone, feeling surrounded. Aidan set her down. She grabbed at him, tottering blindly.
‘You want to see where you are and meet your admirers?’ he whispered in her ear, then took off the scarf.
She blinked in the dazzle of torchères standing near the rough stone walls. She had been right in her assessment. The place was a basement, or a dungeon. Another of Aidan’s hideouts where he and his confederates could indulge the passions they carefully concealed from the outside world. They murmured amongst themselves as her beauty was revealed.
‘I say, old sport, what a stunner!’ exclaimed a colonel with a flushed face, military moustache and medals across the breast of his crimson uniform jacket. ‘This the gal you had before? Thought she’d run away, what?’
‘I have given her enough rope to hang herself,’ Aidan replied loftily, and pinched Angela’s nipples through her bodice. ‘No matter what she does or where she goes, she’ll always come back to me.’
‘She thinks she’s very clever, giving us the slip, but we know all about her, don’t we, Maude?’ said Valerie, appearing from the background wearing an oyster satin gown. Angela’s onetime companion accompanied her. She was dressed in trousers with her hair slicked back, and was drawing on a cigarette in a slim jade holder.
‘Hello, Lady Angela,’ she said, blowing smoke rings in the air, acting the dashing dandy while Valerie watched her admiringly. ‘Doing well on the stage, are you? And enjoying your lodgings with Mrs Morrison?’
Angela’s heart sank. They knew everything about her. She felt trapped and unutterably miserable. Why could they not wish her well and let her go her way? She did not deign to respond, knowing that they had come to mock and abuse her. There were enough rods and whips hanging from racks for all to take their turn if they decided to flog her. Let them do their worst.
‘Still haughty, I see,’ Aidan said grittily, and took the gag from her mouth. ‘Time to bring you down a peg or two. You’re not top of the bill at the Savoy yet, and even when you are I shall remind you every so often that you’re my slave.’
‘Bastard,’ she managed to mumble, and was rewarded by a slashing blow across the rump.
‘Take your clothes off,’ he ordered, and unchained her hands.
‘Go to hell!’ she shouted, and made to run, but the men closed ranks, laughing and applauding.
‘The lass has spirit, Driscol, I give her that. A wild little filly,’ the colonel guffawed, quizzing her through his monocle.
‘What a challenge to break her,’ Aidan answered grimly, and swung round to Maude. ‘Strip her!’
‘Yes, master,’ she said, leaping forward and wrenching at Angela’s buttons and lacing.
Valerie joined in and, despite her flailing hands and savage kicks, Angela was soon deprived of all her clothing, with the exception of her pink corsets. Suspenders made a frame for her pubis in front and her bottom in the rear, attached to the tops of her silk stockings, and she retained her high-heeled ankle boots.
The observers cheered and swigged back tots of whiskey. Several already had their cocks out, stroking them in eager anticipation of joys to come. Angela, feeling more exposed in her stays than she would have done if entirely nude, cringed back, attempting to cover her bush with her hand.
Valerie seized her wrist and prised her fingers away, while Maude grabbed her other hand so that she stood there fully revealed. The men were in a ferment. The colonel collared Aidan and demanded, ‘You said you were holding an auction tonight. I’ll bid for her.’
Aidan shook him off and brushed his coat fastidiously. ‘What I said was, whoever fancies her can bid to be the second man to have her. I shall be the first, naturally.’
‘I say, what a capital wheeze,’ the colonel bellowed. ‘Reminds me of my days in the West Indies. What a jolly time we had before the abolition of slavery.’
‘I’ll bid, too,’ piped up Alfred, and the sheen of sweat on his brow enhanced his fresh complexion. ‘Don’t give a cuss about being the third, just as long as I can get my prick in her. She’s a stunner and no mistake. And I shall be able to boast that I’ve had one of the Savoy actresses. That’ll impress my friends.’
‘You’ll keep your mouth shut,’ Aidan snarled, grabbing him by his lapels and pinning him to the wall. ‘I don’t want any of this to be public knowledge. If I so much as hear a whisper I’ll get you, Codford, and you’ll regret that you were ever born.’
‘All right, old chap, don’t be like that. I only thought—’
‘Don’t think… be your normal addle-pated self,’ Aidan said acidly, and set him on his feet with a force that made his teeth rattle.
It was chilling to hear them squabbling over her like dogs with a bone, and Angela stood between Valerie and Maude and dreaded the next move.
Two black servants dressed as eastern guards placed themselves on either side of her. They were strapping men with fine physiques, bared to the waist, showing rippling chest muscles and mighty arms banded by damascened bracelets. One wore a turban and the other had a mane of ebony ringlets. Their emerald-green pantaloons drew the eye to the mighty packages nestling between their thighs. Valerie could not keep her hands off them, rousing those magnificent phalli and circling the tight discs of their nipples. They ignored her, immobile as rocks, arms folded and bare feet planted apart, awaiting their master’s orders.
Aidan gestured and they seized Angela and lifted her onto an oblong central stand that was doubling as an auction block. Chains were attached to her wrists and the ends slipped into rings fastened to the wood. Her ankles were treated in the same manner, and she stood there in all her nudity, unable to hide or run away.
The cellar throbbed with excitement and the men gathered round. She looked down into a sea of faces, some young, some middle-aged and some old enough to be grandfathers, but each wore the same glazed expression. She was being adored as perhaps once the Mother Goddess was worshipped, but there was a huge difference. Then, in those past ages when the world was still young, she had been viewed with reverence and awe, and no man would have dared lay a finger on her, let alone force and ravish. Now, all Angela read in their eyes was desire – a desire to conquer and enjoy – to show her that they were the superior beings and she a mere vehicle for their passion.
Aidan mounted the rostrum close by, banged on the surface with a gavel and shouted, ‘Let us begin, gentlemen. The only lot tonight is this beautiful Caucasian woman, well bred, well educated and talented. She is almost a virgin.’ A derisive roar went up and he silenced it and continued. ‘I can assure you that her only lovers have been men of consequence, and I was the first to wrest her maidenhead from her. So, where shall we start the bidding? May I say forty guineas?’
‘Aye, start there,’ the colonel shouted.
‘Forty five!’ declared an elderly statesman, devoted servant of Her Majesty.
‘Fifty!’ This came from Alfred, and Angela hoped that he might be the one to second Aidan in his possession of her. At least he was young and personable, while the rest looked what they were: a collection of debauched roués.
‘Sixty!’ chorused the colonel rashly. He approached Angela and, at Aidan’s nod of approval, prised her lower lips apart and inserted a stubby finger into her divide. ‘My word, Driscol, but she’s soaking wet!’ he exclaimed in delight.
The men guffawed and rubbed their pricks vigorously, while Valerie and M
aude opened the guards’ pantaloons and got to work on their fully erect members. They stood there deadpan, neither moving nor responding while the women used their expertise on them. Then the one in the turban grunted suddenly and his spunk shot from him, landing on the colonel’s highly polished boots.
‘Goddamn it!’ the colonel shouted, and brought his cane across the man’s thighs sharply, its end cutting into his deflated penis. ‘Lick it off, you dirty sod!’
The guard tucked his equipment away, sank to his knees, and applied his tongue to the task. The colonel lashed him with his cane but the man carried on regardless. When he had finished and the toecaps of the boots gleamed, he stood up and resumed his post.
‘Well done,’ Valerie crooned, and kissed his pointed nipples, that were darker even than his shining skin. ‘Perhaps these gentlemen will let you enjoy your prisoner once they’ve finished with her.’
Angela shivered with loathing and longing. She was at a high pitch of emotion that bordered on hysteria. The colonel had been right in his assessment of her readiness for penetration. She could not bring her thighs together, but could feel the trickle of lubrication seeping from her labial groove. Her excitement had almost the same quality as when she stood on stage, listening to the thunderous applause as the final curtain went down. Then she was caught up in the warm wave of feeling emanating from her audience. She felt loved, truly loved and, in a strange way, the admiration and attention of this crowd of rakes had that same curious intensity.
She adopted the pose of an abject slave, thinking herself into the part, head bowed, wrists and ankles chained, and the colonel inserted two fingers into her pulsing depths while his thumb rotated on her bud. Aidan stepped behind her, raised his whip and delivered a cracking blow on her quivering buttocks. She yelled and shrank and lost the rising impulse to orgasm, angry and disappointed, raging against him, her flesh seared by the sting of the lash.
‘Leave her be,’ he growled at the colonel. ‘You haven’t bought the right to use her. Let the bidding continue. Stroll round her, sirs, and view that perfect rump, fleshy yet firm, ideal for spanking, and more. See how it glows from my chastisement.’
With a hand at the nape of her neck he pressed her down from the waist, bottom in the air, her anal opening and damp pudenda on show. She had no choice but to gaze at the floor, aware of movements behind her and fingers exploring her intimate parts. She cursed Aidan mentally, and railed against fate that had brought her so low.
Aidan was guarding his treasure fiercely, and after a while shouted, ‘Enough! Stand up straight, slave.’
The auction continued, with more gentlemen joining in the bidding. At last Aidan brought down the hammer after pronouncing, ‘Have you all done, sirs? Any more advances? No? Then she goes to Lord Fennes for two hundred guineas. Going, going, gone!’
This couldn’t be true, Angela thought bleakly. She couldn’t be bought like this. Aidan wasn’t her owner – just her cold-blooded, ex-betrothed who betrayed her so dishonourably. This was England, not some uncivilised foreign shore. And as for Lord Fennes, she’d rather scrub floors than have him lay a hand on her!
He was certainly repulsive, a bent, bald-headed nobleman, impeccably dressed yet with a lined, sneering face and rheumy eyes that feasted upon her with undisguised lust. He had a walking stick on which he leaned, and his other hand was busy at his trouser opening, massaging a lean prick that dribbled pre-come. She wanted to beg Aidan to release her from his bargain with this disgusting peer, but knew it would be useless.
The colonel and Alfred were in second and third place, but Aidan had no intention of letting anyone near Angela till he had finished with her. Lord Fennes was smiling in lecherous glee as the black servants released her hands and feet and lifted her from the block. She glanced round for a means of escape, but Valerie and Maude were watchful and the crowd too great to break through.
‘Come, our audience is waiting,’ murmured Aidan in her ear, his cool breath raising goose bumps all over her.
‘I can’t, not in front of all these people,’ she protested, but his hand was on her rump, weighing the curves, toying with her.
‘It won’t be the first time,’ he reminded. ‘If I recall correctly I took your virginity at one of my parties, and a photographer was there. Did I show you the prints? No? They were excellent. I’m sure Mr Carte would be interested to see them.’
‘You wouldn’t!’ she gasped, horrified at the idea of such shameless pictures of her being laid on her employer’s desk. What would Helen think? And Mr Gilbert? She would be dismissed out of hand, her career finished when it was only just beginning.
‘Wouldn’t I?’ Aidan whispered, and his vulpine smile said it all. He was without scruples or mercy. There was nothing she could do, no argument that would sway him. Aidan was used to getting his own way on every issue, and it was this spirit of dominance that made him so irresistible. But she would have run from him if she could. She had much to lose now, whereas once there had been nothing save her self-respect.
‘Set me free, Aidan,’ she said quietly, not begging or imploring or tearful, but as one human being to another. ‘Let me get on with my life. What harm can it possibly do you? Don’t you want to see me successful?’
He stared at her coldly; an almost reptilian stare. ‘Of course I do, my dear, but under my terms. I should get the credit for freeing you from your straight-laced background and putting you in the footlight’s glare.’
‘I don’t belong to you, Aidan,’ she pressed. ‘I’m not your creature.’
He caressed her breasts in such a way that she leaned towards him, drawn like steel to a magnet. His smile deepened and his eyes were hooded as he responded, ‘Aren’t you, my love? Wasn’t it myself who taught you all you know about passion?’
‘And deceit and lies and pain and humiliation…’ she added.
‘You’ve enjoyed every moment of it,’ Valerie broke in, bizarre and beautiful, teasing the men who were trying to touch her and using a birch mercilessly if they persisted.
‘You’re wrong,’ Angela insisted, remembering oh-so-much. ‘I wish life had worked out otherwise.’
‘Too much talking,’ Aidan said finally, and propelled Angela towards a couch spread with a damask coverlet, adding, ‘time for fucking.’
He guided her down onto the heap of cushions, then lowered himself beside her and took one of her hands and placed on his fly. She could not control her fingers, tracing over the hard baton that lay behind it. There came a low growl from the spectators, and Lord Fennes pushed his way to the front, grinning down at the couple.
‘By God, Driscol!’ he exclaimed. ‘Get on with it, man. My prick is near to bursting.’
‘You’ll have to wait, sir,’ Aidan stated, leaving Angela momentarily to remove his clothes. ‘She is mine and I may decide to keep it that way.’
‘But I bid for her!’ Fennes cried angrily.
‘No money has been exchanged,’ was Aidan’s cool reply. ‘Now, if you will excuse me I have business to attend.’
He braced himself, leaning across Angela, his hands wandering over her with a sensualist’s knowledge of the female erogenous zones. She could not keep still under those arousing caresses. When he tired of this and stretched her across his knees and used his flat palm to spank her posterior soundly, she writhed and mewed like a kitten. Her buttocks were on fire, and so was her clit. By now she was blind to the stares and remarks, feeling the heat of his cock against her side, willing to endure his slaps if only she could have it within her.
The torches flickered, the brazier throwing off a blood-red glow. When Aidan righted her and took her in his arms and lay with her, all she could see was his chiselled features and burning eyes, his hair falling over his face as he bent to kiss her. She gasped her pleasure and her tongue responded to his. He raised his lips from hers and parted her legs, his eyes never leaving hers.
‘You are mine, Angela,’ he said huskily.
‘Yes…’ she breathed, all argumen
ts forgotten.
‘Say it properly,’ he reprimanded, slapping her breasts,
‘Yes, master,’ she faltered, then added, ‘don’t give me to them, please.’
‘I’ll reconsider, if you show me how dutifully you’ve practiced your lessons.’
It was as if the two were alone on a mountaintop. Nothing was of greater significance than his fingers slipping within her, then fondling her nubbin till she came, shuddering and sobbing. He opened her legs and brought them up, and angled himself above her, his penis brushing the tip of her clitoris, rousing it again. He supported himself on his arms then thrust forward, his cock plunging into her wetness. She welcomed him, her legs tightening around his waist. The watchers were rustling and murmuring, but she did not care who saw her taking Aidan into her body. Cruel he undoubtedly was, but her ardour for him had in no way diminished, though she tried hard to deny it.
He penetrated her again and again, slowly at first, but she lifted her pelvis, wanting deeper and deeper thrusts, rubbing her clitoris on his pubic bone, seeking sensation after sensation. Her passion was rising again and she tightened her arms round Aidan’s neck and ground herself against him, his shaft filling her completely. He lay prone upon her, crushing her with his weight, unconcerned about her discomfort – and this lack of consideration thrilled her. The more he thrust, hurting her with his savage intensity, the more she responded to his ardour, but his cock-root grinding against her clitoris was too rough and climax eluded her. Not so Aidan.
She felt his organ like a molten spear penetrating her tender depths. He moved faster and faster, the tension in him rising to breaking point. He shot his semen into her, and then buried his face in her neck for a moment, clasping her to him. There were cries of ‘Bravo!’ from his guests and he raised himself on one elbow and looked down at Angela.
‘All this nonsense about being chaste and ladylike,’ he mocked. ‘You’re a hot-arsed piece, and don’t try to deny it.’
‘I am what you made me,’ she responded, the sudden rush of tenderness she had felt melting like snow in sunlight. He really was incorrigible!
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