The Mistress of Sternwood Grange

by Arabella Knight

  Silently, Mandy wiped her moist palms on the sheen of her black-nyloned buttocks. Erica staggered away from the wall and adjusted her panties and skirt. Shouldering her strap, she strode off into the darkness. The three girls regrouped. They had, from their respective hiding places, all witnessed Erica’s display of self-pleasuring. Mandy sniffed at the heady pungent tang of their mixed scent of arousal.

  They hurried into the kitchen to find Partridge stretched in the Gibbet, her heavily fleshed buttocks an angry shade of red where Erica’s strap had lashed the naked cheeks. Sophie kissed and comforted the housekeeper, whispering soothing words as their lips fused. Sonia’s palms sought out and found the ripe breasts of the whipped woman. The minx squeezed the captive bosom tenderly. Mandy’s lips, and tongue, worked busily across the swell of the punished bottom, licking and lapping, kissing and healing the ravished cheeks.

  The three comforters crushed the comforted between their urgent bodies. Mandy’s arms encircled Partridge, pulling Sonia’s face into the punished housekeeper’s bosom. The minx’s pantied pubis kissed the bound woman’s sticky labia, the cotton clinging to the pouting flesh-lips. Mandy’s sheer black tights grazed the whipped buttocks as she pressed her hips into the rounded cheeks. Up above, the chain rattled as Partridge bucked in response.

  Exchanging tongues, Sophie and the housekeeper kissed deeply, lingeringly. Sonia ground her panties firmly into the warm delta as she sucked fiercely on the nipple in her mouth. Mandy felt the first spasm of the housekeeper’s orgasm as the hot cheeks quivered against her cool belly.

  Sonia’s hands slipped down over Partridge’s hips to capture, cup and squeeze the heavy cheeks. Her fingertips scraped against the sheen of Mandy’s black tights. Peeling the waistband down, the minx scrabbled at Mandy’s pubic fuzz. Mandy blindly sought out Sonia’s mouth. Prising the minx’s lips from Partridge’s breast, she slid her first and second fingers deep inside the open mouth.

  Up above, below the dry rattle of the Gibbet’s chain, Partridge and Sophie were tonguing each other furiously, both fused into an inevitable, rapidly approaching climax. Below, Mandy and the minx fingered each other frantically. The chain jerked and danced as all four came: slit to slit, flesh to flesh, in a welded paroxysm of liquid lust.

  ‘My honey trap has caught quite an interesting little haul,’ the voice of Erica snarled, her low voice breaking the silence of their exquisite joy.

  Mandy turned, her eyes clouded by orgasm, her face slack and pale. Sonia squealed with fear.

  ‘Take them to the gym. Yes, all four of them,’ Erica instructed.

  Mandy shrank back from the three sallow-skinned, dark-suited men who stepped forward. They did not obey the cropped blonde immediately, but stood, mouths open, drinking in the last ripples of orgasm convulsing the nude in the Gibbet.

  ‘Quickly, your master will be waiting,’ Erica snapped. ‘You can enjoy these bitches at your leisure later.’

  Mandy, obeying the strict instructions for silence, followed Erica and one of the three dark-suited thugs along the corridor towards the gym. The others followed behind, shepherded by the remaining two heavies. They must be the muscles, not the brains, of Erica’s party, Mandy calculated. Iraqi or Syrian, she could not tell. Probably cruel and definitely dangerous, she decided. The henchmen of the buyer of Sternwood Grange. But why were they being brought to the gym? She had waived the rights to the deeds. Why would the shrewd solicitor risk complicating matters? Risk Mandy fouling up the sale?

  They were led into the gym. Celia ignored them, other than instructing Erica and the heavies to gag and then tie the four captives to the wall bars. As Mandy, Sonia, Sophie and Partridge were stripped of whatever scant clothing they wore and bound face inwards to the gym wall, Celia continued her discussions with a hawk-nosed man of Arabic appearance. Mandy only managed a fleeting glimpse before rough hands peeled down her tights, palmed and pinched her buttocks dominantly, then yanked her arms up and bound them tightly by the wrists to the wood.

  ‘So glad you could join us,’ the solicitor began drily, sauntering across the polished floor of the gym to address the four bare bottoms. ‘May I present Mr Ozzam,’ she continued, ‘he is from –’

  ‘Many countries,’ a silky voice intervened. ‘Details do not matter, nor do border controls. One has so many passports.’

  Turkish? Or did Mandy catch the flat vowels of Eastern Europe there. Albanian, perhaps. Latvian possibly. Celia’s careful laughter broke into Mandy’s thoughts. ‘But of course. Details do not matter. Mr Ozzam is here to purchase Sternwood Grange.’

  ‘It is agreed,’ Mr Ozzam replied in the cosmopolitan accent Mandy found so difficult to place. He clapped his hands delightedly, adding, ‘It is everything you said it would be.’

  ‘There’s more,’ Celia added teasingly.

  More? Mandy froze, fear forming in her brain.

  ‘Three million,’ Ozzam enthused.

  ‘Three million, sterling,’ the solicitor echoed, clearly proud of her coup.

  He’s being ripped off, Mandy calculated. She knew the valuation and potential. How had she hoodwinked him?

  ‘And when you refurbish, build and extend, your investment will be doubled in a year.’

  Mandy frowned. So that was it. She knew now how Celia had managed to rip Ozzam off by several hundred thousand. Sterling.

  ‘Mr Ozzam runs a very similar establishment in Beirut. He is, he assures me, always looking for fresh faces.’

  ‘Flesh, certainly,’ Ozzam whispered excitedly. ‘Faces, they do not matter so much. But new flesh is highly prized in my humble house of pleasures.’

  The half-formed fear in Mandy’s brain took shape. Suddenly, she knew what Celia had in mind.

  ‘Sternwood Grange comes, as the contract will specify, with fixtures and fittings. These four beauties are an option, Mr Ozzam. Would you care to inspect them more closely?’

  The heavies stood aside smartly, their leather shoes squeaking on the polished floor, as their boss strode across to join the solicitor beside the four bare bottoms.

  ‘Your ancestors probably enjoyed the delights of examining naked females before the slave sale, Mr Ozzam,’ Celia observed suavely. ‘I hope you have inherited their skill and judgement.’

  Ozzam thumbed Sophie’s soft rump, and traced the swell of her outer thigh.

  ‘Young and tender, Mr Ozzam. To be served up, like pink, juicy lamb, to the discriminating appetite. The flesh of both are sweet and tight. An older man’s meal.’

  Ozzam fingered the stripes across Partridge’s whipped cheeks. Mandy heard his breath coming in excited gasps.

  ‘Mellow fruit for you, Mr Ozzam. Sweet, succulent and darkly fleshed. Think of a seasoned fig, split and oozing after many summers.’

  Ozzam grunted excitedly, knuckling the housekeeper’s cheeks fiercely then palming them expertly as if weighing her swollen buttocks. As he turned to Sonia beside her, Mandy heard his curse of approval.

  ‘A filly, Mr Ozzam, who has yet to taste the bridle or the bit. A spirited filly yet to bear the weight of a rider across her flesh. An interesting acquisition.’

  ‘Worth her weight in gold,’ Ozzam muttered, fondling Sonia’s apple breasts. I know a prince who would drown me in diamonds for one so young, so untried.’

  Turning to Mandy, he paused.

  ‘An English rose, Mr Ozzam. A rare bloom in the desert.’

  Mandy shrank from the cruel hands at her bosom, the thick fingertips rubbing her nipples, judging her flesh expertly. The hands caressed her belly and thighs, then spread around to her bottom. She felt both thumbs at her cleft, then sensed his face close to her skin. He sniffed deeply.

  ‘An English rose,’ he grunted. ‘With an intoxicating perfume.’

  She felt the thick thumbs splay her cheeks wide apart, and burned with shame as he bent down to inspect her intimately.

  ‘This one, like the others, has been whipped recently, no?’

  Mandy felt the stubby fingertip tracing the red
lines of Erica’s cane strokes.

  ‘All of them have been punished since sunset,’ Celia conceded. ‘That one especially needs the kiss of the cane. Be sure to remember that. Stripe her regularly, Mr Ozzam, and she will perform exactly to your pleasing.’

  ‘I will remember,’ Ozzam promised.

  ‘They will all respond well to discipline,’ Celia continued. ‘They are like flowers in the desert, my dear Mr Ozzam.’

  ‘How?’ he queried. ‘Flowers in my desert suffer and thirst before they blossom.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she whispered. ‘These four thirst for punishment. Be sure that they suffer before they blossom. Especially our sweet English rose.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Ozzam grunted. ‘I will remember that when they are in my humble house of pleasures.’

  ‘Why not reserve them for those clients who prefer fiercer pleasures: the delights of the whip and cane?’

  ‘It is as you say. These four will serve my very discerning gentlemen.’

  Mandy shivered. Beside her, she heard Sonia whimper anxiously into her gag.

  ‘We will exchange contracts tomorrow,’ Celia concluded, guiding Ozzam to the door.

  ‘And those?’ Mandy heard him say. ‘Are they included in the price?’

  ‘Of course. I promised you a little extra, didn’t I?’

  ‘But, my dear lady, they are worth –’

  ‘They are a token of my good will. I will have them marked as sold for you,’ the solicitor said reassuringly. ‘Erica.’

  Erica stepped forward and, opening a red lipstick, drew a thick red circle on each of the four naked bottoms. Mandy clenched her buttocks but Erica’s spank softened them into submission: loathing the cool kiss of the lipstick, Mandy felt the large O branded on her left buttock.

  ‘See? They are now yours. But come. Let us take some supper together. And, tomorrow, we shall have a whipping party in honour of the sale of Sternwood Grange. A fitting memento, I think.’

  ‘But how delightful. I may have the very whip for just such an occasion,’ he replied, his voice fading as he passed through the gym doors.

  When Ozzam had stroked his thumb down the length of the minx’s cleft, he had caused her to jerk violently in her bondage. The sudden jolt had slightly loosened the cords at her slender left wrist. Straining and struggling like a rabbit in a snare, she wriggled and writhed in the darkness until her aching left arm was free.

  They were startled by her soft voice when she had untied her gag. ‘I’ll just undo the other arm if I can and then I’ll undo your knots.’

  Moments later, the freed hands were unpicking the cords of those still bound until all four women sank their bottoms down on to the polished wooden floor, easing the burning ache at their wrists. Partridge, overwhelmed by the evening’s events, sought information and explanations.

  ‘So much is happening that I don’t understand,’ she sighed.

  They told her, each whispering excitedly as they fitted in another piece of the picture which puzzled her.

  ‘I remember,’ the brown-eyed housekeeper said. ‘It was your eighteenth birthday. Your aunt was very cross with you –’

  ‘And you came upstairs and –’

  ‘Whipped your bottom. Amanda Silk, why of course.’

  They hugged in the darkness, delighted at their reunion.

  ‘But Celia tricked Mandy out of her legacy,’ Sonia chipped in breathlessly, quickly completing the story.

  ‘Then we’d better all get out of Sternwood Grange tonight,’ Partridge decided, her tone emphatic. ‘I will look after you, girls. I’ll get you safely back to London. Trust me.’

  ‘Dear Partridge, always so loyal. But I’m staying,’ Mandy whispered. ‘You three go. And look after each other. I’ve got things to do here.’

  ‘But you can’t,’ Sonia protested, kneeling closer to Mandy in the darkness. Their breasts brushed. Mandy felt the minx’s pink slit press her belly and shivered with delight. ‘You know what she’s planned for tomorrow. A whipping party. And then it’ll be off to Beirut and I’ll never see you again,’ she wailed.

  ‘I’ll be OK,’ Mandy promised. She gave them her London address. ‘We’ll meet up there in a day or two.’

  ‘You’re not going to try to take on that solicitor woman,’ Sophie gasped, appalled. ‘She’s dangerous. And Erica, she’s –’

  Mandy kept her plans secret, but consoled them. ‘No, I’m not going to deal with those two just yet. They will have to wait.’

  Tearfully – little Sonia sobbed and clung on hard – they whispered their farewells in the darkness of the gym, promising to reunite in Notting Hill before the week was over.

  ‘Be sure you all get right away,’ Mandy made them promise. ‘It’s your only chance.’

  Reluctantly, they promised.

  ‘You must get away. But I must take my own chances.’

  Mandy had worked out, by a process of elimination, that Ozzam would be in the gilded bedroom in the East Wing. As Celia’s guest of honour, he would have been given the stateroom once graced by the presence of the Cavalier king.

  Stealing through the moonbeams that fingered the darkness up on the second floor, she was within ten feet of the massive double doors when a strong hand closed around her mouth, and its partner grasped her wrist and twisted her arm up behind her back. An ever watchful heavy had pounced silently out of the shadows and intercepted her.

  ‘What you want? What you do?’ snarled the man, the garlic on his breath overpowering her as much as his skilful strength.

  ‘Mr Ozzam,’ she mumbled meekly into the hard palm at her lips. ‘I have been sent to pleasure him.’

  ‘He sleeps,’ the heavy grunted, pinning her to the wall, squashing her bosom painfully as he lodged his knee in her buttocks.

  ‘Then wake him,’ Mandy gasped. ‘Or,’ she added with a brazen bluff, ‘face his anger in the morning.’

  The knee left her cleft; she peeled her breasts from the wall. She felt the grip on her arm loosen – a fraction – as the bodyguard considered this.

  ‘You come,’ he decided, dragging her naked body up to the double doors as if it were a bin bag. Dropping her on to the carpet, and pinioning her down with his foot, he tapped on the aged oak. Three short raps and one long. The left-hand-side door opened immediately. Mandy saw another heavy loom into the moonlight.

  ‘She has come for the boss.’

  ‘He sleeps.’

  ‘Then wake him.’ Pause. ‘Or,’ Mandy’s goon said, stealing her line, ‘face his anger in the morning.’

  It worked. Minutes later, both heavies were sent into the exile of the corridor beyond the closed double doors as Mandy stood, nakedly demure, at the foot of the once royal bed.

  ‘So, English rose, you have come to pleasure me?’ Ozzam purred, staring at her with hot, narrowed eyes.

  She gazed back at him, wondering when and how to begin. ‘I was worried,’ she whispered.

  ‘You were worried? On what account?’

  She took a deep breath, feigning an effort. ‘That in your humble house of pleasures, the other girls already there would be more accomplished, more versatile, more experienced than me. I do not want to disappoint.’

  ‘Do not have such fears, girl. The whip and the cane await you. One will teach and the other will train you so that you will learn to give complete satisfaction. But I do not understand. Why come to me tonight?’

  ‘I thought – it was a foolish thought – that I would learn from you. When you touched my nakedness earlier I felt your skill and strength. Your touch was sure and certain, my body told me so.’

  ‘So?’ The tone could not disguise his evident pleasure of her flattering tribute. Between his thighs, the silk sheet bulged.

  ‘Who would buy a sports car without a test drive? Try me now, tonight,’ Mandy added quickly. ‘Teach me what I must know.’

  Ozzam’s interest intensified. Mandy palmed her breasts, bunching them deliciously, then dropped her fingers to pluck at her pubic fuzz. Sh
e was vulnerable, naked and delicious in her guise of reluctant willingness. His eyes flickered slowly like those of a lizard stirring in the sun. Under the taut silk, Mandy saw his keener interest thicken and rise proudly.

  ‘Come into my bed, English rose. Let us see if we can open your soft petals tonight while the dew is still on them. Let us sip your nectar and judge its sweetness –’

  ‘And if I am ready to be plucked,’ Mandy murmured, slipping in alongside his naked body.

  Ozzam was in his late forties, his body firm and lean. Mandy saw the scars on his shoulders and thigh. Not the scars of bar-room brawls, but of AK-47 fire and shrapnel. Ozzam had lived in the very teeth of death. Such men were without mercy. His eventful life had aged his face, adding cruel lines to his dark eyes and sensual mouth. Mandy peered shyly at his mouth. This was a man who had tasted all the dishes, all the delights of the flesh, she calculated. Now she was his titbit for the hour, naked as a shorn lamb. How could she hope to satisfy this greedy epicure, to whet and sate his jaded appetite?

  Already his hands, then his mouth, were feasting at her bosom. His thick shaft raked her upper thigh and pierced her belly as he lurched over in the bed of silk, poised to crudely mount and penetrate her as she lay wide-thighed below.

  Closing her eyes, she tried desperately to remember any and every trick she had picked up while serving the clients here at Sternwood Grange. Her brain became a kaleidoscope of fragmented images as she felt his hard flesh nudging at her labia. One idea burned brighter and deeper than all: taunt and tease.

  Yes. That is what she should – must – do. Not strive to please him in passive surrender but plan her assault on his quivering senses with subtle skill. Taunt and tease. She would kindle in him a raging desire – then deny him satisfaction.

  She wriggled herself free from beneath his nakedness, and nimbly straddled him, splaying her buttocks on to his thighs and pinning him down with her hands on his sinewy shoulders. She felt his steel muscles ripple beneath her soft naked warmth, and knew that he could pitch her off and ravish her in a split second.