Owned and Owner

by Anneke Jacob

  Again the food was unfamiliar; it was very plain. Some kind of porridge and a few vegetables. I could tell he had something different by the smells in the air. Whatever it was, it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t very hungry (too horny), and I was trying to eat without getting food on my face or in my hair. He was finished long before me; I could feel him eyeing me for a while. When I straightened my arms and sat back on my heels I caught his expression, and I froze again. He took a few steps across the room and came back with a thonged whip. He pushed my face down into the bowl and began to beat me. I choked, my face so far into the bowl that I couldn’t see the food I began trying frantically to lick up. My painful keening was muffled by wet, embarrassing sounds of inefficient chewing and desperate swallowing. Tears were trickling down my messy face and into the bowl by the time I licked it clean and he stopped whipping me.

  He left me there on my hands and knees for at least a half an hour, wrists fastened to the bowl, face covered with drying, flaky food. There was even some in my eyelashes. My ass felt hot and swollen; I couldn’t count the beatings it had taken so far that day. I cried a little, partly because of the pain and humiliation, of course, and partly because of the fear of what was coming next. I was hoping that once I knew the rules I wouldn’t get beaten quite so much. I was feeling very stupid; it had never occurred to me, in all my fantasies, that I would have to be trained. I guess I thought my master would put me where he wanted me, do what he liked with me, that I could be the passive – orgasmic – object. I knew I’d be beaten, for pleasure or as a punishment. I had just never thought I’d have to make the effort to learn something. I hadn’t made an effort to please anyone at home, naturally. And look at the mess that had been. Now I didn’t really have a choice about it; I made an effort or else. This was terrifying – what if I couldn’t learn? But also comforting. Making choices wasn’t exactly my strong point.

  The room was starting to get dark; night was falling. One of the other men came in and cleaned me up, then unlocked my wrists from the bowl. He locked a short chain onto my collar and led me up the stairs to a bedroom. The furnishings were simple, but had a lot of color, ruby shades and dark blues. Some primitive-looking art on the walls. The floor was slightly soft and resilient. I didn’t get much chance to look around; the man locked my chain low down at the foot of the bed and left. This time I couldn’t even consider lying down; the short chain was mostly taken up by having circled the bedpost. I couldn’t straighten up either. The most comfortable position – well, the least uncomfortable, anyway – was back on my hands and knees, sitting on my haunches with my head low. I was thinking that there was a breed of dog that sat like that, but I couldn’t think of the name of it. Some hound, I think. One of the ancient breeds.

  I could hear sounds in other parts of the house, voices (those deep rumbles), things being moved, etcetera. I thought over what I’d learned that day. Rule One: Don’t speak. That seemed to be critical, given the severity of the punishment. I wondered how I was ever going to learn the language if I couldn’t try it out. Rule Two: Hard to define – a big composite bunch of barely acquired skills: Don’t let my teeth touch his penis; don’t gag; use my tongue along the ridge… Rule 3: Eat all my food whether I want it or not, and don’t take too long about it. Rule 4 was probably Stay in the position you’re placed in, but I hadn’t dared to test that yet.

  At last I heard footsteps coming along the hall. My master came in with some straps in his hand; I could catch that from peripheral vision. My breathing was suddenly shallow again; whether from his presence or from the sight of the straps I’m not sure. Probably both. He threw the straps on the bed and ignored me as he opened and closed drawers, rifled through papers, went to the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of his naked back, a long, lithe, muscular triangle. I was suddenly so aroused I could hardly bear it.

  Finally he was standing over me. I found myself almost whimpering from fear and eagerness. He unlocked my collar from the chain and stood me up. My head didn’t even reach his chest. I cast covert glances at him as he went efficiently to work. The muscles in his arms… those shoulders… the smell of him… I wanted to rub myself against that body, open myself… He clipped a strap to my right wrist cuff and pulled my hand up behind my back, as high as it would go. I could see him watching my face for pain and adjusting the pull just short of that point. He passed the strap over my left shoulder, then diagonally down between my breasts to the right side of my waist. He kept it very taut as it went around the small of my back, crossed up from the left between my breasts again, and over my right shoulder. Then he slid it through the ring on my left wrist cuff, pulled that one up high behind my back, and clipped it. My arms were so firm to my back that they had virtually no movement at all. I felt my heart pounding and my insides swell, warm and wet and needy. I looked down. My breasts looked lovely, barbaric, with black leather crossed between them. And so vulnerable and exposed by the bondage.

  Then my master sat me on his lap and made good use of their exposure. He spent a long, long time playing with my breasts, stroking, squeezing, pinching, pulling. Now there were nerves leading from them to every part of my body and back again, tugging, interweaving, vibrating. My mouth was open and I was breathing in guttural groans. I lost control and moved against his leg, and was rewarded by several painful slaps to my breasts, rather than caresses. He took his hand away until he was sure I was going to sit still, and then he continued. He began kissing me deeply. I responded with everything I had; at least he let me use my mouth. Then he turned me face down over his lap and ran his fingers across the welts he’d given me. He slapped them, not too hard, but enough to revive the pain of all the day’s beatings, while he went back to pinching my nipples with the other hand. I began to think I might come from this alone, but I couldn’t; all it did was hold me dangling over the cliff, without letting me fall. I had been too overwhelmed in that first tumultuous encounter to try for an orgasm, but my arousal had accumulated, was now deeper and more profound, and I was being played and teased, teased and manipulated… He began carefully pinching and stretching my cunt lips, slowly, never staying in close so I could satisfy myself against his hand. I was moving uncontrollably now, for which I got some harder slaps.

  At last he sat me on his lap with my back to him, lifted my hips and slowly worked me down over his huge cock. I was still sore and it hurt, but I was so deep, so in thrall to all the other sensations that pain only intensified them. His hands twisted my nipples and slid over my clitoris, and I screamed and came, and came, and came. It was a full minute of fireworks, exploding from my cunt outward, while he squeezed me tightly in his hand. I felt lit up; I think I would have glowed in the dark. You sure as hell could have heard me, anyway. Then he stood up, still inside me, and carried me to the bed where he arranged me on my face, ass high, still moaning and whimpering and clutching him with my wet cunt. He got his hand into the strap around my waist, and used it to keep me steady while he fucked me, hard, his body punishing my red ass as he thrust. Another intense spasm shook me and I screamed again. By the time he came I was so full of joy that tears leaked from my eyes. In that moment I knew it was all justified, it was worth it; everything I’d been through and put others through, the fear and the terrible risk. I had done what I had to do, and it was right.

  My bed that night was in a little space under the stairs on the ground floor. It had probably just been cleared out for me. He chained my collar to a new ringbolt in the back wall, and gave me a blanket. I felt a little wistful that he didn’t want me in his bed, or even at the foot of it. I crouched, holding the blanket, looking up at him, hoping to convey my longing with my eyes. I wanted to put my hand out to touch him, but I was afraid. That face was too foreign still, to guess what he might be thinking. Then he gestured with one hand, pushing my head down with the other. I kissed his feet. He patted me, and then he was gone in the dimness.

  I didn’t sleep for a long time, not surprisingly. The blanket didn’t cushion the hard floor much.
More important, I had huge amounts of experience to process, too much for one exhausted and overwhelmed slave to handle. My tired brain would not turn off. I relived the intense pain and pleasure of the day; both still lingered, imprinted on my nerves, my flesh. My owner’s touch, his glance, seemed branded on me. What had really happened between us? What did that mean for tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that? What would he expect next from me? How should I act? Where did the other two men fit in? My grasp on the possibilities was frustratingly tenuous, which made me all the more anxious to impose some order on it all. If I could just anticipate, maybe I could handle it better… once I picked up the language…

  Garid lay sleepless in his bed. Details surfaced in his mind that he had not been aware of at the time: his slave’s slight shake of the head when afraid, the way her buttocks shuddered and clenched under the whip, her helpless little hands and feet. He could see her slender forearm, like a doll’s in his fist. She had reacted intensely when both nipples were squeezed, seeming to go into a trance. He remembered her slow upward glance as she stood before him, her eyes finally raised to his and locked, trying to drop her gaze but held helpless. With time he wanted to control her slightest movement, without even touching her, without ever using language more sophisticated than he would use on a dog.

  That night he dreamed that he was starting out for somewhere; he didn’t know where, but there was a sense of great significance about the trip. He was preparing for the journey, gathering supplies, packing containers, all with one hand. The other was held against him, closed around something very small. At last he looked down and opened his hand. She was there, curled up in his palm, looking up at him.

  Toys

  I remember every minute of that first day with my master. After that, it’s harder to sort out what happened when. It seems to me I spent the first few weeks on the point of fainting from fear and excitement. And from pain, sometimes. I know that there were hours every day when my master taught me exactly what he expected from me in the way of obedient behavior, with plenty of beatings to reinforce the learning. He did this with very few words, none of which I was allowed to say. I obeyed as well as I could; I had to, though it was a terrible struggle sometimes. I wanted to open my legs for him, present my breasts to him, even present my ass to be whipped – a little. That kind of obedience was relatively easy. It was much harder to open myself to real pain: to open my thighs to his whip, to hold up my breasts for the cane. Much harder to obey when it meant I got less attention rather than more, which was frequently the case.

  And I was so clumsy at first, as I changed positions or presented myself for him to use. The lack of language slowed down my learning in a lot of areas – often I had no idea what I was being punished for – but I knew right away that I was unacceptably awkward. I often got the timing wrong and made the leash pull, or staggered as I rose from my knees, because my hands were behind my back and I didn’t have the knack of balancing without them. He made me try moves like that over and over until I improved. Gradually I got better, but his requirements became more and more demanding and subtle as time went on. It was very hard to read his expression, or lack of it. Still, when a faint line appeared between his eyebrows my heart went into high gear. Punishment followed on that expression, like the crack of thunder follows a lightning flash.

  He spent a lot of time with me in the first few weeks, and I became more accustomed to his incredible size and shape, his face outlined by darkness, the light eyes capturing me daily the way they had on the auction platform. His expression was generally impassive, unless he was very pleased, when he might break into a rare and heart-stopping smile. He didn’t reward me in that way when I managed to perform properly; a nod and pat and less punishment was the most I could expect. No, the smile was reserved for the moments when he had most discomfited or humiliated me, and he was watching the experience hit home. It was a smile of purest pleasure. It was not a sadistic smile, oddly enough, but something else, something I was too ignorant to understand. But even as I writhed, somehow I wanted more of it.

  Within a day or two of my arrival I had been holographed in detail. New restraints kept appearing. One might be favored for a while, then another. Not that the old ones had lost their charms. I mean, all he had to do was fasten my arms behind me and I was gone. Given our respective sizes, just being handled by him was a bondage in itself. One huge hand around my arm was as implacable, as inescapable as the cuffs and chains that I lived in.

  Still, there were new restraints. One day I was standing on tiptoe with my arms pulled taut above my head, and my master approached me with something in his hands that I recognized, with a thrill of excitement, as a corset. I had seen pictures of these in the articles on ancient costumes that I used to screen. I loved to look at the restrictive garments, try to imagine what they felt like, transport myself into a time when I was forced to wear one. And now here it was, a corset and harness combination that literally took my breath away. As my ribs struggled to expand against the hard leather I found out what they felt like, discovered the deep sexual flush that this kind of restriction brought me. It was as if all the heat in the squeezed areas was flowing down to make me open and swell, in waves of thick, slippery heat. My master pulled straps up on either side of my cunt and tightened the thigh bands; he paused to stroke my wide open slickness, so tightly framed with leather. I pulled so hard on my wrists that I lifted myself off my feet, my toes curling. I groaned and gasped, hungry, begging him with my vaguely thrusting hips to touch me again.

  The corset curved closely underneath and between my breasts, like a pair of hands pushing up from below. He began tightening the heavy straps that fitted above them, restricting my breathing further, and squeezing my breasts so hard they jutted out firm and smooth as marble. Then he brought out a wide-fingered whip and began beating them, gently at first, and then harder and harder. When the tip of a strap caught my nipple the intense pain caught me by surprise; I screamed, ‘Please…!’ Big mistake. Within seconds I had a fat gag in my mouth and I was being caned, several times on the ass and twice on the breasts. I hung there, weeping and gasping through the gag’s air hole. Pain suffused my whole body, stretched and restrained as I was. The agonizing throb in my ass and breasts interwove with my cunt’s seething, touched every part of me till I was lost again in that confused web of sensation. Shame intensified all of this, shame at having to be punished again, and disgust at myself for forgetting the rules.

  When he finally let me down I crawled to him with my head down, hoping for a sign of forgiveness, still whimpering with pain and need. I don’t know if what he gave me was forgiveness or not. He took me hard and fast from behind, making sure not just to pound against the welts on my rear, but also to squeeze those on my harnessed breasts, rubbing large fingers across them in deliberate torment. When I came it was with screams, still muffled by the gag.

  After it was over he sat in a chair for a while, and let me lean against his leg. When he did not stroke my hair I finally got courage to look up at him, my head on his knee. He looked at me, his face impassive, unresponsive to my pleading look.

  I didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t guiding me, and I found it scarier than his most stringent demands. Had I messed up permanently? Had he decided that my speaking meant I wasn’t suitable to be his slave? Even worse, was he right? I touched the gag, using my fingers to settle it more firmly in my mouth. I hoped he would understand the gesture. Then I lay face down at his feet. Eventually he picked up a book, put his foot on my back and began to rock me a little. I lay passively, my sore, distended breasts pressed painfully into the floor, grateful for the touch of the foot that pushed me rhythmically back and forth.

  Every morning when he woke there was a momentary suspension of belief, a pause, before Garid smiled, his eyes still closed, and remembered that it was true. He was really living what he wanted most. He felt as if he was doing a VR brainwave tube, with his own needs and fantasies to guide the program. Only it
was even better than fantasy, because he had never imagined the sweet subtleties of her trembling body, the pulse in her throat, the complex sounds of fear and submission and ecstasy coming from behind her gags. He had known he would be possessive, but never imagined being himself possessed by such a fierce sense of ownership, the jealous ruler of this small kingdom, this one subject.

  Apart from his friend, Therin, whose exuberant good nature was hard to resist, he fended off most of the calls from his associates on the would-be masters’ network, all of them eager to hear how he was doing, eager to visit, eager to grab a chunk of his prize. And though the real owners would probably make him welcome now, Garid stayed away. There was a driven quality to his feelings that he had never cared to dilute, and he did not want to lessen that intensity now. He owned this woman. That one incredible fact kept surprising him, kept him aching with lust, kept electrifying him every time he looked at her.

  He did talk to Therin sometimes, even though his friend’s inevitable wistfulness made him feel a little awkward.

  ‘How’s your little creature?’ Therin asked by vidcam one day. ‘What are you calling her, anyway?’

  ‘Just “jeedy”.’ This was the diminutive of the word ‘hajedy’, meaning female animal. ‘Jeedy’ was one of the terms men used on Henth to call female pets or farm animals – ‘Here, jeedy!’ There were other such diminutives, from various parts of the planet, all of which, like ‘jeedy’, were more or less equivalent to ‘girl’, except that, since on Henth nothing female was human, the words had no human connotation.