Owned and Owner

by Anneke Jacob

  ‘No differences in how you treat her?’ Garid asked.

  ‘Well, I’m a bit restricted by location, except on the weekend when I play with her at Miseko’s. I do have to work sometime. After all, I have debts to pay, right?’ He bowed toward Garid. ‘And all because of her, I might add! So I don’t get a chance to do much pony training. I’ve found that when I have Vizay at my place she needs to be kept locked up pretty firmly or she distracts me; she’s like a cat, always rubbing up against me. Which is fun, but I was getting behind.’

  ‘You’ve got that panel to lock her into. Cerivar, have you seen that?’

  ‘Only by vidcam; I’ll have to get over there someday. It looked gorgeous.’

  ‘Wood Nymph from the Rear,’ said Garid, motioning a large rectangle with one hand and curves with the other.

  ‘Mm-hmm, that’s fun, but I’ve made something simpler when I just want her out of the way for a few minutes. I’ve made a little seat for her.’ He laughed.

  ‘A seat?’

  ‘It’s about a meter off the floor. It’s just a thick, smooth, wooden bar sticking out of the wall, curving up, attached…’ his hands outlined a ‘T’ shape with the arms of the ‘T’ curving back, ‘…to another curved bar that holds her round the waist. Tight. That one attaches to the wall on either side. When I don’t need her I sit her in that and lock it. She has quite a good time, but it gets uncomfortable after a while.’

  Garid thought he’d enjoy seeing this method of storage. He watched Teats pulling her load, almost at the barn now, and Kolyrik bringing her in by the bridle.

  Cerivar asked, ‘Did you see her get shocked on that run?’ The others shook their heads. ‘She’s learning. But Garid, to get back to the obedience question, do you never want the fun of dealing with resistance? I’d get bored.’

  Garid thought about this. ‘I’m never bored with my slave.’ He lay back in his chair and looked at the horizon, where turquoise was darkening to teal. Pale orange shreds of cloud drifted low. ‘I suppose what I’m dealing with is another kind of resistance. I’m talking about her will, rather than her body. She still has a will, and it’s still a struggle, but it’s quite a subtle one. She’s very docile, she does exactly as she’s told, but I can still see her sometimes, trying to anticipate, or second-guess an order, trying to use her intelligence, trying to be something other than what she is. I like to see her let go of that, give herself up completely. Then mind, body, everything becomes whatever I want it to be. It’s ironic, because in fact she has to use whatever she’s got in order to let go as well as she does.’

  ‘It probably helps that she can’t speak Henthen,’ said Therin. ‘Much harder to take control when she doesn’t understand what’s going on.’

  ‘I heard you won’t let her talk at all,’ said Cerivar.

  ‘She can’t understand or speak. She’s never been allowed to learn Henthen, and she lost any urge to speak a long time ago.’

  ‘The more severe punishments we were speaking of, I take it?’

  ‘Yes. I beat it out of her. As far as I’m concerned, women on this planet are animals and shouldn’t be allowed language. But – each to his own.’ He shrugged to show he meant no offense.

  ‘Too late now in Teats’ case.’ Teats was leaving the barn again, the empty cars at her tail. They watched her slowly recede into the distance. The setting sun hit the rails, fiery orange lines glinting through green that was suddenly marked with shadows.

  ‘Vizay’s also; she doesn’t know a lot of Henthen, but probably more than we think. Anyway, I like listening to her begging to be taken out of her wall seat, in that soft, pleading little voice.’

  ‘But should you let them speak among themselves?’ Garid enquired. ‘Especially Ranize?’

  Both men shook their heads. ‘Of course not; who knows what they’d be plotting!’ said Cerivar.

  ‘Hmm. All right, I’ll suggest a rule that when stables are shared the women are gagged.’

  ‘That’s no good if they’re sharing a trough,’ said Therin. ‘They’d have to be watched all the time then. I’ll volunteer,’ he grinned slyly. ‘Did you see how Arageda stopped his slave’s mouth after you complained at Miseko’s? The next time she was there he had her in a tongue press.’ He explained to Garid, who hadn’t seen it. ‘Just two little rectangles of wood held together at the ends with bolts, squeezing her tongue. They go across her mouth like a bit. He had it strapped behind her head so she couldn’t slide it off; apparently she worked it off once.’

  ‘He was the one who was most interested in the fact that his slave had been talking,’ Garid commented. ‘Good for him.’

  ‘He’s planning to put a stud in her tongue so she won’t be able to slide it off.’

  ‘Then he won’t have to use the strap. Nice. More elegant that way.’

  Cerivar returned to Garid’s disciplinary methods. ‘Your slave is the one in the chastity belt, right? I bet she’d do anything to get that off.’

  Therin laughed. ‘She gave up on that one ages ago, eh, Garid?’ For a while he had observed, fascinated, as Garid drew out the punishment for his slave’s outrageous misbehavior. He knew that his friend had not yet seen fit to end the punishment. ‘Garid doesn’t think short-term,’ he told Cerivar. ‘I hold back on Vizay sometimes, just for fun, or make her do things to get the treat. But in the end she always gets to come, a lot. Garid’s pet can’t do anything to earn an orgasm; she’s got no hope at all as far as I can see.’

  Garid shook his head. ‘She can’t earn one; as a slave she has no right to have orgasms.’

  ‘Not ever?’

  ‘Slaves have no rights. If I feel like giving her one, arbitrarily, that’s my choice. All she can do is never, ever try for one. If she tried to make herself come, or to manipulate me into making her come, she’d still be thinking it was something she had some control over. I won’t ever let her have one if she thinks that. And she’s learned not to.’

  ‘So are you ever going to let her come again?’ Therin asked.

  ‘Once I’m sure she understands, understands deep down, that orgasms are completely at my whim and have nothing whatsoever to do with what she wants, she might get one occasionally.’

  ‘But you tease her all the time, don’t you?’ said Cerivar. ‘I’ve seen the dildos in that belt.’

  ‘Oh yes, but it’s not just the dildos; I take her right to the brink, and then stop.’ The other two men looked appalled and aroused by this level of cruelty.

  ‘How often?’

  ‘Most days.’

  ‘Are you saying that she can take all that and still not try to come?’ asked Cerivar, incredulous.

  ‘She can now. As I said, she’s learning. The lesson wouldn’t mean much if it wasn’t difficult. I think it’s the one thing that’s done more than anything else to teach her what she is.’

  ‘I think pony training does that,’ Therin said. ‘They need to know that they’re animals, and on the track they learn that they can’t think for themselves.’

  ‘That helps,’ Garid agreed. ‘But it excites them, just as it does us, you know. All of this does; the beatings, the bondage. If we always resolve that excitement, let them have their pleasure, it’s – I don’t know, for me the relationship becomes mutual, it evens out. It’s an unwritten contract, a game.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Therin. ‘I guess I could agree that it’s up to me arbitrarily to let Vizay come or not. I just choose to let her, even if I delay it a bit, because I enjoy it.’

  ‘Sure, that’s a valid point of view,’ agreed Garid. ‘But does Vizay know that you could choose not to let her? Or does she think she has the right to come – because she always does?’ Therin sat back to think about this. Garid went on. ‘When I first got my slave I made her come a lot, and I enjoyed that. I controlled when and how, so it felt right enough.’ He considered a little. ‘It strengthened her bond to me, too.’ Teats had been out of sight, but now the three men could see the harnessed figure hauling the hea
vy load behind her. They watched in silence for a minute, and then Garid went on. ‘But I started to see how much enjoyment there was in frustrating her, and how much more powerful that was. No one but me can or will satisfy that need, including herself. I have the keys. She’s utterly dependent on me. And I make sure that the need is continual, and intense.’

  Cerivar mused, ‘I’ve watched some owners go in the other direction, force their slaves to come over and over until it hurts.’

  ‘Well, at least that’s an indication of power,’ said Garid. ‘Doesn’t appeal to me at all, but it makes some sense.’

  Therin, having given more thought to the matter, spoke up. ‘What works may depend on the female, and on what the owner likes as well. Some women are humiliated by being forced to come. So it’s fun to do that, especially in public. Some of us – like Cerivar here – enjoy giving their slaves a bit of slack, so they can have the fun of reining them in and showing them who’s boss, over and over again. Isn’t that right?’ Cerivar nodded. ‘And some of us, like me, get a kick out of giving a woman pleasure, just as much as we do from hurting them. As long as we get what we want, and the slaves are under control, what does it matter?’

  Garid was silent for a while, looking at the clouds moving across the cooling sky, gathering more color as they went. Then he nodded. ‘You’re right. There’s no one way to do this. After all, what’s the point of being an owner if you can’t do it your own way?’

  Still, each of the men had some new thoughts. Therin and Cerivar were both planning a little more teasing and denial with their slaves, just to see where it led. And Garid was musing about the uses of a butt plug shocker in pony training.

  It was dusk by the time the visitors said their goodbyes. As he guided the aircar upward, Garid looked back down at the house. Cerivar was sitting on his veranda, the small woman on his lap. Her face was hidden against him; one hand just visible against his chest. She seemed to have given up her tired body without reserve. Cerivar was stroking her with one hand while he waved cheerily at them with the other.

  Party

  One day after a race, I noticed that the ride home was longer than the ride out had been. Where were we going? The car stopped, and I was left to ponder this for quite a long time in the crate.

  I had lost the race, and was still sniffling and rubbing my stinging nose with my mitt. I couldn’t rub the other place that was stinging. My master had been pushing me harder lately, giving me shocks through a butt plug to speed me up, or in response to any hesitation on my part. The first time I’d been frightened almost out of my wits, but I think I’d gone a little faster. If I’d had any consciousness left when I was racing, any existence beyond that of a dumb, conditioned animal, that first shock did away with it. With that thing in my ass, the threat or the actual sensation, I had no mind left at all. I hardly knew if I was ahead or behind. My eyes were so completely blinded by tears and the blinkers that I could barely see anyway, and with blurred vision there was that much less to stimulate the higher brain regions. I just obeyed the reins and the whip and my master’s voice, fearfully and without the slightest hesitation.

  My master finally opened the crate and brought me out by the bridle. I knew at once where I was: the first place we had raced, where we had been many times since. But we had never gone there after racing somewhere else. This time, instead of a competitive, teasing atmosphere, I could sense the beginnings of a party. The women were all over the place, over men’s knees, kneeling on their thighs with hands behind their backs, having their breasts toyed with. The men were laughing their deep laughs. They moved from the stable and garage yards to the terrace, carrying or leading slaves. My master led me by a leash on my degrading nose ring, on all fours, having locked the kneepads on that kept me down. Hardly any of the other women had nose rings, much less got led by them. And very few of them ever wore mitts like I did; I’d seen them use their hands, even to eat!

  I could sense a difference in my master. His hand on the leash was not so tight, nor did he keep it quite so short. Was he just relaxed, or did this mean something?

  He sat down on the terrace and arranged me on all fours in front of him to be his footstool. I braced myself to accept this honor, and tried very hard not to move. I caught glimpses of slaves tied on their backs on a table, their legs stretched wide to the ceiling, serving all comers. I heard their screams of pleasure, and thought about being pounded hard, and I wished, and wished that I deserved it… I had to be careful not to move a muscle; at the slightest twitch my master whipped me. My wet, locked-away cunt contracted around its plug, sending tremors throughout my body.

  Garid sat back and enjoyed the scenes playing out before him. He could feel the smallest quiver of the little body under his feet, and he hardly had to look down to flick her with his whip. He knew she was suffering more from deprivation than from pain, and that was enjoyable also.

  Therin sat down next to him. ‘What do you think, now that you’ve joined us at last?’

  ‘I think it’s time I shared my toy with my friend.’

  Therin stared at Garid, then at his slave, and then he laughed. ‘You finally have her all the way down, do you? About time. Think she knows who owns her yet?’

  ‘You dead wurlegh! Do you want to play with her or not?’ Garid put his feet down, sat up and picked up her leash. ‘Kneel.’ The woman raised herself to her knees, and presented her breasts to Therin at his signal. Garid could feel her slight tension through the leash, but she did not hesitate.

  ‘You’re sure? Not going to want to kill me afterwards?’

  ‘I thought you liked risks.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to unlock that belt for me.’

  ‘No. But you can use her mouth. Just let me know when.’ He unclipped the leash from her nose ring.

  Therin looked thoughtfully at the woman kneeling in front of him. He reached out and gently swirled one finger around her right nipple, then her left, back and forth, watching her face.

  He took both breasts in his hands and squeezed. ‘I’ve been wanting to spend some time on these for a long while. What a pair of beauties.’

  ‘They color up nicely,’ Garid said. ‘Especially with a flogger.’

  ‘I’ve got a good one – hold on.’ It took him more than a few minutes, as the article was in use; he had to find another suitable whip to trade before he could get the one he wanted. Garid held the woman’s arms behind her, and made her arch her back and present her breasts. Therin struck a moderate blow, first right, then left, and examined the marks. ‘You’re right; she marks easily. Vizay’s skin is darker.’

  ‘A little harder now.’ Garid tightened his hold, and enjoyed the sensation of his pet jerking at each blow. Therin placed each stroke fastidiously. He was careful to catch her nipples from time to time, which wrung muffled squeals from her. When she was mewling steadily around her gag, and tears were running in a steady stream down her face, they stopped. Her tits were blushing in bright pink and stripes of red.

  ‘Where are her pony bells? This is sheer artistry; we should call attention to it.’

  Garid was happy to add bells.

  ‘You know,’ said Therin, ‘I never had a dog as a kid. My brother was allergic to them. I always wanted to play with a sweet little doggie who would fetch things when I threw them.’ Garid smiled, and unfastened the ball gag from the slave’s bridle. She swallowed a last sob and flexed her jaw.

  They fastened the leash from her collar to a long raised line that was used for Vizay’s training. At the side of the lawn Therin found a stick, and threw it for her to fetch. She scrambled after it, brown mitts and kneepads sinking in the thick grass. Her face pushed down unhesitatingly after the stick, in her hurry coming up sometimes with a mouthful of grass as well. Soon there were bits of grass on her face and under her bridle, and she was panting around the stick as she scurried back with it. The striped pink and red breasts were crosshatched with strands and flecks of green.

  Therin sent
the stick close to a frame mounted by a saddle, where Lave was making his woman ride. She was making a lot of noise about it. When the whip flashed down her thighs clung to the saddle, but each time Lave raised the whip she raised her hips, and Therin could see the big dildo between her thighs. She was moaning and crying in Henthen: ‘Please master, don’t… ahh! Don’t hit me anymore, please… eee! Oh – oh I can’t – I’m going to – ah…!’

  Therin looked down at Garid’s pet. Distracted by the woman in the saddle, she had lost track of the stick. When she finally crawled back to him with it in her mouth, Therin used it to give her a few good smacks on the hindquarters to punish her for being slow. ‘Bad jeedy!’ She yelped with pain and hung her head.

  Therin crouched down behind her, and examined her soft inner thighs. He called to Garid. ‘I’d like to punish her a little here, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Garid. ‘Let’s use a chair; I’ll hold her for you.’ Garid fastened her wrists behind her back, sat down in a big lawn chair with her in his lap, and pulled her legs wide, his hands gripping her thighs tightly above the kneepads. He tipped her back a little to make her more accessible. ‘How’s your aim?’ he asked, glancing at his lap.

  Therin had no problem landing blows on target, and by the time he was done the slave’s inner thighs were as red and striped as her breasts. This time Garid got to feel her squirming against the whole front of his body; each blow made delicious by her pained writhing. Therin concentrated on marking her evenly, especially up near her belted cunt. He enjoyed seeing the humid flesh through the clear band between her legs, clenching around plugs as she struggled, and the taut shuddering muscles of her thighs. Her distress was louder and more visible without the gag. She was crying with pain again when they stopped.

  Therin looked down at her for a long moment. ‘Okay,’ he said to Garid. ‘Now.’