'Pretty,' I heard him murmur. I felt the fingers stroking again; twice, three, four times, and then they stopped. This time there was a longer pause before I heard the hiss of leather cutting through the air. It was a short swing, but the strap landed right across the middle of both my cheeks, sending a shockwave surging up to my brain that lit tiny red lights before my eyes.
Again the hiss, followed by another bolt of fire. I took half a step forward to prevent myself from toppling and at the same time Erik grabbed my bound wrists to steady me. I jerked upright, pressing back against his chest, looking up and craning my neck to try and see his face.
'Bastard,' I whimpered. 'Beautiful bastard!' I could feel the heat and pressure of his erection pressing against the small of my back and squirmed around to face him, slipping down onto one knee as he released his grip on me. His manhood stood stiff and proud, just asking to be worshipped, and I came to the altar willingly, almost gagging as I swallowed more than half his length. I sensed him trying to relax, the arm holding the strap dropping to his side. The fire in my backside had spread to ignite little blazes that now consumed my entire body and I could think now of only one thing. I let the slippery rod slide from my mouth and staggered to my feet, facing him squarely.
'Fuck me, master,' I begged. 'Fuck me!' Although I was by far the smaller, as well as bound and wearing the mask of a slave, there was no doubt now which of us was in charge as he scooped me up, spread my thighs and lowered me onto his sacrificial spike. I groaned as he filled me, encircling his hips with my legs and sinking my teeth into the flesh of his shoulder just as the first of a new series of climaxes reared up to claim its prize.
'Let's see if you're really worth your money then, shall we dolly?'
I blinked, peering through the shadows to where Hercules now stood, legs astride, an impressive flesh coloured column rising from the opening in his black leather breeches. He pointed to it, and then made an O shape with his mouth.
'C'mon, dolly,' he urged, 'that mouth of yours can only be intended for one thing, so don't be shy.'
I tottered forward and crouched in front of him. My hands were free now and I reached out with both of them to stroke carefully down each side of his shaft, testing it for size to see if the touch matched up with what my eyes were telling me. It did, and now all that remained was for me to see if Carmen's calculations when designing the doll suit's oral feature were generous enough.
They were, but it was a most odd sensation as I guided the gleaming head into the opening, for although I knew I was taking a cock into my mouth, my mouth itself could feel nothing beyond that awful jaw-stretching ache imposed by the rigid ring embedded within the softer latex. And then, without warning, I felt warm flesh against the back of my tongue, but Hercules was far from satisfied yet. He thrust forward and I made a gurgling, throaty protest as he all but gagged me.
'That's a good doll,' I heard him laugh. 'Nice little rubber mouth and very soft.'
Glad you like it, I thought grimly, and slowly began to move my head back and forth. I heard a heavy sigh of pleasure from above and felt his gloved hands grasping at either side of my skull, but now he seemed content to let me take the lead, for there was no attempt to force me to take his entire length again.
Foolish, I thought, how bloody foolish. You've got a live girl inside here with a live mouth and yet you get your rocks off fucking a plastic and rubber mouth in the middle of a stupid latex dolly face. And, in a few minutes, you're going to stick this great big cock inside a rubber cunt and pump and pump until it empties itself. Might just as well have stuck with a real dolly.
But then I was a real dolly, a real flesh and blood and rubber and plastic dolly that moved and breathed, and right now I was coming very close to experiencing something my inflatable counterparts would never know. Closing my eyes and biting hard against the plastic, I did my hardest to resist, knowing that nothing I could do was going to help and hating myself for being so bloody weak.
I had no idea how long we remained in the derelict barn, but outside it had grown dark long before we started back. Inside, Erik produced a lantern he had previously hidden away behind the timber stack in the far corner, and by its flickering orange light we made love twice more. I say 'made love', but in reality we simply fucked each other's lights out, which served to keep the steadily chilling night air at bay, if nothing else. Finally, however, even Erik seemed to have reached his limit, and when we finally emerged to stand looking at the moonlit river, I at least did so on very unsteady legs.
'Beautiful, is it not?' he asked softly.
I gazed at the silvery ripples as the water flowed past and at the darkened silhouettes of the trees on the opposite bank, and nodded. Beautiful and quiet, with only the soft whispering of the current against the banks to break the silence. I looked down immediately in front of me, where the grass suddenly gave way to the water a few inches below. 'This will be a river in a few years time,' I observed.
'This is a river,' Erik said, not understanding.
I shook my head. 'No, where we're standing,' I explained. 'The river is eating into the bank on this side and piling up mud on the other bank as it comes around the bend here. Bit by bit, the river's course is moving this way. A hundred years from now it could be over there, behind us.' I jerked a thumb to illustrate my point. 'I think that's why there's so little left of the mill building itself and the wheel is missing, in case you haven't noticed. The house is still all right because it sits back a way from the bank, but even that will go in time. Once,' I sighed, 'this pathway was probably a proper lane, but the river has eaten away and eaten away and now it doesn't go anywhere.'
'A bridge there was,' Erik said. He nodded upstream. 'Finding it I was when first we came, but gone mostly it is now. As you say, the water takes away.'
'And with no road to it on this side worth talking about,' I observed, 'no one would have bothered keeping it repaired. Was it stone or wood?'
'Wood, but now all rotted is all that is left. As you say, all changing is.'
'And changing I must be,' I mimicked. 'This dress is still damp at the front and the cape's no better.' It had at least stopped raining, but the air was heavy with moisture and I was beginning to feel chilled.
Erik lifted the lantern and by its light briefly studied my face. 'Yes,' he said. 'Warm we must be getting you, or the ague will come.'
More likely a common old cold, I thought, and that prospect, without aspirin, let alone even a basic antibiotic, did not appeal one iota. I had work to do and ending up sniffling and coughing in bed for two weeks wasn't in the script. 'C'mon then, tiger!' I exclaimed. 'Let's get back and see how Indira's been getting on, shall we? With a bit of luck, we'll have two out of three of the girls underway now and two out of three ain't bad, as the saying goes!'
'It does?' Erik shook his head, indicating his confusion, but then he was quickly getting used to some of my curious speech patterns, even if he was trying to be too much of a gentleman to say so. Mind you, in his case, an expression containing the words 'kettle', 'black pot' and 'calling' came easily to mind.
'I think you must be raving mad!' Anne-Marie exclaimed. We were finally on the way back home early on the Sunday evening, and she had unscrewed and removed our gags as Carmen finally removed hers. The hours we spent with our poor jaws distended had taken their toll, and she knew we would be feeling it, as she was herself.
However, the three of us remained inside the doll skins, for Carmen's final twist of devilment had been to insist we dress over them and drive off in the car, waved off by a gaggle of our earlier admirers. There was nothing we could do to extricate ourselves until we reached the sanctuary of Anne-Marie's house, for we would either have to find somewhere discreet enough for us to strip off and remove the latex suits completely, or else we would have to just take off the heads, which would then hang under our chins, complete with hair, and that would be even more likely to draw attention to us than a fleeting glimpse through the car windscreen of three
females with big eyes and O-shaped mouths. I just hoped we wouldn't be stopped by a police patrol car.
'If anything happens,' Anne-Marie growled, 'we'll just say we've been to a fancy dress party and we're driving back like this to win a bet, okay?'
Andrea and I nodded; there wasn't much else we could do anyway. Besides, we weren't breaking any laws, so it would only be an embarrassment thing.
None of us really wanted to talk about our respective ordeals at the hands of our devious hostess and so, in an effort to distract us all, I began bringing Anne-Marie and Andrea up to date on my latest time jaunts. However, I had only got as far as outlining my plan for trying to turn the tables on Hacklebury when Andrea almost drove us into a ditch in astonishment.
'You're mad,' she repeated. 'The man's a monster and Megan is lethal. You should just concentrate on getting as far away from the pair of them as possible. Arundel is not much more than one hundred and twenty miles from Hacklebury's place. Try Yorkshire, Scotland, France even!'
I shook my head. 'If they're looking for us, they'll find us,' I replied. 'They'll start with London, if only because Angelina's family had some contacts and even some distant relatives there, which I know because Indira told me.'
'A young woman travelling with a bloody great Viking and an Indian girl are hardly anonymous.'
'Plenty of people had Indian servants then, you'd be surprised,' I said. 'Besides, you're forgetting, they don't know where to start looking and a hundred odd miles might not sound much to us nowadays, but back then there wasn't that much of a rail network, no telephones and almost no photographs to show around. The best Hacklebury might have would be some sort of portrait of me, but I don't think there was one. And we already know he's not exactly flush with money, so he's hardly in a position to hire an army of private detectives to search for us. It'll take them months, maybe even years.'
'That's exactly my point,' Anne-Marie persisted. 'If it's that hard, just keep getting further and further away and eventually he'll have to give up.'
'He won't give up,' I replied grimly, 'and even if he wanted to, Megan Crowthorne wouldn't let him. She'd keep searching if it took fifty years and she'd find us in the end, I know it.'
'But you're talking about actually bringing that bastard to you!' Anne-Marie exclaimed. 'That's as good as committing suicide.'
'Not if I do this right,' I reassured her. 'Hacklebury won't have any idea that it's me and neither would he expect it to be. Like you, he'll think we'll be trying to keep as far away from him as possible, so when he gets his invite to Lady Sadie's establishment - and it'll come from someone who shares his tastes and whom he trusts - he'll come a-running like a puppy dog chasing a kitten. Except when he gets there, he'll find the kitten is a cat and that she has nasty claws.'
'Lady Sadie?' Anne-Marie burst out laughing and the car swerved alarmingly yet again. 'You've gotta be kidding! Talk about a rotten pun.'
'Yeah, well,' I grinned, 'it'll be lost on him. The Marquis de Sade's writings didn't get that much exposure until a lot later, and Sacher-Masoch couldn't have been much more than a toddler in eighteen thirty-nine. It's just my little joke.'
'Well, let's hope Hacklebury doesn't have the last laugh,' Anne-Marie muttered. 'You're playing with fire here, my girl.'
'I'm being very careful, but I need to run a few ideas and thoughts past you and as quickly as possible. I reckon I've been a fast learner, and so are my three girls, but I want to make sure I've thought of everything so our trap ends up with just the right bait in it. On the other hand, now that I've got everything more or less set up, maybe I won't be needed back there, especially as Angelina seems to have some idea of what I'm doing, and Indira is well in on the act now.'
'Yeah?' Andrea cut in. 'And like you really believe that?'
I sighed, closed my eyes and settled back in my seat. 'No,' I said. 'No, I don't. I'll be going back there all right, and unless something's suddenly changing in all this, I shan't have to wait very long, either.'
Our first client did not come to Arundel. A letter arrived at the shoemaker's asking if we could supply the services discussed earlier, but at an address in Chichester. The note went on to explain the gentleman in question, a Mister Archibald Henderbrick, who had rented a house from friends of friends in order to escape the unpleasant winter atmosphere in the capital. Together with a companion, he would be happy to receive us for the fourth weekend in October. I showed the letter to Erik and read it out loud to him, in case his grasp of written English left any gaps for misunderstanding.
'What do you think?' I asked.
He shrugged his massive shoulders. 'Careful we should be,' he replied slowly. 'Better it might be if I went with two of the girls first and around the place looked.'
'You don't think it might be some sort of set-up, a trap, I mean?' We had to be wary of anything that might be a cover for Hacklebury and Megan, even though I remained convinced I would somehow receive warning if they were getting near to finding us, and the dream flashes had ceased since my last glimpse of the poor girl who was now being held in my stead.
'Dealing with strange people we are,' Erik said. 'Possible could almost anything be.'
I hesitated, considering the possibilities. I had found little in Archibald Henderbrick that was threatening when I first interviewed him; in fact, he was a quite unremarkable individual, in his late thirties, I guessed, somewhat overweight and with thinning, sandy-coloured hair and a ridiculously straggling moustache that was unevenly trimmed. He had money, and he would need it at the prices I had quoted, but it came from a doting, aging mother whose family had made their fortunes trading with the New World and, reading between the lines, probably shipping slaves from Africa to the Southern States. He had spent some time in Georgia himself, he told me, and I guessed he probably developed a taste for playing master and slave by experiencing it for real there.
'See if you can find out anything about this address,' I instructed Erik.
He took the single sheet, folded it away and headed off to find one of the two saddle horses we had bought only two days earlier and which we were now stabling temporarily in the old barn. He rode off immediately and did not return until after nightfall.
'The house is belonging to a Mr and Mrs Henry Strode,' he informed me. 'Mrs Strode is American and to New York they have gone for most of the winter. Doing this they have been for three years now,' he added. 'Henderbrick is known to a grocer and a wine merchant. Every winter he is at the house while his friends away are and also visiting them during the summer is. Then I calling on him was.'
I raised an eyebrow. 'Was he surprised?'
Erik shook his head. 'No.' He grinned. 'Expecting a reply he said he was. He also was saying that the partner is a new friend and not wanting to bring him yet to Madame's establishment was he, not sure of how to trust him as he is.'
'Oh no!' I exclaimed. 'Did you meet this friend?' Thoughts that this unknown friend might be Hacklebury immediately crossed my mind.
Erik shook his head. 'No, but describing him the gentleman was and it is not who thinking it might be you are. Only young, this one is, about twenty-two years and so high.' He illustrated with his hand at a height of about five feet six, which was definitely not friend Gregory. 'Also, his friends of the house have tastes most similar.' He grinned. 'Showing me he was, a large cellar.'
'A dungeon?'
'Yes, with barred walls and places for chaining and punishing. Many straps, chains, whips, most impressive. You would approve, I am thinking.'
'So he seems genuine enough,' I mused. 'Fair enough. Let him know that we accept.'
Erik nodded and his grin widened. 'Already I have done so,' he replied, and then reached beneath his jacket and drew out a small leather bag. 'Part payment this is,' he said, opening the end of the bag and tipping the contents into the palm of his hand before showing it to me.
I saw the unmistakeable glint of gold. 'There must be twenty guineas there!' I gasped.
He chuckled. 'Fiv
e and twenty, and five and twenty more afterwards.'
'But that's a lot more than we discussed originally,' I said incredulously. Fifty guineas was a small fortune by the standards of the day.
Erik made a sound in the back of his throat. 'To travel to Chichester is inconvenient,' he replied. 'Six people in the coach...' He shook his head. 'Most inconvenient.'
'So you've negotiated expenses as well?' I laughed.
He tipped the gold coins carefully back into the bag and drew the string tight again. 'Yes,' he said, and patted his left pocket. I heard a muffled jingling sound. 'Five pounds I have here.'
'On top of the other?' I was flabbergasted. 'I thought—'
'So did he,' Erik said, 'but firm I was. The ladies, I said, would not want to be travelling and entertaining on the same day.' This time, I noticed, Erik's English phrasing was immaculate and I realised he must have practiced it carefully for Henderbrick's benefit. 'Therefore, rooms I have reserved in a hotel nearby there and we shall travel on the Friday. Overnight we rest and back to the hotel on Sunday morning. A friend I now have at this hotel, and if returning we are not, he will raise the alarm.'
Ah, a friend by means of a healthy bribe, I realised. Clever Erik. Slow of speech, lumbering in action, but I made a further note not to underestimate whatever brain lay inside that broad skull.
'You assured me that your man would find them and yet we still have no clue as to their whereabouts, do we?' Hacklebury glared across his desk, but Megan Crowthorne was unconcerned by his obvious anger.
'Gordon Marjoribanks has three men in addition to himself working on this,' she replied calmly, 'but there are a lot of places for them to look. So far they have concentrated on London and Birmingham, but they could have gone further than that, possibly even across the Channel into France.'
Teena: A House of Ill Repute Page 16
