“I want us to come at the same time,” he rubbed her swollen clit.
She dug her nails into the comforter. Why, oh why was she still a virgin? Had there ever been a greater fiction? She was more of a slut now than Mariana or any other woman she’d ever known. “Fuck me,” she moaned. “Fuck me hard…oh, master, make me your slut.”
He grunted darkly, running fingers clawing her hair. “Not my slut. Belok’s slut.”
“Belok’s slut,” she repeated, not comprehending the meaning, knowing only that the mysterious label was pregnant with erotic possibility as well as profound danger.
Simon’s balls crashed against her wounded behind. She was stuffed full, the cock meat nearly piercing her belly. The walls of her anus throbbed and her pussy was in continuous spasm. Expertly with sadistic delight, Simon held her and himself at the brink. He waited for her moans, the thrashing head and for the begging.
“Please…master.”
“A little longer,” he exhaled through clenched teeth.
Truly, thought Merritt, a man could not be closer to a woman than in loving her after beating her. Could there be a better, more inevitable combination in all of human biology?
A little longer. He was delaying gratification. Or was it simply torture? A keen and clever substitute for beating her into submission yet again. Truth be told, after a few more stripes of the cane, she’d have been coming. A good girl would never do that. A good girl required romance and flowers. She knew how to make a man wait, how to keep him weak and in need. This was the game that led to marriage. And inevitable human unhappiness.
Merritt was anything but a good girl. She was a whore. Worse than a whore, because she collected no fees, dictated no terms for her exploitation. She was simply available for whoever wished to stake a claim. By day or night, unable to say no to anyone. Her master of the moment was this man, and as he gave in to his own building explosion, she held herself back, knowing that her climax, as much as any other part of her, belonged to him.
“Now,” he grunted, and she let herself go, like a tidal wave crashing over the boundaries of propriety, signaling and telegraphing sexual satiation and promising bliss for whomever wished to corral and control her next time out.
“Oh, Simon,” she cried.
“No,” came the voice of the other. “It is not Simon.”
She opened her mouth to scream, but he silenced her, putting his formless, fleshless finger to his lips, the bloodless line of them slightly curled, the eyes dancing with mischief and power and other things darker than she dared behold.
“No!” she was wanted to protest but Belok, who had replaced Simon behind her and inside her, did not budge. Like a blinding moonbeam, he filled her vision, filled her body, his flesh on hers, cold and beautiful as marble, the long silver hair blowing in some unknown breeze.
Some time later, she lay in Simon’s arms, her head on his chest, her sore, smarting buttocks pointing skyward. He was on his back, his breathing soft and strong. She did not wish him to leave, but she knew he was going to shortly. Merritt did not know how she could bear to be alone, especially if he was coming back, the smirking Prince.
“Simon,” she whispered. “Tell me what’s really going on. I have a right to know.”
“I know, sweetheart. But you have to be patient.” He stroked her hair, the murmured words softening her jolted insides, making her feel, perhaps, that she might end up loving this man if she kept on trying to hate him.
“Just tell me I’m not crazy. Please?” She grabbed at his strong chest, needing the feel of it, the sound of pure masculine heartbeat.
“Far from it, my dear.”
Sucking him off was an act of pure impulse. He raised little objection as she kissed her way to his crotch, trying to find in the journey some sense of normalcy, or at least what had come to pass as such in this strange, paradoxical land.
Simon came with soft moans, his cock swelled pleasantly within her cheeks. She drank him down willingly, then continued to lick, stretching the moment, trying to live in it forever. Not wanting the clock to continue, cursing time, cursing life itself, its heart beating contradictions, its pains. At length, he laid her on her back, head on the pillow.
“Courage, little one. Dawn comes quick enough.”
She’d wanted to ask if it was Simon telling her that or Belok, but a finger had touched her lips and she was gone, slipping into something deeper than sleep, but shallower than death. A twilight world, somewhere in-between.
Chapter Nine
Merritt squirmed uncomfortably in the carved mahogany seat, throne-like, hundreds of years old and saved from a monastery burned to the ground in 1671. The heavy table was a match though only a replica. She could swear this prison library was as dank as that old place must have been.
At present, she was perusing a history of Zuravia from the seventeenth century containing precious and unique footnotes concerning Belok’s origins. Any scholar would give a vital organ to study such a work, but Merritt was having great difficulty focusing this morning. For one thing, there was her throbbing behind. The freshness of her wounds having given way to heavy welts and sores. But there was also the growing legion of feelings and strange thoughts crowding her mind. Not to mention the growing questions and the nagging doubts.
She had no complaint for lack of sleep. After Simon left, she’d fallen into slumber so deep it had taken a near explosion to wake her back up. It was Petrok to whom she’d opened her eyes. His coloring was sallow, his attitude cold. Dropping off her purse, which he’d carried back for her from the plaza the night before, he’d informed her there was a man from the Institute to pick her up.
It hadn’t been her intention to make him jealous or hurt his feelings. Simon was more of a man. That was all there was to it.
She’d rushed to the shower, then thrown on underwear, a pair of jeans and a sweater, stuffed her bare feet into sneakers and gone down to meet Piko in the lobby, wet hair and all. Ileana had looked askance at her casual attire but hadn’t said a word nor had she attempted to intervene as Karisvan led her to the library.
And here she sat, trying to figure it all out. What was real and what was a dream? She’d not seen Belok overnight, and Simon was as good as a ghost himself, having made no contact since beating and screwing her. Petrok was changed, too, acting as if they’d never shared more than a cool, professional association.
Merritt slipped her chin into her palm. Truthfully, this was a boring book, not what she needed right now at all. The Journal of Night was what she wanted. The infamous work of torture, philosophy, black magic and mayhem that had been banned more often even than the works of the Marquis De Sade. Merritt herself had only ever seen photo static copies and not even of the entire work at that.
Idly, she wondered where Becca was this morning. Sliding into daydream, she tried to picture what a girl like her went through on a daily basis and what she suffered. Where did she sleep? In Karisvan’s office? In a hotel? Merritt felt a wicked delight as she imagined the girl in one of the cages by night. Crawling on all fours through the entrance, nude and collared, ready to take her supper from a bowl, her water from a dish and her pain and loneliness by electronic injection.
Mariana had never been caged, but she was learning submission. With the two hundred zuravs given her by Simon, she had likely bought a night of bliss. Would Marco have been kind to her? Would he have bought her supper and coffee, strolling hand in hand with her in the plaza afterward until they were both weary, returning to the room to make love? He would use her in the bed and then, as a privilege and not a right, she would have been allowed to sleep on the mattress, her head on pillows, her nude body covered in the tangled, sweaty sheets.
Awakened in the morning by sweet, little kisses. Her eyes opening with a smile as she beholds her love. Who turns her over, smacks her arse, cold and hard and tells her to be ready. She must earn more money today with her cunt and arse and pretty mouth. No sass, no insolence.
“Yes, Ma
rco,” she says, the word on her all her lips with all the reverence of lord or master.
“Doctor, would you like a cup of coffee?”
Merritt awoke from her reverie, embarrassed to find her hand lingering on the inside of her thigh, the flesh warm through the fabric of her jeans. She’d been on the verge of masturbating. “Becca, I didn’t hear you come in.”
The redhead lowered her eyes. “I’m not supposed to make any noise today. Unless it’s to scream.”
Merritt let the outrageous comment go. “Thank you,” she accepted the proffered mug. “Won’t you join me?”
Becca’s eyes were moist and fraught with secret meaning. “I’m not allowed.”
Merritt fought the unwanted image from her mind: Becca on all fours, sipping water from the bowl in her cage, her long, silky hair over her face, spilling onto the wire mesh floor. “Rebecca, where do you live?” she asked compulsively, needing to wash the absurd idea from her mind that the girl was a prisoner, the last one perhaps of the old Central Prison.
Or was she the first inhabitant of some new prison?
“Do you mean my home?” she shook out her long free hair. The girl was beautiful with her long, thin fingers, the starched white blouse, high necked and brocaded and the long, simple skirt.
“Yes, Becca. Your home.”
“I’m from Lancashire. My father is wealthy. I fought his wishes and ran away with my boyfriend to the continent. Eventually, we stopped here.” She shrugged. “Things happen.”
Merritt sipped from the white ceramic cup. “This is quite good. Sweet, just the way I like it.”
“I took a chance. You might have taken it black. Or wanted only one sugar. Or three.”
Merritt eyed her pretty face, strangely aged. Again, there were words unspoken, lines imbedded in lines.
“Doctor Fisher, would you read the book to me?”
Merritt felt her heart skip a beat. “The Journal of Night,” she whispered, knowing immediately what the girl had meant.
Becca nodded solemnly. Not waiting for a response, she went to the shelves, pushing the sliding ladder to the appropriate section. There were over a thousand books stacked fifteen feet high up to the top of the flat gray, institutional ceiling. At one point, before being converted to a Marxist library by the communists, it had been a refectory. There was still a catwalk around the perimeter where the guards stood, armed with shotguns, watching the prisoners eat their simple, tasteless meals.
According to Karisvan, who had shared snippets while escorting her here earlier, this was the men’s refectory, though on occasion a female prisoner would be dragged in and left to fend for herself. The guards would take bets on which of the men would claim her first. There were rival gangs, and blood was frequently shed in such matters. To make things more interesting, the female would be sent in a state of extreme hunger, making her extraordinarily pliable.
It would be almost comical to see what a girl would do for even the smallest, most unappetizing portion of prison fare. Guards would howl and prisoners cheer as a beauty on all fours, nibbling a bit of slimy meat or lumpy mashed potato off the floor, would hold herself perfectly still for an invading cock slammed into her tender sex from behind. Or else on her knees, nude under the table, gaining her nourishment from off the end of a penis, licking at smeared peanut butter or grease, cleaning a man’s rod for him as he builds himself towards an emission which she must also swallow under penalty of a severe beating.
Karisvan had deadpanned his account sideways out of his mouth, interspersed with tidbits about the Institute and rare Belok findings she would soon be reviewing. It was odd and obscene conversational fodder, but compared to yesterday, downright normal.
Merritt watched as Becca stretched herself, rising on tiptoes to pull from the shelf a sealed volume boxed in an acid free container. There was no other book on this particular shelf, a further testament to the uniqueness of the work. As the girl descended the ladder, Merritt could not help but think of her being thrown into that refectory, naked, into the clutches of the dangerous, sadistic men collected by the communists for punishment.
Such an anomaly, a wealthy English girl on the run from her father, fallen into the clutches of this bizarre Institute. Had her boyfriend fought for her and lost, or did he betray her? And did her wealthy father know where she was? If so, would he rescue her?
Merritt heard an echo now from the girl in the dream.
“My father the duke will save me. He will come with a powerful army.”
Becca’s father could easily be a noble. In fact, her carefully guarded words practically screamed such a possibility.
“Are you unable to read if by yourself?” Merritt wanted to know as Becca set the sealed volume in front of her.
“I don’t know the language. I can barely read a newspaper here let alone an old book like this. But I know something about it…a lot of the things in there have already been done to me.”
Merritt felt warm moisture between her thighs.
“Will you read it to me now?” Becca slipped to her knees beside Merritt. “Please?”
“I—I’d rather you sat.”
“I can’t,” she shook her head. “And I don’t want to either.”
Merritt let the girl rest her head on her denim-covered lap. If only she could get Becca to answer more questions, to share her heart, this wouldn’t seem so scary, Merritt thought.
The book was in an acid free case. She lifted the top, setting it beside her on the table. The book itself was brown leather with the title embossed in gold. There was no authorial reference. The leather had a strong scent of age about it, rich but not musty. Potent, making her think of strong tight bonds on soft flesh, the reigns of powerful war horses and the slash of a mighty whip. Her pulse quickened a little as she pulled it gently, reverently from the box with her small hands.
Delicately she placed it before her. It was thick, and the edge was sealed with a gold clasp. There was no lock, and the metal yielded with a precise pinging click. She felt a little chill down her spine, thinking this time of Belok’s chains and the forged metal terrors of his dungeon. The thick cover opened smoothly to the title page, which again had only the name of the book and no author.
Merritt flipped to the next page. The text was tightly woven, the ink sharp and dark. DNA analysis had revealed it was not blood, though there was an unknown element in it that still defied scientific analysis.
Along the margins were tiny illustrations, miniature tableaus of exquisitely rendered agony. A female, her body stretched on a rack, her mouth opened in pain as a demon sodomized her. Another bent at the waist, a phallus inserted deep inside her sex, the end of which was attached to a booted male figure with the head of a fox.
Merritt cleared her throat. “’This being an account of the ways of the Black Cross,” she began, translating from medieval Zuravian, “as taught to one who is both student and teacher. Know ye that this account be both wholly accurate and without omission, either by accident or intent and that whomsoever blasphemes, distorts or adds unto these words shall be visited with the most horrible sufferings imaginable.’”
She skipped a little lower down the page. “’If man be man must he not partake of woman, as strength consumes weakness; do not her tears belong to him as much or more than her laughter? Let her therefore dance upon his strings and writhe upon the end of his cock as though it be a sword…’”
Becca had lifted Merritt’s sweater and now she was delivering kisses to her bare belly. “Don’t stop,” she murmured.
“…sharp as hell’s point, pinnacle of life, pain indistinguishable from pleasure…”
“Mmm,” breathed Becca, greedily unbuttoning Merritt’s jeans. “That’s so hot.”
“Rebecca, that’s enough.”
“All right,” cooed Becca, lifting herself to plant a kiss on the woman’s mouth. “I’ll stop.”
Merritt stiffened but found herself unable to resist. Becca’s lips were soft and inviting, her ful
l breasts pressing, her submissive body yielding against Merritt’s thumping chest. She’d never even fantasized about being with a female before, but there was no denying the heat of flesh, the sudden, overpowering desire to get under the girl’s clothes, to have the girl under hers. “Becca, I don’t know if this is right,” she pushed her back.
“Make it right, then.” Becca’s eyes were liquid heat, challenging. “Force me to do what you want. There’s a dildo I could get. You could fuck me with it.”
“No, I don’t think that will happen,” Ileana announced, her hip resting against the doorframe, her arms folded casually over her breasts.
“Mistress,” croaked Becca, putting her head instantly to the floor and facing the cruelly smiling woman.
Merritt worked at the fastenings to her pants. God, her nipples were sticking straight out. “It wasn’t anything,” she told Ileana. “Just a momentary…lapse.”
Ileana, wearing riding britches and high black boots, strode towards them, her long legs striking terror in both females. “Oh, I think it was something, all right. Don’t you, Rebecca?”
Becca placed her lips on the toe of one of Ileana’s shiny boots. “I beg to be punished, mistress.”
“What about you, Dr. Fisher? Would you like to be punished as well?”
Merritt’s cheeks brightened. She shifted on the chair, feeling anew the swing of Simon’s cane, the whistling, crashing agony mixed with the deviltry of his fingers, coaxing orgasms from amidst the screams. “Really I think I should be going.”
“No, Doctor Fisher, you’ll continue your reading. Unless you’d like it to be on your head when your little fellow lesbian slut here is put under for the next twenty-four hours straight.”
The humbled, servile Becca trembled visibly as she continued her licking. “Please, mistress. Not that.”
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