Twenty-One

by D. Victoria BonAnno

  Gabe pushed his slave into the arms of another attendant.

  “Cuff her and take her to the basement for punishment,” he said. “And for Chrissakes, nobody fuck with her this time.” He looked down at the wounded attendant. “When you call Demetrius about her biting you, tell him I figured out that water punishment can break her.”

  The attendants began to pick up their slaves and continue with their grooming. Rodney tapped Chloe’s buttocks with his foot, which she took to mean that she should rise. She and Three crawled to their feet. Chloe resisted the urge to glance at the girl beside her. She was sure it was forbidden.

  Gabe approached them, dripping wet. He took Chloe by the collar.

  “Thanks, man,” he said to Rodney.

  “My pleasure,” Rodney replied. Chloe did not have to look at him to know that that infuriating grin was on his face again. “You think D will give you a bonus for figuring out Seventeen’s poison?”

  Gabe laughed and tugged Chloe’s collar to lead her away. “We’ll see what happens.”

  Chloe followed Gabe, but she could not resist looking behind her and stealing one last glance at the rebellious slave, now limp and panting, curled up in the arms of an attendant like a child.

  Chapter 13

  October 17, 2011

  “Ah, ah, I see those legs quivering, cherí. If you fall, you won’t get your little treat.”

  Demetrius watched Twenty-One’s face contort with frustration, her little nose scrunched, her brow furrowed. She breathed deeply and he noticed her relax on the exhale. That told him she had some knowledge of breath and body; perhaps she had been in yoga. Good. She was already a few steps ahead of some of this season’s slaves in that regard. Some of them couldn’t hold a position for more than ten seconds in the beginning.

  He sat on the corner of the bed, a safe distance from Twenty-One, though not so far that he could not reach her with the end of the short single-tail whip in his hand. She hovered over the floor in a half-crouch position, her fingers interlaced behind her neck, her legs wide apart. She had been rising from a kneeling pose back to Display when he had stopped her and ordered her to hold the position. He smirked at the flash of anger on her face when he had stopped her. She had found a flow from position to position, and the interruption of something she had just begun to accomplish smoothly seemed to agitate her. Excellent. She needed to be kept on her toes.

  Today he had bent her body into the first slave positions she would learn. He taught them like a yoga series, which seemed to register well with new slaves. She began in Display, which he knew Gabe had shown her in the baths. She had strengthened considerably with food and water and handled the wide-legged stance very well, standing on her toes with her arms behind her head and her breasts lifted. Inspection was difficult but she knew that one as well. He had thought she would break down when he bent her toward her feet to grasp her ankles. The positions where the slave’s sex was completely exposed for the world to see were always the most difficult. She had been relieved when he brought her down to all fours, through Abasement, and up to a kneeling position, ending the series. He led her through the series, over and over again, drilling it into her brain. Now he had stopped the flow to keep her focused. Twenty-One had a habit of dissociating from the moment. He had to break her out of her mental escapes.

  “Slave,” his voice cut through her silent struggle.

  “Yes, Master,” came the strained reply.

  He tried to ignore the swelling sensation in his chest. Hearing Master on her lips still felt far, far, too good.

  “Would you like to kneel and have your treat?”

  He heard her swallow from the short distance between them.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Ah, ah,” he chided, snaking the end of the whip along the floor. He had yet to use it, but he knew the sight frightened her. No, no, her virgin skin had never tasted a whip. “You know how to answer me. I ask you again, would you like your treat?”

  He watched her jaw clench and unclench.

  “If it pleases you, Master,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Demetrius smiled, making his mask shift up the bridge of his nose.

  “Good girl,” he said, rising from the bed. “Now kneel.”

  Twenty-One’s knees struck the floor a shade too hard to be a controlled movement. Her luscious chest quivered as she perfected her pose, tucking her feet beneath her buttocks and spreading her knees to a perfect ‘v.’ She clasped her hands behind her back and arched back just enough to display her breasts, a habit she had already begun to get more comfortable with.

  Demetrius approached her, letting the whip slither behind him. He parted her lips with a fresh cut of peach and she ate greedily, the fruit juices dribbling down her chin. He was overwhelmed with the thought of ripping off his mask and catching those juices with his tongue, prying open her plump lips and lapping at the sticky sweetness inside her mouth. He shivered, his erection in direct eye line of the slave, but she kept her gaze on the floor in perfect form.

  Twenty-One was in exceptionally good form today, as if their first few sessions had cracked some wall in her. Tears flowed, humiliation flushed her cheeks, yet there had been no flash of defiance, no refusal to comply that didn’t dissolve with a slap on the ass or threat of the whip. Oh, she still had fight in her, little Chloe, he knew that, but she was fast becoming the ideal slave he had seen in her from the beginning.

  Chloe. He had to stop referring to her as anything but Twenty-One or slave, even in his own mind, but her name stuck like a thorn in his finger. Normally his knowledge of his slaves’ identities before they came to him held power over them. In Twenty-One’s case, it seemed to hold just as much power over him. It unnerved him.

  He backed away as soon as the slave at his feet had taken the last bits of peach from his hand. He wiped his palm against his tight grey pants, smearing peach juice against the steel studs running down his thigh. The entire training process with Twenty-One was unnerving, but he had to venture on. He only had a couple of months before Abigail and Konri came to his doorstep, and she had to be a true Model Slave by then. The Dinner party held to kick off the auction was an overwhelming experience for even the most seasoned slave. He was certain that Abigail would want her to participate in some of the games. He had to be certain she would be obedient and have the stamina for humiliation and pain. He had to prepare himself to see her in those games as well. If she were selected to fuck one of Abigail’s slaves...he refused to entertain the thought further. The very idea of Twenty-One in the throes of another man’s passion sent venom into his veins. It was ridiculous; he had taken her to turn her into an instrument of pleasure for whomever desired her, after all. Yet the thought of her writhing beneath someone else, those sweet agonized screams escaping her throat as she came under another man’s touch…

  He shook the thought away. There was no reason for him to feel this way, and there was no reason for him to focus on it right now.

  “Slave,” he said a little too roughly. “Toe Touch.”

  Colour rose to her cheeks immediately. Oh, yes, this was her most despised position of the series. But she complied, curling her toes beneath her and coming up to stand. Her splayed legs quivered; she was tired; but she was stronger than she had been just out of the cage. He worried for a moment that he had fed her too much, that she was no longer in a state of hunger so crucial for obedience at this early stage in a slave’s development, but her good behaviour today was testament enough that she was hungry enough to obey.

  His breath hitched as she bent to clasp her ankles. Her back was still a bit rounded, but would flatten with increased practice and flexibility. It was her sex that made him pause, those delicate pink folds open and exposed to him, glistening with a hint of moisture. The fresh memory of rubbing himself against the slickness of those folds, of forcing himself into her, so tight, so wet, threatened to overtake him. He took a breath to steady himself, slipped a hand into his pocket, and pulled out
his digital recorder. He approached the bent-over slave and ran his fingertips over the bend of her back. She shivered, her knees shaking ever so slightly.

  “You must not break form,” he said, “or you will be punished. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master,” came her soft voice laced with a mixture of fear and anticipation. Oh, he loved how each note in her voice betrayed her every little emotion.

  “You must answer my questions or you will be punished.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “You must ask permission to come,” he said.

  Orgasm control would be a challenge for a slave with such a sense of entitlement to her own pleasure. He always found that trait in slaves who had not been prostitutes before coming to him. Having them ask permission to come forced them to focus more on their own arousal and begin to learn to delay it, to await his approval. It would be difficult for Chloe, but with the way she was progressing, he had every confidence that she would take to it in time. She was silent, a troubled crease between her brows. She had not answered him.

  “Slave,” he injected irritation in his voice to move her. “You must have my permission to come. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master,” she said quickly. The slightest tremor ran through her limbs.

  “Good.” Demetrius turned on the digital recorder and bent to show it to Twenty-One. “Now...who are you?”

  The slave gave him a pleading frown, staring at the recorder as if it were some sort of torture device, but responded nonetheless.

  “I am Twenty-One.”

  He gave her a gentle pat and approached that imploring little sex of hers. “Good. Now chant your mantra.”

  The slave shivered. She could feel his presence somehow, and he felt her, too; a sultry heat pressing into the fabric of his clothes, coaxing him to tear them off and close the distance between them.

  Twenty-One recited the slave mantra. “I am Twenty-One. I am a slave. I will obey. I will be used. I will not question. I will please my Master. I am Twenty-One. I am a slave.”

  Even though she had only recently learned the mantra, there was a distance in her voice, as if she weren’t really hearing her own words. She had already begun to drift somewhere else, somewhere safe and far away from him. Demetrius flipped the whip up so it landed limply on her back with no strike. The slave jumped, expecting a blow. She had come back.

  “Again,” he ordered. “Stay focused.”

  “Twenty-One’s voice quivered. “I am Twenty-One...”

  He let the end of the whip slide down her back and onto the floor. He roamed her body with his free hand, dragging his fingers along her spine, up the back of her thigh, along her buttocks, stopping short of her most tender parts.

  “Again,” he murmured.

  Twenty-One began again, her voice taking on a breathless quality. Her sex glistened from his touch. It was tantalizing. It was as if she had been starved of physical contact and his hands were the first that touched her in years. Gabe had not mentioned her reacting this way to his examination of her in the baths. Demetrius nearly laughed at himself for such a juvenile thought. There was a strange connection between them that he couldn’t yet explain, but hoping that her charms were open to him and him alone was comical if not dangerous. Again the thought of her with one of Abigail’s slaves came to him, making his blood simmer. He had to keep calm. It would happen eventually, if not at the Dinner party, then when she was inevitably sold. But for now…for now she was his and his alone. Not even the attendants could touch her without his permission, and as damaging to her training as that may be, he would keep it that way until he had overcome his childish attachment to her. And he would overcome it. But not right now.

  Twenty-One had fallen silent, and his fingers had trailed dangerously close to her wet little sex.

  “Again.” His voice was a bit hoarse, but she obeyed.

  Demetrius brought the thick, braided handle of the whip to her sex and slid it from opening to apex. She gasped, faltering immediately.

  “Continue,” he ordered. “Stay focused.”

  “I am Twenty-One. I am a slave. I will obey…”

  Demetrius moved the whip handle in slow circles around her opening as she struggled to continue her mantra. He longed to use himself in this exercise rather than a tool, but Chloe…Twenty-One…had no hope of controlling herself with how entranced she was by him. He had very little help of controlling himself either, and he had to move slowly through this, draw out her arousal, make her more aware of her body. He had begun this with her daily required masturbatory sessions, but in reviewing them, he had noticed that Twenty-One treated them like a chore, finishing her task as quickly as possible. She seemed to take little pleasure in it. He suspected she dissociated during them, as she seemed to with any action once it became repetitive enough.

  “Again, until I tell you to stop,” he said when she had finished her mantra again. He tested her opening with his fingers and she tensed immediately. She was wet, but she was not ready for penetration. She was a tight little thing, too. He remembered how he had to fight for every inch when he entered her, how snugly she had enveloped him. The whip handle was a little thinner than his own sex, but she needed to be warmed up a little more to comfortably accommodate it. He found the most sensitive part of her clitoris with his middle finger and began rubbing in tiny circles. The movement stole her breath for a moment. Her legs trembled.

  “Don’t break stance,” he reminded her, stroking her apex until his finger grew slick. She recited the mantra, her grip tightening around her ankles. He continued to work her with his fingers and reveled in the sound of her voice growing weaker and more distracted as she grew hotter and wetter in his hand. Finally he pushed the base of the whip against her opening and felt it yield. He slid it a small way inside of her.

  Twenty-One uttered something between a whimper and a moan; a sad, longing sound that made him hard in an instant. He worked the whip into her, bit by bit, opening her. He continued to torment her apex, which by now felt like a hard ember as he stroked it and rolled it between his fingers. He slid the whip in and out of her, gently at first, until she began to rock her hips to meet it. He smiled to himself. There it was, her entitlement to her own pleasure. She had tried to control his pace the night he had fucked her, too, and he had nearly let her, enchanted by the way she undulated beneath him. But she had to learn that her place was not to fuck, but to be fucked.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” he said. “Hold still, cherí, or you’ll get a taste of the other end of this whip.”

  That stopped her, though she wasn’t able to suppress a sigh. He teased her with slower, gentler strides, her soft moans stoking his own growing need. He gave her apex a hard tap, making her gasp.

  “I’m not hearing your mantra, slave.”

  She whimpered and repeated her mantra, though her voice was little more than a series of moans and sighs. Her breathlessness was too much for him. He pushed the whip hard into her, forcing a cry from her throat, and quickened the pace of his thrusts, his fingers working furiously on her apex. Twenty-One’s mantra became broken and disjointed.

  “I am…oh, God…I am a slave…I will…I will…!”

  “Focus,” he growled. The whip was slick with her wetness, sliding in and out of her with ease. He tilted the angle up slightly and focused on her g-spot, and from the way her knees shook, he could tell she had never been touched there. He pounded the whip into her and she tried to continue her mantra, tried as hard as she could to remain still in her pose. He saw every muscle in her tense with the effort. His strokes along her apex became swift and frantic, betraying his own longing to discard the whip and replace it with himself, to feel her slick and tight and hot around him. He wanted to fill her with his seed, a desire he had never had trouble ignoring before in a slave. The urge gave him a moment of pause, but Twenty-One’s ragged voice cut through his concern.

  “Oh, Master, please…please…” she cried.

  Demetrius couldn’t suppress
a low moan himself. Her begging was too much. He forced himself to slow down, to give her a chance to control herself. “Please, what?”

  “Please...please, may I-” her voice dissolved into a hoarse cry. He saw her nails dig into her ankles, her face flush red, her eyes close. He nearly came himself from the sight of her in the throes of orgasm. His sex throbbed, aching, needing, so sensitive that the feeling of the zipper of his pants pressing against him was erotic. He could have thrown her onto the floor and taken her now, done everything he’d wanted to do the moment he stepped in the door, but she had come without permission, and the session was over. With great effort, he removed the whip and came to stand in front of her. He reached into his pocket and shut off the recorder.

  “On your knees,” he ordered, masking his need with a cold voice. Twenty-One, her sweet hazel eyes filling with tears, obeyed. She was pink all over, glistening with sweat, lips parted. He had a mental flash of yanking her hair back and forcing himself between those lips. He gripped the whip until it hurt. He would not let his desires make him a failure of a Master. This girl would not make him fall so far.

  “Oh, ma chère. You were so close, so close, but you failed. You must put your Master’s pleasure above your own, always. And your Master didn’t give you permission to come, now, did he?”

  He wanted to lick the tears from her cheeks as she whispered, “No, Master.”

  Demetrius went into the bathroom and returned to find Twenty-One in the same position in which he’d left her, her head down, tears flowing freely down her ruddy cheeks. He called her attention with a snap of his fingers and held up a toothbrush and a small bucket of soapy water.

  “Your punishment is to clean the floor using this.” He held up the toothbrush. “And to do so while chanting your mantra and listening to your failure.” He took the recorder from his pocket and pressed a button. The room filled with Twenty-One’s voice from a short time ago, reciting her mantra. Twenty-One’s head snapped up, startled. He knew she was aware of the cameras, but she hadn’t known that he could inject sound into the room. He smirked, but his amusement was short lived. A dull ache low in his body reminded him that he had business to attend to. He had to punish a slave, or find the twins, or find some other way to extinguish his lust. He could not quench the heat between him and Twenty-One today.