“Yes, Professor, I plan on having a Model Slave for each upcoming season,” said Demetrius, responding to a question Twenty-One couldn’t hear. “All training currently available will be expanded upon; domestic duties and etiquette, positions and pain response, pleasure and endurance…yes.” He gave the low chuckle that always made the hair rise on Twenty-One’s skin. “Oh, yes, I will enjoy myself.”
The twins laughed as well. Again Twenty-One was struck by the sensation of phantom eyes on her. She fought not to squirm. Demetrius spoke over the increasing volume of the melodic strings. He opened his arms wide, like a circus ringleader.
“Let’s start the party.”
The music reached a crescendo and the hallway the twins had come from burst into movement. Slaves and attendants and a dozen strangers in chef attire flooded the dining room. Twenty-One couldn’t have kept her eyes lowered if she tried. A herd of chefs, complete strangers to Twenty-One, carried platters of food and the steel slaves, who were slung over their shoulders. They set the gilded women down on their backs along the table runner. As they were set down, their attendants came to their side, dipped a brush into a jar of honey, and drizzled the nectar down the length of their bodies.
Chefs set a slave on the table within arm’s reach of Twenty-One. Twenty-One recognized her from the basement: Seven, a beautiful, heavily-tattooed steel slave with short red hair. Seven’s attendant decorated her with honey and layered the sweet streaks on her body with various fruits; scoops of honeydew, strawberries, pomegranate seeds, and plump blackberries.
The kitchen staff set dishes of bread and fine cheeses between the slaves on the table runner and retreated to the kitchen. Twenty-One saw Demetrius on the platform, waving a row of nude women forward. The five glass slaves approached in perfect posture, their gait as delicate as any dancer’s. They held trays of champagne flutes, identical to those Twenty-One had held the night before, but the glasses didn’t shake above their steady hands. They glided over to Demetrius in unison and did a slow coordinated spin, showing off their balance skill and their elegance. Twenty-One saw Three in the middle, painted gold with her choppy white hair tied back with ribbon.
“Twenty, Three, Fourteen, Ten, and One are the glass slaves of this season,” said Demetrius. “I am particularly proud of this season’s glass crop. Each are delicate and very eager to please. Their skin is so easy to break that we had to punish them with water alone.”
Water. Twenty-One thought back to Three’s punishment, submerged in the tub until she ran out of air.
“You can see the steel slaves on the table, three of them this year. They’ve each been challenges in their own way.” He paused. “Yes, of course. They’re all obedient and desperate to serve. We have increased their pain tolerance and they will beg for the harshest punishments. They are more prone to outburst, but again, each have their own ways of being tamed. It’s all in the catalogue you received.”
He introduced the rest of the slaves, all with leather collars, too quickly for Twenty-One to keep up with. The attendants all came to sit, their slaves standing beside their chairs with their arms behind their backs. Demetrius, too, went to his seat and stood beside Twenty-One. It was only then that she realized she was shaking and that her skin had gone cold. The music, the swarm of activity, the stench of the food in the chef’s arms, ready to serve; it was so much, so fast. She had grown accustomed to her unwavering routine. The dinner party was so controlled, yet to her it was chaos. Her hands curled into fists in her lap. She had to keep it together. She strained to recall her mantra to calm herself, but the words she had burned into her brain seemed to break up like a cobweb blown apart by a strong breeze.
Twenty-One did not notice the French doors open until the icy breeze hit her back. She turned around, breaking form. If her Master noticed, he gave no indication. He, too, had turned toward the French doors.
The first thing Twenty-One noticed, oddly enough, were the curling horns decorating the heads of ten men, nude and gilded just as she was. Like the female slaves, the men were uniquely beautiful and had thick leather collars around their necks. Each slave was erect and at the ready.
Two of the male slaves were a few steps behind the others, surrounded by ten men in suits; attendants, Twenty-One assumed. A woman sat on the slaves’ shoulders, supported by their strength. Twenty-One supposed she was Abigail, the partner Demetrius had mentioned. She looked like a Roman goddess, a statue come to life in a long white gown with an open front, baring plump, pale cleavage. Her dark golden hair fell in careful ringlets, pulled halfway back with ribbon similar to the slaves. She wore a slow, easy smile, as if this entire spectacle was just so amusing, and outstretched her arms. One of the slaves in front of her fell onto all fours. The two holding her lifted her up and she stepped onto the kneeling man’s back to the floor.
“Oh, Demetrius,” she said, her voice sweet and melodic. “You never dress for the theme! I guess you’re always our Hades, though, aren’t you?” She kissed Demetrius’ cheeks.
Twenty-One couldn’t keep her eyes off Abigail. She seemed to glow in her white gown against Demetrius’ monochromatic figure as she traced his lapel with her fingertips. Twenty-One didn’t understand the feeling that came over her as she watched a woman behave with such familiarity toward Demetrius, as if he were an everyday person. It burned like jealousy, but there was an edge of pain as well, an ache akin to heartbreak. Yet she was mesmerized by this woman, by every casual smile and languid gesture. She flicked her wrist and her ten slaves sprung into motion, aligning themselves behind Twenty-One and Demetrius’ chair. Demetrius led Abigail to her seat, beside Twenty-One near the head of the table. Twenty-One kept her gaze on the empty plate in front of her.
“Please tell me the chefs are ready to serve,” Abigail’s voice rang clear over the din. “I am famished.”
Demetrius sat down in his chair and again addressed the cameras. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have games planned for your entertainment while we eat, though feel free to make a request should you wish to see any slave perform a task. Their attendants will be happy to oblige using any of the tools you see on the rack.”
The chefs set platters of food on the table. Twenty-One saw roast pig, poultry, and lamb, heaps of roasted red potatoes, pots of stew, platters of foods she couldn’t name. Between the food and the three steel slaves, there was hardly any room to move, but no one seemed to mind.
Abigail beckoned and one of her slaves appeared at her side, a trim and muscular young man with short, light brown hair, who knelt at her feet immediately.
“Ash,” Abigail lifted his chin and handed him her plate. “Make my plate, darling, and you can sit next to me and this sweet little creature here.”
Twenty-One felt Abigail’s eyes on her.
“Look up, slave,” the woman ordered. “Let me have a look at you.”
Twenty-One looked at the Mistress. Abigail studied her. Her dark blue eyes seemed harder than Twenty-One would have anticipated from her warm and casual demeanor.
“So this is the Model Slave,” she said with a slow, sharp smile. A coldness crept across Twenty-One’s skin. “Well, she is very pretty, Demetrius, but she’s certainly not stellar. Why is she the perfect model for future slaves?”
The air seemed to grow colder where her Master sat.
“Twenty-One has only been with me since October,” he said, his voice flat and steady, “and she is better trained than most slaves are in three months. She learns and retains lessons better than any slave I have had. She is a perfect prototype for this new classification.”
Twenty-One felt colour rise to her cheeks. She’d had no idea how she stacked up to the other slaves. Her Master’s words from long ago echoed in her head. You were born for this.
Ash, the handsome slave, returned, setting a plate of food down before his Mistress. Abigail smiled at him, picked up a scrap of pork from her plate, and held it out on her palm. Ash took the meat between his shapely lips without hesitation or shame. The sme
ll of the meat was overpowering. Twenty-One’s stomach had never felt so empty. When was the last time she had eaten anything but broth, water, and fruit?
Abigail plucked a second morsel of meat from her plate.
“I think our little Model Slave deserves a treat,” she purred. “Ash, why don’t you share this with her?”
Abigail popped the pork into Ash’s mouth and the young slave approached Twenty-One. She glanced at her Master, whose eyes held a dangerous edge, but Ash’s hand appeared at the back of her neck and forced her attention back to him. Ash’s mouth was on hers as soon as she turned her head, his lips soft and insistent, pushing hers open as he slid the meat into her mouth.
Twenty-One’s body became fire, sparked and fed by Ash’s lips. The pork was more delicious than she could have imagined. When she swallowed it, the warm, succulent taste remained in Ash’s mouth. She lapped at his tongue, clinging to the taste, to the tenderness of his kiss. He pulled away, licking his lips, and she met his eyes for a moment, a bluer grey than her Master’s. Something was wrong. There was an urgency behind his Hollywood smile, a frantic spark in his gaze that she didn’t understand. Tears threatened to swell in her eyes. She didn’t know why she wanted to cry.
Ash drew back and Abigail pulled out a stool beside her for him. Twenty-One’s gaze trailed down the strong chest, the hard cut of his muscular stomach, to find him hard and inviting. Her pulse jumped. She turned away. She had been surrounded by nude women, but other than her Master, she had not seen a fully naked man in this place, let alone one as model-perfect as Ash. Twenty-One stole a glimpse of Demetrius and immediately wished she hadn’t. Her Master was still as stone, as still as he had been when she had struck him in the face the first night she had awoken in the cage. He stared at Ash, Abigail, and finally looked at her. She looked at her plate and wished she could make herself invisible.
Abigail shook her head at Demetrius with a bright laugh. Twenty-One tensed even more. How could Abigail not feel the dangerous static in the air?
“Oh, D,” she said, shaking her head and smiling as she pushed the food around her plate with her fork. “Are you ever going to eat with us? Must you sit at the head of the table with an empty plate like a vampire year after year?”
Demetrius cut his eyes to Abigail, an icy glare that again made Twenty-One wish she could disappear. Abigail merely tossed her slender shoulders and took a sip of wine from her glass.
Demetrius turned his attention to the cameras overhead. “Ladies and gentlemen, Faith and Charity will be directing our first game. We will need two female slaves and a male slave. Whom would you like to see perform?”
Abigail laughed suddenly, making Twenty-One jump. “Willow,” she beckoned one of her slaves, a towering young man with long frost-blonde hair and sharp runway features. “More than a few buyers called your name immediately. You’re a lucky one.”
“Four and Eight, to the platform,” Demetrius ordered.
Twenty-One tried to stare at her plate, but she couldn’t ignore the spectacle. Faith and Charity led Four, a pale and curvaceous girl with ginger red hair, and Eight, tall and graceful as any of the glass slaves, to the platform.
Faith came back from the tool rack with two blue and green taper candles. Twenty-One knew what was going to happen immediately. The twins bound Four and Eight’s hands behind their backs and placed the candles in their mouths.
“On the table,” Charity ordered.
Willow, the beautiful male slave, sprung onto the training table and extended his arms overhead, waiting to be bound. Four and Eight hovered over him, and though the candles weren’t yet lit, Twenty-One’s skin burned with the memory of hot wax searing on her chest and belly. It had hurt so badly. She didn’t want to watch another slave suffer so, yet she couldn’t look away from the long-limbed man shackled to the table.
“Slaves,” said Faith to the two women, “why don’t you draw a pretty tree on your canvas?”
Four and Eight set to work the moment Charity lit the candles in their mouths. They leaned forward, dribbling wax, and the attendants at the table burst into cheers and chants, as if they were watching a boxing match. The slaves tilted their heads, doing their best to direct the hot wax into shapes. Twenty-One shivered. Bright bursts of blue and green dripped onto Willow’s milky skin. He threw his head back, his mouth open. If he made any sound, it was swallowed by the attendants’ shouts. His sex moved with every new spot of wax, bouncing against his pelvis as his muscles tensed from the heat.
Twenty-One felt warm all over, and it wasn’t from fear. The game was such a spectacle. The female slaves hovered over Willow, their breasts cast in candlelight, and Willow all but writhing on his back, thrusting his hips in the air in spite of himself, his hard sex begging for contact. He enjoyed the wax. Twenty-One wondered if she would ever be able to reach the point where she enjoyed that pain. She would have to in order to embody the title of Model Slave, wouldn’t she? She already enjoyed Demetrius’ nails and crop strikes while he gave her pleasure, but she could only hope that he would be able to train her to enjoy pain alone. She knew he would be able to. Demetrius was Master, after all. She only hoped she could be strong enough to learn at a pace that pleased him.
The dinner party was a flood of activity. The glass slaves fluttered about the table, serving champagne and pouring wine. The attendants gave them affectionate strokes, squeezed their breasts, patted their buttocks as they worked. Their slaves, standing beside them, were given morsels of their feast as Abigail had fed Ash. Some attendants made a game of tossing bits of food in the air and making their slaves catch them in their mouths. They even tossed food at the steel slaves, who could only open their mouths and move their heads slightly or risk spilling the honeyed fruits on their bodies and be punished. Twenty-One felt as if she were in a different world.
Something warm and almost rough brushed Twenty-One’s shin, startling her. Ash caught her eye, his head bowed, looking at her. He smiled, so handsome it almost hurt to look at him, and again brushed her shin with his foot. Twenty-One swallowed, her heart in her throat, and tried to remain still. She wasn’t allowed to interact with any of the other female slaves without express orders to do so. She was certain this interaction was also forbidden. Abigail was distracted, chatting with Konri across the table as she ate. Ash was little more than a decoration at her side. Twenty-One dared not look at Demetrius, lest she signal to him that something was wrong. She would not risk Demetrius’ anger for a flirtatious slave.
Ash would not relent, though she kept her eyes on her plate, the food, the steel slave on the table in front of her. She felt him looking at her, felt those lovely blue-grey eyes vying for her attention. She tried not to think of the way he fed her with his mouth, of the press of his lips, but her sex bloomed, and Twenty-One was ashamed of the warmth between her legs. She sat in silence as the twins declared Four the winner of the game, unbound Willow, and threw Four onto the table in his place. Willow wrapped Four’s seashell-white legs around his waist and plunged inside of her, his thrusts hard and urgent, while the dinner table erupted into cheers. Faith and Charity flitted about the coupling, occasionally striking Willow’s legs or Four’s breasts with a leather crop from the tool rack. The smack of each strike echoed over the din, sending jolts through Twenty-One. She stared at Willow, at the frost blonde hair clinging to his face. His torso was still decorated with dots of wax. Twenty-One couldn’t see a tree pattern in the wax, but she was not the judge in this game. The male slave’s thighs quivered with each thrust and every slap from the crop. Though he looked frantic, there was something utterly controlled about the way he took Four, a method in the chaos. She had never seen a male slave. She wondered what training entailed for them, what methods they learned for pleasing their Masters and Mistresses.
“Twenty-One.”
Her Master’s voice startled her. She tore her attention from the game and looked at her empty plate.
“Yes, Master?”
She wanted to look at
him so badly, to see him in his black suit again.
“You must be hungry,” he said. She couldn’t read his tone. He was cold and even.
“Only if it pleases you, Master,” she murmured. The wax game had allowed her temporary reprieve from her hunger, but now it was back in full force. Remembering the rich pork made her stomach cramp with need.
“You may eat what you can get from Seven,” he said, “using your mouth.”
On the table in front of Twenty-One, Seven did not react to her name. She remained on her back, her gaze on the ceiling, still as a sculpture. Abigail, Konri, and a few attendants had plucked fruit from her, but much of it remained, streaked in honey.
“Go on,” Abigail said. Twenty-One had forgotten she was there. “Let’s see you use that pretty mouth.”
Twenty-One felt her face flush. However, the food was too tempting for her to be embarrassed for long. She leaned forward, hovering over Seven’s hip, and reached for a strawberry. She was thankful her hair was styled out of her face, or it would have come down into the honey on Seven’s skin. She closed her mouth around the strawberry and the moment the honey struck her tongue, her knees weakened. It was so sweet, almost cloying, but she wanted it. She sank her teeth into the fruit and the juice burst onto her tongue, so sweet, so delicious. She nearly moaned.
Twenty-One heard Abigail laugh and clap her hands, which only encouraged the slave. She dipped down again and captured a mouthful of fleshy pomegranate seeds. She ate them so frantically that a few dribbled out of her mouth and onto the table runner. But she didn’t care. The honeyed fruit was ambrosia. She ate every piece she could reach, lapping at the honeyed streaks on Seven’s skin. Seven stirred from Twenty-One’s tongue, moaning through closed lips, but Twenty-One only wanted the fruit and honey.
Finally, she could reach no more. The honey she licked at was gone. She could only taste Seven’s smooth and salty skin.
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