Chapter 2
Arthur's mind was filled with the contest that he himself had devised.
He was known for being a very impetuous sort. Sometimes his wild notions even surprised himself. He was the junior executive who, it was felt, would never make it to the head of anything. He was a little too wild, a little too flamboyant.
There were many in the company who were a little frightened by him. They figured that in another three years he wouldn't be there anyway. He was the sort who was going to do a lot of moving around in his life. That was clearly the life that he preferred and that was the life that no one would begrudge him. But while he was at the company he would be valuable for his creative input.
He was the one at the meetings who would talk off the top of his head. He would play the devil's advocate. If something was proposed he would point out all the problems with it and then if the entire board started to agree with that new position, he would switch sides and would give all the negative points of the other plan.
Then he would smile at everyone and say, "You see, gentlemen, I'm just trying to say that there are no creative answers. There are problems no matter which course is chosen."
That was the kind of thinking that made waves in a large corporation like theirs, but there were enough people in the upper echelons of the company who knew that this kind of radical thinking was what was needed if they were ever going to keep pace with the times.
Arthur knew the way that the others in the company saw him and that suited him just fine. He made no secret of the fact that his ultimate goal was to work for himself and that he wasn't interested in being a cog in some corporate machine.
He had a curious past since he had started out as a tough kid from Brooklyn. He went to college and was involved with the radical politics of the late sixties. However, he was a little more clever than he was idealistic. He was able to take the politics on his particular college campus and to make it homogenized. He was the information Officer for the radical student group and he was the one who was interviewed on the news shows.
Suddenly the radical student group didn't seem so radical. He was selling the group and their point of view to the American viewers and he became a minor celebrity in the Northeast for a few months. However, the people who took their politics seriously soon started to denounce him. He acted very wounded by the whole thing, got more publicity on television news shows because of his ouster by the radicals. After he left the movement fell apart.
It was all too neatly packaged. Arthur had been the good guy. The radicals had become the bad guys.
As soon as all that was starting to die down Arthur knew that his future was in advertising. If he had been able to paint a picture on the television news of his group of campus radicals as the kind of sincere young men that any mother would love to have her daughter bring home, men who were walking in the footsteps of Tolstoy and Jesus, then he was meant for the advertising world.
The sad part was that the other members of his group did consider themselves sincere young men. They did consider themselves to be fighting for something important. It was Arthur who saw the whole thing neatly packaged like breakfast cereal on a shelf.
But, that was all part of his past. He was a fashionable young bachelor with a classy apartment that was beyond his means by just a bit. And he had a reputation for being a lady-killer.
There was a darker side to his nature, a side that was definitely sado-masochistic. He loved to dominate women. He loved to tie them up and to have them serve as his slaves.
And this combined with his creative side. He always liked to tackle problems in a wild way, to come at things from an unusual direction. He knew that he could find a woman who could be his slave, but the assignment was to find a woman who would be difficult to tame.
Therefore, he had to look for the woman in the least likely place for a woman to be willing to admit that she would be a sex slave. He was walking toward the Times Square area. But, that seemed like the most likely place. After all, there were hookers there, girls who were down and out on their luck and who would do anything for money.
He thought about that. He was about to turn around and head in another direction when he passed a little storefront that had the big letters 'L.A.F.F.' on the window and below that the words 'It's no laughing matter!' printed in red. He had heard about this group.
Straightening out his jacket and brushing back his hair, he stepped into the little store and looked around. There was a beautiful young woman who was sitting behind the table at the far end of the room. She was folding circulars and putting them in envelopes.
"May I help you, sir?" she asked, looking up at the man who had just entered.
He assessed her very quickly. She was tall. Be could tell that even though she was seated. She was wearing a long dress in a shiny, dark fabric, it was one of those things that was suddenly fashionable again and had been fashionable a quarter of a century ago.
Her hair, which was a light reddish brown was pulled back from her face and swept up into a bun. Her eyes were large and her nose was narrow. Her lips were a little thin. Her complexion was very white and very clear, definitely a New Yorker who hadn't had a tan in years.
"Yes. I'd like some information on your organization," he said, stepping closer to her.
He was aware that there were two other people in the place, one woman and one man, but he paid no attention to them. It was only the woman behind the desk who interested him.
"What sort of information?" she asked, a note of suspicion in her voice.
Sensing that note, he said, "My name is Arthur Barone and I'm with the Dalon Company. You know that we have five floors in the building at the corner of Madison and this street. You know which building that is the one with the little fountain and the steps."
"Oh, yes. Forgive me Mr. Barone. We sometimes get some ... men at this hour who have crude notions."
"Crude notions, Miss ... ?" he asked, leaning over the desk and shaking her hand.
"I'm Ms. Finn. I'm working on my dissertation and doing it with the cooperation of L.A.F.F. I take care of the office in the afternoons. Now, what can I do for you?"
"Well, I'm really here independently. It's just that the company has been talking about wanting to have more involvement with neighborhood improvement and ... your group here seems to have some direct bearing on the very neighborhood that we occupy."
"Won't you have a seat, Mr. Barone," she said, pointing to a chair which he pulled up to the other side of the table.
Then she started to gather mimeographed sheets and brochures for him. "This is all about us L.A.F.F. The Lady's Anti-Filth Foundation. We're going to clean up smut and filth and prostitution. The first amendment may guarantee a lot of things, but it doesn't guarantee that."
"It doesn't?" Arthur said, trying to hide his surprise at her glib statement. "Will you prove that in your dissertation as well?"
"Pardon me?"
"Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Tell me. Just how do you intend to get rid of the smut?"
She cleared her throat and said, "We want all of it shut down."
Nodding his head, he said, "Who decides which is which?" He seemed very intent.
"Well, filth is filth. I mean, obscenity is obscenity. Isn't it?"
"In your dissertation, are you including any historical observations? I mean, remember that there was a time in our not-too-distant past when books like 'Tropic of Cancer' and 'Lady Chatterley's Lover,' recognized classics now, were considered the subject of bans because of their obscenity.
"If you go back a little further in history you come to a point where Goya's famous painting 'The Naked Maja' was banned because it was of a woman's body. He would have been burned at the stake for that if it weren't for the fact that he admitted he was wrong.
"And then you go back to the point where people died because any medical experiments were considered obscene and even the most simple operations would have been forbidden ... "
"Sir, I don't know what your business is here," the woman snapped as she stood up suddenly. Her face was flushed and he could see the absolute rage in her, eyes. "I don't see where medical experimentation or the works of proven masters can be lumped into the same category with filth."
He smiled and wanted to say, "You closed-minded bitch! It's because of near-sighted people like you that we're able to have things like the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazi march of terror."
But he didn't say that to her. He merely smiled and chuckled a little bit. "Please. Ms. Finn. I should have told you about my reputation on the board of the company. I'm called the devil's advocate. I always want to look at it from all sides.
"Please, calm down." He urged her back into her seat. "I need to have answers to all of these questions so that I will be, able to answer any questions from the board should I decide to speak on behalf of your organization and, urge our company to support you."
"F-forgive me but ... uh, working here sometimes I get a little ... hassled."
They, smiled at each, other and then she said, "But, you see, what we're actually talking about when we refer to filth is ... actual images of women being tied up and ... and hurt by men. Honestly. These things are being sold right down the block."
"Yes. I have seen that in the windows of the stores," Arthur said, nodding.
He was pleased with himself because he hadn't told a single lie since entering her establishment. He told her about his position with the company and he told her that the company wanted to support some projects in their own community and, when she reacted with hostility to his questions he told her of his reputation for seeing all sides of an issue.
"I must admit," he said to the woman in all sincerity. "That it's going to take some further information until I'm convinced that what your group is doing is either worthwhile or possible."
"Possible? Why, if the city agreed to shut down all the porno operations here ... "
"There aren't enough police to protect people from violent crime as it is ... " he said, leaning back in his sea pretending that he was casually coming up with his responses.
"And look at prohibition. That didn't stop people from drinking. That only made alcohol harder to get, more expensive, and of lower quality. Isn't that all that a police crack-down would do in this matter?"
Ms. Finn was getting upset again and he saw it clearly on her face. He reached across for her hands and asked where she was going for her doctorate and in what field.
She was involved in the Social Anthropology department of the City University Once she started to tell him about that she was more relaxed. She didn't feel as threatened.
When he asked her out to dinner that night she was a little flustered. "Please. You said you would be leaving the office soon and you are going to have to eat dinner anyway. You're on your student stipend from school. Let me buy you diner then."
"Thank you," she said, as she felt him touching her hands once more.
He clutched both of her hands together and squeezed. He was thinking of bondage. He was thinking of having the girl in bondage and as he held onto her wrists he squeezed a little bit harder still.
She shuddered and he knew that she was going to love it.
But he also knew that he would have to work his way up to that point. When she finally stood up he found out that she really was very tall and very graceful. There was a certain elegance about the girl, a certain luscious beauty as, she walked so sensually.
Her name was Eleanore and she was willing to call him Arthur by the time they got to the restaurant. "Oh. I thought you were just going to get me a burger. I didn't know ... "
"Please. It's a restaurant that I like. It will be my pleasure ... " He smiled.
And he knew that the girl warmed up to that treatment. He was being very much an old-fashioned gentleman for her. The restaurant was a very lovely little Spanish place and Arthur ordered elaborately from the menu. He knew that the girl was feeling suspicious of him and he knew that he wasn't going to have sex with her that night. That would have fulfilled her suspicions.
He understood the workings of her mind better than she understood them herself. He knew what she was capable of and he knew what she was thinking. That was part of Arthur's art, always understanding the responses of the other person.
The girl was filled with a lot of rhetoric that she hardly seemed to believe. He listened through dinner and, although he had started out feeling contempt for her and wanting to slam her down on the bed and teach her a lesson, he ended up with very different feelings.
By the end of dinner he knew that the reason he wasn't going to take her to bed, aside from the fact that this was part of his major game plan, was that he didn't just want to slam her down, tie her up, and abuse her. He actually felt sorry for the girl.
He was hearing more than the words she was speaking. Between the lines he was hearing the cry of a frightened little girl, a little girl who thought that sex was filthy and terrifying and who was virtually disgusted by the whole process and by the human body.
She had actually grown up, with whatever input, believing that she spoke about how contemporary she was, about how shocked her father, the minister, was when she decided to live alone in Manhattan "But, I'm a modem woman, I have to be."
Arthur couldn't help smiling when she said that. Everything she had said to him throughout dinner sounded as if it had been spoken by her father, the minister. Of course the reasons why she hated 'smut' and 'filth' were different from his reasons. She gave Sociological background and explanations that seemed rational. But, he knew that it was all the same reason deep down behind all of her words. He knew that she was echoing the same fears she had felt when she was a little girl and when she was first aware of the hot feeling between her legs.
"It's something wrong!" her young voice cried out in her head.
She pressed her legs together. Even now as she sat at the table across from the handsome man who had taken her out to dinner she had her legs pressed together. She wanted to tell her body to stop feeling the way that it felt. "These dirty feelings," she said to herself.
He held her hand and said, "I hope you'll let me see you again. This has been very interesting."
"Oh, yes ... I must be going home now. There's a report I have to do and I should have left already. You understand? It's no reflection on you." She laughed nervously.
"Of course. But ... if I may see you for dinner tomorrow night ... "
Eleanore felt her heart beating very quickly, very nervously.
If Ralph was the most likely to succeed of the crew of young junior executives it was no reflections on his skills or on his performance in his job. It had a great deal to do with the fact that his father had been head of the firm's legal department for the previous fifteen years.
His father was one of the highest ranking and most respected men on the executive board. Ralph was always given prepared statements to read to the board meetings. The statements were actually prepared by his father's faithful private secretary and they were always incisive and to the point.
There were many in the company who were concerned that Ralph wouldn't be able to function without his father there pulling the strings. But, that opinion was never voiced openly.
Not only was his father too respected, he was also too powerful in the company. It would have been suicide for anyone but the senior vice presidents to have said anything against Ralph. It was automatically assumed that there would be a time when Ralph would be a vice president.
His father was still not sixty and in fine health so the assumption was that the old man would be on the board for another ten years, at the very least, and that would be time enough for his son to have moved into a comfortably entrenched position in the company.
But, although his family's money was so great that he didn't really have to care about his pay or anything like that, he was concerned about the hundred dollar wager he had made with the others.
He was thinking about it all during the long train ride up to Westchester.
Ralph still lived at his parents home. It was silly not to. The place was so large, was such an estate, that he had all the privacy he wanted. He had his own entrance and his own rent-free apartment with full-time maid service and a full-time gardener.
Actually, Ralph would probably live at that house until he married. Without someone to look after him, although he was well into his twenties by that time, he probably wouldn't have been able to find anything at all in his life, including a clean, dish or a pair of socks.
He, just like his associates, knew full well what everyone said about him. He even knew it better than his father knew it. Once in a while the older man would give his son a lecture about "Standing on your own two feet. That's what it takes to gel somewhere in business. Show them that you're a man and that you've got guts."
However, on those rare occasions when Ralph had questioned some position on the company board which was supported by the older entrenched members who had the power there, his father would slap him down immediately. Ralph knew that there was no way he was ever going to stand on his own two feet and that when his father said that it was just hollow.
But he didn't care too much. He had a heated pool and he had a sauna and a whirlpool and a tennis court and he really didn't kill himself at work. He worked just hard enough so that he felt it was respectable. But mostly he liked to play. He liked to go out for wild weekends with his little sports car. He liked to pick up girls who were willing to do a great deal in return for an expensive and splashy weekend.
Actually, Ralph was an attractive guy. He was appealing to girls, but he had never given himself a chance to discover that. He had only made it with girls who (he figured) were obliged to put out for him since he had spent so much on them. And, he got very huffy and snide when a girl refused to put out for him even though he had spent money on her.
"Do you know what that restaurant cost me? You were never in such an expensive restaurant before tonight!"
"Ralph. If you wanted a girl who would do it for money, you should have gotten one who had a price tag on her."
The reason he still hadn't had any serious relationship with any girl was that he was unable to think of any of them beyond that level. He had no respect for the girls he saw and felt 'it was a give and take situation. He spent money on them and took his sexual pleasure.
But, he was uneasy as he thought about the contest he had agreed to enter. He had to find some woman, someone who was a hell of a woman, who he could turn into a slave!
On the train up to Westchester he reviewed all of the young women he had dated recently and his conquests. But he felt embarrassed over the notion of playing Master over one of those females. After all, they knew him. They knew where he worked. They knew his family.
For a moment he thought about finding some very anonymous woman, picking up a woman in a bar. But that wouldn't be good either. He would probably just get slapped by her.
It was only when he was finishing dinner that the obvious thought came to him.
His parents weren't home that night. They had gone out to the West Coast for a few days since his father had some business to take care of and his mother wanted to shop in Beverly.
He was sitting in the palatial dining room all alone. His was the only place that was set. And there was only one servant who was working. She had cooked the dinner and she was serving him. Each time he finished a course he reached his foot under the table and stepped on the buzzer.
She would come bustling into the room, a smile on her face, and pick up his dish. Then she would return a moment later with something else. First there was melon and ham. Then there was a bowl of cold red soup. "Just like back at home," she said in her charming Swedish accent.
And then there was the squab with the sweet potato. Ralph insisted that, even though she was only cooking for him that week, he wasn't going to accept any compromise.
After the squab there was a fresh green salad with a light dressing and finally there was coffee with some pastries that she had cooked that day. She was quite a good maid.
"How long have you been with us, Elke?" he asked her, assessing her beauty.
A maid! That was a servant. And wasn't a servant only one step away from a slave?
"Almost one month now I have been in this country," she said with a smile.
"Almost one month," he said with an admiring nod of his head. "You speak English very well."
"Oh, thank you. I study it for years and years. But I don't really know it until I get here and have to speak it every day. You know?" She had a clear white complexion. Her face was rounded and her very light blonde hair was-curly and was clipped short.
Her eyes were large and, although pale blue, were accented with a very dark eye make up. This was the only unusual thing about the girl. She stayed in the room while he ate his salad. She was standing there and holding a tray because he was asking her questions.
"How old are you now, Elke?" he asked her, looking up from his dish.
"I am twenty. This is a wonderful chance for me to get away from Sweden."
"You don't like it in Sweden?" he asked the girl, raising his eyebrows.
"Oh. It's fine. But that was the only, life I ever knew. I was a country girl there. I wanted to go someplace different and coming to America ... It is just perfect"
"And your visa is based on the fact that you're working for my family? Is that it?"
"Yes. It is a working visa. I am so glad that your mother likes me. If she did not like me they would have made me go back to Sweden right away and that would not have been good."
"So," he asked as he pushed his empty salad plate away from him. 'What is it you hope for?"
"I do not understand," she said, smiling even wider then.
"Do you want to work as a maid the rest of your life, or what?"
"Oh," she blushed a little. "I do painting. I want to study this in America. But, meanwhile, I cannot afford to go to the schools yet. Your mother knows about this."
"Admirable," he said. "You may bring my coffee into the parlor."
Ralph was definitely thinking of things in competitive terms. He wanted to get the girl as if the were a touchdown in a football game. He merely had to figure out a proper way to maneuver.
When she came to take away the coffee cup, he asked, "Back in Sweden they're much more open about sex, aren't they. None of the girls have much modesty, do they?"
"Oh, Mr. Ralph. You will make me blush," she said. He saw that she was nervous as she hurried out of the room. She was also aware of the sexuality of the situation between them.
It was close to ten and the girl was almost done in the kitchen, almost ready to return to her quarters to the far side of the kitchen. She was the only person on staff who was currently sleeping In. There was also a laundress and a gardener and a daily maid who cleaned the upstairs after this Swedish maid had finished making the beds and the immediate morning chores after breakfast. And then there was the driver who drove Ralph's father and the pool man who came to clean the pool.
But now the house was quiet but for the two of them, Ralph and Elke.
He walked up beside her and said, "I think we have to have a talk."
"Mr. Ralph, is something wrong?" She responded because he had sounded so serous.
"Sit down." It was a command. Then he took some things out of his jacket pocket. There was a silver lighter and a little silver cigarette case. They usually stood on an end table in the living room. "Axe these objects at all familiar to you, Elke?"
"Sir?" she asked, looking directly at him. Then she looked at the silver pieces again and said, "I see those when I clean in the big grey room with the white drapes."
"Perhaps you can explain why I found them in your room, Elke."
"In my room? Sir, these things were not in my room. They were never in my room?"
"You deny that so vociferously, with so much enthusiasm, Elke."
"Vociferously? I do not know what this word means, sit."
"Elke, let's not play games. I found these missing yesterday. I know that I shouldn't have gone into your room to look for anything. I know that was an invasion of privacy. But I was hoping, really hoping, because you seemed like such a sweet girl, that I wouldn't find them there."
"Sir?" the, girl said, still terribly confused. "What were they doing there?"
"Oh, come off it, Elke. You seamed like such a sweet girl. But, you weren't the first maid we've had here who stole things. I've almost come to expect it. Hell. You're a country girl from Sweden and you want enough money so that you can go art school."
"No-o-o-o-o!" she cried out, standing up. "No. I did not ever steal in my life."
Shaking his head and speaking in a soft voice, he said, "I doubt the police will believe that."
"No-o-o-o-o!" she cried. "When did you go to my room? When was that missing?"
"Now see ... here! I'm the one asking the questions here." He bullied her.
"Oh, please. This will ruin all that I work for. You must believe I did not do it."
She fell back into the chair and although she didn't start to cry she looked like she was right on the verge of breaking into tears. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and moist.
He sighed softly and asked, "Should I call the police now?"
Elke didn't understand the question. The man was standing over her and wasn't making any move to call the police or anything like that. She shook her head. "Please don't."
"And if I don't, what will you do for me in return, Elke?" he asked with a low groan in his voice.
"What will I ... ? I do not understand. What ... c-can I do for you?"
He looked up and down her sensually formed body. She had a well-curved and extremely feminine body. Even though she was wearing the stark black dress and the white apron of her profession she could not hide the rounded hips and the full breasts that she had.
Ralph chuckled a little bit under his breath. "The first thing you can do is take off your clothes."
"Mr. Ralph!" The girl's eyes popped open as she jumped up from her seat.
"You heard what I said. Now, are you going to cooperate or am I going to call the police?"
Her breathing was thick and fast and her breasts were bouncing up and down as she looked, intently at the man. "You invented this. You invented all this about the silver and the stealing so that you could tell me to take my clothes off. You should be ashamed."
He stepped back toward the phone in the kitchen and asked, "Which will it be?"
"What? What? You do not mean that you really will c-call the ... No. You would not." Ralph picked up the phone and looked at a list of numbers in front of him. The number for the police precinct was right there. He dialed it and waited for a moment. "Yes. I'd like to issue a formal complaint against someone for robbery ... No ... It's an employee of ..."
Before he could say anything more, the girl came up to his side and slammed her fingers down on the receiver, disconnecting the call. She looked at him and swallowed hard.
"How could you do such a thing to me. I never did anything to hurt you."
"That's not what life is about. It's not to our advantage," Ralph pontificated, "to do things for revenge. It makes much more sense to do things for gain. I wouldn't worry about hurting you if you ha hurt me ... which I don't imagine you could, anyway.
"But, you have something I want. That's all human nature is about. We fight wars for it and we struggle for it. We want to get what we want. I want your body. No, I want more than that. I want more than your body, Elke. I want to dominate you, to control you."
She was slowly stepping back away from him as she shook her head and said, "Mr. Ralph, you are frightening me."
He grinned broadly then. "You have had sex with a man, child? You do know what it's all about?"
Elke nodded her head slightly and then looked down at her hands. She was standing there without any bonds on her, but she knew that she was his victim as surely as she would have been if she had been shackled hand and foot. He had a stronger bond that metal.
"Well, Elke, this is going to be different. This is going to take you a little further. I don't want to have mere sex with you. I can do that with any woman, any day of the week."
The beautiful Swedish girl was gritting her teeth as she listened to him.
"I want to dominate you. I want you to service me and to be my slave."
She stood up tall and proud. Merely her posture indicated defiance to the man who continued, "So, first I want you to strip completely naked and then I'll permit you to serve me."
The Swedish beauty peeled off her black dress and, a moment later, she stood wearing her bra and panties along with the black step-in shoes which were already worn down.
She kicked off the shoes and then struggled with her bra so that her breasts could burst to freedom. The young man who was watching her licked his lips. These tits were like possessions to him.
Then she reached into the clinging elastic waistband of her panties. She shut her eyes as she peeled them off and then stood completely naked in front of the man.
"Okay, slave!" he announced to the naked beauty. "Now I'll give you the honor of serving my body. Now I'll permit you .to undress me." He stood in the middle of the kitchen. "But, of course, you'll have to get down on your knees in order to do it right."