Chapter 8
That damn fool letter! And old Dimbleby romping on the phone! And an asshole named Ravel. I wanted to kick the whole lot of 'em, including Cathy! It was far worse than the time she'd gone away with Nancy Dwight. The house without Cathy was a morgue. I was a corpse. I could tell she'd spent a lot of time on that letter. It was complete and explicit and answered all my impatient questions before I'd even asked 'em. Dammit to hell, I could see her logic. I hadn't an argument. I was back at square one. Why would any girl in her right mind walk through my front door and ask to be chained or tied so she could never leave again, and to be whipped if she failed to please my notions of what she should be! Why! Hell, there's no answer to that one.
The Templars had been a last straw too many. What an ass I'd been! Unsure of myself. Doubting the perfection I'd created. Asking her to prove it one more time.
Cathy was gone.
Sure, sure, I thought of finding her, It would not be hard. But what then! Tears.
Contempt. Rejection. Cathy had been hurt bad. Both physically and mentally. And it was my fault. Who else!
Even though it had become a mausoleum my house had acquired an aura from what I had done within its walls with Cathy. I had bought it for her. Bought it to be her prison after I'd captured her. Bought it for the two of us. I could look back and realise how the fantasy of my slave girl falling love with her master had been there always, long before I got the money and perfected my plan to kidnap a pretty girl.
My house chided me. It mocked. It cried aloud that it was bereft of purpose. It had fulfilled my every dream, and now I had abandoned it to echoes.
Maybe I can blame or thank my house for what I now did.
I had made a slave girl. I had lost her. I had killed her love. But the world was full of girls. I had found Cathy: I could find another. Kidnapping was a surprisingly easy thing to do. I should know!
Who?
I took to wandering the City and attending functions. Lots of girls. But I soon realised I was not looking for them, I was looking for Cathy. Nuts! But there it was.
In desperation, or maybe to save searching, I decided on Nancy Dwight.
It was easy to date her. She was curious as all get out. I spent an evening with her, fobbing off her questions and casually asking enough of my own to obtain the background I needed for a successful kidnap. I managed to amuse her enough to set up another date. She didn't know it, but it was to be her last date ever.
Beautifully simple. Nancy had an apartment on the ground floor, there was a parking lot. I'd chloroform her and carry her the short distance to the car. If anyone saw me I'd pretend to be taking her to the doctor. I'd ask 'em to open the door for me. Honest, that's all there is to it. Once I had her in the car I'd slip the handcuffs on her wrists and ankles and I'd have me a new slave girl.
I managed to get excited. My house approved. Nancy's peppery and abrasive temper helped. The thought of tying her up and reddening her rump until she got some sense was most appealing. I got rid of the few things that might have reminded either of us of Cathy. Then, on the fatal evening, I walked briskly into Nancy's apartment with the chloroform in my jacket pocket. I didn't ring, I didn't knock. I just walked in through the kitchen and on into the living room. The chair she sat in had its back to the door. I could see her crossed feet and an elbow as she thumbed a magazine. It was perfect. I took out the chloroform and pounced.
But it wasn't Nancy.
It was Cathy.
You know all about momentum and conditioned reflexes and the impulse of compulsion. All of them worked on me. I could no more have stopped than could a planet in the sky. I had the pad well over the protesting mouth and nose before recognition was total on either side. As we fought she slipped away into blackness.
Unthinking and uncaring. I carried my slave girl to the car. No one saw us.
It was the same ecstasy, the same surge of joy. The knowledge of a point beyond return. A glory of fulfilment. I laid my treasure upon the back seat, brought her hands round back and handcuffed them firmly, then locked her ankles. Then I drove us home at exactly the speed limit.
It was done. I was back at another square one.
I played it the same as before. I could not conceive another way. It was a natural. I stripped her and spread her on the bed exactly as she had been the first time. I felt savage at the way she'd been used by the Templars. Their marks were still all over her, mostly faded, but they must have been bad. They were going to be hard to talk away. I fixed her comfortably and safely. I had hardly sat down to wait when she blinked her way back into the world. Only the smallest tremor, then tense realisation, followed by much the same tentative testing of her bonds as I had watched that first time long ago. She did not bother to struggle. Just said in a tired voice.
"It's no good, y'know."
I kept silent. I think she drifted back into the shadows for a minute or so before she said: "It's so silly, Cedric. It doesn't change anything."
I let that go too. I couldn't think of anything worthwhile to say. Cathy pulled fretfully at the ropes on her wrists and ankles. I suspect to show me her distaste for them.
"You don't need to tie me, Cedric. I'm so very sick of being tied."
"You mean you won't run? You mean you'll stay?" The words exploded out of me.
"Did I say that! I don't think I did." She was still dopey. "It's not what I mean. Oh Cedric, no!"
My hope destroyed, I kept silent. Anything I said would be wrong. I ached with words that would not come.
"Cedric, untie me please?"
The biggest hurt was her use of my name. Not a single 'master', not even in sarcasm. Her use of my christian name made us strangers. I wanted to untie her but I did not dare. Oh sure, she looked delightful tied the way she was, and I couldn't help the thrill I was getting at having her like that again. But, with all that, I would have loosened the ropes if I'd thought she would come into my arms instead of walking out of my house.
"Darling, I can't untie you. You know I can't."
"Drop the 'darling' Cedric, it doesn't belong any more. Maybe it never did. We were in love with a dream. I'm so sorry."
I wanted to say: "I love you." But it would sound trite. Everything was wrong for us.
Just the one bright spot: I had her!.
"Cedric! Please! Untie me!"
Her voice had strengthened, so had her dismay. She raised herself as much as she could, the ropes tugging' at her wrists. She looked at the familiar room and then at me. I expect she was remembering things too. Then she let herself fall back. A moment later a tear formed and trickled down her cheek. She let it fall. She didn't care. It was followed by another.
We box ourselves in, make our own traps. What the hell could I do now! I could keep the girl I loved a prisoner or I could let her go. Either way I was going to lose.
If I freed her she would add contempt to whatever other feelings she had for me. If I kept her, it seemed unlikely her regard for me would be any less negative than now.
Looked at that way there wasn't much choice. I tried to explain my quandary. Cathy lay there crying quietly while I floundered.
"Don't try and analyse it, Cedric. None of it matters."
"I won't let you go, Cathy."
"You have to say that, but its silly. I'm no good to you any more. I hate what you love. You don't need me. Get Nancy to be your slave. She must like you to set me up for you the way she did."
Another box I couldn't get out of. Cathy couldn't possibly believe the truth, and I couldn't tell it without playing into her hands. Damn!
"What's changed you, Cathy? Was it the Templars?"
She sniffed and then tugged listlessly at her tethers.
Slowly she blurted it all out about her captivity and the man Ravel. Her animation flowered as she talked. At the end she said vehemently.
"It was beastly. But, in a way, I owe them. They opened my eyes to what a damn stupid business this is; this whole idea of slavery and being tied and chained and hurt and losing freedom. It's nuts!"
I felt a heel, but I also felt anger. "You didn't think it was nuts with me." I said.
"I did at the start, when you had me the way you've got me now." She sneered unhappily. "You broke me. Nothing dramatic, but you punished me until I saw things Your way. I had to see things your way to survive. Then I got used to it.
Can't you understand how lonely it is for a girl captive. She sits chained to await your pleasure. When you come she's so damn pleased to see you that, after along time, she begins to think she actually loves you, her slavery becomes plausible.
She's been conditioned, that's what happened to me."
"That's not fair. You're leaving out the best."
"Stop it, Cedric! I don't want to talk about it. Leave well enough alone. If you want to talk, then let me loose so I can do it in a civilised way, not tied down like some captured animal."
"I'll get you off the bed if you want, but I won't free you."
"Leave me here then, damn you!"
She suddenly went wild. I knew it was a fit of temper, or maybe to make me feel bad. But it was impressive. Cathy positively hurled herself at those ropes. The bed creaked and groaned. I wondered if she knew how beautiful she was struggling that way. By the time she gave it up and relapsed she was sweating, her hair in disarray.
"Let me go! Let me go! You've no right to do this to me. You ought to be locked up, you're crazy."
"You know that's not true." I said.
"Well, haven't you mercy or kindness? You said you loved me?"
"You told me you loved me, too." I said.
"Look, this isn't getting us anywhere. Do something!" "What the devil can I do?" I said.
"Undo these blasted ropes. I hate lying her like this with my cunt staring you in the face. I suppose you're enjoying my cunt!"
I knew why she used the rotten word. We both hated it. The sound of it from her lips would hurt me. I wanted to hurt back and blurted out: "You've got a beautiful cunt. I ought to use it."
"Go ahead." she said bitterly. "Everyone else has."
"In the proper time and place." I said.
"Oh shit, Cedric, grow up!"
"We could go to bed." I said.
She stiffened, and raised a questioning eye. "Where?"
"You know where. The real one. Just one ankle chained?" I said.
"Shove it."
"Do you want to stay here all night?" I said.
She went berserk again, and damn near wrecked the bed. "Does that answer you question?"
It answered my question. Chagrin and disappointment sparked my anger. I'd been repulsed brutally enough to hurt my pride.
"You tell me where then." I said.
"In my own home. That's where." "That's not possible." She sneered again. "That makes it easy. Bung me in your lousy little prison cell. Thats all I am, a prisoner."
"Cathy, don't. Don't talk like that. I love you." I felt like crying.
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Cedric, not that." She raised her head the little bit she could and glared at me imploringly. "Look, I'll make you a deal. Untie me. Then I'll go to bed with you. You'll feel better after you've screwed me. Then we can talk. I suggest you visit me in town once a week, we can do things together, sensible things. I'm through with being tied up."
"No you're not."
She tugged demonstratively at her wrists, and turned at my words. Someone else had said them. They were born of my hurt that Cathy would so scorn the things we had come to share, to mock my fantasy, reject my inner most need. We who adore a bound girl cherish our dream against a hostile world, forever defensive. She should have respected my vulnerability.
"You don't trust me!"
The words popped out of her mouth almost as though I could trust her! Once free, she would rationalise my banishment from her life. Besides, what did I want with social evenings! I had kidnapped her the first time to make her a slave. I saw now that's the only way. If a woman is not herself enslaved, she will enslave you. Look around at American men,? puppy dogs, grateful for any bone a girl tosses their way.
"I'd trust you in anything else, but not this." I said She made an inarticulate moan and fell back. Her face was a mask of misery. In a silly desperation I went and sat on the bed beside her and began to gently friction her nipples.
"Please leave them alone. Don't touch me."
"You can't stop me."
"D'you think I don't know that!"
She was as hurt as I was. But she was also right, How her face to one side so as to exclude me from sight. She stripped her features of expression in a way that made me ashamed of what I was doing taking advantage. But I kept on doing it.
"Please rape me and be done." she said.
"I'm busy." I said.
She moaned and shifted her breasts beneath my fingers.
It was a reflex action, a protest in helplessness "Alright! If you keep that up you'll get a response out of my cunt. It will get wet so you can get into me easy. It won't prove a thing."
I did not answer. But I kept on the tender massage and watched her cheeks flush and her breath quicken. for a long time she managed to quell her response, lying there listlessly as though I did not exist. But after awhile her sensations defeated her hostility. Fighting each inch of the way, she entered lotus land. Transferring my attentions to the lips between her spread thighs I took her to the final brink. Then went and sat down.
Cathy was so close to orgasm that her eyes were closed and her hips were working of their own. It took her a minute to properly realise what had happened. It was funny, really, but I shouldn't laugh.
"You son of a bitch!"
Silence "Have the decency to finish what. You started."
Silence "Fuck me, damn you! Fuck me!"
"Don't use those rotten words." I said.
"Don't leave me this way."
"I'll leave you anyway I like." I said "Oh, shit! " Her voice held infinite disgust." Are we back to that again."
"All the way." I said.
She lay there, pouting and sullen while I untied her legs. While I was locking on a shackle on her ankle she got in a really massive kick with her other foot. It sent me sprawling.
I got slowly to my feet. I'm human. I went and got a whip. When I returned with it she was busy working ineffectually at her wrists, hoping that with her feet free she could find some advantage. When she saw the whip she froze.
"You're not going to start hitting me with that beastly things, are you!"
"Any better ideas?"
"Alright! I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kicked you. But you make me so mad."
Cathy didn't want to be whipped. Her apology was sweet, but I knew why she was making it. She was looking at the whip as though it was a rattlesnake. I should have felt a bastard but I didn't. I gave her a real good cut across her thighs. She squealed.
"Don't do that! I said I was sorry."
This one was across her hips. She bucked and kicked in the most interesting manner. If I'm a bastard: then O.K., I'm a bastard. But I have to admit I found the sight of Cathy doing what she was doing both amusing and amazingly erotic. I had the damnedest hard on. But I'd made up my mind not to screw her. I had the feeling it would give her some sort of advantage.
"Would you say five was fair?" I said.
"None of it's fair. I don't want any. Oh, damn I've been whipped so much! Lay off me, Cedric."
"Five." I said "No! Wait! Don't"
She was delightful. I'd never whipped her before in this position. But it was one of the best. Cathy couldn't keep her legs still. They squirmed and kicked so that, by biding my time, I was able to cut at her in the most interesting ways. I wasn't hitting that hard but she made the damnedest fuss and the shackle on her one ankle clinked like crazy. After she'd had the five, she lay twitching and looking stonily at the ceiling.
"That gets us back on a proper footing." I said.
She did not answer. She refused to look at me. I fastened the shackle on her other ankle, and then the collar around her neck and locked it with the lead chain attached.
She made small impatient motions but could not stop me. Just once our eyes met briefly. For the life of me I couldn't read hers. I don't know what she saw in mine.
Then I untied her wrist. While she sat up and massaged them, she asked dully: "Can you get these bracelets off me?"
"Why?"
"Don't tell me you're not going to fasten my hands some way?"
"When I'm ready."
She sat there, rubbing her chafed skin. Thinking. "I suppose this sounds like buttering you up, or that the whip has had the desired effect. But anyway, thanks for untying me. It was horrible to wake up and find myself all spread and helpless."
"You're welcome." I said.
She put on a resigned air of martyrdom when I pulled on her leash. But she got up and followed docilely enough. She had not forgotten how to walk with chained feet.
I figured the only reason she didn't put up a fight with her free hands was she was scared how a tussle might end. And anyway, with her ankles shackled and the collar and all, she hadn't a hope of winning. But she blew her top when I sat on the edge of the tub.
"Cedric, get out of here. I don't want you in the bathroom while I'm using it. You've locked the chain to the wall. I'm fixed."
"No."
"Good heavens, you've seen all there is to see of me. Or do you get a charge out of watching a girl pee?"
"It's not that. I have my reasons." I said.
From her blush I figured she knew what those reasons were. With a shrug she sat down, and afterwards had a bit of a wash and fixed her hair. Then, for a moment, I though she was going to balk when I produced the rope but, with another shrug, she turned and crossed her wrists behind her back. It was not until I'd tied the last knot she said: "Don't be so unkind to me, Cedric."
"Do you want to come to my bedroom instead?" "No."
I led my slave girl to the cell. Everything was clean and tidy and ready. It was not until I had locked her chain to the ring in the wall and was part way through the door that she exploded.
"Cedric!"
I turned and cocked an eyebrow.
"You're not going to leave me like this are you?"
"Yes. Goodnight."
"Oh noooo! Not with my hands tied? But it's an awful way to leave a girl. It's not fair."
She was damn cute. I wanted to laugh or to kid her along. I knew her main concern.
But I was severe.
"The only reason you want your hands is so you can play with your clit." I said.
"Well, you're not going to."
She blushed and said sullenly. "You're punishing me. I haven't done anything to deserve it. I kicked you but I paid for that."
"Everything about you deserves punishing." I said. "Your whole attitude. You're pouting right this moment."
She stamped a bare foot and twisted against her tied hands in frustration, but said nothing. When I locked the door and looked back at her she was still busy fighting the rope.
She was the most beautiful thing in the world.
I'll admit I hoped for better things come morning. But they weren't there. When I looked through the bars she was sitting on her cot, and my heart went out to her she looked so damn hopeless and defeated. When she turned to look at me I could see she'd been crying.
"Morning Cathy."
She had nothing to say. She was mad. But she let herself be led to where I locked her chain to the wall and untied her hands. Before I left the bathroom and closed the door, I said: "It's all yours, Cathy. Take your time."
"You mean you don't want to watch me pee!"
She poured a ton of sarcasm into that one. It was like the time of long ago. I left her to it and went to make breakfast.
"I'm not hungry."
We've all heard that one. I locked her leash to the chair. If she wanted to make a fuss she could take the chair along. She glared, hating men. she then proceeded to eat a hearty breakfast and lap up the coffee.
"We'd better come to an understanding, Cedric."
"We've already got one."
"No, we haven't. You simply beat me or tie me up in some awful way so that I obey you."
"It works." I said.
I nearly got her coffee in my face, but she killed the impulse. "I mean about my release." She looked at me brightly.
"There won't be any."
She became sort of maternally patient with a small awkward boy. "I'm willing to make concessions if I can have my freedom."
"No deal."
This time it happened. I should have been watching, but I got it in my face. While I was cleaning up, she said archly: "Don't tell me. Let me guess. I'll be whipped!"
"Wasn't that an invitation?" I said.
She took a plate and smashed it on the floor. Then sat looking perky and smart.
"Now I get whipped again." she said gaily. "Aren't I the lucky girl!"
"You're a damn fool." I said. "And I know what you're up to. You're going to provoke me so much and pile up so many punishments I'll feel sorry for you, throw up my hands in despair, and set you free."
"What a lovely scenario! May I smash another plate?"
"I wouldn't recommend it. Let's both have another cup of coffee and talk. By the way, start calling me 'Master' again."
She did not throw the fresh one at me. She sat brooding. "I haven't anything to bribe you with, have I Cedric! You've got all of me here now, conveniently chained.
What's the use of us trying to arrive at anything? the way I am is so unfair."
"You loved me once." I said.
"That was all so silly. It's past." She looked at me mournfully. "What you've got us into now is an anticlimax. We both know every move. You're going to hurt me in various ways until I become completely tractable and I'll get so I'm grateful for even a kind word. Probably after a month I'll want you to take me to bed, just to relieve the tedium."
"You sure have a gift for lousing up a nice situation." I said.
"I suppose you'll make me do the dishes and clean up the broken plate? Do I get whipped before or after?"
"After."
"I'd hoped you wouldn't." She looked at me wistfully. "Don't you ever get bored with whipping me?"
"Never. You are eternally beautiful."
"And it gives you an erection."
"I'll start punishing you for remarks like that."
"Don't! No, please! Don't you see, Cedric, those remarks are me. Take 'em away and you've just got a body to beat."
There was a witchery in her. And she was right. I liked her as she was. I joined her game. "O.K. Cathy. I'll whip you only for my own amusement. No guilt. Or if you insist on kicking me and stuff like that. And the one other "
Her quick glance was fearful. She knew!
"If you make a serious attempt to escape and I catch you."
"Cedric, is that so bad!" Her voice had a small break. "Isn't it a human right! Aren't prisoners supposed to try?"
"I've told you the way it is. You're warned."
"Oh well." She had control of herself. "You never gave me a chance before. I don't suppose you will now. I'll take my chances." She gave me a wry grin. "I bloody well have to, don't I!"
"Are you deliberately calling me 'Cedric' still for a reason?"
She shrugged. "I suppose so. Dammit, Cedric, can't you understand how helpless and hopeless I feel! I'm screwed every way I turn. You've got me again. I suppose I'm trying to make the situation as impossible as I can. All of me is seething with revolt at what you're doing with me. When I look ahead there's nothing but despair.
Try and see it my way."
She was magnificent. I kept silent.
"Look, I'm a girl. Just an ordinary, pretty girl. I haven't done anything wrong, but I've been put in prison. It's not an ordinary prison with time off for good behaviour and visits from the padre or the Chaplain and a week in solitary if I misbehave. It's a prison where I'm whipped for everything even for my jailer's private fun. A prison where I'm kept in chains the way they did many hundreds of years ago, on the slave plantations. About my only privilege is that you're willing to take me to bed. But, from what I've read, pretty girl prisoners could always rely on being screwed." She stopped for breath, and look at me forlornly. "Oh, Cedric!"
Dust and ashes.
Defeat.
Yet Cathy had made me see her plight more intimately than before. My heart softened. There was no way I was going to admit defeat for either of us right then.
She was in the doldrums of a new captivity. But I could show willingness.
"You've talked yourself out of a whipping." I said. "For this one time."
She looked at me very seriously and said: "Thank you, Cedric. I'm grateful for that, honest I am."
We had run out of words.
I transferred her leash to the ring by the sink and left her to do the dishes.
She broke none of them.