A Dangerous Liaison (to be one-on-one/closed)

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

'cherub'

Seraph

How are your intrigues and endeavours, cherie? You know how much I envy you. This baby is going to imprison me a thousand, well a hundred miles from you, for another four months before it deigns to enter the world. I'm sure it'll be a boy: typical male, waiting to make a good entrance, keeping a woman on tenterhooks.

Hey, and Alphonse writes to tell me he's left his card with you twice this last week. Don't you remember the wonderful times the three of us had, cheating that old goat in Versailles out of his princess's ruby necklace? Don't hold it against poor Alphonse that he gave us less than our share of the proceeds: he would have been challenged to a duel otherwise, and it's the rapier of his wit that's his forte, not the metal kind.

I need more gossip. Feed me, feed me. How are Marie and her German drunkard? And the Mad Monk? And do see Alphonse and tell me all, won't you?

your Cherub

 

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[patrick1]

Alphonse

Diary April 16, 1735

I shouldn't have visited Seraphine, the angel indeed, so soon after her card arrived. It looked a little eager. But unbeknownst to her, I had seen her at the recital at the Duchesse de Chamblay's only the week before - she was deep in conversation with another of her circle of delightful harridans and can't have heard a note the poor pianist tinkled - and, I confess only to you, dear Diary, something quickened in me when I saw her. Yes, yes, in that region, but also -

Enough. Today I attached myself to Caloustere, a pretty young thing with a most unfortunate laugh. As I whispered to the angel, there are rumoured to be birds in the Dutch East Indies who flap their wings at just such a sound. Seraphine looked at me a little sharply when I said this, but perhaps it was because until that point I had been using the young bird as my alibi, as it were. Caloustere actually read one of my poems aloud to the assembled throng (there were two or three other idlers there). I did my best to summon up a blush, but dammit I was actually somewhat pleased to hear the words on her tongue - she has a fine speaking voice and indeed a most delectable tongue - and to enjoy the scattering of applause afterwards.

Seraphine herself looked ravishing. She said in all the time she'd known me (I think this was a sort of claim upon me, or perhaps a jibe at the youth of my companion of the day) I had never written her a poem. Naturally I have had to promise to write her one, although the very promise has immediately driven anything but foolishness out of my head (Every woman has her season / Till finally she'll lose her reason).

We need a conspiracy. Something that will force us together while we enact the plot of it. Now, I have ideas a-plenty for that, but as ever, so many of them involve the whipping of tender female flesh and one cannot be sure that even such a libertine as Seraphine would venture so far into the darkness of our souls. (First my dear I'd like to strip you / Then with my crop I'd like to -)

Wine. I need wine to contemplate this further. Or at least to quench the desire for contemplation. Bah. Where is Auguste when I need him?

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

Alphonse

Madame

How delightful it was to attend upon you yesterday. I regret I am out of town for a day or two to settle up some affairs. I have not told anyone of this, and would be grateful if you would keep my confidence (except for 'Cherub' of course whom I regard as almost a part of you), but my mother died recently, leaving rather a swamp of debt and chaos behind her. As a consequence I have found myself in the grip of altogether unfamiliar emotions which are not precisely grief, but which certainly seem to me to have their source in the sudden sense of isolation I am experiencing.

Perhaps it is this mood that has stimulated these lines, which I have penned in response to your words the other day that I never wrote anything for you. They do not feel appropriate for public consumption, yet I venture to offer them to you, as they are a most sincere reflection, or should I say refraction, of my sentiments. If you find them, I don't know, if you think they are in any way inappropriate, I beg you to toss them aside, and let us imagine they were never sent, nor even imagined.

Your smile is a diffident disguise.
Your grace is a swan's
as you raise yourself up to examine
the rich world you deserve.
Ah but who among the throng around you
has glimpsed behind the powder and rouge
beyond the pale serenity
Seraphina, burning?

Forgive me. When we meet again in Valais I shall be my old self again. Indeed, I have some wicked thoughts about how we might enjoy ourselves in a little conspiracy. Please excuse this serious face I present to you for once. Consider it a wound I have, a scar, say, like that blood-red mark on the cheek of the vile Vicomte de Clichy; when we meet in person I promise to show you my other profile again.

Alphonse.

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

April 24, 1735

Madame

I regret that a Wednesday has passed and I have been unable to take up your kind offer of hospitality and conviviality. Mundanities detain me here, sadly. To begin to examine the accounts of someone else is to venture into a nether-world of strange codes and understandings. I cannot entrust this work to an underling for alas it is plain that my mother's dealings with the world in her later years were an elaborate, I don't quite know the word to summon up what was truly happening, an elaborate coiffure to hide the baldness beneath? It seems she spent a great deal of money she didn't have on a ne'er-do-well, and rather a lot on tincture of iodine, which seems to have become her not-so-secret alternative name for Dutch gin.

But I bore you with my secret mundanities. I imagine you, beautiful as ever, stretched on a chaise longue, scanning my letter between poems sent to you by ardent Valaisiens, finding me wanting I had hoped to pen more verses to add to the one I despatched to you a week ago. I confess the refrain 'Seraphina burning' continues its percussion in my imagination, but I cannot as yet add a further refrain to this drum, and fear that perhaps you will burn with indignation or indeed vexation rather than, rather than, I don't know what, at my lack of invention.

Well, but I can inform you that another of my secret mundanities, Caloustere, has ventured so far out of her native city as to visit me here, and lest this immediately trouble rather than please you, let me hasten to tell you that the next conspiracy I shall propose to you when we meet concerns a wager relating to the young woman concerned, which I hope you will like to countenance.

Now I must return to the abacus and the reading of codes. I raise a glass of, ahm, 'tincture of iodine' to you, and hope this finds you in good spirits, Dutch or otherwise.

Alphonse.

+

Diary, 24 April

I think Caloustere's mother has altogether misunderstood the knowledge she inveigled out of me - that I was coming here to settle my mother's estate. She thinks her daughter is toying with a newly rich man, not one toying with his last coins on the edge of bankruptcy. So she despatched the poor girl hence to entice me further.

Calou herself surprised me. She is blank-eyed, clear about the world. 'This won't last, will it?' she said, not seeking an answer, as we dallied together in the run-down cupola. 'Don't despise me,' she said, rendering me speechless and momentarily appalled at myself.

It was she who gave me the idea for the game. There's something that bores her about conventional flirting. After a little infusion of Chateau Magnon, she began to make animal gestures and sounds. A pig grunting, a cat, a horse whinnying. I got us another bottle and began mirroring her. We played in the jungle together. I saw how it could be. I saw what she would do if I asked, and was alarmed. But I do so want to entertain Seraphina with this. So I shall continue. Woof woof. Miaou. Grrrrrrrowl.

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

Alphonse

April 27, 1735

Madame

How right the Comte is to warn you against me. Keep your eyes open, Marquise: I shall be dangerous to you, I trust.

He and I did indeed enjoy some boyish roistering days. He is a cunning rogue. At first I took his avowals of licentiousness, atheism and headlong avarice at face value. It was only after some time in his company that I realized there was a technique to him: that he would seem to avow radicalism, but what he would often do would be to pose the question - 'Such horrors prove there is no God, wouldn't you say?' I remember him saying about tales of war - and I, seduced by him, would be the one who charged over the abyss - 'There is no God but ourselves!' I would cry to the heavens, or an assembled throng, and be surprised to find the good Comte not supporting me, watching quizzically from the sidelines.

There is some rancour between us, over the way he treated a servant girl on his estate, which perhaps I shall bore you with at another time.

Perhaps at the same time I shall tell you of the witch I knew when I was sixteen, and didn't know my ---- from my elbow, and how kindly she, an ancient woman of at least twenty-seven, with hair below her waist and a knife scar across her throat, taught me the little I know about my own body, and a woman's.

Your correspondence and the stories you have to tell are most welcome, Madame. The lion lies down with the lion, indeed. I send you a guttural growl, I hope you were careful when you unsealed this letter not to let it escape too far, even a growl can be dangerous when unleashed.

Alphonse.

Diary, April 28, 1735.

The trail is laid. I feel no compunction now, either; the naive Calou is not so naive. When I 'confessed' to her that my desires were not those of other men, that something had happened to me in late childhood that had given me an idée fixe, she gasped as if startled into knowledge. She asked me if I was prepared to tell her the intimate detail, and thus it will have seemed to her that she initiated what then took place. Ah: how delightful. This Wednesday, yes, shall I dare to take up the Marquise's invitation?

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

Alphonse: a Wednesday evening with Seraphine

I feel unnatural. I hear myself telling stories about a man called 'I' and wonder if these events sound plausible. They are more self-deprecating than the stories I usually hear me tell - falling into a river at nineteen while drunk because I was pretending to be a Venetian gondolier, or waking naked and alone outside a chateau somewhere near Versailles and unable to remember why I was there - and I suppose I must be, without having thought about it in advance, trying to portray myself as vulnerable. Mustn't I? Do I want her to take care of me, then?

I feel, indeed, vulnerable. How odd. Who the hell are you? - I'm a gadfly, a libertine, a rake, a ne'er do well. I am not at all vulnerable. I remind myself of this, sucking on another oyster, and follow the impulse I've had since I arrived: I touch Seraphine's chest, with the thumb, and the first and third fingers of my right hand, under cover of affecting to admire the ruby pendant that hangs there, hovering above her breasts which seem to want to burst out of their confinement and force themselves into my palms.

I must not think like this. She makes a good joke and I laugh, making myself not look at her chest, dappled with small freckles as it is, its imprint on my fingertips.

She quotes a German author and I pretend to have read him and find myself lost down a long dark avenue of follow-up questions and, I don't know what it is about her dancing eyes but I say to her, 'Actually, I only pretended to have read him to impress you,' like a gauche young student, and to my surprise she laughs, in a different way, and places her left hand on my right for more than a moment.

This is not at all how I behave. Honesty on top of vulnerability. Meat is sticking in my throat and I am wondering if I prefer vegetables. I demur at the offer of a glass of Sauternes with dessert. Who is this stranger inhabiting my body?

Armagnac. I begin to return to myself with too-quickly-drunk Armagnac. Yes, yes, a refill. 'So it's time you told me, Alphonse.'

Oh, her dancing eyes. 'Told you what?'

'Your scheme. Your conspiracy.'

Calou. Ah. It will both make the mood, and break it, to mention the younger woman. 'A wager. I propose a wager. On the behaviour of Caloustere.'

I knew the effect the name would have. Her smile, so sensual, so intimate, becomes glacial. And yet, perhaps, to an untutored observer it would have remained the same smile. She doesn't speak; simply nods.

'I wager that she will, naked...'

The servant enters to refill our glasses and I pause. When he's gone, Seraphine says: 'Naked?' For a moment I imagine her, thus. I gasp for breath. 'Alphonse?' she says.

'I wager that she will, in your sight, naked, bark like a dog.'

'A bitch, you mean,' says Seraphine, not smiling. 'How many francs are we wagering?'

'Oh no. Not money.' I take a gulp of Armagnac. 'I have been reading tales of the enslavement of innocent Europeans - women and men - at the hands of cruel Moroccans and other Mahometans.'

My voice is lower. Our heads are closer together. 'Enslavement?' she says, licking her lips in a most - most - most particular way.

'And so I was inspired to propose a wager. You will say whether she will bark or not. If you're right: I promise to be your - naked - slave for an hour of my life. If you're wrong - the opposite would be the case.'

How convoluted I have become. I sound like one of my old teachers, M Philippe whom I used to despise. The opposite would be the case indeed. I should have been a lawyer. 'I would be your naked slave for an hour of my life,' she says, softly, simply.

'Yes. So - do you accept the wager? If you do - will the bitch bark, or not?'

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

Alphonse

I wake to Seraphine, in her silk gown. I reach for her but somehow, although close, she recedes from my reach. Her nipples are erect, her mouth tantalizes in the shape of a kiss, but I can't seem to speak and there's a slithering shell-less oyster between her pale thighs and -

Ah. It's the night. I'm alone, in my creaking bed, at my mother's empty house.

I am dancing on the edge of the world. Is this why passion has me in its sway? I cannot even afford my own valet now. The sale of the estate will only just settle all my mother's debts. And then - what?

Carpe diem, Alphonse.

In the dark of the night I finally scribble the answer that I postponed in the flesh, the flesh that seemed to seethe and shimmer and make so much noise that it drowned out my thoughts; now I can think. I accept the wager, I write. Time and place to be confirmed.

+​

It's some days later when Caloustere, the kindly minx, comes to call. I am asleep in my clothes on the floor of my step-father's old study in my mother's house. 'Sir,' she says, knocking over a half-finished bottle as she bends to touch my face. 'Alphonse. Are you ill?'

The wine flows towards me like a river of blood. Melancholy has me by the throat. What can I say to her? There are two little spots on her skin, between her upper lip and her nose. How young she is. God, how must I look? I don't remember shaving, or bathing, for several days. 'Is it a mercredi?'

'Mercury's day,' she spells out, somehow as if she herself is the winged messenger.

Too late, then, to reach Seraphine tonight. 'Let me be your dog,' I say to the two spots above Calou's upper lip.

'I don't understand,' she answers.

I bark. I growl. She laughs. I start to become myself again. I am on all fours. 'Let's go to the hunting lodge. Woof. Woof.'

+​

Dear Seraphine

It is to be vendredi. Venus's day. Three o'clock in the afternoon. There is a hunting lodge on my mother's estate. Leave your coachman and your maid at the house. Walk through the gate into the forest. After about four hundred paces, I will hang something in the trees to your right. A narrow path. It's very dark: do not be afraid. Soon you will come to a wooden shack. Caloustere and I will be within. She will not be expecting you. I am a gambler to the last; if she protests, and covers herself, or desists from the game, then you have won.

your Alphonse.

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

Alphonse

I am instantly sober when I read her note. I look around me with her eyes. My mother's house is filthy.

S. The hunting lodge. Vendredi. Midday. There is a servants' room attached, whose door I shall leave open, where you might prepare yourself, then knock at the door to the main room. A.

I realize I should be feeling excitement but to my surprise I feel the most terrible shame. I see myself, with Caloustere, and Seraphine's face at the window.

It's just a game, man, just a game.

I write to Calou, a tangled web of half-truths trying to end our entanglement. She writes back very simply. When I saw her face at the window I knew it was over. Thank you. I had a lovely time. Of course her generosity shames me further, makes me want to get drunk again. And naturally I want to recant, for the sake of another embrace of her lovely young body.

But I restrain myself. Yes I do.

Well, perhaps I permit myself a couple of drinks. Later I find myself outside Seraphine's house in Valais, staring up at the windows, and worry that I am taking this too seriously.

I lose money I don't have at roulette chez the Comte de Darsin, and feel a good deal better.

Mardi, by a marvellous fluke, I meet a certain Marquise de Chaussy at a party hosted by the Duchesse de Chantilly. We blush at each other. She wears the rubies again at her throat and I touch them, and her skin. I struggle for something witty and elegant.

'Seraphine. You look beautiful,' I say.

What an idiot. She seems nonplussed by my plain speech. 'Thank you, Sir,' she says, and moves on.

I sip beer, for the water is not to be trusted, and I am not to be trusted with anything stronger. I go looking for her after an hour or so but she's left early.

Mercredi. I write letters to creditors.

Jeudi. I begin the story of a man who -

A man like me. I call him 'Alphonse'.

Vendredi. I light the fire in the hunting lodge at dawn. There are crimson dreams in the sky, turning to blue. At last I'm calm. What will happen, will happen. I eat apples, and leftover vegetables from the meal that Janci from the village made me yesterday. I walk among the trees. I visit the game-keeper's cottage, and don't give him a reason for borrowing the rope, and the knife, and the whip, and the leather animal collar. As I return to the hunting lodge, it's almost time. I hear a horse whinnying in the distance. Perhaps a man's voice calming it. Is she, even now, walking towards me? Seraphine?

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

Alphonse

The knocking. I am an animal. We are both animals. Her scent precedes her. I wonder if I reek of the scent of my want, even through the barrier of the door.

'Turn away,' I say.

I do desire to see the look in her eyes. I promise it to myself another time, if she grants me another time. But for now...

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I turn the handle.. Quickly, I place the black silk over her eyes and knot it behind her head.

I take the hourglass from her, and turn it, and say, 'Esclave. I have turned the hour-glass.' The first offer of trust. I might keep her forever. But I will only keep her for the time her hour-glass prescribes. Won't I? Which of us believes this?

I take hold of her hair, and she bends into my grasp, and I pull her five paces. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

I am no maid. I have no idea how to remove her clothing. Agh. There's a sort of catch at the back, at the top. Then small buttons.

I puzzle it out, and find there is no clothing beneath. I am shocked and alarmed.

And aroused.

I accidentally touch her bare back as I remove the dress. I kiss her neck, just beneath her right ear, in a place where, in a crowded room, I once imagined kissing her.

Ah. The dress is off her. I make myself look. The dress a pool at her feet. Her skin is satin. She is stunningly beautiful. The sight of her is almost, I can't even think it. She is so -

There was some sort of plan I had, but now, seeing her naked. I simply want to touch, and lick, her satin skin. I feel - enslaved. It's so silent. Why aren't we talking?

Am I in hell or heaven? Some sort of plan: Yes. The - I tie rope around her left wrist - then her left thigh - then her right thigh - then her right wrist. I have the words ready. I had meant them to be foul, rude words. But they won't come. 'Make love to yourself,' I say instead.

Her fingers, guided by mine, begin to caress herself. Has she ever touched herself there? I trust so. I make her kneel, my hand in her hair. I begin to stroke and lick her skin, from her shoulders, down her arms. 'I knew you were lovely, but I hadn't understood quite how lovely you are.' My words are so pseudo-elegant, so stupid. How ugly and foolish I am, how beautiful she is. How, strangely, because of that I want to hit her. Have to restrain myself. Lick. Caress. Make her make love to herself. Yes. Yes. Don't hit her. No. No. Don't. Dear helpless no mustn't yes. How lovely. Yes. No. Con. Satin.

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

Alphonse

Ah. No. Not yet.

'My esclave.' I reach across, and let her feel the tails of the whip against her breasts. How she jumps for a moment. 'Continue your ministrations with your left hand, and take hold of this with your right.' The handle I place in her hand is made of bone. There are nine leather strands leading from it.

I kneel behind her, reaching around her. I place my hands softly on her breasts. I whisper into her right ear, licking between sentences. 'I know I promised you only an hour, but you are my esclave now.' My palms just touch her nipples, and circle. 'You must come twice before I let you go. First, penetrated by the handle of the whip with which I shall soon beat you. Later, by - by another instrument.'

I lick her neck. I cup her breasts. Soon I will squeeze the nipples between thumb and forefinger while I -

'You're facing a mirror, esclave. Imagine me, watching you.' I watch her there. 'Esclave, fuck yourself with my whip.'

And I watch, and my thumb and forefinger close over each nipple, to caress. But soon they will twist there, twist until she cries out, and I'll watch, just stopping myself from rubbing against her with my prick....

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

Alphonse

I hold her there, kneeling, her body trembling. I kiss her neck. The mirror quivers with her reflection, nude, blind, her hands bound at her sex. 'That's good,' I say, 'that's good, that's good.' I could lie down now, happily, clothed, with her naked in my arms, and feel at peace.

The moment passes. She is mine thus, my esclave, only until the hour-glass expires, unless I am a dishonourable man.

Well, I am indeed a dishonourable man, but curiously enough, not towards Seraphine.

I am up, in front of her. 'Keep the handle in you. Stand up.' I speak gently, so she'll think it's gentle and slow. Then she's tardy rising, and I take hold of her nipples, and yank her to her feet, and her cry is almost a scream. 'You must use your well-practised muscles to hold the handle in you, or its tails will punish you straight away.'

I am busy with her ropes: untying her right wrist, placing her hand upon her right breast while I unloop the rope from her thighs. Then I tie her right wrist again, close to her left, her palms facing each other. 'It's time for a game,' I tell her, lifting her wrists right over her and behind her head, as far as they will go. 'A scenario, esclave.' There's a long stretch of rope left. I pull it down. Only now do I take hold of the whip-handle - how tense she is there, holding it in despite her slickness - and twist it gently out of her vagina. 'Mouth open.'

She hesitates, but obeys. Tastes herself, on the handle of the whip that's now between her teeth. 'Hold it there.' And I tug the rope from her wrists through the crack of her arse and between her labia, swollen with desire still, and up to her waist. I hold the rope there and loop it round her body, tie it, tie it tight so that if her arms try to relax she will feel it in her most intimate places.

'There's a low wooden stool, here, just in front of you, for you to stand on.' My arm around her waist, with tentative feet, first her right, then her left, she steps up.

How pretty her feet are. And the curve of her calves

I let go of her and a sound emerges. 'Here's the scenario,' I say, circling her. 'The prospective buyers, watching through the mirror, the two-way mirror, have seen the prospective slave come to ecstasy, bound, nude and kneeling, at the man's behest. They have seen something of what a fine slave she would make: the sheikh, or the doctor who is travelling overseas, or the poxy Count, or the Spanish gentleman - the prospective buyers.'

On fine slave I have to touch her: touch both her thighs, then around to her buttocks, and up her back. I become the Master of Ceremonies, the auctioneer, touching her, touching her: 'What am I bid for the former Marquise de Chaussy, now the proud esclave you see before you? Do I hear a thousand? What's that, sir? You want to see how she reacts if she's -'

I want to murmur in her ear but on the stool she's too tall and she squeals and resists my efforts to make her bend to me, perhaps simply afraid of falling. So I merely lower my voice, my left hand at her exquisite buttocks. 'He wants to see how you'll react if you're whipped. They all do. I tell you what: why don't I throw in the reward, that I will have you come for me again if you beg to be whipped, but if you don't, I won't? What d'you say, esclave? Would you like to be whipped?'

I take the handle from her mouth. It's slippery with her saliva, over and among the juices of her cunt that I can smell there. I stroke her back. She moves her head, as if looking about her, although the blindfold is holding. 'Eh bien, mon esclave?'

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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[patrick1]

Alphonse

I've never dreamt of this. Of the Marquise de Chaussy - of Seraphine - of this woman whom I might rename - in my power. It would have been too much to dream of: a mad foolish hope, a dream of the Indies while sailing west. I've dreamt of Amelie, and Barbara, and yes, Caloustere, but never -

And yet here, gloriously nude, blind and bound and standing on a stool for me, a dream of a slave displayed before prospective buyers, smiling in a strange way, is Seraphine. Esclave. Asking, rhetorically, 'What master offers his slaves the choice of being punished, or how?'

I can't help laughing - at my good fortune, at the impossibility of the situation except that it truly is happening. At the timbre of her words.

I place my left hand at her belly, where the rope is knotted. How hot her skin is, or maybe it's my palm that's a flame. She doesn't understand. I land a great stinging slap on her right buttock with my free right hand, and she staggers forward. Only my hand at her belly saves her. And I land another slap on her left buttock, and she cries out, and I see her jaw moving, as if she's trying to find words to speak. I pull her forwards then by the rope at her waist, tightening it in her crotch and anus, she almost falls as she steps off the stool and then, my hand in her hair, I pull her down to her knees, oh, she falls awkwardly to her right and for a moment I don't care, I feel a terrible joy at her alarm and I just don't care, then she feels my exposed membrum virile brush against her cheek and yes, without, even being told, or just as I'm saying, 'Take your master in your mouth,' her lips are already there, her tongue is licking at the tip.

I need words, I need words to hold myself back. 'What slave,' I say, twisting her hair, 'quibbles with her Master when he offers her a choice? A slave who hasn't yet thrown off the cloak of the Marquise de Chaussy, that's who.' She licks, she sucks, ah...'A slave who isn't yet a slave. A slave who doesn't accept that a Master may do just as he chooses.' No, no, too much, it's too lovely, I have to pull her hair to take her mouth from me.

Ah.

I squat down, touching her face. Her shoulders. The hollows made by her collar-bone. My voice is soft, low: 'My esclave must be punished for her presumption. The poxy Count says that, before whipping you, I should drip hot candle wax on the buttocks I'm to whip. Whereas the Spanish gentleman, a man of exquisite gentleness in other times and places,' her skin, her skin, I can't stop caressing her skin, the circumference of her breasts, her upper arms pulled up and back, her neck, her inner thighs, 'Don Pedro suggests using the rattan cane instead of the cat o'nine tails. The cane cuts so much deeper, more agonisingly, and leaves a livid mark. If you hadn't been so clever-clever,' oh and so beautiful, those places either side of your waist where the rope's dug in, the slight curve of your pelvis, your firm breasts, 'I might have given you the choice. But not now. Up.'

Perhaps remembering my hands at her nipples the last time she had to rise, she's up quickly.

My hands are busy and soon the rope is free of her waist. She sighs as I release it from between her legs. And I bring her arms over her head and forwards, and untie her left wrist but not her right. 'Here, turn this way. You must bend forward, legs straight, hands on your knees, your right profile showing to the buyers, your face turned in their direction so they can see how you react.' How compliant she is. She turns and bends as instructed. I wish there were a painter, here, could paint her now, thus. A picture she could hide behind a velvet curtain in her bedroom. A copy in my own cellar.

I tie her right wrist to just above her right knee. I cut the rope's surplus. 'Legs apart.' I tie her left wrist to just above her left knee. 'There. Keep your back horizontal. I shall place the whip, and the cane there, and you will hold the candle, and we shall contemplate what should happen to you next, won't we, gentlemen?'

I place the cane there along the line of her spine, its handle resting on her hair. I place the whip beside it, the tails arranged over her buttocks. 'Mouth open, hold this in it.' I place a long thin candle in her mouth. She hears the scrape of the flint; I light the candle. I take a swig of wine, at last, from the bottle on the table. I would like to see the look in her eyes, but I want to keep her blind.

And then, the creak of my chair. Stillness. Silence. She might beg for something, if she could speak through the candle, or risk my ire in letting it fall. She might begin to shake with fear. Or keep herself composed. Or weep. I wait, watch, admire the bent, nude, bound esclave, her mouth a candle-holder for a lit candle, her back a table for her instruments of torment, her body a beautiful spectacle for her buyers and her temporary master. Sweat drips from her armpits. Down the side of her face. I wait. And wait.

 

[UNREGISTERED]

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