Authors: John Savage
When both cameras were established on tripods and plugged in, he told the men, “Bring the bitch in.”
Susie Speed was still naked. Her wrists and ankles were locked quite tightly in handcuffs, so walking was both difficult and painful on her ankles. Her ass displayed some blue-gray bruises and still a bit of redness and swollen flesh from the whipping it had received the night before. She was escorted on each side by a man holding her arm. In the sunlight coming through the skylights, she looked tired, as if she had not slept well, as indeed she had not. She had been left standing in the middle of a room not much bigger than a closet with her handcuffed wrists pulled up behind her. Not enough to threaten dislocation of her shoulders, but enough to keep her wrists hurting and making sleep nearly impossible.
“We’re going to tie her up and play with her a little,” he told them. “But you guys don’t do a good job with ropes, so I brought in an expert. Stella, you’re on.”
From the back of the room stepped forward a woman. Stella was dressed in black leather, a tight fitting jumpsuit usually called a “catsuit”. The stiletto heels of her boots clicked on the concrete floor as she walked with an exaggerated stride, one foot placed before the other, making her leather-covered ass sway from side to side. Her hair was long and straight, hanging down almost to her waist and making her look like someone’s idea of a vampire. Lipstick and dark eye shadow helped hide the fact that she was in her early forties. That did not keep the henchmen standing there with Susie from staring at the leather-covered curves. She held a riding crop in her hand and was faintly smiling as she looked at the naked woman before her.
“Okay, Stella, she’s all yours. You know what I want.”
Stella smiled, looking much like a cat smiling at a cornered mouse. This young woman standing between the two men was more than she had expected – much more. When Raszini said she was beautiful, Stella had discounted his appraisal, but now she saw that, indeed, this Susie was very good looking and possessed a centerfold body. The tip of Stella’s tongue peeked out between her lips. This was going to be a fun session!
Raszini retreated to a position behind one of the cameras.
“Leave her here,” Stella spoke on the gravelly side. Perhaps she was a smoker, but whatever, it was not a sweet, pleasing voice. Nor did it hold the slightest hint of kindness. More to the point, it sounded like someone used to giving and having obeyed orders.
The men let go of Susie’s arms and stepped back. Raszini nodded to the cameras and they took their positions to act as cameramen.
Stella dragged a chair over to the center of the room, directly under some of the overhead rings and hooks. “Get over here and sit down,” she commanded.
Susie looked confused. She had expected Raszini himself to continue her punishment, not some woman dressed like a dominatrix. Still, she had enough experience with such people to know that this woman would not tolerate any disobedience. As she began to shuffle towards the chair, she made up her mind to obey, be meek and try to avoid as much of the punishment as she could by not giving this woman a reason to add to it.
As she began to turn around to sit down, there came a sharp crack and a burst of pain on her bare ass. The riding crop was not a serious punishment tool, but when applied over skin already made sensitive by a prior whipping, it could cause enough pain to make her jerk and yelp. She sat down on the hard wooden chair, feeling the fresh burning spot on her left cheek.
Both cameras had begun recording the scene as Stella knelt before Susie and unlocked the handcuffs from her ankles. There were deep red marks left when the steel cuffs fell away. Quickly the ankles were re-bound, this time in white nylon rope no more than a quarter of an inch thick. Half a dozen turns of the rope around her ankles and then it was cinched down and knotted tightly. Another piece of rope was tied around this ankle bondage and also knotted, but left with most of it trailing off across the floor.
“Madam Stella runs one of the Houses of Discipline I own,” Raszini told the man nearest him. “She’s one really mean bitch, so don’t get any ideas about hitting on her.”
“Wouldn’t think of it, boss,” Marco said.
Raszini went on, “She hates men, but not as much as she hates women. Something about her having an abusive mother or something.”
In front of the cameras, with Susie’s ankles tightly bound together, she was being made to stand up. The chair was moved out of the way and Madam Stella approached Susie from behind. In her hand was a coil of rope. After removing the handcuffs from her wrists, Stella grabbed Susie’s arm and twisted it up behind her until she squealed. Then, with surprising strength, she twisted up the other arm until both hands were higher on the back than the shoulder blades. Susie was one of those girls flexible enough to easily touch her elbows behind her, but this was something else. Her arms were jerked upward until the hands were almost at the level of her neck. They were turned so that the palms faced each other, and then rope began going around the wrists, binding them tightly together. When they were tied and cinched down nicely, more rope was used around her forearms, upper arms and chest to lash her arms tightly to her body. Even if her wrists had not been tied, she would be unable to move her arms from that position. In front, the ropes passed around her above and below the large breasts. Each turn of rope was jerked as tightly as Stella could force it, and the knots were multiple and tied far from the fingers. It was as if Susie had been deprived of her hands and arms.
“One of you bastards get over here, thread this rope through that ring and pull on it,” she ordered, pointing to the rope trailing from Susie’s ankles. One of the men looked to Raszini, who nodded approval, then he came around the camera to do as ordered.
Still standing on her feet as the man positioned the chair next to her so he could stand on it and thread the rope through the ring, Susie realized what was going to happen. As the man pulled, her feet would be pulled out from under her and she would fall. To avoid that, she knelt down and allowed herself to slowly fall to one side. When he set the chair aside and took up the end of the rope, Susie was lying on her side. Her feet slowly lifted from the floor, higher and higher, until she was resting on her bound arms with her legs and hips totally off the floor.
“Continue,” Stella ordered. Susie’s feet went higher, and in a few seconds she was hanging totally upside down, her head a good two feet off the floor.
Stella knelt down so she could take a handful of Susie’s long black hair and jerked it to bring her face closer to hers. “Now we’re going to begin hurting you,” she hissed. “I certainly hope that you like pain because you’re going to get plenty of it.” She gave Susie’s hair a jerk to one side that set Susie to swinging like a pendulum.
Positioning herself to one side of Susie, Stella brought the riding crop up and then struck downward quickly. A loud slap and Susie jerked. The riding crop had struck her breast and left a red mark on the bottom of it. There followed half a dozen strokes, evenly divided between both breasts and leaving the undersides of her breasts an angry red in color, and caused tears to begin working their way up Susie’s head.
The brave girl tried to hold it in, but the stinging pain in her breasts made her cry. She was very proud of those globes and was becoming afraid that they might be damaged by this black-clad woman.
“She’s just getting warmed up,” Raszini told the man next to him. “Just watch.” There was an evil glow in his eyes as he took in the hanging woman’s suffering.
After two dozen more strikes to those breasts, this time on the fronts, and copious tears, Stella stepped back. She had been striking as hard as she could, but, as Raszini had pointed out, she was only warming up. There was a large black purse sitting to one side. From that, Stella took a short whip; a stiff handle of twelve inches in length, from which there was another twelve inches of braided leather ending with a short piece of stiffened leather. It was that stiff end that was called a “snapper” and would cause the most pain.
Before Susie could get a good look at the whip, Stella was in position and swinging it directly at her breasts. This time there was no yelp but a good scream as Susie jerked her body back. The end of the whip had kissed the soft flesh of her nipple, sending a jolt of pain shooting into her breast.
Through her tears, Susie could see the whip going back in preparation for another blow. “No, no!” she cried out, but the whip again swished towards her breasts. She could not twist away in time and the snapper caught her other nipple squarely. She yelled loudly and jerked again.
The pain must have been stronger than the first stroke because her body jerked and twisted wildly for a long time.
“Please, no more!” Susie called out between her sobs. “Please!”
As if aroused by a lover’s tongue, both her nipples were standing out, taut and hard.
Bending down, Stella brought the whip up to Susie’s bare breast and tapped the rigid nipple. “Just the beginning,” she whispered. Susie’s looked up to see a mask of pure, vicious evil. This woman loved hurting other women!
Susie closed her eyes and waited for the next blow. What else could she do? She was sure that there was nothing she could say, no promise she could make, nothing she could do that would stop this torment. Raszini wanted her in pain, and so it would be.
The riding crop had reddened the skin of her breasts, but this whip raised an ugly welt wherever it kissed the flesh.
The whipping of her breasts continued. With each strike of the leather, she cried out and frantically twisted her body to try to avoid the pain. Her contortions set her to swinging, but no amount of movement could distract Stella’s accurate blows. Again and again the whip touched her flesh and delivered its venom.
With both her breasts covered with dozens vicious whipmarks, there came a point where it seemed that continued punishment would do more than mark the skin, perhaps even begin to tear it. At that point, Stella’s hand was caught in mid-backswing by a man’s hand.
“Let’s leave some for tomorrow,” Raszini said, quietly.
Stella glared at him, a vicious curse about to spring from her lips, but then she sucked in air and the hatred fled from her face.
“Of course, Mr. Raszini. Tomorrow.”
Susie hung there, crying softly and in pain for a long time before she was let down and her numb hands released from those cruelly tight ropes.
Chapter XVIII
The Search
I pulled up to Raszini’s former residence that afternoon after what should have been a pleasant drive up the California coast. But my mind was too filled with worry to enjoy the views of the mighty Pacific, the blue sky, and the offshore oil rigs. His home was in an area called Montecito, a foothill area of Santa Barbara filled with trees and multi-million dollar homes, most at the end of a private driveway. The house itself was a classic California Mission style home with whitewashed walls and red tile roof, and was large enough to hold conventions in.
No one seemed to be at home, which did not surprise me. I had hoped to find the place empty. There was yellow police “crime scene” tape across the front door, so I walked around to the back and let myself in via a convenient window.
There were signs that the pace had been tossed, undoubtedly by federal agents. Drawers were pulled out, papers scattered around, pictures off the walls (looking for safes) and generally everything was a mess. At least they hadn’t taken to tearing the upholstery off the expensive furniture.
It was getting dark before I found what I was looking for. The agents had been looking for evidence relating to criminal activity. They had taken everything out of the house, including a couple places that looked as if there had been computers. I was looking for something more normal. And found it.
In the trash can next to a desk I found a sheet of paper. It was only a utility bill for electricity and gas but it was not for this house. It told me that he had another house. And it gave me the address.
* * * * *
The address was in an upscale area of Orange County, one Newport Beach by name. It was an area of expensive homes crowded shoulder to shoulder along a network of canals and islands. Every available foot of shoreline was filled with docks and boats. The few streets that serviced the area were always crowded and parking places were hard as hell to find. I had to park three blocks away and walk to the address I had copied from the bill.
From the street side, the place wasn’t too impressive, a two-story house so closed in on each side by neighbors that you could damned near reach out your bedroom window and touch the next house. I knew the other side had a small dock and maybe a boat, most of them did. My guess was the person who lived here would have a sailboat, probably twenty feet or so in length. I had seen summer weekends when there were so many boats in the channels that you could almost walk from side to side by stepping on the decks.
The one-car garage was closed, so I had no way to knowing if the person I wanted was home or not. Taking the direct approach, I knocked on the door. It was opened by a dark-haired young lady in a tiny red bikini.
“Hello, Angelica,” I said.
She tried to slam the door in my face, but I got my foot in to keep it from shutting. Then I pushed my way in, closing the door behind me.
Angelica was angry. “Get out of here!” she nearly screamed.
“Not until we’ve had a little talk,” I said.
She turned and dashed for what was probably the bedroom. It was my guess that she was going for a gun kept in the nightstand. She never made it. I tackled her and was pinning her down to the plush carpet long before she reached the bedroom door.
She put up a good struggle and almost got me with a knee in the groin. Twisting her over onto her face, I pulled out a pair of handcuffs and secured her wrists behind her tightly enough to discourage struggling.
“You bastard!” she hissed when I let her up. “My father will kill you!”
I pushed her into a chair and stood leaning over her. “Is that any way to talk to the person who rescued you?”
“And then turned my father over to the police! He told me it was you who gave them what they needed to bust him.”
When Susie had been snatched, I kind of figured the Raszini knew who had snitched on him; this only confirmed it. But how he knew it was me had to be filed away for future consideration, along with how he knew the raid was coming. Right now I had to get Susie back before he hurt or killed her.
“Where is Susie?”
She tried to spit in my face. So I slapped her.
Her head jerked sideways and a red spot appeared where my hand had impacted that pretty face. “Where is Susie?” I repeated.
“Go to hell.”
She was brave, but I could see in her eyes that she was also very scared. Good! The more scared she was, the more likely she was to tell me what I needed to know.
“Look, you know that your father kidnapped my girl, Linda, and was torturing her,” I said.
“I saw the photos. She was not really being hurt. I was hurt more.”
“And you’re going to get hurt a lot worse than you got from Alberto Savinio. Tell me where Susie is and we can avoid a painful experience… for you.”
“I don’t know.”
When you’ve been a private dick as long as I have, you get to know when someone is lying to you. This pretty Italian girl in the delightful bikini was lying through her teeth.
“I don’t believe you,” I told her. “But if you’re half the bastard your father is… Make that half the bitch, it may take a while to get it out of you.”
Now I could see real fear in her eyes. But also a determination not to give in. I sighed inwardly. I don’t enjoy hurting women, but this one had to be made to talk and I didn’t happen to have any
sodium pentathol
handy. I grabbed her legs and pulled her off the chair, flipping her around so that she landed face down on the carpet. Unhooking the bikini top, I pulled it off her – none too gently, I will admit. Then I used it to bind her ankles together. It wasn’t much in the way of bondage, but it would hold her until I found what I needed.
Leaving her wiggling on the floor, I did a quick search of her place. In the kitchen, under the sink, I found a roll of duct tape. In a dresser in her bedroom, I found a couple pairs of pantyhose. Back in the front room, she was almost finished untying her ankles. She had simply arched her body backwards until she would reach the bikini binding on her ankles. Which was fine with me since I was about to untie them anyway.
Grabbing her feet, I held them together and wrapped a pair of pantyhose around the ankles. The nylon material stretches into a thin cord that can be tied the same as rope. I cinched down the windings and knotted the nylon a couple times. The second pair of pantyhose were used to pulled her feet up behind her into a classic hogtie. I was careful to knot the nylon on the other side of her ankles where her fingers could not reach. And I was not too gentle, pulling her feet and hands together until they touched. The sharp edges of the handcuffs were cutting into her wrists and had to hurt. She said nothing, but even if she were screaming I wouldn’t pay any attention. I didn’t mind if she was in a little pain. It would “soften” her up for the later questioning.
I rolled her over onto her side and forced open her mouth, into which I shoved a wadded up pair of panties I had found in her bathroom. Being the bastard I am, I took them out of her dirty clothes hamper rather than from her dresser. The duct tape wrapped around her head would hold them in quite nicely. I wound it around five times before cutting the tape.
Those dark eyes were glaring daggers at me as I stood up. She was not very comfortable, hogtied and gagged like that, but I simply reminded myself that Susie might be experiencing worse right then.
I found her car keys in her purse. The car was in the garage, a nice, new Mercedes SL500, fire engine red with the top down. The trunk was just large enough to fit one hogtied girl.
While driving up to my apartment in LA, I was finding that I liked that car. It was smooth and powerful and good looking. I considered that, when this whole thing was over, I might get myself one. But not fire engine red. Too flashy. Maybe silver.