Chapter 9
Thou art to me a delicious torment.
—R
ALPH
W
ALDO
E
MERSON
H
anson tried not to think about baseball bats, but another bloody, beaten body so soon on the heels of Roger Banks was pretty damned coincidental.
“Check-out was noon,” Griggs said. “They rang the room, got no answer. Housekeeping banged on the door. When they still got no answer, the manager used the master and found this.”
“Looks like Roger Banks all over again.”
“She don’t look like a hooker.” Griggs stared down at the body on the bed. “Crack head, either.”
The Madison Inn didn’t rent by the hour (that would be the Airways, over on the other side of town), but it was a dump that offered free twenty-four-hour porn. Most of the Madison’s clientele checked in with no luggage.
The manager, a small Pakistani man who spoke in heavily accented English, would not come into the room. He stood wringing his hands in the doorway, insisting that nothing like this had ever happened at his motel before.
“She’s in rigor,” Miles volunteered. “Anal temp is eighty-six degrees.”
“Can’t you just say body temp?” Hanson asked sourly. It was bad enough that someone should die so violently; he didn’t like thinking about Miles shoving a thermometer up the victim’s dead ass.
Griggs was going through a purse on the sad little dresser.
“Still got her wallet.” He pulled the driver’s license out. “Robyn Ann Macy.”
“What time did she check in?”
“Mr. Patel here says he never saw her check in. Says a man rented the room, paid cash—”
“Let me guess. John Smith?”
“Nah. George Harrison.” Griggs grinned. “Mr. Harrison checked in around three p.m. yesterday afternoon.”
“So she died sometime between . . .” Hanson hesitated, hoping Miles would jump in and do the math for him.
“She’s been dead at least four hours,” Miles said. “It could have been much earlier. Lividity is no help, because it looks like there’s very little blood left in her.”
So much blood. The mattress literally
squished
as Miles removed his knee from its edge.
They would have to get Mr. Patel together with a sketch artist. Talk to housekeeping and other guests—assuming they could be found. He wondered if her car was in the lot.
“Well, lookee here!” Griggs pulled a neatly braided length of rope from a small duffel bag. “She musta been here for a little of the nasty if she was carrying this much rope around.”
“Sure the bag is hers? Maybe the killer left it behind?”
“Of course, it’s hers.” Griggs turned the bag around so Hanson could see the
HELLO KITTY
logo.
It didn’t make sense. The rope was here, but the killer hadn’t used it?
“Ligature marks?” Hanson glanced over at Miles.
Miles shrugged.
“Only a slight abrasion on one wrist. Something that could be a rope burn under one breast. If she was tied up at some point, she wasn’t when she died.”
The rope was pristine, without a drop of rusty red, unlike the body on the bed. The dead girl was staring through blackening, half-closed eyes at the ceiling. Her matted hair seemed to be blond. She was naked, and what appeared to be a T-shirt, jeans, bra, and pink satin bikinis were scattered on the floor and bed. All were ripped and torn.
“What’s this? A tattoo?”
With the tip of a gloved finger, Hanson wiped a small bit of blood away for a better look.
The small circular emblem looked a little like a yin and yang symbol, but with three curving divisions instead of just two. It looked vaguely familiar.
“Was she raped?” he asked.
Miles grimaced. “Too messy to tell.”
“Aww, shit.” Hanson rubbed his eyes. “And her tongue?”
“Gone.”
Chapter 10
But you wished to be my plaything, my slave! You found the highest pleasure in feeling the foot, the whip of an arrogant, cruel woman. What do you want now?
—L
EOPOLD
V
ON
S
ACHER
-M
ASOCH
,
Venus in Furs
“T
hat’s my good boy, ooh, isn’t him my precious widdle baby?”
Lady Cassandra sat back in the faded Victorian sofa, one of the Pekingese cradled in her arms, scratching the animal behind the ears.
“Mmmmf.” The voice behind the ball gag came out in a muffled whine, not all that different from the rest of Lady Cassandra’s dogs, which were now scratching at the other side of the door.
“Shut up, Randall. You were late. You know what the punishment for that is.”
The punishment was being made to wait in the corner, with the ball gag firmly in his mouth. That, and the shoes. Five-inch heels that barely fit his big feet. Pink shoes.
It wasn’t the pain he minded; he was a hard masochist—that was why he adored his Lady Cassandra. But he was not into sissification. That was a hard limit and she damned well knew it.
Still, he didn’t have the balls to call
Red
. He needed to please her too badly. Other mistresses had all cut him loose, for reasons that were never clear to him.
But not Lady Cassandra. For that, he would suffer the shoes, the stockings she sometimes made him wear—even the pink ribbons braided around his prick.
So he wobbled on the heels, legs trembling, with hands clasped behind his back.
He was disappointed that he was not even allowed to look at her while he waited. She was wearing that lovely blue kimono again.
She was on the phone, talking as if he were just another piece of furniture.
“You listen to me,” came Lady’s voice. “I never promised you that.”
Her voice had turned deep and deadly. It made the hair on Randall’s neck stand up. He knew where her anger would go as soon as she hung up the phone.
“Those photos don’t matter because there will always be new ones. Apparently, you can’t keep a leash on him any better than I could.”
There was a pause, and then she laughed.
“I wouldn’t care if you were God himself. Your ass is on the line here, not mine. You just remember that.”
He heard the sofa creak and the sound of her heels crossing the floor.
“Go to the bench and bend over. You know the position. Hurry up!”
The vinyl padding was cool against his stomach as he stretched his cuffed arms and ankles toward the legs of the bench.
She took a crop off the wall and swung it a few times. He could hear it cut through the air. The anticipation made his prick twitch.
Thwap!
She brought the crop down on his ass and he gasped. She was swinging hard, right out of the gate.
“No warm-up for a piece of shit like you,” she said.
Thwap, thwap, thwap!
“Pathetic bastard, making me . . . wait . . . for . . . you!”
The crop punctuated the last four words. He swayed on the high heels, feeling the heat spread along his backside.
She moved around in front of him and grabbed his hair. She yanked his head up and stared into his eyes.
“Fuckin’ piss-ant cocksucker.”
She let go of him and walked over to the wall of toys.
“MMmfff,” he grunted, watching her with miserable eagerness.
Oh, please, Mistress,
he wanted to beg . . .
Please, the big wooden paddle!
“I don’t give a shit what you want, asshole. You’ll take what I give you and be thankful for it.”
Yes, Ma’m! Yes, Ma’am, always . . .
She grabbed his balls, stretching them away from his body, and then he felt the excruciating pressure of the metal clamps biting into his scrotum.
“Don’t you dare move your filthy hands off the legs of that bench. Move and I’ll chain your ass down and leave you there all night.”
The leather flapper of the crop flickered back and forth against his ass cheeks, then down to his balls. Softly at first, a tease that made him squirm and moan.
“Look at you.” She laughed. “Pushing your ass out, just like a whore.”
She moved the crop faster now: back and forth, back and forth, the edge of it grazing his balls until they began to sting.
“Dance, fucker. Dance for me.”
He couldn’t help it, torn between the desire to twist away from the pain and the need to take it, to take it all and more. He heard the clamps jangle against each other, and with every tinkle, their teeth pulled sharply.
He didn’t think he could bear it a moment longer. God, it was sweet, that mother-fucking sting!
She left his balls and hit him a few more times on the fleshy buttocks.
She walked away again. He lay there panting, waiting. Sweat made his stomach stick to the vinyl padding.
Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!
Oh, Christ, the paddle! The paddle!
He almost wept with gratitude.
The weight of it pushed him against the bench, made the legs screech against the wooden floor.
She was swinging with both hands now, slower but harder. The shock wave of every mighty
thwap!
made the clamps jingle.
Then, he felt her nails trail lightly over his burning ass. The cool, sharp prickle sent shivers through him, made his legs weak with yearning.
“Mmmgg,” he moaned. The drool was running from the corners of his mouth.
“Christ, look at you! You’re a fuckin’ mess. Get on your knees.”
He dropped hard, feeling his kneecaps scream as they hit the floor. Then the pointed toe of her dainty blue kitten-heels crashed into his groin.
He screamed and fell forward, barely catching himself in time to keep his face from smashing into the floor.
“Up, on your knees, you sorry bastard,” she hissed at him.
He struggled up onto his knees before her.
She opened the kimono to reveal the plastic eight-inch cock jutting out in front of her.
She grabbed his head and roughly unbuckled the gag, taking some of his hair out at the root.
“Oh, Mistress—”
But she was shoving the plastic cock into his mouth. Once she had it between his lips, she grabbed his hair with both hands to hold his head firmly in place.
“Shut up and suck my dick. Suck it, bitch.”
The dildo hit the back of his throat, and he did his best not to gag. The taste of the silicone was terrible, almost acidic. The head of it caught the roof of his mouth and he tasted his own blood.
“You’re my bitch, aren’t you? Take every goddamned inch of it, you cocksucker.”
She thrust her hips, driving her “prick” so deep that he did gag.
She grabbed his nose between two fingers and pinched his nostrils shut. He made terrible gurgling sounds as he struggled to catch a breath between her strokes.
“Ugg,” he choked. “Uugggr . . .”
The need for oxygen burned in his chest. He was just on the edge of panic as she released his nose and granted him air once more.
His scalp stung as she once again held his hair by both hands.
“You like being face-fucked? Having your . . . throat . . . raped?”
Abruptly she shoved him away.
“Please, Mistress,” he croaked. “Fuck my slut mouth some more . . .”
He groveled, bending his head to lick her shoe.
“Get your nasty tongue off me! Get up, over there. On the cross.”
He scrambled to the St. Andrew’s, nearly twisting an ankle on the damned shoes.
“No, you moron, face me!”
He turned and she pinned him hard against the wood with the full weight of her body.
“You disgust me,” she said, driving her knee up into his balls.
He nearly bent in two, panting raggedly.
“Stand up!”
When she removed the first clamp, he screamed, high and shrill. The pain was razor sharp and blinding. He was still howling when she pulled the second off.
“Shut up!”
She slapped him hard in the face. He felt his teeth cut into his inner cheek.
“One more sound out of you, the gag goes back in.”
She snapped his wrist cuffs to the top eyebolts in the cross, then leaned down. She grabbed his left foot.
“Move it,” she growled. “Spread those fucking legs for me.”
When she had his ankles cuffed in place, she stood and regarded him with hard eyes.
“Ah, here’s a good place!”
She grabbed his nipple and caught the tip of it in the clamp’s teeth.
He whimpered, tears rolling down his face. He pressed his lips together against a desperate urge to shriek.
She added the second clamp to the other nipple, but not before giving it a vicious twist between two fingers.
“Oooh, God!” he gasped, unable to stop himself.
She slapped him again, so hard that his vision blackened as spots of white danced before his eyes.
She bent to snatch the ball gag off the floor.
“Open your mouth,” she demanded, shoving the ball gag against his lips. “Open it!”
He tried to turn his head away at the dog hair clinging to the wet ball, but she just forced it between his teeth.
She reached around his head to buckle the leather strap, pulling sharply to bring it so tight into his stretched, raw mouth that he could not move it at all with his tongue.
She stood back, looking at him, a smile on her thin lips.
All he could do was gaze longingly into her eyes.
Then his eyes grew wider as the door behind her opened.