House of Dark Delights (11 page)

“Do more than try, Charlotte,” he said as he pushed himself into her mouth, “and I just might let you come.”

She proved herself an accomplished fellatrix, employing a firm, rhythmic suction without once scraping him with her teeth. The way she looked, bound to the stool in a posture of submission as she sucked him in and out of her mouth, only heightened the sensation. On the verge of spending all too soon, he pulled himself out and told her to lick just the tip, then the shaft and balls, lightly, teasingly, as he fought the urge to shoot, letting the pleasure mount higher, higher…

“Take it in your mouth again,” he ordered her, in as calm and authoritative a voice as he could muster, under the circumstances. “Deep this time, as far as it will go.”

She struggled to obey him, eyes watering as he shoved deeper, deeper…

“You can do it,” he said. “Open your throat. That's it…”

He withdrew when she began to gag, waited a moment for her to regain her breath, then said, “Again—deeper,” and pushed himself in even farther before retreating. “Again. Take it all the way to the root. Good girl.”

He fucked her mouth, thrusting faster and faster as the pleasure sizzled through his veins, surging in his loins like lava ready to spew. “I'm coming,” he rasped. “Swallow it down. All of it.”

He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out as he exploded in her mouth, pumping it full as he hunched over her, clutching her head. Breathless and sated, he slid out from between her lips and tucked himself back into his drawers with unsteady fingers.

Charlotte dropped her head, her back heaving as if she were struggling for air.

“Charlotte?” he said gently as he crouched down.

There came a sound like a cough as she spat her mouthful of come onto the floor.

He stood and rebuttoned his trouser flap.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and contrite. “I…I couldn't,” she said. “I never could. I just can't bear the thought of—”

“Silence,”
he roared. “You refuse to follow commands, refuse to keep your mouth shut. You claim you want to be here, that you're ready to bend to my will, yet—”

“I do,” she exclaimed. “I am. I…I just…”

“You just need a little assistance in overcoming your natural willfulness, is that it?”

“I…suppose…”

“I had hoped you wouldn't start out quite so obdurate,” he said as he crossed to the shelves next to the bed. “I must say, I'm disappointed in you, Charlotte. It seems you're going to require much in the way of external restraint before you can be trusted to exercise that restraint of your own accord.”

Darius stood for some time, examining the various implements of punishment on the shelf. From the corner of his eye he saw her watching him fretfully.

He paused to contemplate the brank, a hinged, skull-shaped framework of iron welded to a heavy band meant to encircle the lower part of the face. Dangling from the front was a chain with which to control the movements of the wearer. There was a triangular opening for the nose and mouth, the bottom of which was fashioned to accommodate one of two iron appendages designed to serve as gags; these Darius examined one by one. The most benign was a flat tab. More sinister by far was a fat little shaft studded with spikes.

“No,” Charlotte begged as Darius scrutinized the latter, even going so far as to fit it speculatively into the mouthpiece. “Please don't, not that. I won't speak out of turn, I promise.”

“And yet you're doing so right now.” Removing the spiked bit, Darius inserted the iron tab. “Calm yourself, Charlotte. My intent is not to maim you to the point where you can never speak again, but rather to teach you to master that insolent tongue of yours on your own.”

Kneeling before her, Darius pried the brank open and fitted it around Charlotte's head, shoving the knob over her tongue as he snapped the device shut. He secured it with the attached padlock and slipped the key into his trouser pocket.

Standing back, he admired his captive, now not just naked and bound to the whipping stool, but gagged with an instrument designed as much to humiliate as to silence. Emitting muffled little mews of distress, Charlotte twisted her head about like a puppy trying to divest itself of its collar, her little breasts bobbing and swaying with her efforts.

Darius felt a heaviness unfurl between his legs as his arousal reasserted itself. She was entirely within his power, this iron-masked strumpet, and of her own volition, no less. He could do with her what he wished, his excitement, and hers, escalating in direct proportion to her suffering.

It was a heady, even thrilling sensation, yet at the same time unsettling. This wasn't the first time Darius had been compelled through casual contact with a human to change into something he was not, to feel things he wouldn't ordinarily feel, to do things that, when recalled later, would appall him. Experience had taught him that the longer such an episode lasted—and it would not end until the human was ready for it to end—the deeper his immersion in the sensations and desires he'd been forced to embrace. Right now, there was still a part of him that was Darius, the
real
Darius, with his familiar ideology, principles, likes and dislikes,
self
. Before Charlotte was done with him, however, he might be so consumed by this new, casually brutal persona that his old self was barely a memory.

She had ceased struggling, and was regarding him warily through the iron bars of the brank, wondering, no doubt, what further indignities he had in store for her. Her eyes were a golden green, and quite fetching, really, or would have been but for all that ridiculous paint.

“So much for your training,” he told her. “Now for your punishment.”

Five

R
OOTING AMONG
the heap of clothing she'd deposited on the iron chair, as Charlotte craned her caged head to watch him, Darius came up with her crook.

“Methinks you deserve a taste of that which you so liberally dole out to your gentlemen associates,” he said. “What's sauce for the gander may be sauce for the goose, eh?”

Taking up position beside her and facing her upraised ass, he bent the slender cane this way and that, testing the whiplike suppleness of the rattan. “Have you ever been caned, Charlotte?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“But you've wondered what it feels like.”

After a moment's hesitation, she nodded grudgingly.

He said, “There are—as you must know, this being your weapon of choice—any number of techniques one may employ with the cane, depending on whether one's aim is to inflict excruciating pain and permanent scars, or merely a few temporary welts. I would imagine that you wield it with a relatively judicious touch.”

She nodded vigorously.

“Of course,” he continued, “your purpose in administering canings is erotic stimulation. Mine is chastisement.”

He whipped the rattan switch through the air with a malevolent whistle.

She cringed.

“How many strokes do you generally deliver?” he asked. “Five?”

She shook her head.

“Four?”

She shook it again, her gaze on the crook.

“Fewer?”

She nodded.

He cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “You shall receive six.” Taking careful aim at the plumpest part of Charlotte's bottom, still flushed from the riding crop, Darius said, “One.”

He delivered a stroke of the cane, just a short one, with a little twist of the wrist to give it some sting. It connected with a snap that drew a muffled gasp from its recipient, who strained vainly against her bindings.

Across the rosy mounds of her bottom there arose a thin, pale welt, which reddened as Darius watched. From the way she squirmed and groaned, it was apparent that the pain was actually intensifying, rather than easing, as blood rushed to the point of impact. It took her close to a minute to settle down, at which point Darius took aim again.

“Two,” he said, and dealt her a new welt just below the first.

He waited, as before, for the pain to blossom fully, the welt to redden prettily, before counting off and delivering strokes three, four, and five, each time connecting just a little farther down.

“Six.” With his final blow, he aimed for the crook of her thighs, a location that seemed, from her reaction, particularly sensitive. When he was done, she bore a neat ladder of welts down her hindquarters that struck Darius as cruelly beautiful.

Charlotte's little snatch looked, if anything, more inflamed than before. Moisture glistened between the distended lips. “You found pleasure in that,” he said. “The pain, the humiliation, it rouses your passions, does it not?”

When she hesitated, he flicked the cane again, leaving a fresh mark just below the last one. “Does it not?”

She nodded.

He stroked the crook upward over her quim to the little puckered aperture above it, pressing into it just deeply enough to force a natural ridge near its tip into the tight sphincter. Charlotte drew in a sharp intake of breath. He popped the ridge out, then in again, and again, and again, provoking a satisfying gasp every time.

“Have you ever been ass-fucked, Charlotte?”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“Did you fancy it?”

She shook her head violently.

“Why not? Because it's degrading?”

She shook her head.

“Because it's painful?”

She nodded.

“It needn't be,” he said, “if one is properly conditioned.”

Tossing the cane back onto the chair, he unbuckled her restraints, took hold of the chain attached to the brank, and tugged. “On your feet.”

She stood, bending over to swipe at her stockings, grimy from her having crawled across the earthen floor.

He yanked her up by the chain. “Are you
utterly
incorrigible? I said, ‘On your feet,' not ‘Get up and dust yourself off.' Stand up straight, damn it. Shoulders back, tits out, hands clasped behind your waist.”

She did as she was told.

“When you are standing or sitting,” he said, “you shall maintain this posture unless I instruct you otherwise. When I say, ‘Down,' you are to turn away from me and kneel while keeping your hands behind your back, and lower your head until your forehead touches the floor as close as possible to your knees. At all times, you are to keep your back arched, your movements graceful, and your bearing humble. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Yes, of course you understand,” he said, “but knowing you, you will need a little help in learning to comply.”

He strode back to the bay housing the bed, Charlotte stumbling along behind him as he pulled her leash. One of the shelves held several straight belts—hinged bands of iron made to fit around the waist and pinion the arms by means of attached rings, some on the sides, others on the back. As luck would have it, the smallest belt had its rings on the back. This Darius fitted around Charlotte's waist, instructing her to interlock her fingers behind her as he clamped the rings around her wrists.

“This will serve as a reminder of proper demeanor,” he said, “till you've learned to exercise it on your own.”

Turning to the bed, Darius pulled off the mattress and blanket and tossed them onto the floor, exposing an interlaced network of ropes—hemp cord, like that coiled around the bedposts. Tugging Charlotte forward, he ordered her to lie facedown.

She hesitated, blinking at the bare rope bed. Darius unceremoniously lifted her and laid her down with her vulva and each breast positioned over one of the six-inch-square gaps formed by the intersections of the ropes; then he reached for the coil of hemp. Pulling her stockinged legs wide open, he secured them to the rope bed by wrapping them tightly from ankles to upper thighs, tying off the bindings just short of the bottommost welts from her caning. Bound and gagged with iron restraints, her legs utterly immobilized, she was as helpless as a fly in a spiderweb.

Charlotte observed Darius fixedly through the brank as he returned his attention to the items on the shelves. Most were ugly, monstrous even, but a few struck him as malevolently beautiful, like the collection of pear-shaped shafts forged of embossed steel with ornate knobs at the stem ends. He chose the smallest one; six or seven inches in length, its bulbous tip—the blossom end of the “pear”—was about as thick around as the head of a prick.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Darius glided the little instrument over Charlotte's red-striped ass and between the lips of her sex, still inflamed by cantharides and damp with lust. She emitted little pleading moans through her gag, lifting her hips reflexively. He obligingly pressed the pear against the mouth of her quim.

“Are you so very eager to be fucked?” he asked as he worked it around and around, teasingly, in the dewy little opening. “Even by cold, hard steel?”

She nodded.

He slid it into her, sheathing it to its full length. She thrust her hips, wordlessly begging him to frig her.

“'Tis a rather cunning machine you've just invited into your cony,” he said as he shifted it this way and that inside her. “Lovely to behold, but with a nasty little secret.
La poire d'angoisse,
they call it.”

He waited for her to translate it in her mind from French to English:
the pear of anguish.
Her movements ceased. She turned her caged head to look at him.

“Would you like me to demonstrate how it got its name?” he asked.

She stared at him for a moment, shook her head.

He said, “Come now, surely you're a little curious. You see, this knob is actually connected to a screw. If one turns it, like so”—he gave it a short twist, making her gasp—“it causes the steel petals that form the pear to spread outward, rather like a flower opening up. The more one turns it, the wider it opens, eventually producing a fair degree of pain and mutilation—and, in many cases, death. In times past,
la poire
was employed both for punishment and to extract confessions. The sin of the accused would determine into which body cavity it would be inserted, sometimes coated with some noxious or caustic substance. Heretics would take it in the mouth, sodomites in the ass. Of course, for strums such as yourself, the orifice of choice was Cock Alley.”

He turned the knob again. Charlotte began to writhe and twist, struggling against her bonds, more from fear, he knew, than from discomfort; he'd barely begun to expand it.

“Don't like the feel of it in that pampered little snatch of yours, eh? As it would happen, I've other plans for it.” He screwed the pear closed and slid it out.

Lifting the brown bottle from the bottom shelf, Darius pulled out the stopper and dribbled a yellowish, syrupy fluid over the tip of the pear, turning it this way and that until it was well coated.

Charlotte shook her head wildly, emitting muffled protestations.

“It's olive oil,” he said dryly as he restoppered the bottle and put it back. “For the lamps.”

Charlotte closed her eyes and turned away from him, clearly as embarrassed as she was relieved.

“You see, the aperture for which this device is destined,” he said as he spread the cheeks of her ass, “is somewhat less accommodating than—”

She bucked and thrashed as she realized where he was about to insert the pear.

“Be still,” he demanded, forcing compliance by pressing down hard on the small of her back. “My intent is not to injure you, merely to stretch you a bit. The pear will remain inside you, gradually expanding, until you've learned not to merely tolerate it, but to find it arousing. You'll thank me for it when that which you once found painful elicits instead a rare degree of pleasure.”

She looked dubious, but she stopped squirming.

This time, when he spread her cheeks, she lay still and rigid, her eyes squeezed shut. She flinched as he pressed the pear's slick, rounded base into her, penetrating only half an inch or so before her body tightened around the intrusion.

“Ease up,” he told her as he twisted and pushed, making little headway. “If you're tense, 'twill only make it hurt. You're taking it either way—you've no choice in the matter—so you may as well open up and accept it.”

She nodded, drew in a breath, and let it out.

This time, when he pushed, the pear slid in a good inch, thanks in large part to its slippery coating of oil. “That's it,” he murmured as he worked it in deeper, deeper. “That's it.” Reaching between her legs with his free hand, he cupped her smooth, warm sex. “You may come now for being such a good girl.”

She bore down, rubbing her wet slit and stiff little clit against his fingers, and again and again, hips thrusting in a carnal rhythm. With every upthrust, Darius shoved the pear a little deeper, wriggling it a bit to enhance the internal stimulation. The more she associated such stimulation with pleasure, the more satisfying it would be for both of them when his cock was inserted where the pear was now.

By the time he'd buried its entire length inside her, Charlotte was in a paroxysm of lust. The bed creaked with every thrust against his now-slippery hand.

Charlotte screamed through her gag as she spent her passion, grinding wildly against his hand. Darius frigged her with shallow thrusts of the pear, caressing her gently as her pleasure ebbed, then more purposefully as it renewed itself. She spent thrice more, and would doubtless have continued to do so had Darius indulged her wordless pleas for release, but for now, his own need for release had become far too distracting to ignore.

He untied her legs from the rope bed, then helped her to rise off it and stand up. “If I take off your restraints,” he asked, “can you be trusted to comport yourself as if you were still wearing them?”

Charlotte nodded, whereupon he unlocked and removed first the brank, then the straight belt. Without being prompted, she clasped her hands behind her waist, standing with her shoulders back, breasts outthrust.

He circled her, appraising her posture and nodding in approval. “Take down your hair,” he said.

She did so. It fell to her waist in a thick, gleaming braid. “Shall I unplait it?” she asked.

“Nay, leave it as it is. But give me those,” he said, indicating her handful of little diamond-studded hairpins. “Are they real or paste?” he asked, holding one up to admire in the torchlight.

“Real, of course.”

He shoved them into his pocket. She looked as if she was about to object, but she stilled her tongue.

He pointed to the mattress on the floor. “Down.”

She stepped onto the mattress and began lowering herself to her knees, forcing him to remind her to turn away from him first. This she did, then knelt and bent forward with her hands still clasped behind her, head down.

He flicked open the buttons of his trouser flap, savoring as he did the sight of the pear's beautifully crafted knob emerging from between the cheeks of her ass, with its neatly spaced embroidery of welts. Her pussy was wet, red, and wide open. Kneeling behind her, he grabbed her hips and filled her with a single, slick lunge that forced a startled cry of pleasure from her.

He wrapped her braid around his fist like a horse's rein and fucked her with sharp, deep strokes, relishing her posture of submission, her meekness, her complete surrender to his will. On the verge of coming, he paused and twisted the knob of the pear, just enough so that he could feel it widening inside her, making her as snug as a fist. She moaned at the added pressure, but voiced no objection.

He twisted the knob again.

“Stop, I beg you,” she implored.

Darius yanked on the braid, jerking her head up and forcing her back into a nice, ass-hiking curve. “We have a covenant, you and I. 'Tis my place to decide what you can bear, and yours to take it. Is that not what you agreed to?” He dealt her bum a stinging smack, the red-wealed flesh hot beneath his palm; she cried out in a way that he found intensely arousing. “Is it not?”