Lot Nine

Tanya crosses the empty stage toward her.

She doesn’t speak. She stands beside the sling and, slowly, runs her long nails over Samantha’s skin, from the collar down between her breasts to the soft skin below her navel, and then from her ankle, strapped in its leather loop, all the way up the inside of her thigh. Samantha squirms in her bonds and can’t get away from it and doesn’t want to. Then Tanya unties her knees and unbuckles her ankles and wrists, and helps her down out of the sling, and holds her by the elbows until she’s steady on her feet.

“All right, Slave,” Velvet says. “It’s your turn. Let’s show them what you’ve got.”

Samantha looks out at the room. With the spotlight off her face for a moment, she can see it properly for the first time: a sea of faces, on the floor and all along the gallery, looking back at her with expectation and with open, unbridled hunger.

Samantha turns, slowly, in a full circle, letting the spotlight slide over her body and back again. The heat of it presses on her skin. So do the eyes.

“Mistress,” she whispers, “this is my first time in front of an audience. I’m so nervous.”

“I know,” Velvet says, not unkindly. “Present yourself anyway. Your mouth. Your cunt. That’s what they came to see.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

She steps up beside the podium and opens her stance, feet wide, hiding nothing. She can feel the air on her, and the heat of the lights, and a hundred stares. She spreads her feet a little wider still, and accepts all of it: the looks, the appetite, the fact that in a moment they are going to start putting a price on her. Under the lights she can smell herself, faintly, and knows what that means. On the screens the camera pans slowly down her, catching the sheen of sweat between her breasts, along her spine, and the dampness glistening between her legs.

“Masters and Mistresses,” Velvet says. “Slave Samantha is our last lot tonight. You’ve had all evening to look her over, so you know what a lovely specimen she is.” She comes to stand beside Samantha. “Hands behind your neck. Legs apart.”

Samantha laces her fingers at her nape, elbows wide, feet at shoulder width.

Velvet cups her chin. “A very pretty face,” she tells the room, “and a very willing mouth, for Masters and Mistresses alike.” She presses her thumb to Samantha’s lower lip until it opens, then draws her hand down over the throat, the collarbones, and cups one breast. “Perfectly formed. And these nipples love to be clamped and pulled.” She twists one, and Samantha winces and jerks. “Hold still, girl.” The hand travels over her stomach to her hip, round to her backside, and strokes it.

“One of the smoothest little peaches I have ever had the pleasure of handling,” Velvet says, and then lands a hard slap that echoes, and the room laughs. “Made for spanking, flogging, cropping and caning. Just remember, she wants to be punished but she doesn’t want permanent marks.” Her hand comes back around, and lower, and lower still, and the room goes quiet. “And down here,” Velvet says, “she’s sweet, and she is very, very wet. Shall we let them see?”

Samantha shudders. Velvet parts her with fingers and thumb and opens her swollen clit to the camera, to the screens, to everyone, and Samantha stares at a point above the gallery and burns.

“Imagine what you could do with that, Masters and Mistresses. Tease it, lick it, fill it, fuck it, clamp it open. It’s yours for the taking. Her limits are few.” Velvet steps back. “Turn around. Hold your ankles. Legs wide.”

Samantha turns her back to the room and bends and takes hold of her ankles, as she’s watched the others do all night, and the air touches places it’s never touched in public before.

“And back here she’s a complete novice,” Velvet says. “A lovely little asshole, and it begs to be played with. She’ll take a finger, a small plug, perhaps one day something larger — but she’ll need to be worked up to things. Patiently.” She works the tip of one finger inside, testing, and Samantha clenches and jerks her hips away before she can stop herself. “You see? Upright, Slave, and face your audience.”

Samantha straightens and turns around, her whole face on fire.

“I have inspected this one personally,” Velvet tells the room, “and I do not say that about everyone. Now. Shall we begin?”

* * *

“Three hundred.”

The first paddle belongs to a man at the bar in a tuxedo, and Samantha’s stomach drops through the stage. John. His eyes are on her and for once they aren’t laughing.

“Five hundred,” calls a man near the front, and Samantha knows him too before she knows how: warm brown eyes, greying beard, a woman at his elbow with her hand tucked through his arm and her chin resting on his shoulder. Marcus. Elle. Coffee first, always. They’re raising their paddle together, his hand and her hand both on the handle, and Elle catches Samantha’s eye and gives her the smallest, kindest smile.

“Seven hundred.”

That voice she’d know anywhere. The man from the bar, the man who crooked two fingers and said I’d very much like to show you the ropes. Bare-chested even now, the snake curling over his ribs, his pale grey eyes resting on her the way a creative director rests his eyes on the last portfolio of the day: not wondering whether the work is good, but already deciding what it’s good for. Master Douglas.

Up in the gallery, at the same corner table as before, the woman with close-cropped silver hair sits with her glass of red. Her paddle lies flat on the tablecloth, and it stays there. She isn’t bidding. She’s watching the bidders, and every so often she smiles, as if the room were a game she’d seen played many times and still enjoyed.

The price climbs. A thousand. Fifteen hundred. Two thousand. It’s happening so fast that Samantha can barely follow. She’s aware of the heat, and the lights, and the faces, and the leather collar cold around her throat, and under it all of that, of her own body, which is responding to every new number as if each one were a hand. Her mouth waters. Her knees have gone weak. And she knows, without looking, that everyone watching the screens can see exactly how wet she is — that by now it’s a steady trickle on the insides of her thighs, and there is nothing she can do to hide it.

“Twenty-five hundred,” says a woman’s voice from the center of the gallery.

At twenty-six, John lowers his paddle. He shrugs at her, lightly, and raises his glass, and she swears she can see his mouth shape the words the good kind. At three thousand, Elle whispers something in Marcus’s ear, and he lowers theirs, and Elle blows Samantha a kiss.

That leaves Douglas, and the woman in the gallery.

“Thirty-two hundred,” Velvet calls. Douglas lifts his paddle. The gallery answers at once. “Thirty-four hundred.”

“Thirty-six!” Douglas says, loud, and the room goes silent.

A pause. Then, from the gallery, cool and clear:

“Four.”

Just that. Four. There’s so much certainty in it that heads turn all over the room to find her. Samantha looks too, squinting past the lights, but a voice heard once across a crowded bar is only a voice.

Douglas holds his paddle a moment longer. Then he shakes his head and lowers it. But his grey eyes stay on Samantha a second longer than they need to, and they say, very clearly, another time.

Velvet’s gavel cracks.

“Sold! For four thousand dollars, to Mistress Noire.” Applause, a rising wave of it. Velvet has to wait for it to fall. “And that, Masters and Mistresses, brings tonight’s total to twenty-seven thousand, two hundred dollars. We’ve beaten our target.”

The room erupts. Samantha barely hears it.

Mistress Noire.

She looks up at the gallery, into the light, and sees her. The woman in black at the center of the balustrade, rising now, setting down her paddle. The corset and trousers are gone; tonight it’s a black leather dress and gloves to the elbow, and black hair cut at the jaw. The woman from the Green Room. May I? The fingertip on the white silk that stopped exactly at the edge of the dress, and the voice saying I can’t imagine we’d have much trouble with you.

Samantha’s knees very nearly give out.

Further along the rail, at her corner table, the silver-haired woman lifts her glass an inch toward the woman in black. A salute, one player to another. The woman in black inclines her head in return. Then the silver-haired woman goes back to her wine.

She feels a cool breath on her back and realizes Tanya has clipped a leash to her collar. She’s being led down the steps at the front of the stage to meet her owner.

* * *

A small procession threads its way down the wide staircase from the gallery, and the crowd parts to let it through. Mistress Noire walks at the front with a blonde, tattooed girl on a leash at her heel, arms still cuffed behind her. Behind her comes a tall, easy-looking man in a white shirt, leading a redhead in a red harness.

Samantha waits at the foot of the steps in the position she’s been taught: hands behind her neck, feet apart, every part of her on display. The three rings still hang from her collar. But everyone here understands the rules of the room: she belongs to someone now, and for the next twelve hours, nobody touches her without her owner’s permission. The thought should make her feel used. It makes her feel chosen with a specificity that leaves her dizzy.

Tanya offers the leash. “Mistress Noire. Your slave.” She smiles. “I’m very envious.”

Mistress Noire takes the leash and gives it a short tug, and Samantha stumbles a step toward her.

“Well, stick around,” the woman says to Tanya. “I might let you have a turn later.”

“I’d be honored.” Tanya turns to Samantha and touches her cheek. “You’ll make a perfect slave for Mistress Noire.”

Then they’re face to face, and the woman is looking at her the way she did in the Green Room, only now there’s no Tanya to say that’s as far as a guest goes.

“Now, Slave. Let’s begin your training. Is it true you’ve never done any of this? No restraints? No punishment of any kind?”

“No, Mistress,” Samantha says quietly.

“Well. We’ll have to change that, won’t we?”

Samantha, lost, says nothing.

“Won’t we?”

“Yes, Mistress!”

“Velvet?” Mistress Noire calls across to the podium, where Velvet is gathering her things. “Which of the playrooms are free?”

Velvet consults her phone. “All occupied, I’m afraid. The other girls got there first.”

“Then may we have the stage? And some help moving furniture onto it?”

Samantha’s face floods with heat as she understands.

“But of course,” Velvet says, grinning. “Just tell us what you need.”

“A St. Andrew’s cross, to start,” Mistress Noire says, and Samantha remembers the White Room on Newcomers’ Night, the woman in black vinyl bound to that cross while two men took turns with her and a room full of strangers reached out to touch. “On your knees, Slave.”

Samantha drops to all fours. Her new owner leads her back up the steps onto the stage by the leash, and Samantha crawls, painfully aware of how many people are watching her from behind. A large cross is being wheeled to the center of the stage, its base locked down to the floor rings. A box of implements is set beside it. When everything’s ready, Tanya helps her up, turns her to face the cross, and buckles her wrists and ankles to its arms in soft leather cuffs, until she’s spread wide in an X with her cheek against the wood.

“Slave,” says Mistress Noire. “You’ve drawn a great deal of attention tonight. The more people watch, the more they’ll want to play with you. Are you ready for that?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Samantha says softly.

“Then one thing before we begin.” She raises her voice so that it carries to the back of the room. “Tell these people what they may not do to you.”

Samantha’s mouth goes dry. “No… no blood, no water sports, no fisting, no permanent marks, Mistress.”

“Louder. They came to hear you.”

Heat floods her face, and on the screen, the camera obligingly finds it. “No blood, no water sports, no fisting, no permanent marks!” Her own voice comes back to her off the far wall, a stranger’s voice, saying intimate things about her body on her behalf.

Mistress Noire gives the room a beat to enjoy it. “Everything else,” she says, “she’s already signed away.” Then, lower, for Samantha alone: “And your word?”

“Red, Mistress.”

“Good. Don’t be afraid to use it. And don’t use it unless you mean it.”

She turns to the crowd. “This is a brand-new slave. Aside from this evening, she’s never been restrained or punished, in private or in public. And I think she’s been looking forward to it.” The crowd claps. Behind her, Samantha hears the long black gloves being drawn off, finger by finger, and then the sound of the box being opened.

Mistress Noire walks a slow circle around the cross, a long black flogger trailing from her hand. “So young. So beautiful. Such a shame to mark this lovely skin.” Her palm rests for a moment in the small of Samantha’s back. “But we all have to learn, don’t we, Slave?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

The flogger swings in a lazy loop, draws back, and lands with a heavy thud across her backside.

Samantha flinches. She doesn’t make a sound.

“See how pretty that is,” Mistress Noire says to the room, and the flogger lands again, across her back this time, and she twitches. Then again. The sting comes a heartbeat behind each stroke, a warmth that blooms and spreads. “Good. Another dozen, I think, to warm her up.”

The strokes come one after another, and with each one Samantha squirms and jerks a little more against the cuffs, and she can hear the room now, clapping, whistling, calling out, and it’s getting to be too much. She feels, suddenly, as if she’s going to cry.

“And this one,” says Mistress Noire, “is for your audience.”

The flogger lands with everything behind it.

Samantha howls. It tears out of her, raw and long and completely unplanned, and the room lets out a great ooooh, and some people laugh, and some cheer.

“Look at them, Slave. Be proud. They’re all here for you.”

Samantha turns her head as far as the cross allows and looks. The faces. The phones held down and away, the rule respected. The screens. Every one of them watching her, and not one thing she can do about it. And it’s thrilling. She can’t pretend it isn’t.

“Oh, yes,” Mistress Noire murmurs. “A natural.” And she brings the flogger up, gently, between Samantha’s legs, and lets it fall against her open sex, and Samantha lets out a long, low groan that isn’t pain at all.

“They want to see you come,” Mistress Noire says. “They’ll have to wait quite a while.”

She takes her time after that. She lets Samantha breathe between strokes. She lets her recover, and then she takes her further. Samantha’s backside is on fire, and she’s sure she can’t take any more, and her owner is in no rush whatsoever. She’s enjoying the show. Every pause becomes its own torment; Samantha finds herself pushing back into the next stroke and hating how obvious that must be.

“Count the last dozen for me. Loudly. So everyone can hear.”

Samantha counts. The leather lands again and again and she counts every stroke aloud and hears her own voice fraying on the higher numbers, hoarse and cracked and nothing like the voice she uses for clients, carrying to people she’ll never meet. At twelve she’s sobbing too hard to speak.

A hand rests on her burning skin, gently. Then there’s the sound of a bottle being uncapped, and something warm pooling in a palm, and then both hands are on her, slick and slow, working oil into the heat.

So that’s what the oil is for, Samantha thinks, from a long way away, remembering the man in the White Room and the thin line he poured along his paddle.

“Oh,” she moans. “Oh.”

“How does that feel, Slave?”

“Good, Mistress. So good.” She has never imagined anything could feel this good.

Mistress Noire unbuckles her ankles, then her wrists, and draws her away from the cross by the collar and turns her around. The air against her burning skin feels almost cold, a mercy she didn’t know she’d been begging for. There are tears drying on her cheeks. Without being told, she laces her hands behind her neck, straightens her back and sets her feet apart.

She knows she shouldn’t, but she looks out at the crowd. A sea of faces looks back, drinking her in. And it makes her feel proud: proud to have this kind of power over them, even though she’s the one in the collar. She glances at the screens and finds herself arching her back a little further, parting her feet a few inches more, and she likes how those small changes make her feel.

An hour ago she was afraid of this room. Now the room is afraid of missing a single inch of her. And the fear has burned off into something she can only call pride.

* * *

Marissa

Marissa walks a slow circle around her slave, running her fingertips over the heated skin, and lets herself admit it.

She came here tonight with a number in her phone and a name beside it. Four thousand dollars, for Veronica. She’s spent every cent of it, and on another girl entirely. A girl who stepped out of the line-up with her knees shaking and her chin up, and made Douglas raise his paddle, and something in Marissa had made up its mind before her own paddle did. She has spent more on shoes she likes less. She has never spent it on anything that has looked back at her like this.

The girl took her first strokes in silence. Marissa files that: the silent type. They always break louder in the end. And then, when the flogger found her between the legs, she simply opened, like a tipped glass, no shyness to work through, no modesty to peel away layer by layer. A natural. The word presents itself, and Marissa accepts it without sentiment.

Or tries to.

She turns to Tom, who has been waiting a few feet away with Pet and Megan kneeling at his feet. “So,” she says lightly. “What shall we do with her next?”

Tom considers the girl, standing in her pose with tears on her face and her chin up.

“She’s had a fair amount of punishment for a beginner,” he says. “Perhaps she needs a taste of pleasure.” He smiles. “But not too much.”