Part 18 (1/2)

She took another bite, and then finished it off. She hadn't eaten anything as delicious as this since entering the Dodge household.

The man put something else in her hand a napkin. She discretely wiped her greasy fingers. She was about to tell the man to try one because they were exquisite, but realized the trap. She was not to speak.

Instead, she nodded her approval, congratulating herself on outwitting the man.

”Raise your hands,” the man said.

When her hands were in the air, he scrawled his name across her belly. ”See,” he said to someone. ”No real slave has such delicate manners. Every other woman in this room gulped it in a single bite and wiped her fingers on her thighs.”

A fourth man added his name to the three that were already scrawled across her abdomen. ”You're a clever man, Jake.”

Jake Rostrum. Lord of Flatstoke. A man that James admired for his skill at card games. Flame wanted to cry at the man's cleverness.

”It was a mistake to try to identify a lady with s.e.x,” Jake said. ”All cats are black after midnight. It's the table manners that make the lady.”

Now she wanted to tell him that he was wrong. McCullough had identified her with s.e.x. He had tricked her into giving him cold-fish, lady-style s.e.x.

But she still dared not speak.

It seemed that having four names inscribed on her belly made her stand out from the other slaves. Suddenly, she was the most popular girl at the orgy. A rather dubious honor as she was ordered to her hands and knees and used repeatedly without a break between men. That stopped after the fifth man in a row impaled her with his c.o.c.k; the second of the five to prefer a.s.shole to c.u.n.t.

These men were fast, rough, and impersonal. She couldn't tell if they were trying to treat her as much like a slave as possible in the hope that she would reveal herself by revolting; or if they thought that she probably was Lady Irene and wanted to make sure that they could say that they'd f.u.c.ked Lord James' wife the next time they played poker with their friends.

If it was the latter, then they were just covering their bets but not risking anything by signing her belly.

Maybe they had already used up their votes by signing their names on other slaves. Maybe all five had signed the same slave and she, not Flame, was in the lead for getting punished.

A girl could dream.

But not for long. Someone ordered her to her feet and then scrawled on her belly. She didn't know why he had chosen her but now she had five votes. That had to be a lot because there were fewer than three men per slave. Even three votes would have been more than her share.

Maybe the most recent vote had been registered by one of the five men who had used her when she was on her hands and knees or maybe it was someone that she had encountered earlier someone who had been spending time with the others and had been convinced that none of them could ever have been a lady.

A new voice began speaking in her m.u.f.fled ear. ”I don't care if you're Lady Irene or not. I've been watching you and I think that you're an exceptional woman. My wife died last year and I'm not interested in the kind of ladies that keep trying to trap me into another marriage. They're a bunch of tight-a.s.sed prudes. I'd like to buy you and spend a year teaching you to be a lady. If you can show me that you can fit into society, I'll free you and marry you. Every man secretly fantasizes about marrying a slave so that he'll have a wife who will give him as much pleasure in the bedroom as he can get in the kennel. The difference between me and those other men is that I want to make my fantasy come true. What do you think? Could you act like my slave in the bedroom but be a lady in the dining room? If you had the right training, I mean?”

Flame thought about his proposition. It was a way that she could get what she wanted most, a pa.s.sionate s.e.x life, without having to service any man who gave her an order. She would be a part-time slave of one master.

She nodded.

”Really? You're not just humoring me, are you? That would be cruel. You'd really marry me if I could make it work?”

She nodded again.

He leaned close. She could feel his lips against her ear through the leather. ”Got you, Irene. I got you. You know why?”

She shook her head.

”Because you listened to my proposal. You hoped it I would do what I said. No real slave has hope. Ever. When I offered the same proposal to other slaves in the room, every one of them either laughed in my face or pushed me away. They knew that they had no hope of ever being free, no matter what a gentleman says. You're the only one who took my jest seriously. Now, slave, put your hands behind your back.”

When her hands were out of the way, he signed her belly.

She now had six votes. That had to be enough to make her the winner of two special punishments.

Three more men used her, each one taking advantage of a different orifice.

She was exhausted. She didn't know how these men could keep getting it up. Surely they were as tired as her. As nearly as she could remember, she had been used more than a dozen times. Some of the men, like Earl Jones, were too old to perform at all. So, if all the other slaves had been used as much as her, then most of the men in the room must have f.u.c.ked more than a half dozen slaves.

Flame doubted that. She didn't think that it was physically possible for so many men to have so many erections in an evening.

There was only logical conclusion. She must have serviced far more than her share of the gentlemen in the room.

”Gentlemen, your attention, please.” Thorn's voice penetrated to all corners.

Men stopped what they were doing.

”I do believe that every man in the room has voted. Am I correct? Is there any man here who has not written his name on the belly of one of the slaves?”

There was silence.

”Then it is time to tally the vote. Give me a moment to arrange the ladies.”

There was shuffling and milling around.

After a couple of minutes, Flame was grabbed by the arm and escorted across the room. She was turned around and placed with her back against a wall. She could feel naked arms brus.h.i.+ng against hers on both sides.

”Gentlemen, as you can see, I have arranged the slaves in order according to the tally of votes on their bellies. We have two slaves who were so good, so subservient that their bellies are unmarked. Lets give a hand to the two slaves who were perfect.”

There was a scattered round of polite applause.

”Next, we have one slave with one vote, five with two votes, and three with three votes. It seems that they could have tried harder but they did not fail so badly that they merit punishment.”

There was a brief pause while Thorn walked down the line, and then Flame felt a hand on her shoulder.

”That, gentlemen, leaves a tie. These two slaves have each earned six votes. We must break the tie. All those gentlemen who voted for one of the other slaves must now vote for one of these two. We won't bother with the markers. We'll vote now with a show of hands.”

Thorn raised Flame's hand high above her head.

”Gentlemen, how many of you believe that this slave, the one marked with a K was Lady Irene? Raise your hand. Even if you already marked her belly, you have to raise your hand now, to be counted again.”

There was a pause before Thorn returned her hand to her side and released it.

”And the other slave, who was marked with an M?”

Flame struggled to understand. If they had been arranged alphabetically, then she would have been the eleventh slave in the line. That was consistent with what she had believed when they were being lined up that only one slave was in line after her, the one marked with an L. So where had the M come from?”

It didn't matter.

”The winner, gentlemen, is Slave K!” Thorn raised Flame's hand high. ”She will be punished for receiving the most votes, six in the first round, and a full twenty in the second.”