Taking Chances

[BEThalia]

Chapter Thirty-Four



Ellen and Martina unclipped me from the cross but did not remove my cuffs. They brought me forward to about the middle of the stage. Several lines were gathered off to the right. Ellen manipulated one of these and got a spreader bar off the wall. She attached the bar by two clips, one at either end. Martina brought the bar down and attached my cuffs. Ellen pulled on the line and my arms were drawn upward, wide and high. Martina brought another bar from the side. This one she attached to my ankle cuffs. It did not hold my feet apart as wide as the top bar held my hands. The upper bar was about four feet long and the lower two feet. So, I was not stretched as much as on the cross, but I was held in essentially the same pose. I wondered: So, why the change?

Martina and Ellen were gone then for a few minutes. The next time I saw them they were at the head of a large group of all women peasants. They all seemed excited about something. I tried to anticipate. Andrea had put my backside off limits, basically from my ass to my shoulders. I did not think it would take much more for her to rule that my breasts had had enough. I was standing, so no one could punish the soles of my feet. I supposed my legs and belly were still ripe for punishment. I gave up. What was going to happen was going to happen. It had to be getting into evening. I was hungry and hoped we might just get this over with. They had to feed me! So, let’s get this done so I could have my bowl of gruel.

The women stepped into the stage and began to crowd around me. Then something was falling on my head. It was liquid and as it worked its way through my dreads to my scalp I could feel warmth. I had no idea what was going on, but the sensation was pleasant and toasty in a liquid way, like Maggie’s tongue on my feet. Then the volume of liquid increased noticeably – a greater weight. The warm substance began to spread out over my head. Suddenly the liquid was poured onto my shoulders and began to run down my back. It was not hot enough to cause my wheals any distress. Next, liquid was applied across the top of my chest, shoulder to shoulder, and began its gravity-assisted descent. And more liquid was applied to the tops of my legs. What the fuck? I still had not seen anyone holding any sort of container. They had been behind me and to my sides. Finally, two of the peasant women were in front of me wearing big yellow kitchen gloves. Talk about a temporal anomaly! They were running their hands up and down my legs, plainly distributing the liquid. Another slug of warm liquid was applied to my head. This bunch fell onto my forehead and continued to my cheeks, then followed my jaw bones to my chin. There it began to drip into my chest. Some went down my nose and ended up at my mouth. Tentatively, I put out my tongue to taste it. Molasses! The women in front of me were busy distributing the molasses generously over my belly, hips, breasts, and between my legs. They spread the liquid onto my face – my forehead, cheeks, temples, chin. I could feel four other glove-encased hands behind me doing the same – spreading molasses over my shoulders, back, waist, ass, neck, and between my legs from the rear. Apparently, everyone seemed intent on turning my vulva into a literal honeypot. What the fuck? Why would anyone want to coat me with molasses? As they finished their work there I stood, basically all of me thickly covered in the sweet liquid.

Maggie and Monica were in front of me then. Between them they held a bulging white bag. Sweet Maggie – the woman who had graced my feet with her tongue not long ago – was smiling at me. She and Monica brought the bag up. Maggie’s hand came out of it with a big handful of feathers and let them flutter back into the bag, which I now identified as a pillowcase.

Motherfucker! I was being tarred and feathered!

With grins, Maggie and Monica each threw a handful of the feathers in my face. Most stuck to the viscous liquid, some fluttered away. I could see the feathers that stuck to my cheeks and nose. Others were doing the same job behind me. I felt puffs of the insubstantial feathers hitting me continuously from close range: back, sides, top of my head; my shoulders, neck, waist, breasts, legs. Molasses had been spread up my arms to my wrists. Looking up, I saw my upper appendages coated with feathers. The light impacts hit my ass and between my legs. The process did not take more than a minute before my entire body was nothing but feathers from my feet to the top of my head. My tormenters and everyone in the room – the club seemed as populated now as it had been yesterday for the drawing – were laughing uproariously, in high spirits, and having a great time watching her ladyship and Baroness being tarred and feathered.

We’d had occasion to talk about this practice in one of my classes and to see slides. The earliest historical mentions go back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. One girl in the class expressed her disbelief that most people who were tarred and feathered did not die from the experience. Like many, she assumed the ‘tar’ used was like that used in modern times to patch roads and roofs. That tar must be heated to hundreds of degrees to do its intended job. If a person’s skin came into contact with that tar it would surely cause third degree burns. If they were coated with it death would be the likely result. But it was pine tar, a mineral rather than a petroleum substance, that was used in medieval times, a substance commonly used to waterproof ships. It had to be heated, and was likely quite hot when applied, but not so hot as to cause serious injury, at least not in and of itself. The process of cleaning the pine tar off would certainly involve a great deal of scraping and abrading of the skin. But fatal? Not even close. Just messing and humiliating. When colonists came to the New World, they brought the practice with them. Tarring and feathering was never a form of judicial punishment for crimes. But it became a go-to method of intimidating the sorts of people crowds did not like, such as tax collectors or colonists loyal to the Crown during the War for Independence. Or whoring Baronesses in need of mob justice.

Mary Shank was not happy when she saw Dorothy Grandon, 21, hugging her husband Lloyd in Myersville, Maryland in 1924. Mrs. Shank gathered a gang of men. The men waylaid Dorothy on the road at night. Mrs. Shank stripped Dorothy naked and while some of the men held her down, she poured tar over her body, then added a coat of feathers.

In 1895 in Jayville, New York, Hattie Covey left town with John Kirch, married (not to Hattie) with children. When she returned to town two month later to live with her mother, two men came to her house and told her to leave town or be tarred and feathered. She went to the county seat the next day to swear out arrest warrants against the men who had threatened her. Unfortunately for her, Mrs. Kirch was on the train she rode back to Jayville. On arrival, a crowd of men seized her and took her into a railroad freight house where they stripped her naked. A crowd of women then used brushes to paint her with tar from head to toe, followed by a layer of feathers.

In 1911, Mary Chamberlain was a young schoolteacher in Shady Bend, Kansas who some of the local women thought to be too flirtatious. She was lured to a secluded spot where a group of masked men stripped her of all her clothes and coated her body with tar and feathers.

Not all such incidents are from the distant past. In 1981, Elizabeth Jamieson had a date at the altar with her beau, Dr. John McElway, in Town Creek, Alabama. The day before, the doctor’s ex-wife, Marietta, whom he had divorced in 1976, came to Jamieson’s home with her sister, Robbie Jean. While Robbie Jean held a shotgun on Elizabeth, Marietta stripped her to the waist, shaved her head, applied tar and feathers to her torso and head. Then the sisters drove Elizabeth out to the town dump and shoved her out of the car. The wedding proceeded as scheduled the next day. And ten years later the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the sisters owed Elizabeth $35,000 in damages.

In July 1937, in New Salem, Minnesota, Deborah Steele’s sister-in-law, Edith, thought her brother’s wife was not being faithful to him. She gathered another sister and four friends and paid Deborah a visit. Deborah testified at the women’s trial for assault that they barged into her house at 3:00 p.m. Some of the women held her in a chair while Edith used scissors and then soap and a safety razor to shave her head bald. The women then spread tar on her head, neck, and upper torso and emptied a feather pillow on her. They showed her a sign they had made announcing she was an unfaithful wife and to leave her where she was until her husband came home after work. They told her to walk out the door, stand with her back to a tree next to the road and put her hands behind the tree to be tied there. The sign would be nailed above her head. She refused. They told her again, and again she refused. They said she had one last chance to endure her humiliation in a clothed state. She said they would not dare. The six women stripped her bare, carried her out to the tree, and tied her there. The house was on the route walked each day by two hundred men from the town to the railyard, the town’s main employer. Many wives and girlfriends made the walk with them. So it was the women on the way to meet their men coming out the gate who first saw Deborah, and they were able to tell them of the hilarious sight that awaited on the walk home. So, essentially the entire town viewed a naked, bald, tarred and feathered Deborah, and read about her sinfulness. The event was the talk of the (greatly amused) town. As it turns out, Deborah’s husband worked two hours of overtime that day. The six women were all found guilty of assault and fined $10 each.

Apparently, my experience with being tarred and feathered was now over, but just beginning. Ellen and Martina, who had done none of the dirty work, were unbuckling me. Mallory told me I had thirty minutes to finish with the gibbet or I would find my skinny, chicken ass on the cross again.

I went to work and tried to do the best I could. I resigned myself that I possibly would not get every speck, and if I did not that she would find that speck. Or that if she did not find a speck that she would either provide the speck or pretend she had found a speck.

As it turned out none of that happened.

 

[BEThalia]

Chapter Thirty-Five


Mallory came by in a little while, looked over the gibbet in a cursory manner, then said, “Let’s go.” I was not done with the gibbet. She could have found plenty wrong. But I was not about to argue. I followed her back into the pillory and stocks alcove. She told me to sit in the stocks on the right side of the pillory. On the left side were two stocks, one of which I had gotten my bastinado punishment in. There was one stocks on the right, although it was made for two people. The foot board on these stocks held the victim’s feet about a foot apart, unlike the one I had been in earlier, which held them side by side. This seemed good news to me. In the other stocks, Mallory had been able to bind my big toes together, making one two-sole target for her whip and making sure both my feet got twelve lashes. Now, if she decided she wanted to cook up a reason to punish me then she would have to lash my feet separately. But she would still only get twelve swings, and I would get just six on each sole. I was getting good at thinking ahead and making such calculations.

Soon Mallory was back. Without ceremony she plunked down next to me a large bowl and a mug. “Andrea says you’re over due to eat. You’ve got thirty minutes.” She walked away; her responsibility accomplished.

The bowl contained the same large helping of the same oatmeal I’d had that morning. Warm. No maggots. The mug contained tea. Nice and hot. I was sure Andrea was behind that. So, I sat there in my chicken suit and ate my meal, scooping it up with my fingers. Members came by periodically to stare at me, smile at me, lord it over me, cluck at me.

I came to with a start. A noise had awakened me. Apparently, that noise had been Mallory kicking the stocks bench I sat on. I was not surprised that I had been asleep. I simply could not figure out how I had remained asleep. I had managed what felt like a short period of good REM slumber while sitting on a bench, my legs held straight out in front of me, and nothing front, back, or sides to lean on. It was as if I had an internal gyroscope keeping me upright. The empty bowl and tea mug were on the bench next to me, so apparently, I had finished my dinner before corking off.

Mallory lifted the top of the stocks. “Let’s go. Go get your shit. Empty out the buckets.”

I did as I was told: pulled my wagon from the cross room, went to one of the bathrooms, dumped the buckets in the shower. The sheriff led me to the front of the club. It was obvious to me that members had gone home, but a group of perhaps fifty to sixty remained. “Dry your stuff. Then get all the towels into the washing machine.”

I used more towels to dry out the buckets, stowed the mop and the various cans of cleaning products. With the addition of the ones I had just used, all the dirty towels mostly filled the tub in the washing machine. I shook in some detergent and powder bleach and set the machine running for a normal cycle. The handy time readout said the full cycle would take fifty-three minutes. Which reminded me, although I could not believe I had forgotten! I looked at the little digital clock. 8:59. Well, I had most of an hour. I sat in the reclining chair and relaxed. I tried not to think of what an absurd sight I would present: chicken lady with her bare feet up on the desk. I was close to dozing off again when the voice I had become so used to hearing all day was in my ears.

“What the fuck all do you think you’re doing! Her ladyship must think she’s on sabbatical!” I was on my feet in seconds. Shouldn’t I have known more would be expected of me than just fucking off while the washing machine did its thing? Yeah, I had to know that. So why…? Was I getting used to being on the bottom? Was I starting to enjoy it? Did I want to call punishment down on myself? Who the fuck knows? Certainly not me.

Mallory grabbed one of my nipples and hauled me into the front room, my sore areola screaming loudly. She took us to the front corner of the room where a small post jutted from the floor – about a foot wide and two high. It was rounded at the top and had numerous straps for binding a person at any number of points. She made me stand straddling the post and went to work with the straps. When she was done my legs were firmly strapped to the post at my ankles and just above my knees. She went away and came back with a device I knew about: a shrew’s fiddle. I was glad to see my education on medieval punishments had been comprehensive.

The shrew’s fiddle was a sort of portable pillory. The device was a several feet long piece of wood. It was hinged with a hole at the wider end to trap a woman’s head (and a shrew’s fiddle was used on women, almost without exception) and two smaller holes in front of it to trap her wrists. Once the device was latched it was as inescapable as a pillory. It was used to humiliate and punish women thought to be too idle, or to talk or gossip too much. A double version of the device existed. This was used to lock up two women who had been fighting or bickering. They remained in the device until they had settled their difference and were no longer likely to disturb the peace with their trivial disagreement.

Mallory was gone for another couple minutes and came back with some metallic items in her hands. “Think your job is to fuck off, Milady?” She had a couple nipple clamps. This would be my first acquaintance with them. A small screw widened them. They had plastic guards over the ends. She pulled on my nipples to erect them. She fitted them between the sides of the clamp and tightened the screw. Ouch! Did it ever hurt my already sore nipples! They had tiny dog collar latches hanging from them. She fixed the other one on just as tight. She brought out a couple of small silver buckets – perhaps a reference to my day’s labors. “Just a pound,” she said. She hooked them onto the latches at the ends of the clamps. The clamps were ouch. The added weight was Holy Jesus! Why did I ever pray for breasts when I was eleven?

The pain was all consuming. My first instinct was to swing my breasts around to shuck them off, but I also knew instinctively that would not loose them, and the pain would be overwhelming. I realized my best strategy to lessen my agony was simply to remain as motionless as possible. I was conscious of hunching my shoulders, trying to pull away from the pain, disown my breasts. My nipples were folded over, pointing straight down.

Never in my life has a load of wash taken so long. I was frustrated too by the fact that were I bound only at my ankles I might have been able to sit down on the post. Just my ankles bound would have given me enough freedom of movement to get my ass onto the top of the pole by moving my knees forward. If I could sit, I could rest the little buckets on my knees or thighs. But with the leather holding my legs above the knees that was impossible. I realized this was probably just as well. Mallory was not around just now, but if she came back and found me sitting, she would have probably attached free weights to the nipple clamps.

Maybe a dozen people left the club while I waited for the washer’s end of cycle buzzer to sound. The main entrance was about thirty feet in front of me. I noticed then what I had noticed all day. Ninety percent of the torments, humiliation, and mocking I had suffered over these two days had come from women. None of the women who left now did so without some derisive interaction with me. A couple of them kissed me, their tongues deep into my mouth, long and wet. All of them added some torment to my breasts: starting the weights swinging or giving the weights a good tug.

Secured in the shrew’s fiddle, my arms were in front of me. I tried to bring my elbows together with the hope that I could support the buckets and relieve their weight from my nipples, but the chains they hung from were too long. They hung below a point where my arms or elbows could do any good.

Then Monica was in front of me again. There could not have been much time left on the washer’s cycle. She took the buckets in her hands. To yank them and cause me more misery? No. I felt the weight leave my nipples. The relief was instant and immense. Thank you, Monica! She did something with them then. Trapped in the fiddle it was impossible for me to see down my front. Then the weight was back only much more of it on each nipple. The discomfort was compounded. Monica gave me a smile and a laugh and off she went. Trying to relieve the increased pain I moved around. I felt the weight in the middle of my torso instead of two separate weights, one on either side, and my nipples were tugged inward. Apparently, she had twisted the chains around each other to combine the two weights into one. Really wish she had not done that.

Finally, the washer played its little end of cycle melody. Monica took off into the hallway. Mallory came over and released my legs. Told me to get the towels into the dryer. She left the clamps and weights on. I walked toward the office carefully, trying to minimize painful motions. My neck and wrists were still held immobile in the shrew’s fiddle. But she was right behind me smacking my ass with her hand, making me move along and getting the now combined weights swaying painfully.

In the office she released me from the portable pillory. I transferred the wet laundry, taking every opportunity to rest the weights on the top of the washer or dryer and get a moment’s respite. I closed the dryer door and set the temperature on high. The dryer’s chip did its twenty-first century calculations of weight and :23 appeared on the display. I had not heard her enter, but suddenly Mallory was at my side. “Hey,” she said, “we like to treat our laundry around here gently.” She turned the temperature selector to medium and the display blinked to :31.

I hit the start button, and she grabbed the weights and pulled me back to the little post.

She had something different planned for this time. I had noticed a hole in the top center of the small post, about two inches in diameter, but had thought nothing of it. Now I found a metal pipe sticking out of the hole to a height of maybe five feet. Mallory tested it. It had no wiggle to it, so I assumed it went to the bottom of the post. It had a short crossing pipe at the top. Mallory put ankle cuffs on me and clipped them together. She did the same with the wrist cuffs and bound my wrists behind my back. She put me on a spot about three feet from the pole and told me to squat down. Some sort of rope was run through the wrist cuffs behind me. My arms rose in the back, the line obviously attached to the top of the pipe. Quickly, I was held strappado. She took the buckets off my nipple clamps and replaced them with two fine chains. The chains ended in loops that she put around the middle two toes on each foot. The length of the chains pulled my nipples out an inch. Within a few minutes I was held squatting. My wrists were elevated behind me to the level of the top of my head. I could have come up to relieve the strappado position, but any attempt to do so distended my nipples even more than they were. The more they stretched, the more they hurt. My thigh and calf muscles and knees soon began a negotiation with each other to hold my height exactly where it was: up high enough to relieve the painful strappado posture but not so high as to cause increased pain to my nipples. All three quickly began to complain about the stressful position they were forced to help hold. My knees were wide apart from my ankles being held together directly below me. I thought perhaps I might relieve my leg muscles by moving my knees closer together, but the chains that connected my nipples to my toes ran right between my thighs. Bringing my legs together had the same effect of stretching my nipples as did trying to rise.

I was held in an impossible position. I could not rise, and I could not go lower. My thigh and calf muscles and my knees were forced to hold my position, and they had to work hard to accomplish that task.

I had heard of predicament bondage. Now I was in it. My leg muscles became more and more tired, burned more as they burned oxygen and became more laden with lactic acid. I soon became desperate to rest them. (Oh! I guess that’s why they call it “predicament” bondage!)

How long? Thirty-one minutes, minus however long it had taken her to arrange my predicament. How many had passed? Five? Ten? Every minute seemed like an hour.

I do not know how long I had been crying, but I came to the realization I had been. People continued to leave the club. Through the haze caused by my burning, agonized thighs and calves I was not clearly aware of too much.

I had not been there long when Mallory and Sabrina, the magistrate, were suddenly in my face. “Hey what’s this?” Mallory asked. I could feel her hand touching my bottom. She brought it up and there were two eggs in the palm of her hand. Plain white grocery store eggs. “What should I do with these?”

“I know,” Sabrina said. She took one of the eggs in the flat of her hand. A moment later her hand crashed into the top of my head and egg white and yoke began to distribute themselves into my hair and over my scalp. “You monster!” Mallory chided Sabrina. “You just aborted one of her fetuses!” Laughing, she cracked her egg on my head.

That became the program for the rest of my stay at the pole. One guy, leaving, picked up a couple eggs from a carton on a table by the coat area. He walked over. “So, a chicken and an egg are in bed sitting up leaning against the headboard. The chicken is smoking a cigarette and has a satisfied look on their face. The egg rolls over, pissed off, and says, ‘Well I guess that answers that question.’” He proceeded to put his hands on either side of my face, an egg in each, and squeezed until they broke on my cheeks.

But mostly (again) it was the women who wanted one last mocking, humiliating interaction, most of them peasants. Was it a way of expressing their relief that they had not been the unlucky one, and were not now where I was? Some cracked eggs on my breasts, some reached between my legs and cracked them on my vulva. Some wedged an egg between my ass cheeks and cracked them. Near the end I was crying, breathing hard, my mouth open, head up, and eyes closed. There was a tap on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to Monica’s face. She was holding an egg which she cracked right over my open mouth, the egg white and yolk plopping into my mouth. While Monica laughed, I tried to spit out the offensive egg goo, and that effort took away all the equilibrium I had been trying to maintain. Soreness flared from my leg muscles and knees. I pulled my upper body higher yanking my nipples to a painfully long extent. In the next few minutes many more eggs were cracked over my head and body. Someone apparently had gotten a couple 18-egg cartons from the grocery. There seemed no shortage of them, and the thought seemed appreciated by those who had stayed late.

I heard the dryer buzzing the end of its cycle. Thank god! My torment was finally over. I could finally get out of this. Mallory came to tend to me. The muscles of my thighs and calves were screaming. The cartilage that held my knees together was shrieking. I was crying, tears pouring down my face and I became aware that I was moaning,” Please, please, please, please….” She unhooked the line between my nipples and toes first. That helped. Then the tension was gone from my tortured arms. I spilled forward onto the floor. I was aware of Mallory unclipping and removing the cuffs from my ankles and wrists. “Now get your ass in there and get those towels folded and put away,” she ordered.

I tried to stand. My legs were shaking and wobbly. I made several attempts and I simply did not have enough strength left in my legs to bring myself to my feet. At last I used a combination of pushing against the top of the post and climbing the pipe sticking from it to come almost straight. But it just was not happening. My legs just did not have enough left to support me and carry me where I wanted to go. I crawled on my hands and knees into the office.

I opened the dryer door and pulled myself up by my hands on the top of the appliance. That allowed me to lean on the dryer as I pulled out the warm, dry towels and piled them on top. Once there, I could easily fold them, and when it came time to move the folded towels to their shelf, I found my leg muscles had recovered enough that I could shuffle slowly and carefully back and forth. Finally done, I looked at the clock: 10:47.

 

[BEThalia]

Chapter Thirty-Six


When I walked from the office, I expected Mallory with more of her bullshit. Instead I got Andrea – a welcome sight.

“C’mon,” she said, “let’s get you ready for bed.”

She supported me on one side as I shuffled down the hall. My feet were no longer the problem. Before, I could do no better than hobble on them. But they had mostly recovered. They were still way sore, but not so much as to hinder my locomotion. My legs seemed to be recuperating, too. But I still wanted to take it slow.

As we walked down the hall I said, “People seemed to be leaving earlier tonight than they did last night.” As we shuffled past the alcoves on the left, I had seen perhaps a dozen and a half people still in the club and involved in one scene or another.

“Yeah, the club is always open past midnight. But yesterday was our special Faire day. Most members stay around until all the punishments have been given out. You can watch SM scenes here almost any time, but there’s just something special about watching someone get it when they weren’t expecting it and didn’t want it. Totally off script and outside their personal bounds. It only happens once a year so people like to get it while they can. And that made last night a late one, so people want to get home tonight.”

We were passing the last room, site of my jail cell.

“Hey, something else I was wondering about. Okay. So, when I went to start the dryer, I was going to do it on high heat so the towels would be done faster. Mallory reset the heat to medium. They were going to take twenty-three minutes, but on medium heat it said thirty-one.

Andrea smiled. “Rules. The club has a recommended limit of twenty minutes for predicament bondage, and an absolute, drop dead limit of thirty. The thirty minutes includes the time it takes to get the person trussed up and into their predicament.”

“So, thirty-one minutes was almost exactly what she was looking for. Got it.”

“That predicament bondage stuff can be absolute torture...”

“…no kidding…”

“…so, we like to keep a tight lid on it.” We had arrived at the bathrooms. “I’ll leave you to it. Take your time.”

My shift was there, folded on the sink. I could not wait to lose the absurd covering of feathers I had worn for so many hours. I ran the water in the shower. While it got hot, I sat on the john and loosed another biblical flood. I have no idea how I had managed to keep it in during my trials of the last couple hours. I also pooped, something I’d had on my mind for the last few hours.

Finished with the paperwork, I thought to just get in and get to cleaning, but foolishly I just had to know. I did what I had done the night before to view the marks of my punishment. I positioned myself to see front and back in the two mirrors. Holy god! I looked freakish, grotesque! I had been seen by a hundred: feathers thick on my head, face, and body. The addition of hardening egg yolks added lurid yellow streaks. What an absurd, preposterous looking human being I looked!

Unable to stand the ludicrous sight anymore, I stepped into the shower and just stood under the comforting water for many minutes.

By the time I was ready to begin into my cleansing project I found the feathers came off very easily, the underlying molasses now soft and pliable from the hot water and humidity. I started with my hair, pulling out clumps of feathers and eggshell. I lathered it again and again, trying to wash out the molasses and egg stuff, pulling apart the stuck-together dreads. I kept my head under the water the whole time.

I started in on my body. I found the project was a bit unpleasant and painful. Normally, it would have gone quickly and easily, but as soft as it was the molasses still adhered. It took a bit of scrubbing with a soapy washcloth, and my inflamed wales did not take well to the interaction. Soon enough, I had my feet and legs clean, then my front, arms, and face.

All the while the drain grate became clogged repeatedly with feathers and eggshells. I was obliged to stop frequently to scoop them up and deposit them in the trash can, as I had the previous night with the pelting goop. I soaped repeatedly and continued to run my fingers through my dreads.

My backside remained covered. As I started in on it the door from the hallway opened. Fuck! What now? I did not want to look, just left whatever was going on to catch up with me. The sounds were of someone taking off their clothes. In a moment, the door opened, and a naked Monica stepped into the shower.

“You’re looking better than you did an hour ago,” she said.

“Monica! What are you doing here?”

“Well, from the looks of it you could use a hand.” I let her turn me around. She took the washcloth from my hands, soaped it, and began to gently rub on the feathers and molasses. She was being a good deal more tender with me than I had been. After a while she said, “There.” My back and ass were clean. The drain was clogged again, and the accumulated water was to the tops of our feet. I felt her lips kissing my back, her tongue running across my skin. She reached around and softly stroked my breasts.

So many confusing signals.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” she whispered. Despite the soreness of my breasts and nipples, her touch was like that of an angel, and I found myself getting turned on in a large way. But I still wanted to begin to work my way toward answers.

I turned. “Hey, Monica, what the fuck…”

She pulled herself up my body and kissed me then. We embraced and our lips came together with increasing passion. Apparent from her comment about touching my breasts, she’d had feelings for me for some time. I, in turn, had always found her chubby body to be a beautiful work of sensuous art. I had always wanted her to lose our little group bets so that she would have to go about the house naked and I could indulge myself, eyeing the candy. I loved her as a close and trusted friend. I loved her like a sister, I had always thought. Had I been denying and deflecting my own feelings? I was very close to her, and I did trust her. But now I found deeper feelings there. Very deep indeed. Were they feelings of love? I did not know…yet. And if it was love, then under what conditions? What would the nature of a relationship between us look like? I wanted to find out.

As we continued to kiss, she put faint pressure on me, encouraging me to kiss down her body – the sort of subtle/unsubtle push one gives a Ouija board stylus when one has a place in particular one wants it to go. I took my time, using my lips and tongue. I gathered her plump breasts together and lavished her areolae with kisses and licks. When I got to her solid and broad belly, I spent time with her navel. Monica took a short step back and leaned against the wall of the shower stall. Did I want to finish my journey at its natural conclusion? I was not sure. To get her opinion I began to lick back up her body. Her hands came to my head and stopped its upward progress.

“I want you to pleasure me,” she said, her voice husky, but of a tone that did not invite any other opinion. When I did not proceed lower right away, she said, “Put your tongue between my legs and get me off, Alicia. Please.”

She bent her knees and brought her legs apart. I thought for no more than a second before I brought my mouth to her sex. She was wet, her clitoris hard, prominent. I had never been with a woman before, and certainly not performing oral on her while I knelt, and she stood. As short as this interaction was, I learned that men were not full of shit when they complained of sore necks. But I do not think I would have found an adolescent boy to come as quickly as Monica did. I ran my tongue along her slick labia. I sucked her clitoris through my lips. As I did this, I let my hands wander over her ass. I could feel the healing that had gone on during the last ten days. The puffy whales were gone. Her skin felt smooth. Perhaps it still held some redness or faint lines, but largely her ass was healing just fine. Her hands were on my head, her sex bucking against my face. She kept coming for an extraordinary length of time, finally subsiding as she released my head. I found myself looking forward to the same interaction, but in a bed.

I came to my feet and Monica kissed me. We returned to our necking. I was already more than ready for release. I tried to give her the subtle/unsubtle signals to go down on me. She resisted and finally shook her head. But her kisses increased their intensity, and her hand found its way between my legs. Well, okay, that works, too. Her fingers ran back and forth along my slippery lips. She ground her finger tightly in, putting pressure on my clitoris. Holy god! Did that feel good! I withdrew my mouth so I could concentrate on my breathing which was already ragged. Monica slipped her other hand between my legs from the back. Two fingers found my rear entrance. I wanted her to kiss me again. I reached with my lips for hers and when I did not find them opened my eyes. She was looking at me. Studying me. My eyes rolled up in my head and I groaned, overcome with pleasure. She began to move her fingers in me and with her thumb rolled my clitoris. I flew higher and higher, nearer and nearer to my peak. I was oblivious to everything other than the feelings emanating from my sex. My mouth hung open, the better to accommodate my fast, ragged breath. My eyes were open but saw nothing but Monica’s eyes which regarded my coolly, abstractly. I was over the top then, soaring, pushing against her fingers, my head now on her shoulder as the waves of ecstasy washed over me. I have no idea how long I came. Long, long, long seconds? A year? I had no clear idea. When I finally came down, she kissed me: deeply, passionately. I leaned into a corner of the stall, a cheek against the plastic.

I might have fallen asleep briefly, or perhaps I was just glowing. I came to my senses and Monica was gone. Had she even been here? I felt my back and ass. They were clean, so she must have been. Unless I cleaned them and masturbated myself to that shattering orgasm. The hot water still pounded out of the shower head. I redirected it so I could lean with my back to the wall and let it hit me at my collarbone and then course down my body.

Finally, there was nothing left to do. When I stepped from the shower there was a wet towel hanging on the bar. Yes, Monica had been here, and we had shared what we had shared. But what to make of it. I thought of how she had taken oral pleasure from me but had not returned it. I thought of the cool, unengaged gaze with which she had observed me as a neared and went over my peak. What did any of it mean? I had a thought then. Was something like this how Claudia and Maggie had gotten their start?

I was dry. I did my improvised tooth care as I had done the night before. Then there was nothing left to do, no reason to linger. And I was tired right down to my marrow. I craved sleep.

I put the shift over my head, smoothed it down my body, and stepped out of the bathroom. The door to the jail cell room was just a short way down the hall, the doors to the other two rooms open. I let myself into my cell. I had barely sat on my bed when the door opened and in came Andrea.

“Sorry,” I said, “You’re still around.”

“No need to be sorry,” she answered. “I told you to take your time and I meant it. I’m staying again tonight. Viivi’s here and we’ll use one of the fold outs in the first room.”

“What time is it?”

She consulted her phone. “11:59.”

“So, am I likely to hear from the deputies tonight?”

“Ellen and Martina? No. Ellen said she and David were going to spend a quiet night at home. Martina said she was going to get her rocks off with Lenny tonight. I think they both meant essentially the same thing.”

I laughed and realized that it had been a while since I had.

“So, look, Martina, the heavy hitters are still here. Sabrina, Mallory, and Ethan. Last time I checked in with…”

“It’s okay, Andrea.”

“I can send them home. They’ll bitch and moan, but that’s all they can do.”

Last chance for the get-out-of-jail-free card. “No, Andrea. I haven’t changed my mind. I’ve come this far. I’ll take whatever the experience brings. And I get it that it’s going to suck. But I signed up. I’m okay. It’s been a good night since I got off that goddamned post.”

Andrea smiled. “I saw Monica headed toward the bathroom. I wondered what she might want, but she didn’t have a whip with her, so I thought maybe it had the potential to be a positive interaction.”

“Yeah, it was good.”

“I guess you two will have a few things to sort out.”

“Oh, yeah. But I’m going to find out just what happens to noblewomen at night in a gaol. And whatever it is I’ll still have some sweetness to look into starting tomorrow.”

“Okay. Your choice. I’ll leave you to it.” She got up, exited the cell, closed the lock, and left the room.

I was almost asleep before she was out of the room. I was back to just my airplane pillow and army blanket. But once my head was on the pillow and the blanket over me, I was out.

 

[BEThalia]

Chapter Thirty-Seven


That forgetful slumber became shocking reality. With a start, I was awake, wondering for a moment where I could possibly be. The bars to my right identified my location and that told me why I was suddenly awake. My arms were beyond my head, and when I tried to move them, they were held fast. My legs were open, and when I tried to close them found that some someone was between them. My shift was pushed to my waist.

A couple of lamps burned across the room and they provided plenty of light to see adequately. Over me, blocking my legs from closing, was sheriff Mallory. Next to her was magistrate Sabrina. I assumed the reason I could not move my arms was because bailiff Ethan held them. Mallory had a mocking expression on her face, and when I looked lower, I saw a phallus jutting from her crotch.

“You like having your nether mouth filled, Milady. We’re here to make sure you’re not lonely tonight. We all want to find out what Sir Archibald found to be worth a whole shilling.”

The safe words – red stop – flitted through my mind. I pushed them away. No, I was here now and would let it play however it did. I knew this was part of what a helpless woman in a medieval gaol would likely endure.

I felt, incongruously, butterflies in my stomach – the same inward fluttering I had years ago felt when I had been alone with a boy for the first time when I knew we were going to do it. When I had lost my virginity that time it had been to sex I had wanted, eagerly anticipated, and with someone I very much wanted to have it. This sex tonight was dreaded, reluctant, and with people I would never have sex with under other circumstances. I was acquiescing, making myself subservient to those who would take pleasure from me and give me none. I had never done that before. Was I, in a way, again losing my virginity? My virginity as a submissive? For a moment I felt disappointment. If something like losing your submissive virginity was a real thing then I wanted the act to happen with Monica. Then I was suffused with warmth and my mind found peace. Isn’t that what had happened in the shower? Hadn’t Monica and I pleasured each other, but in an unequal way? Yes, that is what happened. Once I realized I was not giving up anything better saved for another I found my resolve renewed.

Mallory pinched my mouth between the fingers and thumb of one hand, and she jerked my attention to her. She brought her face to just above mine. “Anything to say, your worship?” The question was out of place. I knew if this were real, they would just get on with it. She was waiting for an answer. Waiting to see if I would use those safe words. Did I want to use them? Would I use them? I made my decision and tendered my consent.

“How dare you!” I said. “How dare you touch me! Get out of this cell immediately and leave me alone!” I cannot say that I have ever had occasion to spit at anyone, but I thought the occasion ripe and decided to see how it might go. I gathered saliva in my mouth and launched it toward Mallory. The glob only had to travel about a foot. Bingo! It hit her smack in her left eye!

She slapped me across the face. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that, bitch. Get this off her.” Mallory said. My consent – my lack of demand that the scene end, my agreement to let it continue – was understood. The hands holding my wrists released and were at my waist pulling the shift up my body and quickly off. Once again, I was naked. Mallory moved in, forcing my legs wider.

I had a moment of panic. My innards were tingling, but was my sex cooperating? Mallory put the head of her phallus against my opening and pushed. This was not going to be easy, but not as bad as it might have been. My pussy was still moist, soft, and pliable from my encounter with Monica. That was the saving grace. Still, as she began to push in and stroke deeper my sex was not entirely ready for the intrusion. I let out an exclamation of pain, and she seemed to enjoy that. Her hand found my mouth again, covered it, silencing me, and her eyes bored into mine. Instinctively I understood, as my medieval character would in this situation, that my best defense was surrender. I wanted to know how a woman would feel sexually taken advantage of in a medieval gaol. So, I became that woman. I identified with her. Mallory turned my face to hers, glaring at my eyes, forcing eye contact. Alicia in the twenty-first century might challenge her. I surrendered. I turned my head away and began sobbing. She laughed and shoved the phallus in deeper. She fiddled with something. I heard a firm buzzing. She had turned on the harness’s vibration feature. Her eyes rolled up briefly in her head as the pleasurable sensations took hold. Quickly she was back with me, that deep, challenging and mocking stare, not returned by me. She began to stroke deeper and harder, taking from my body the pleasure she had the power to claim. In a minute, the dildo was entirely in me. She was so tightly in me that the vibrations that were giving her pleasure were also stimulating me. The leather of the harness was against me, near the top, the vibrations buzzing my clitoris. The dildo was not moving in and out. She was grinding herself against me. The stimulation of my clit caused my labia and vagina to turn to liquid. Then she was utterly still, groaning out her orgasm. She kept pushing against me until she had milked every drop of pleasure. Then she moved back, and my vagina was empty again, my clit still, her silencing hand no longer on my mouth. Strangely, I was disappointed. I had come to enjoy the fullness of the dildo and the buzz at my clit. Now it was gone.

Mallory was now done, and Sabrina was right behind her. She wore the same type of harness and dildo. She was on me and pushing in. I hated what was happening to me, but I also could not wait to have Sabrina grinding against me as Mallory had been. I longed to take something away from this experience. I thought with another bout like the one I’d had with Mallory I might get at least a little orgasm out of this. But I soon surmised that Sabrina had been watching closely while Mallory had fucked me. She pushed her phallus deep into me but did not bring that fluttering leather close enough to make contact. The dildo had some degree of vibration to it, but not remotely as much as the harness. I groaned and tried to fuck back, trying to find that pulsing leather. Sabrina knew what I was doing. She laughed and pulled the dildo out half an inch. Just that tiny distance made the contact I craved beyond reach. “Looking for something, Milady?” she asked and laughed. She got down to business then in search of her release. Mallory had gone all the way in and ground herself against me. Sabina held back and got the same stimulation by stretching against the limits of my vagina. She pushed to the sides, or the top or bottom. The light secondary vibrations from the rubber were only enough to frustrate me. But Sabrina soon reached down and pushed the base of the dildo, rubbing it against herself while using my vagina for resistance. It pushed her over the top in a big way, her eyes closed and breath coming in tremulous waves. She settled herself quickly and pulled the phallus from my body. I moaned a soft, “No” that I hoped no one heard. I was wrong, much to the trio’s amusement.

The three of them were rolling me off the bed and I was soon on my knees, Ethan’s erection before my eyes. I did not really have to do anything. The women were on either side of me. One took charge of Ethan’s boner. The other took charge of my head and mouth. Soon Ethan was in my mouth and the person holding my head was pushing my mouth back and forth on him. Ethan let them direct the action, but after a while he took over. He painfully took handfuls of dreads and began fucking my mouth. He stroked deeply in and out, enjoying that rhythm. As his excitement grew, he began to hold his cock deep in my mouth for long seconds cutting off my air. When he pulled back, I exhaled quickly and then gulped in air for the next bout. As he reached his peak, he withdrew his cock partway. A hand released my dreads on one side. He wrapped his fist around the base of his cock, squeezing. I was finally able to breath freely. Then his cum gushed into my mouth. I just let him use my mouth as the receptacle for his ejaculation. I coughed and his cum spilled from my mouth, over my chin and down my front. His ejaculations were lessening. Then he was stroking in and out, enjoying the aftershocks. He finally pulled himself from my mouth. He wiped his cock on my face, a belated small squirt hitting the side of my nose. Then my dreads were free, and he pushed me away.

The three of them walked out of the cell, Mallory pausing to lock the door. As they walked toward the hallway, they had a few things to say, mostly about what a good fuck her ladyship was.

I was so, so tired. I wanted just to crawl onto my bed and let sleep take me, but the thought of waking up with dried cum on me was unacceptable. I stumbled to the sink and looked at my reflection in the polished metal mirror. What a sight! Dreads all over the place. That blotch of cum on my nose. Below my mouth what the frat boys call a ‘chin omelet’. I ran the water hot and picked up a towel, soaked it, soaped it, and began to clean myself. When I had finished cleaning my face and body, I rinsed the cloth, soaped it again, and washed my vulva. I swished my mouth with water and, dissatisfied with the result, did my finger and soft soap brush again. I sat on the john and let go another strong, long stream of pee. I found I was close to sleep by the time my bladder had emptied. I cleaned myself, paused to put the rough shift back on, crawled onto my bed, and pulled the blanket over me.

I know I slept then, deeply, refreshingly. But I also came to a couple times unexpectedly. Both times I was crying, or maybe it was only one time. When I first came to, I felt my tears and wondered what caused them. Of course! I was Alicia. The woman who had agreed to play the game, had made the bet, lost, and then agreed to see through the consequences of her ill luck. The woman who bravely or foolishly had consented to allow the scenario to play out and as a result had given permission for people to hurt her body, punish her, humiliate her publicly, and ultimately gave her leave to be fucked. Alicia had given permission for her own sexual degradation. And that was the source of my misery and tears.

I stopped thinking, allowed my whole mind to be lost in my sorrow. Maybe I drifted off then. When I was aware of myself again, I found I was crying – still or again I do not know – but I was the Baroness. The name Alicia floated through my mind and I thought Yes, Baroness Alicia. I felt my hot tears, my misery, and knew they were for myself and how far I had fallen. A lady of the manor, born to the manor. I was filled with shame. Instead of honoring that place I had stumbled into by an accident of birth, I had sullied it, cheapened it. And in so doing I had destroyed myself. But my husband took everything I owned. Yes, I lived well, but only because I lived at my husband’s good grace and forbearance. I had only what he and this society permitted me to have. I deserved money of my own, and I had devised a way to get it. How could the Baroness be so dishonest with herself? I knew at my root that money was not my motivator. I had loved and craved the attention of Sir Archibald, Baronet Theobald and of every man I’d had the chance to either offer myself to or let know in subtle ways I was available. I coveted men’s desire to have me and reveled in it. I lusted after the sight of their flesh and of the titillation of showing them my nakedness. I reveled in the knowledge that the sight of my raw nudity made them powerless to stop. No! This had never been about coins. This was about power. I’d had no power over my father. I’d had no power over my husband. But I found that power: over other men. I wielded that power using the weapon of my sex. And now I had been found out. I had been forced to feel the lash on my body, to endure public humiliation. My nudity had moved the people who had seen it, not to lust - but to amusement. Now I was soon to leave all the life I had known, sold like chattel and my husband with my replacement ready. And how long would this new life last? Years, as the captain took me for his personal pleasure? Or months (weeks? days?) as I was passed from hand to hand below deck? And finally, my lifeless body thrown overboard in the middle of some ocean. And that was the source of my misery and tears.

I wept, and weeping fell back into sleep.

When I came to myself again there was dim light in the room. Botany Bay had opaque transom windows along its second story. Every other room had a frosted skylight. The club had no other windows. Now dim light seeped through this room’s triangular aperture. I slowed my breathing and listened. The club was utterly silent. The end of May, just a few weeks before the Summer Solstice. Between the silence and the dim light I guessed the time to be maybe in the hour before or after sunrise.

Mostly asleep, I rose, stepped to the toilet, and sat. I let loose a strong stream of pee. Fuck washing my hands. I laid down and covered myself with the blanket. My dual identity – Alicia/The Baroness – filled my mind as I spiraled down again into sleep.

 

[BEThalia]

Chapter Thirty-Eight


“How are you feeling?” Andrea asked. She had shaken me awake.

I took a brief inventory and found an encouraging answer. My mind felt truly renewed. Apparently, I had slept long and deeply, despite the contrasting episodes of wakefulness I remembered. Given the way the brain works, all my perceptions both times could have flashed through my mind in seconds before I retreated into sleep.

“Yeah, I feel fairly good. What time is it?”

“Eleven-thirty.”

“So, do I get my gruel this morning?”

“Shortly. I’ve been making Mallory get it ready and bring it in.”

“She’ll probably use the opportunity to tell me what a skank I am, and how much she liked fucking me last night.”

“Seems like some mental gymnastics at work there. Fuck someone who’s reluctantly putting up with it and somehow they’re the skank? Anyway. Regrets?”

“No. No, I’m fairly sure not. I think the regrets would have come later today if I’d not seen this through. You know, didn’t honor paying my bet in full.”

Andrea patted my arm, rose, and stepped out through the open cell door. She pushed it closed but did not lock it.

While I waited for Mallory, I took a physical inventory. My jaw and mouth were sore. My pussy had an overused feeling. My feet still felt tender but seemed to have recovered and would be no hindrance to my getting around. My back and ass were hurting – a dull throb that I thought likely to be with me until my wounds and wheals healed completely. My breasts, which had been throbbing when I had gone to bed last night, were still achy. Without thinking, I cupped them over my shift. That was a mistake! The rough, scratchy material set the swollen, tender flesh and my tormented nipples to loudly complaining. No bra for a week, at least. My legs were functional. I got up to go to the sink. They worked fine, although they still were weak. I looked in the mirror. My dreads were a mess. I hated to think how much washing and drying they would need before the molasses was all out of them. I would probably be finding bits of eggshell for months.

I was on the john again when Mallory came through the door. My sentence was over at four. I figured that if I squeezed out every drop I possibly could, I might make it to my release without any desperation or accidents. “Christ! Are you pissing again!” She plunked the bowl of oatmeal and mug of tea on my bed. I cupped my hands and had several drinks of water to slake the thirst I had woken with. I did not want to just drain the delicious hot tea all in a minute. I waited until Mallory left and then sat and ate my breakfast, again using my fingers to shovel the cereal into my mouth, washing it down with rationed sips of tea. I wanted to save at least half of the cup to just enjoy after the food was gone.

She was back some time after I had finished my breakfast. In the meantime, I had another pee, washed my hands of both urine and oatmeal. “Let’s go, your worship.” She had a handful of my dreads and propelled me out of the cell and toward the door to the hallway. In a lower voice she said near my ear, “Man, I had a good time last night. I really got off stretching that hole of yours. I especially liked that you didn’t have any choice but to spread your legs and take it. That’s the part that really got me off. You ever want to give up your snatch like that again you just stop by the club here any time and we’ll play.”

As we moved out into the hallway, Mallory tightened her grip painfully on my hair, pulling my head sideway. She released me in the office, told me to get my shit together. “That bathroom is a fucking mess, and you left one god-awful mess at the post out there, and you’ve got your cell to clean. And don’t forget to sweep all those fucking feathers, chicken woman. You got two hours.”

I got everything I had used yesterday into my wagon. On the way out of the office I looked at the post. No problem there except the egg yolks. They were not the consistency of concrete, but not far from it. I pulled the wagon to the bathroom.

I thought I would start in the bathroom, but before I did, I filled the small bucket with hot water. I carried it and a stack of towels to the front room. There I soaked the towels in the hot water and put them over the egg gunk on the floor and the post. That should loosen up the crap by the time I got back.

There seemed to be maybe a couple dozen members in the club. I mopped the bathroom floor, scrubbed out the shower stall. There was still quite a bit of feathers and eggshells that needed to be cleaned up. I used window cleaner on the mirrors, washed the sink and towel racks, changed the liner in the trash can. I do not think it took overlong, and to my eyes the bathroom was gleaming by the time I was done.

I decided to do the post next. My strategy was that if I did that, then I could do the sweeping and retreat to my cell. I was certain I would be done with all this well before the two-hour deadline. If I was out of sight when Mallory came to get me all I had to do was look like I was just finishing cleaning the cell and I’d be able to spend a good chunk of this time relaxing. A hardened con could not have come up with a better plan to get over on the screws.

My plan for the egg gunk could not have turned out better. It was all soft and wiped off easily. I had to do a little more general cleaning around the area, and I applied furniture polish and rubbed until the wood of the short post practically shimmered.

I got a broom and dustpan from the office and made a tour of the hallway and various alcoves. There were a lot of loose feathers, but they were easy to sweep together and clean up. When I got to the last alcove with the St. Andrew’s cross and gibbets, I got a surprise I had not anticipated. Lots of molasses was still on the slate of the stage. I had to go get my wagon and buckets and towels, but once I had all my cleaning means together I made quick work of the mess. Then I was off to my cell. I made a detour to the office – no one seemed to be around who might question my need to go there – and looked at the clock: 12:53. Great plan! When I got to my cell, I had next to nothing to do. The floor did not need mopping. There were a few drops of Ethan’s cum by the bed and I cleaned those easily enough. I wiped down the sink and toilet until they shined. I used window cleaner on the polished metal mirror. I straightened the mattress on the bed. I folded the blanket, put it at the head of the mattress and placed the little pillow on top. I could find not another single thing that needed doing. I likely had forty-five minutes to myself. At least.

I sat on the thin mattress. Did I want to start analyzing all this yet? Nah! There would be plenty of time for that. Sitting was not terribly comfortable so I stretched out on the mattress. Hands behind my head, I gazed up at the ceiling.

“What in the motherfuck do you think you’re doing?” The loud voice jolted me awake. “You must think you’re on a fucking Disney cruise. Get the fuck up.”

Mallory’s voice and outrage ringing in my ears, I came to my feet. I even did what I thought might be close to standing at attention. Shit! She had given me two hours, so the time must be after two in the afternoon. Just – what? – two hours left, and I had called down judgment on myself. Fuck!

She barked orders then, me on my feet and trying as hard as I could to comply as quickly as I could. She told me to grab the handle of my wagon, she grabbed a handful my dreads and led me out of the cell, into the hall, and down to the office.

“Now get your shit put away and towels into the washer.” I cringed. The last thing I wanted to do was contradict her. “Are you deaf?” she asked when I did not move.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but I have to dump out the buckets in the bathroom.”

She looked at me coldly. “Then go do it.” I started to pick up the handle of the wagon and she slapped my hand away from it. “You’ve lost your wagon privileges.” Wagon privileges? “Carry them down there.”

“That will take more than one trip, ma’am.”

“No. One trip is what you get. Spill one drop on the floor. Just one. See what happens.”

It was not hard to see the solution. I dumped the smaller bucket, dividing the contents between the two larger ones. Then I set off with a large bucket in each hand. They each had gallons of water in them. Ridiculously heavy. I made my way down the hall. The club had become populated while I had taken my siesta. It was nearly as crowded as it had been the last two days. Members showing up for the exciting denouement. I guess they were not going to be disappointed.

As I passed the first private room I had to stop. My arms were tired. My legs were reminding me about the overtime they had worked last night. By the time I reached the second room, I had to stop again. The buckets were full enough that if I did not carry them right the water would slosh out. My weakened muscles could not keep them as steady as I would have liked, and the water had begun to lap toward the buckets’ tops. I got past the third room, where my jail was. I decided to rest again near the entrance to the hallway leading to the restrooms. Finally, I made a final push. I left one pail outside while I took the other in. I put it completely in the shower stall, tipped it slowly, and let the water run into the shower in a controlled manner. I did the same with the other. I washed the shower stall out thoroughly, gathered the buckets, and made a straight uninterrupted beeline to the office.

“Took your fucking time,” Mallory said. “My mistake. I should’ve told you how long you had.”

I went to work putting back in their places the various cleaning products I had used. I got some more towels off the shelf and dried the insides of the buckets. Parked the wagon. Collected the used towels - not near as many as there had been yesterday – and put them in the washer. Started the load. Mallory watched every move. When I was done, she grabbed another handful of dreads and marched me out of the office and up the hall. I had known since I had been shocked from my unintended and untimely nap that there would be a price to pay. We passed the whipping post alcove. Thank God for that! At the second alcove she turned left. Shit! Not the fucking pillory again! My ersatz prayer was answered when she steered me to the left of the pillory. I soon found both my ankles and wrists immobilized in the one stocks I had not yet experienced. In this one, a board trapped my ankles. On top of that board were cutouts for wrists and then a third board trapped them. It did not seem as torturous an instrument as the pillory, but I appreciated immediately how uncomfortable this contraption might quickly become. What did I have left? An hour and something?

All the club members present had been attracted to the commotion.

This stocks, like the one for just the feet, placed the feet side by side. Mallory was gone briefly and came back carrying her short whip prominently, swishing the thongs through the air. She did not have to announce why I was being punished. The crowd was hushed, and while she had been gone, I had heard disembodied voices. “…sleeping in her cell…” “…supposed to be cleaning…” “…thinks she’s at Club Med…” “heard she got a good fucking…” “probably going to be walking funny…” More than a few expressions of amusement jumped from the crowd.

Like on Saturday, I felt her thick rubber band pull my big toes together. A moment later agony traveled from the soles of my feet to the pain receptors in my brain. Pain from the feet is funny. Of all the body’s nerve signals pain travels the slowest. Normal touch impulses travel at about 300 feet per second. Pain impulses travel about 12 times slower. That’s why when you bang your toe against the leg of the coffee table you have time to think Fuck! This is going to hurt! before you feel the hurt.

So, it was with me. I heard the crack of the leather thongs across the soles of my feet. I could almost visualize the sensation, like an electrical spark or a burning fuse, running up my body to explode in my brain. I did not think Fuck! This is going to hurt! every time, but it sure as fuck did. Mallory swatted my feet hard and took her time between each. In this way, I had twelve chances to experience the touch sensation from the leather hitting my feet, first, racing up my nerve pathways. And then feel the agony carried by the sluggish pain impulse. That understanding did not ameliorate the accumulating burning, tired misery from my feet. She finally finished and, like the day before, I found my eyes streaming tears.

I worked to slow my breathing and my sobs and had myself back under control in minutes. The aching, throbbing soreness continued to emanate from my feet, but like most pain it was spreading, becoming less concentrated, less intense.

Apparently, I was meant to just sit there on display until I had finished serving my sentence. I looked around and found the club members much transformed. For the last two days everyone had been in costume. Today the majority were in their regular clothing or some sort of BDSM getup.

I discovered that the only members who seemed to be in costume today were the three dozen or so female peasants. I began to get bored and anxious to be done. The position – forced to learn forward, back awkwardly bent – had long since become a source of torment. My ass hurt, both from its previous punishment and from the hard wood on which it rested.

At long last I saw Andrea. She came to the stocks, started to sit beside me, realized how I’d have to bend my neck to see her, and took a position directly in front of me, her arms folded on top of the boards and her chin on her arms. “Fifty-three minutes,” she said.

“Well, thank god for that! So that’s the end of the program? Nothing else on the agenda?” She looked a bit hesitant or uncomfortable. “Shit, Andrea, just tell me.”

“Well, that’s the thing. I don’t know. There’s nothing else officially on the agenda. But it’s like when you got tarred and feathered yesterday, or the pelting in the pillory or gibbet: those weren’t on the agenda either. They just happened, and that sort of thing is allowed as long as it doesn’t involve corporal punishment.”

“So, you’re saying there are folks cooking stuff up for the last little bit? Like more mob justice?”

“No, I’m not saying that. I haven’t heard anything. But I have noticed that the only people in costume today are women peasants. Maybe just a coincidence. Everyone tries to keep things like that away from me. So, I’m saying I just don’t know. But I should also say that when our lawbreaker is a merchant, or especially an aristocrat, well, you probably noticed that most of the members come as peasants. They seem in many years to want to take advantage along class lines. And we haven’t had an aristocrat as the lawbreaker for three or four years. If you want, I can announce you’re done and off limits.”

“Shit, Andrea. Last night I got my pussy fucked twice and my mouth fucked once. And by people that under normal circumstances I would not give the time of day to. I’ve come this far, so whatever is going to happen just let it happen and I can get out of here.”

“Okay. Tell you what, I’ll tell them no guillotines.” She smiled at me. “I’ll take your choice to heart. You won’t see me again before the end. But I hope you’ll give the club a chance under normal circumstances.”

“Maybe I will. I know you put a lot of hours into hovering all weekend and making sure things were okay. I can’t thank you enough.”

“You already have.” She stood and walked off.

She was no sooner gone than four peasant women came up and gathered around. “We don’t want you to get lonely, your ladyship,” one of them announced. With that she came up to the side of the stocks so she could lean in front of my face. She hocked and a large glob of spit landed on my temple next to my right eye. Soon another peasant was on my left depositing her spit. This again? How unoriginal! If this was all they had I was home free.

After a minute or so I was getting quite a coat of saliva sliding down my face.

Suddenly, a large group of peasant women – seemingly all the rest of them – came sweeping around the corner from the direction of the front room. Other club members not in costume were wandering up the hall toward Botany Bay.

 

[prtn]

I've been following this story. Its' really interesting reading from the female/victim POV.
That's what would actually happen in a modern BDSM club.

I think is coming to the final chapters though

 

[BEThalia]

I've been following this story. Its' really interesting reading from the female/victim POV.
That's what would actually happen in a modern BDSM club.

I think is coming to the final chapters though

Thank you for your enjoyment of and enthusiasm for the story, prtn.

In this story and others (the Leather & Lace club has made appearances in several other of the later Taking Chances stories) I've tried to portray the club as a realistic character. As you note, in the modern world such an establishment would have to function with clear safety rules and boundries, and I've tried to stay true to that reality.

As I mentioned near the beginning, Taking Chances: Volume Eight - Alicia's Bet is a novel-length story of 41 chapters. I've been trying to put up a chapter a day (sometimes two if they're shorter ones).

And you are right about the female POV. All of the stories in Taking Chances are about female main characters - 1 Ellen (novella), 2 Roberta (short story), 3 Dani (novella), 4 Emily (novella), 5 Ellen and David (novella), 6 Emily and Ellen (novel), 7 Martina (premium length novel) - and all are written in first person. I find that approach to be way more involving. Although the loser in the wagering interactions is not always the female (as you saw in this story with David at the dinner party). But I found putting a female character at the center of each story to open the story to refreshing emotions and reactions.

The preface statement/generality that applies to all of the stories of Taking Chances is: "The stories are about contemporary women who for a variety of reasons -
sound or unsound, impulsive or considered - make a wager that, win or lose, will have far-reaching consequences in their lives and relationships."

The first seven stories are on Smashwords.

Thank you for your comments and interest.

BEThalia

 

[BEThalia]

Chapter Thirty-Nine


In a moment, the peasant women were all around me. A couple of them lifted the top board, freeing my hands. The bottom board was raised, and my feet were free. Such a relief to straighten my back! I was going to begin the process of coming to my sore feet. There was no need.

The peasants pulled me from my seat, but there was no need to try to be gentle with my tender soles. I was partially lifted on both sides – as Martina and Ellen had twice done with me. We all turned into the hallway and headed toward the back of the club. The doors to Botany Bay were open. That instrument and the punishment meted out on it scared me. But there was no way I could be whipped on it. There was certainly no time, and Andrea had placed my back off limits. And she had said impromptu things like this could not involve physical punishment. That settled that question. But it did not answer the question, So why are we headed in this direction?

As we progressed down the hallway calls of “Strip her!” rang out. Immediately, my shift was pulled up and off. We entered the room, and a straight back chair was in place under the triangle. The peasant women carried me to it and plopped me onto the seat. There was no shortage of women to hold me in place. One on each side used her foot and ankle to hold my ankles to the chair legs. I do not know how many held my hands and arms behind the chair back, but those limbs were not going anywhere.

The room quieted.

I saw the sheriff, magistrate, and bailiff to the left of the door with wide smiles on their faces, laughing and joking with each other. On the right I saw deputy Martina, but not Ellen. So, all the official types had no role in whatever was going on. One of the women who had been spitting in my face in the other room stood forward. “What do we do with her?” she asked.

The voices of the women peasants all sounded the same verdict. “Give her the harlot’s coiffure!”

A hand came around the side of my face and held electric clippers. Then Monica in her peasant costume stepped around in front of me. She switched on the clippers. They buzzed wickedly. She looked at someone behind me. A hand came around my head and clamped over my mouth.

Monica stood to my side and started in immediately. I felt the humming instrument at my hair line just left of center. Then it was slicing through my hair. I could feel the resistance as the clippers bored into the base of each dread. They began to fall on my naked shoulders and front. Monica started another row farther to the side. My eyes began to leak tears. Bald! I was going to leave here bald!

The harlot’s coiffure. Many punishments for women adulterers were devised by the men who ran the medieval world: death was the common penalty in the early middle ages, sometimes for both participants, but often only for the woman. The man might be exiled. As time passed into the middle and late periods of the middle ages penalties became less fatal. For a while, a woman might have her nose, ears, or both cut off before being sent on her way. Society’s disapproval of extra-marital sex eventually settled into a whipping for the woman (or sometimes both), head shaving for the woman, or being paraded naked through the streets for her (or sometimes both).

The clippers went through my hair like a scythe through wheat. At least they could not kill me or cut off my nose or ears. Parading me naked through the streets of Chicago seemed most unlikely. I had already been whipped. So, I hated it, but I sat for my head shaving. Monica continued over my head and all the way down to the nape of my neck. She mowed down row after row, the dreads falling away over my naked shoulders or brushing my shoulder blades or breasts on the way down.

I could not turn my head but looking around as much as the motion of my eyes allowed, I saw the rest of the peasant women giddy with excitement, jumping and laughing and clapping. Looking beyond them, I could see many of the other folks watching. The men seemed interested, some perhaps conjuring a sexual fantasy, watching a woman shorn of her locks. Of the women, a few looked on with what I thought might be concern or empathy. But most had a look of amusement or relief. Perhaps they were thinking that if the drawing two days ago had gone differently it could be they sitting here being shorn. Still others, and this probably included most of the women in my audience, stood in couples or trios exchanging comments, looking at me and my increasingly bare head, exchanging good natured comments or laughing together.

Monica had continued with her clippers, row after row. I heard the clippers snap off. Then I felt warmth at the back of my head. I soon identified it as the application of shaving cream or gel. She applied it vigorously to my whole head. What had to be a plastic disposable razon began its rounds, the sensation pausing only for moments as Monica wiped accumulated foam from the razor.

The empathetic few were just that – few. For the most part the crowd was enjoying my humiliation, much as French, Belgian, and Dutch civilians after the Second World War had derived great entertainment and satisfaction from the public shaving of woman who had worked for the Germans in non-military positions or were deemed to have carried on romances with the enemy – collaboration horizontale. Supposedly, these public punishments were carried out by men and women who had risked everything fighting with the Resistance. And many of them had. But many others in the uniform of the Resistance were rightly dubbed the Mothball Brigade. Their uniforms had sat in a chest during the war and had come out only after the enemy was gone, to exact retribution on women who, in reality, had been no more cowardly than they, or who had simply chosen survival for themselves and their children.

This was something to think about as the razor worked over my scalp, taking up both shaving gel and stubble.

When Monica was done, she toweled the remaining gel from my head. She came around into my view, smiled wide, and kissed my naked head. She turned to address the room. “The harlot’s coiffure! Just the perfect haircut for a…. well…. harlot! Oh, I almost forgot. One last thing.”

Her clipper buzzed to life. She made two quick motions and my eyebrows were gone.

The hands holding me in the chair were suddenly not there. More hands pulled me from the seat and propelled me forward. Once again, I was moving forward not under my own power. We rapidly passed all the places of my torment over the last forty-eight hours: the room containing my cell on the left, and on my right the alcoves that held the St. Andrew’s cross and gibbet, the pillory and stocks, the whipping post. I was swept into the front room, the site of my trial and my torment at the short post. We approached the doors and those who preceded us swung them open. My captors released me, and I was finally free again. They pushed me through the doors. I stumbled across the stoop and down the two low steps. I ended on my hands and knees on the hot asphalt of the parking lot.

I was ten feet in front of the now closed doors. Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do now? I was acutely aware of my nakedness. I backed up a few feet and sat on the stoop. I put my elbows on my knees and brought my hands to my head and began to run them over my entirely smooth scalp. Shit.

“Holy fuck! Would you look at that!” A sizeable group of young people – maybe a dozen men and women – had appeared on the sidewalk on their way to somewhere, just enjoying the sun and the holiday. Uproarious laughter ensued. Whistles from the men. When one of them said, “Hey, is that thing for sale?” I realized I was sitting in such a way as to give the world a view of my private parts, which had not been so terribly private for the last few days. But my presence was known, and they drank in the novel sight: a woman bare-assed naked, chrome domed. One of the doors opened behind me then closed immediately. I looked around and found my clothes – bliaut, over-gown, chemise, shoes, hose - my medieval aristocrat’s getup – on the stoop behind me. I rose and turned. I just wanted to get into the chemise if nothing else. Just cover myself. When I turned, the comments and laughter from the group silenced. “Holy shit,” a male voice said. More silence as they looked at my heavily punished back and ass. Then a woman’s voice. “Uh-oh! Looks like somebody’s been a bad girl!” That broke the tension, and the laughter, shouts, and whistles began anew. And that was in a way the worst. It was one thing inside the club. Everyone had taken the chance, everyone knew what was going on, everyone was a participant in one way or another and understood the attraction of the bet and the drama.

Out here, I just presented the incongruous and shocking sight of an entirely naked woman, head shaven, with the marks of extremely hard discipline on her body, her eyes blinking in the sunlight. Even if I had the chance or wanted to, how would I explain to these people why I was in this state in a way they would understand?

As I was putting the chemise over my head, there was the chirp of a car horn. My audience was blocking the entrance to the parking lot. They moved aside and – I prayed my eyes were not deceiving me – through them rolled a silver Grand Caravan with David at the wheel and Ellen riding shotgun. Thank you for answered prayers!

They rolled up to me, turning to leave the lot, as I pulled the medieval undergarment down my body. I slid open the side door and hopped in, tossing the rest of my outfit on the bench seat beside me. Ellen was on her phone saying, “Yeah, we’re here. Hurry up.” Some seconds later one of the doors flew open and peasants Monica and Gloria ran out and hopped into the rear seat. I closed the door and David steered the car out of the lot, my little audience pounding on the car as it passed them.

“Sorry,” Ellen said, turning toward me. “We thought we’d be here when you came out. Neither of us had the ticket, so it took us forever to get out of parking.”

 

[BEThalia]

Chapter Forty


The car was mostly silent on the way back. When we arrived at Emily and Ian’s building Gloria and Monica got out.

“Thank you for coming to get me,” I said to David and Ellen.

“Oh, you’re welcome,” Ellen said. “Andrea told us we might want to get the car ready.”

“So, she knew what was going to happen? She told me she didn’t.”

“She really didn’t,” David said. “Not until the mob started marching down the hall to deliver some peasant justice. As soon as she knew what was going on, she told us we should get the car and be ready in the parking lot.”

“Sorry we didn’t make it back five minutes sooner,” Ellen said.

“It’s okay. I’m just glad you showed up. Thanks for the ride.”

“Are you okay?” Ellen said. “Kind of a rough few days.”

“I’m all right. Yeah, it was rough. I wish I could have watched the whole thing from the outside. But really, I think I got out of it what I wanted, along with a lot I didn’t. But, hey, without the sour…”

Ellen and David laughed. I got out. Monica and Gloria were waiting for me. I was still in just my chemise – a state of public undress that would have been scandalous, and likely criminal, in a medieval village. In May 2011 it did not so much as raise an eyebrow. Of which I did not have any. Even the combination of my obviously female figure in a form-fitting under-gown paired with my bald head would not garner even a second glance today. I carried the rest of my costume as we three went up to the apartment. Fortunately, the chemise was essentially shoulders to ankles, so none of the red and scarlet remnants of my weekend ordeal were visible to casual observers. I suppose if they were that might attract some notice.

Emily and Ian had left for Wales on Friday, the day after their city hall wedding. With them went Dani and all the parents. The four of us had been staying with them, all sleeping in their second bedroom. But for Friday night we had been able to rearrange ourselves and spread out. We’d cut cards and Monica’ queen got her Emily and Ian’s room. Gloria’s ten earned her the second bedroom all to her lonesome. My four earned me the pullout in the living room.

Emily and Ian would be gone until the beginning of July. The Wales wedding was not for almost a fortnight. Then they would be honeymooning in Scotland for three weeks. So, we had the run of the place. At least Monica and I did. Gloria was leaving tomorrow, heading home to Vermont. So really it was Monica and me who were staying for a month, and what then we could not say. After that we would have about six weeks until we needed to be back at school.

Now that everything had reached its conclusion and we were home – after three weeks Emily and Ian’s was as good as home to me, even though I had parents and a house I had grown up in here in the metroplex – I could no longer defer my exhaustion. As we unlocked the door and entered, I felt as if I could barely walk, and my mind seemed sluggish and dull.

“Hey, I can hardly take another step. Can I use your room, Gloria? It’s way early and I don’t want to cramp you two by crashing in the living room.”

“Yeah, sure. You didn’t end up spending more than one night on the couch and the other bedroom is yours tomorrow anyway.”

I thanked her and made my weary way down the hallway to the bathroom. It had been five hours since I’d peed – really something how I was just naturally beginning to keep such close track of that! - and no way was I going to go lights out and wake up to soaked sheets. After I had finished my bathroom chores - which included washing the dried peasant spit from my face and brushing my teeth for real - I dragged my weary body to the second bedroom and shut the door. I brought the shade down. The day was blazing bright, and sunset was not until after 8:00 p.m. three weeks before the Summer Solstice. There was a blanket folded at the foot of the bed. As I lay down on my front, I brought the blanket over me. I began my descent into welcome unconsciousness. Before I was out my eyes swept over the digital clock. 5:11. Then I was gone.

Usually when you wake you can tell how you slept. Had you been just under? Going down and resurfacing again and again? Had you been sleeping soundly? Usually you know. When I woke, I knew I had been way, way out. I knew I must have been immersed in healthy, restorative REM sleep for a good long while. The memory of any dreams was tantalizingly elusive. And I knew the purpose of REM sleep was not just dreaming. Much of it involved the processing of recent events – the brain figuring out where to store the memories and which memories were more important. I cringed at what my sub-conscious might be trying to make of the last few days, all without any awareness by my conscious mind.

My eyes swept around the room. The window shade had the same light leaking in around it as when I had pulled it down. Could I have been out just for an hour or two? That did not seem possible. My brain was too rested for that. My gaze fell on the bedside digital. 11:17. The p.m. light was not lit. I worked it out. Eighteen hours! Was that possible? My bladder sent me an urgent reminder that it was full to bursting again. I was really getting used to the feeling. Well, eighteen hours, after all. At the moment the number formed in my mind the tiniest squirt of pee pushed past my urethra. No, no, no, no! Not this again! And in a bed with sheets and a mattress! Fuck no!

I rolled out of bed and started for the bathroom, and I found my urgency was so great that I could not stand. Neither could I move with any alacrity. Bent double, I minced down the hall in tiny steps. To even try to come straight or to take normal steps would release the flood. All down the hall my chemise was around my waist.

Gloria’s voice behind me. “Hey! The moon’s out early today!”

But the raised chemise was a wise precaution. When I got to the john, I barely had time to drop the toilet seat – Fucking Gloria! I cannot believe she hasn’t grown a penis yet with how she leaves the seat up! – turn and collapse backward.

After I have no idea how long my stream finally subsided and died.

Slowly I lifted myself, used the sink on one side and the tub on the other for leverage and brought myself to my feet.

“I thought you’d still be sleeping,” Monica said. She had come through the door and was watching me. “Gloria was right about the moon being out.”

Self-consciously, I let the chemise drop.

“Had to pee.”

“Yeah, that seems to be a recurring theme. Are you coming with us?”

Fuck! We had to get Gloria to the train station. She was on an Amtrak train to New York today. She would get there in about twenty-four hours. She had a ninety-minute layover in Penn Station and then a couple hour ride on the Empire Amtrak train to Albany. Her folks only had to drive an hour over to pick her up and bring her home to Brattleboro where a job awaited her in the family business, until she found something in her field. We would have to be out the door in less than half an hour.

I had been thinking of a long soak in the tub, but that would have to wait for tonight. A quick shower was all I could manage now.

We made the drive to Union Station. Emily and Ian had left the keys and an invitation to use their car. We had been reluctant to, hence the rides back and forth to the club with Ellen and David for the weekend. We could take a cab both ways. There was something new called Uber that was popular out in California and was supposed to start in Chicago, but that was likely a year away. So, for this trip it was either borrow the car or take two expensive cab rides. Or just wave to Gloria as she drove away looking out the back window of a cab. We were not ready for that.

We dropped off Gloria by the terminal and went to park the car. We ate a late lunch together and waited with her until her train boarded. Then it was too quick hugs and kisses. Monica and I were going back to school to start graduate studies. Gloria was done with school, at least for a while. We really had no plan going forward beyond See you when we see you. After all our years together, it was a bittersweet ending. Back at the car Monica and I cried in each other’s arms before we felt ready to hit the road.

 

[BEThalia]

Chapter Forty-One


When we got back it was getting on dinner time. We walked a couple blocks over to a Thai place and got takeout. Back at the apartment we ate while we watched a movie on DVD: Swimming Pool with Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier. It was a fascinating movie – in some ways a frightening movie – about Sarah: a middle aged, stodgy British crime novel writer on a working sabbatical at her publisher’s summer house in France. Unexpectedly, the publisher’s 20-something daughter, Julie – the product of an affair – showed up. She is a wild child: drink, weed, and a different man home with her every night. It’s not until the end (Spoiler Alert!) back at the editorial offices in London, that the publisher’s real daughter, Julia, shows up – a completely different person than the one whom the writer butted heads with, and later found common purpose with, in France. And in five seconds it all fell into place. There had been no Julie in France. What we had been watching was two aspects of Sarah’s personality – the tedious, repressed, middle-aged spinster, and the wild woman of inebriation and sexual flings she fantasized about and longed to be – trying to find peace with each other.

Later, I sat in a tub of warm water, the outside light fading, a couple dozen candles illuminating my setting. In twenty years was I going to be Sarah? Would I be a self who existed and moved about the world but was in fundamental conflict with the person I really was?

The door opened. Monica. She sat and peed. Neither of us spoke. She finished and wiped herself, came off the toilet to sit next to the tub. She swished her hands in the bath water by way of washing them.

I was silent. Then I decided I did not want to be. “In the shower you made me go down on you. But you wouldn’t do the same for me.”

“I got you off.”

“But not the same way. And you looked at me when I was most exposed, trying to get off. You studied me.”

“Yes, I did. We’ve lived together all these years. And a while ago – I don’t even know when – I came to discover that I love you, Alicia. That I want something with you.”

“But you didn’t say anything.”

“No, Alicia, I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do with my feelings.”

“In the shower it was like you were superior to me.

“Not superior, Alicia.” Her hand stole under the suds. It found my sex: fingers sliding along my labia, a thumb rubbing my clitoris. “Dominant.” Me responding. Monica smiling.

“When I was in the pillory you kissed me so wonderfully. Then you spit in my face.”

“Which did you like better?”

My breathing was now deep. The sexual response center of my brain was lit up and firing. I was in that condition when nothing could come out of my mouth but truth. In one of my long exhales I whispered, “Both.”

Monica slipped two fingers into me and rubbed my clitoris with new vigor. I grabbed her, hugged her to me, pushed against her fingers and came. I held onto her for a long while as I brought myself down from the high place.

I settled back into the water. Monica took off her robe and joined me.

We faced each other, our hips inside the other’s legs. We brought our faces close together.

Monica’s hands found my head. They rubbed the smooth skin, fondled it.

“I love your head like this. I love that I’m the one who shaved you. Are you going to start growing your hair back right away?”

“You tell me. It’s yours. It’s my gift to you. My submission to you. I give you the power to decide if and when I have permission to grow any of it back.”

“Alicia! Are you…”?

“Yes. I understand that I want to be yours. I want to submit to you. I want you to be dominant over me. Can we try that?”

“I talked to Claudia and Maggie, and they told me about how their relationship works. How…”

“A D/s relationship works. I did to. How the submissive cedes control, and the…”

“Dominant has no power over the submissive…”

“That she doesn’t grant them.”

“Alicia, can you accept my love? Can we be…”

“Together like that? We just were. All weekend.” I stood and stepped out of the tub, dried myself. I held a towel open for Monica to step into. She did, and I wrapped it around her. She stood in place as I dried her.


# # # # # END # # # # #

 

[thehangingtree]

very well done story, BEThalia!!!

 

[BEThalia]

very well done story, BEThalia!!!

Thank you, hangingtree. That means a lot coming from a staff member and from a writer whose stories I have found interesting, involving, and well-written.

 

[Boris Spider]

Superb story. Thank you ever so much for writing and posting it!

 

[BEThalia]

Superb story. Thank you ever so much for writing and posting it!

Thank you, Boris. I appreciate your taking the time to express your enjoyment.

BEThalia

 

[BEThalia]

I had considered putting up another story of the Taking Chances series. I just don't know how good a fit any of the other stories would be here. I contributed Alicia's story because, while it is not crux-centeric (none of the stories are), it at least had a heavy medieval BDSM theme, which seemed a good fit here.

Any thoughts or preferences?

 

[prtn]

I had considered putting up another story of the Taking Chances series. I just don't know how good a fit any of the other stories would be here. I contributed Alicia's story because, while it is not crux-centeric (none of the stories are), it at least had a heavy medieval BDSM theme, which seemed a good fit here.

Any thoughts or preferences?

I really like your writing style. You manage a very good level of details and create a plausible plot.
Would you like to take further the ending? To a darker story like Alice not be able to make it at the end.

 

[imoenbg1]

I like it exactly the opposite, that the story has a somewaht happy ending.

And I would really like to read more,

 

[BEThalia]

I really like your writing style. You manage a very good level of details and create a plausible plot.
Would you like to take further the ending? To a darker story like Alice not be able to make it at the end.

Thank you for expressing your enjoyment, ptrn. Once my stories are done they're done. Anyway, I have got no clue where Alicia's story might go once Monica is dried off. In all of the stories I like to leave room for the characters and story to go in any direction.

 

[BEThalia]

I like it exactly the opposite, that the story has a somewaht happy ending.

And I would really like to read more,

Thank you for your kind words, imoenbg1. I hope with all my stories to leave them at neutral places, with possibilities in any number of directions.

 

[BEThalia]

Taking Chances - Volume One : Ellen's Bet​

Chapter One​

I know what happened to me and how it happened. No, wait. I suppose that is not the right way to phrase the matter. That makes the situation sound too much as if some random event, over which I had no control, befell me. Perhaps the better way to express myself is: I know what I foolishly got myself into. Lately, I am beginning to understand why this happened, but I still must decide what I am going to do about it. That last part has been on my mind a great deal.

My name is Ellen Ryan. I am a thirty-seven-year-old married mother of three, and I am only beginning to dimly understand why I impulsively placed myself in such jeopardy. Just an insane thing to do on the road? Sub-consciously looking for an illicit thrill? Vera Farmiga's character in Up In The Air has come to mind. Mid-life crisis? I still do not know. I have never been to Las Vegas. I do not buy lotto tickets. I do not participate in the office football pool. Yet for some dark reason my mouth engaged itself, and I found myself in the middle of this experience.

I have a master’s degree and do consulting and training in a very specialized field. Most of my work is here in Chicago where my firm’s offices are located, but I travel two or three or four times a year.

In early February 2010, I traveled to work with a firm in Baton Rouge, introducing the staff to a proprietary process they were licensing from us. I was there for the week before the Super Bowl and had two more days of work on the Monday and Tuesday after. The mid-thirties-something manager who was my host on behalf of his firm, Patrick, invited me to his home to watch the game. His invitation was a thoughtful courtesy. He and his wife, Roberta, were having a small party and had invited me and three guys from the office.

Patrick told me he invites some of the unattached fellows from the office each year in case they have no other social option for watching the game. Some of them accept; some do not. He told me it is usually different guys from year to year as last year's unattached males have often become somebody's boyfriend this year. Patrick and Roberta's kids were at grandma's for the weekend and were not being picked up until Monday.

I gladly accepted Patrick's invitation. I enjoy watching the game each year, although I have no greater interest in football. Besides, the event would be something to do with an empty day in a town I was visiting for the first time.

The guys and I had been invited for a couple of hours before the game to share a buffet meal with our hosts. The other three guests were all quite young: I would estimate mid-twenties to thirty. To the extent I cared about the outcome of the game, I was rooting for the Colts, mostly because they play home games in the state next to mine. My husband, David, lately has found following the Colts to be much more satisfying than watching the gridiron frustrations of our hometown Bears. My hosts and the other guests were all rooting for the Saints, Louisiana’s hometown team that plays home games just eighty miles to the south in New Orleans. As we sat around the dining table sharing good food and drink, we also shared our different perspectives on the outcome of the game, and I found myself unexpectedly becoming a little contentious and stubborn. I suppose I might have been egged on by their teasing: they made a point of the fact that I was the only Yankee in the room.

“Well, if you’re so sure the Colts are winners, I’ll happily put a thousand dollars on the Saints,” said one of the other guests, Steve, a young man's brashness and thoughtless enthusiasm animating his voice. He was the oldest of the male guests, I estimated thirty; and he was a big guy: six two at least.

“Well, I’d love to take your money from you,” I replied without a moment’s hesitation, and without a single thought to the import of what I was saying. Of course, I did not have the cash to cover a bet of that size. The expression had leapt from my mouth: a demonstration of my sudden confidence in a Colts victory, but all four men had taken my statement to mean I accepted Steve’s wager. The other three quickly chimed in that they would make the same bet.

“No, no. I just meant I’m sure the Colts will win,” I said. “I don’t have that kind of cash on me. You don’t think my company hands out that kind of per diem, do you?” The next words came out of my mouth as if someone else controlled my vocal cords. "But that would be quite a pot of money. If you're all willing to put up a thousand dollars each, then I’d be willing to bet my ass on the Colts."

Silence fell, and I saw four faces bearing looks of confused anticipation. Roberta looked troubled.

“What do you mean, Ellen?” Patrick asked.

A lightheaded feeling engulfed me; my stomach was turning, and I felt giddy as I said, "Simple. You guys put up a thousand dollars each. The Colts win and I take the cash home with me. If the Saints win" (and here I almost faltered but somehow continued, my incredulity at the absurd words emerging from my mouth masked by a contrivance of sophistication) "I'll strip naked and my body is yours until tomorrow morning. It’s all I’ve got to cover the bet with. Anything you want, any way you want it."

I could not believe the voice speaking those words was mine. My sagacity, in which I take no small amount of pride, had utterly abandoned me. I also knew, though, it was my voice and that those were words that for some dark and unknowable reason wanted to come out of me. I felt high, like I’d had a couple glasses of wine too many, and I recognized the source of my intoxication as the incredible, reckless risk I was taking.

I looked at Roberta and said, "Of course, I don't mean that Patrick should participate." There are women who shock and fluster easily. That night I discovered Roberta is not one of them.

"If you’re serious, he'll take the bet," Roberta said. "His birthday is next week, and this will be my little present to him. Of course, if he blows a thousand bucks on those damned Saints, he can hardly expect any other present from yours truly."

Patrick looked at me hard and asked, "You're sure about this, Ellen?"

He showed a look of skepticism. This was not a proposal he could ever have expected to come from the mouth of the consummate professional from Chicago. On the other hand, maybe he assumed this was simply the kind of thing we urbanites amuse ourselves with in the big city.

I told him, truthfully, I could not believe I was doing this, but I was entirely serious about the bet. I would gladly take the money home with me if I won. If I lost, I would pay off my end of the bet willingly and consensually, if not gladly.

I specified several conditions and was frankly amazed and bewildered at how my mind seemed to have a naturally ability to cover the bases quickly and thoroughly. I wanted four thousand dollars in cash on the coffee table by the kickoff. If I lost, they were done with me by 7:00 a.m. since I was to lead a 9:00 a.m. training session. There would be absolutely no pictures or videos. I would do oral bare (even flavored condoms in my mouth make me sick to my stomach), but that vaginal sex required a condom.

The young man who had first offered to risk his cash on the Saints, Steve, asked, "Condoms for anal, too?"

I had not even thought of that! My husband and I do anal only infrequently because I do not care for it, so the act ends up a birthday and Father's Day treat for him if he wants it. Often, he takes a pass. As the expression goes: any resolute answer is better than the most profound pondering.

"Yes," I said, "condoms for anal, too." I thought I said it in a very nonchalant way while thinking, Oh, my God! If I lose this how many times will I have to take one up my ass tonight?

There was an exodus as all four of them left to drive to the nearest ATM to get the cash they required. After they were gone, Roberta and I sat on stools at the kitchen island, she picking up little bits of turkey and putting them in her mouth. I had learned earlier that she is a lab manager with a firm that does a wide variety of drug and chemical testing.

"So, what’s this all about, Ellen?" she asked with a neutral voice.

"God, Roberta, I have no idea," I said truthfully, looking into her eyes and shaking my head slowly. "It just tumbled out of me. I've never done anything remotely like this, and I have no idea where this notion came from. The last bet I made with my husband the loser had to make dinner and clean up the kitchen for a couple days.” I felt my face flush. Did she believe my claim that this was far outside the norm for me? Somehow, I felt she did understand, and that I could be candid with her. “But it's giving me a hell of a thrill I've never felt before. I want to win the bet, you know, prove that I was right, and I want to win the money, but I'm also terrified of losing. It's an interesting, I don’t know, I guess you’d call it ‘tension.’ I wonder: what will I do if I lose?"

Roberta met my eyes with a steady gaze and said, "You're a big girl, Ellen. What you'll do is take off your clothes and do what you agreed to do. When you lose a bet like this it’s all you can do."

She held my gaze for long moments. Finally, I caught the meaning underlying her comment.

I said, "You?"

She nodded and went on to describe an experience she'd had in college. She was twenty-five and in the last year of her graduate program. There were two boys who assisted with her thesis research as a financial aid campus job. They were sophomores, nineteen-year-old undergraduates, and football players.

Roberta had studied at a small liberal arts college in the South. The school was small enough that sophomores sometimes made the cut for varsity. These two mostly warmed the bench, but they had some team pride. The big homecoming weekend game was approaching against the traditional rival school, a squad her school's team had lost to every year for over a decade. She did not hesitate to tell her two assistants that they were going to lose. They thought otherwise, and a bet ensued.

"I lost," Roberta said with a shrug of her shoulders and color suffusing her cheeks. "Our team broke its losing streak, but the game went down to the wire. I've never had a feeling in my life like the one I had for those two hours watching the game."

"So, what did you lose? Is that okay to ask?" I wondered if I was perhaps overstepping. I supposed she was relating the story because her bet with the boys had been in some way like mine.

"God, look at me. Nine years ago, and I’m still blushing about it," she said and continued with a sigh. "The next afternoon, Sunday, I had to go to their dorm room. I had to strip and got on one of their beds. All fours. They stripped and high-fived. One got behind me. The other got in front. If I lost, I’d agreed to let them 'roast me on the dick spit.’ They both got to do both ends and weren't very nice about it. The one in front made me open and then slapped my face back and forth with his boner before he stuffed it in my mouth. The one in back jammed his hard-on into me without any warning. When he was done, he gave my ass a couple of good slaps and told me what a good fuck I was. The second session didn't go any better. It was nothing short of the most complete humiliation of my life and made worse by the fact that I was a woman in my mid-twenties and had to submit to this from a couple of teenagers. In their dorm room! I had to face them afterward in the lab for another month, two days a week. Thank God their work on my research finished at the end of the semester, and I no longer had to endure their smirks and rude jokes." She was silent for a moment, in the grip of her recollection, a troubled look on her face. "You can find stories - if you go looking like I did - about a woman having reluctant sex because she lost a bet or is being blackmailed or whatnot. Most of them tell how the woman, as she's getting fucked, has this moment when the eroticism of the moment hits her, she begins to enjoy what's happening to her, and she just comes and comes. Forget it. When I went to pay off my bet, I used the restroom before I went to their room. I didn't have to pee. I just squirted my vagina full of liquid lube. I was terrified of having to pay off a bet like that and knew I would never get turned on."

I looked at Roberta: her face, her eyes, her hands on the countertop, the one squeezing the other slightly. I suspected I was hearing a story only Patrick had heard before. Considering my current circumstance, I asked her the question most on my mind. "Why did you make the bet?"

"The same reason you just made this one, I guess," Roberta said. "They told me what they wanted if I lost. The adrenaline rush was incredible. They’d had some time to cook it up, and I had been flapping my mouth so much about how they couldn’t possibly win. I was stuck. There wasn’t really any way at that point that I could say no. I didn’t even know what I wanted to win. It's funny. I didn't see myself losing the bet and being obliged to let them have their way with me, and I didn’t see myself winning the bet and watching them pay off. No, I saw myself sitting in the stands that Saturday watching some boys play football, knowing that depending on how the contest went I either would or wouldn't spend part of the next afternoon giving two boys I had no romantic interest in a fuck and a blowjob. The thought of losing and having to pay off was scary and humiliating, and that made the risk I was taking, I don’t know, some sort of a big, delicious thrill."

I looked at her again and knew her explanation was at least a possibility for what I was doing that night. I had one final question I had to ask before the men returned.

"What were you going to get if you’d won?"

Roberta rolled her eyes and smiled in a way that revealed her embarrassment. She reddened more than she yet had. "Okay," she said, "if they lost, they were going to have to come to my place. They would have to strip and then jerk off while I watched. I was going to make them do it one at a time. I thought it would be a laugh. Mostly, I wanted to experience their embarrassment. I was going to make them squirt their cum on a plate and eat it. Then they were going to have to give each other blowjobs while I watched. I figured after jerking off they would take forever to come again. I pictured myself, I don’t know, as the worldly and sophisticated grad student, sitting back with her clothes on, having a condescending laugh at the expense of two naked and humiliated undergrads. I thought I’d feel a sense of justice. You know, getting back at them when the loathsome bet they’d proposed blew up in their faces. College girl curiosity? I don’t know. I guess after the bet was made, I had this little fantasy about exploring the role of a dominant female for an afternoon."

I reassured her. "I’d rather win that tonight than some money. It sounds like some real entertainment. Why didn't you tell me this half an hour ago?"

Her laugh was hearty and deep.

After we stopped giggling, I got serious once more. The garage door opener started: Patrick and the boys returning.

"Um, if I lose are you really okay with Patrick being in on this?" I asked.

She put her hand on mine and said, "It's okay. Patrick’s a good boy. He can have his fun if he wins. Our marriage is solid. He won't be following you to Chicago with stars in his eyes. And he'll have me on a pedestal for years for letting him make his macho little wager." She got serious, made eye contact, and cupped my cheek in her palm. "I just worry about you. Those are some young guys. If you lose this, you’re going to have a lot of boners to tame tonight. Even Patrick can do it a couple times in a night with the right incentive."

I did not have an answer for her, but I knew what she said was true. Then the guys were piling through the door from the garage. Apparently, they had not each been able to withdraw the money they needed in the way they had planned. ATMs will only spit out so much cash per day per account, so they’d had to do some creative financial juggling. Patrick and one of the others had advanced them all some cash since they were able to withdraw enough currency using the different banks Patrick and Roberta and the other guy maintained accounts with, using various cards, from debit to credit to equity line to brokerage account. In the end they had been able to assemble the required amount.

We all moved to the living room and settled into seats, snacks and drinks on the coffee table. The game started shortly after. The two younger men, Adam and Jason, sat on the couch. Patrick and Roberta shared the love seat. I sat in a rocker on the other side of the couch from the love seat. The older guy, Steve, was in the lounger.

The four thousand dollars sat there on the coffee table, and I thought that Ben Franklin was looking at me as if he had serious doubts about my prudence and sanity.

What are you lookin' at, Bub? I remember thinking. I seem to recall that you had quite a colorful sexual history yourself! But, as the initial emotional rush of making the bet was dissipating, I was beginning to see his point. I looked at the stack of bills thinking that I make good money. While an extra four large of ‘spend it on crazy stuff' cash would be nice, I hardly needed it. I considered that I was betting my body, my modesty, my self-respect, my dignity against that impressively tall stack of fifties and hundreds. What would Gloria Steinem say? Betty Friedan must be spinning in her grave! At the same time, I felt an exhilaration I had never experienced before.

Imagine walking out of here with all that cash, smugly satisfied, the winner, rubbing it in and leaving these guys so utterly disappointed and dreaming about what could have been! Would the young guys masturbate when they got home to mental images of fucking a woman with my face and a body they had to fantasize about because they never saw mine nude? What a feeling of power those thoughts stirred in me! Some of the thrill and excitement came from what I was risking. The term 'gangbang' drifted through my head, to me only a theoretical concept, something from a vulgar story. Would that dreaded possibility turn into reality later this evening with me at the center? I - married for twelve years, every day of it faithful to my husband, and a mother of three darling girls ten, seven, and six - could in a few hours be on a bed (Bent over a table? On all fours? On my knees?) with four hungry cocks just waiting to devour me.