Chapter 10: Patriarch Games

I helped her up. She seemed apprehensive.

I suppose I couldn’t blame her - we had hardly parted on the best of terms.

Her eye makeup was smeared and I could tell she’d been crying again.

I looked into her eyes and she tried to look away.

The posture collar made that impossible and I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me.

As I looked into those need-filled eyes, I knew that I’d succeeded, that over a period of just a few days I’d made Caroline Conway -- the preacher’s daughter, the good little girl -- hopelessly addicted to sex.

She thrust her hips against me again and moaned.

She was ungagged and perfectly capable of asking for what she wanted, but these were animal needs and she begged as any animal in heat would.

There was more in that look, a silent capitulation that told me that she was all set for another back down.

If there was ever a time when she was disposed to talk, this was it.

I led her to the toilet and removed the vibrator.

She sat, embarrassed as before to have me watching her.

I looked at her damp box, no surprise there.

She was the juiciest female I’d ever known.

She squirmed a little but did her business and afterwards I cleaned her up, finishing by pushing the vibrator back inside and upping the setting slightly.

Subconsciously, she thrust her latex covered twat in my direction and her eyes asked a silent question.

Just last week she had been a struggling student living in a tiny apartment.

Now she stood next to me, a fetish queen begging a man to fuck her, almost a nymphomaniac, and very nearly a slave.

The thought amused me.

I smiled, caressing her naked breast for a moment to ensure that her nipples had some attention too, then led her into the dungeon.

I forced her onto the bondage chair (without dildos) and started to strap her in.

I paused, letting my touch linger, as I fastened her ankles to the legs.

She was hot and ready so I reached down to her throbbing crotch and as she gasped, begging soundlessly for more, removed the vibrator.

She cried out in frustration, horny but denied.

I just smiled. That would make things easier.

“Okay, I’ve calmed down a little and I want to hear what you have to say.”

“Please...”

“Want to cum, slave?”

“Oh ... yes.”

“Then you won’t have any problem telling me what it’s all about.”

She looked up hopefully, “What, about my offer?”

“No, not about your offer.”

“Please Master, I will do any...”

“Enough!”

She fell silent, sensing my annoyance.

I reached down and forced her to look at me. Best get this over with.

I smiled. “Ok, so you want to talk about your offer. So let’s deal with that first, shall we?”

I wanted to make sure that she realized the permanency of her position.

It would perhaps persuade her to tell me what I needed to know.

“It is my intention to keep you forever, but assuming that I did tire of you, what makes you think you would be released? How do you know there isn’t a shallow grave in your future?”

She shuddered and for an instant a look of fear crossed her face, but then she tried to shake her head.

Finding that impossible she licked her lips.

“I don’t think you could do that,” she said quietly.

There was perhaps a little flicker of doubt behind those blue eyes, but she did her best to sound sure.

I laughed.

“What do you base that on?” I asked. “And I hope that isn’t a psychological opinion. I wouldn’t bet my life on it, not with your grades!”

“No,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

“Then what?”

“A slave must know her Master’s mind,” she said. “I don’t, not completely, but I do know that rules are important to you. I don’t think you’d kill me for no reason, I realized that yesterday.”

I was beginning to see.

“You thought I was going to kill you?”

She looked up, “I thought that it was likely,” she admitted.

“I thought I’d have a couple of weeks, a month at most. I tried not to provoke you, not to attempt to escape unless I knew it was going to work...

“Yesterday, when I tried to escape, I thought you would kill me for sure, but you didn’t.

“Then I realized that you were serious about keeping me as a slave and that I had a future to plan for.”

She looked at me with those big blue eyes, pleading.

“My offer is good,” she said. “I’ll willingly be your slave, do anything in return, the piercing, the brand, even a baby if that’s what you want.”

I smiled again, as I understood.

“What you’re offering is to be my girlfriend,” I said. “Well, it may surprise you to learn that I can get a girl with no trouble whatsoever. If not from love then form the fact that I am a very wealthy man.”

I brought my hand up and stroked her cheek, again.

She didn’t try to stop me.

“If I’d wanted, I could have bought your pretty little ass,” I said. “You could deny it but think; how much did you owe? If I’d have cometo you and offered say a thousand dollars for one night would you have really turned it down?”

The look on her face told me she didn’t know.

“We could go on,” I said. “How much would the piercing cost me, or the brand, or the baby? Probably a lot less than it’s already cost me to bring you here. You remember the outfit you wore last night. Those boots were probably the most expensive footwear you’ve ever had, that corset alone cost more than half your wardrobe.

“Taking a slave is a very expensive hobby but it’s worth it because in return I get something I could never buy -- complete control of your life.

“If I decide to throw you out in ten years and you are forced to make your way in the world with no education, that’s my choice. I could just as easily sell you to a brothel in Mexico, that’s my choice too. That’s what ownership buys me.”

She’d looked upset, almost terrified when I mentioned the brothel.

I smiled as I explained, “Caroline Conway doesn’t have a future to plan for, slave. She died in that alleyway. My slave has a long and interesting future ahead of her once she accepts her situation and starts looking forward instead of looking back.”

She was silent, fidgeting nervously like a schoolgirl in front of the principal and perhaps sulking a little.

“Now, slave, what I want to know is why you almost hung yourself today.”

She said nothing.

I thought back to Maggie.

“Did you have an abortion?”

She looked shocked, scandalized. “No. I...”

“Then what? Why such a dramatic reaction?”

Still nothing.

“Slave,” I said as kindly as I could, “Ownership means responsibility. You are my slave, I am your Master. I want to help you, and you must need that help otherwise you wouldn’t have done something so melodramatic.

Now tell me!”

I could tell she wanted to but something deep and old was fighting me for her soul.

“Tell me!”

Still nothing.

Then I remembered what Maggie had said, that she may have been threatened punishment if she told.

Well, two could play at that game.

I allowed the vicious quality to creep into my voice.

“I don’t have all day, Slut!”

“I’m sorry Master.”

“That is nowhere near good enough,” I said coldly. “What is rule one?”

“Obey first time, every time,” she said without hesitation.

“Or?”

“Be punished,” she whispered.

“And this is the creed you live by, the rules you say I always keep.”

“Yes.” It was almost a gasp.

“Well then, I have given you a direct order. You are that far away from a major punishment, Slave. That close. You are going to tell me all about whatever it is that’s going on here and I mean now.”

I slammed the crop against the table.

She started crying. “Please, I can’t,” she moaned.

“A pussy whipping then? Twenty lashes?”

She stiffened. One had been painful enough, twenty must have seemed unimaginable.

“Please!”

“Do I hear thirty?”

“No!”

“Thirty from the dumb bitch tied to the chair!” I said like a mock auctioneer.

“Please!”

I could tell she didn’t want to say it whatever it was.

Coercion was obviously needed and I had to sell her on the idea that major pain would result from a refusal.

In an instant my decision was made.

I brought the crop down hard on her unprotected nipple and yelled, “Sold!”

She screamed and cried but still said nothing.

I waited a few moments, then shook my head.

“I see. A pussy whipping it is then!” I said with a trace of disappointment in my voice.

“No, please!” she screamed. It was agony for her, torn between wanting to obey me and the fear or embarrassment holding her back.

I stood and turned towards the cabinet. I’d deliberately left it open so that the floggers hung on the back of the door were visible to her.

Of course I knew that these were designed for sexual play, and at worst they could deliver only mild pain and discomfort.

But God, they looked marvelous.

I heard the gasp as I went towards them.

“I ... I ... I’m a bastard!”

I stopped.

Not the sort of thing you expect a lady to say, especially about herself.

It took me a moment to realize that she meant it literally.

Thinking about it, I kicked myself for not spotting it sooner.

Caroline’s parents’ wedding date had been one of the first things I’d checked, as it wouldn’t have done for the dutiful daughter to miss such an important anniversary.

The date popped into my head and I realized immediately that it was wrong.

Or rather, that it didn’t match up with Caroline’s age.

In my defense, a lot of my married friends have cohabited for a while and I no longer tend to directly link married time with length of relationship.

The Reverend Conway did not strike me as the cohab type.

A quick calculation told me that Caroline was almost eighteen months old when the happy event happened.

Then my words came back to me: “ ... if it’s a girl, you can look after it yourself. I don’t want to be stuck with your bastards.”

“You’re illegitimate,” I said with some relief, remembering the horror stories told by Maggie.

Part of me thought she had overreacted; after all, huge numbers of kids are born out of wedlock these days.

Then I remembered she hadn’t grown up in the real world but in the weird twilight zone that was small town middle America.

I could imagine the comments, the knowing looks, the gossip -- and then, another part of the puzzle fell into place.

“The Reverend Conway isn’t your real father, is he?” I said softly. “He married your mother after you were born.”

“Yes.”

Her face flushed with shame, she looked like a heroine from a Victorian melodrama, the foundling child born from sin.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine the Reverend’s motive for marrying a single mother, but knowing the Bible Belt I felt sure he could find some way to sell it to his loyal congregation.

“So who is your real father?”

She tried to shake her head. “I don’t know.”

She started to cry and my concerns returned.

So she was a bastard, but even in darkest Iowa it didn’t constitute this much grief.

Then I remembered her reaction to my words, the begging letter home to her mother.

Mother.

“So the good reverend isn’t your father. So what?”

She said nothing.

I took a risk. “He still scares you that much?”

She looked at me in surprise, obviously disturbed now.

“Y-you know?”

“Tell me!”

She wobbled her head, sobbing.

It was so clear. I don’t know why I didn’t spot it sooner.

I turned to her, making a sweeping gesture with my hand. “All this, all the histrionics,” I demanded. “It’s all about your father, isn’t it?”

A look came across her face, a strange mixture of fear and relief.

If Maggie was right, Caroline had carried a dark secret with her for many years, afraid to tell anyone because she thought they would hate her.

Part of her mind wanted so desperately to tell, to free herself from the guilt.

Confession is a powerful aid to conditioning someone; it builds trust because inside we all have something to hide.

It’s hardly surprising that it is used extensively as part of the brainwashing process.

I nodded to myself.

“I want you to tell me all about it. Everything, understand?”

“No, please--”

“Not the right answer!” I said. “Slave, there is nothing you can tell me that can shock me in any way. It’s not possible for me to think any less of you than I do at the moment. Make no mistake -- you will tell me, sooner or later. I have a lot of interesting and painful ways to make you tell me. Speak now before I have to whip it out of you, and you may buy a little of my respect.”

She looked up at that.

“Respect?” Her voice was quiet but emotional.

“Winning her Master’s respect is the only thing that should matter to a slave,” I said.

“It’s the only way she’ll ever be anything more than an object.”

“Please.”

“What’s the matter, afraid I’ll spread it around? What do you think I’d say?” I slipped into a fake Texas drawl. “Hey, Bob, old buddy old pal. You’ll never guess what I found out -- Caroline, the kidnapped girl I have locked in my basement? Hell, I found out she fucks farm animals.”

That caused her to smile a little, but there was still the fear in her eyes.

“No matter what you did, I’m not likely to throw you out,” I continued. “You might as well tell me.

“Now.”

“He said he’d...” She closed her eyes, the tears gleaming on her cheeks.

“You’re afraid he’ll hurt you!”

She would have nodded but the posture collar prevented it. “Yes,” she whispered.

I laughed harshly.

“You’ve been kidnapped, taken countless miles away, locked in a hidden room behind a door a tank couldn’t get though, and you’re still afraid he’ll punish you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he won’t,” I said, leaning down until I was almost nose to nose with her. “Because to get you he has to come through me, and I’m the scariest thing in heaven or hell that bastard will ever meet.”

She looked at me with those doe eyes. She wanted so much to believe.

“I am your Master, slave,” I said, in the purr of a jungle cat.

All sleek and powerful and razor-tipped, something that could kill in an eyeblink.

“You are my property and I defend my property. No matter what.”

I released her, then, sitting down and pulling her onto my lap. She curled up like a frightened little girl.

I held her close, letting her feel the warmth of my body, the tangible physical contact.

Remembering what Maggie had said, I gently brushed her breast in a deliberately calming sensation, especially for someone as needful as she was at that moment.

“Tell me everything,” I said. “No one will punish you for what happened.”

She looked up at me.

It was so close to the surface.

“Tell me,” I whispered. “I can free you from the guilt.”

For a while she cried, but I knew it would be soon so I punched a button on the remote.

Somewhere upstairs the sound system started recording.

She had begun speaking like a child, using simple ungrammatical sentences like a five or six year old.

As the story progressed, her use of language improved, almost as if she’d been hypnotically regressed. Or perhaps she had rehearsed it in her mind for all those years, waiting for that trusted adult that had never arrived to save her from the hell that was her home.

In any case, it took several hours for her to get through it.

She would periodically break down and I would have to comfort her before she went on.

She recounted it slowly, and at my insistence she had described everything in a vivid, almost grotesque detail.

When she had finally calmed down, I retrieved a bottle of whisky from the cellar and we drank ourselves into a minor stupor.

This time she hadn’t argued, as grateful for the liquor as I was.

Then I had taken her back to the cell and reattached the wire.

She just looked up at me, and I felt the need to hold her. She was stiff and tense, and I knew she could never sleep like this.

I started to caress her, rekindling the burning need buried deep inside her womb, feeling her body relax, finally accepting absolution and the freedom from guilt.

Then I very gently parted her legs and started to lick and tease her pussy, feeling the warmth, the need sweep across her, obliterating all other concerns.

I concentrated on her clit, building the sensation still further, listening as she lost control and her screams of lust filled the room.

Then, when I judged the moment was right, I stopped and shifted so that I could gently play with her nipples, listening as the volume of her cries increased still further.

I prolonged the moment, kept her on the edge for minute after minute, knowing that to her it was an eternity of sweet agony, a torture far more intense than any pain.

I found myself thinking of Maggie and her moment earlier that night, had it been this intense for her?

Did I really care?

Then I slipped my cock into her warm hole and fucked her slowly, feeling her tightness drawing me in, enveloping me completely.

For the first time, I was aiming to give her maximum enjoyment, matching my stroke to her needs and feeling her body strain against the bonds as she crawled over the edge.

Then she came again and again, a bursting chain of climaxes, as if all those orgasms her guilt had denied her had finally found release.

Slowly, finally, she smiled and almost instantly fell asleep.

I paused to loosen some of the straps and relieve the pressure on her arms.

She looked like an angel, fine wisps of blond hair framing her beautiful face.

She seemed calm, with that strange look of peace in her face that you only associate with children.

It was as if all those terrible years had just slipped away and she was a little girl once more, enjoying the deep sleep of a renewed innocence.

I was not so lucky.

At first I had been enthused by my new power.

I knew that the demons of her past were the only obstacle to my total control of her, and went to bed in hog heaven; I had tied up and fucked two beautiful women today, and perhaps Vicky would be number three.

I remembered the embarrassment of Maggie in her hooker outfit, those huge begging eyes above her gag as we had traveled up in the lift.

I heard Caroline’s screams as she came again and again, remembered the sweet taste of her pussy, the look in her eyes that told me she was nearly mine.

I had drifted off feeling drunk and very satisfied.

It didn’t last.

I awoke around three with the unpleasant feeling that I’d just had another bad dream and a pounding headache.

It had taken two Advil, three cups of coffee and almost two hours of Animaniacs before I felt I could sleep without nightmares.

The next morning I woke early.

The suggestion of a headache still lurked in the back of my skull so more tablets and coffee were in order.

A quick check showed her still asleep, so I cleaned myself up and trudged into my office.

I unpacked her little box, quickly sorting the diaries and pictures from the rest of her life.

Then I replayed the recording, editing out the pauses and the worst of the anguished cries.

Over the next few hours I systematically took her story and turned it into a continuous monologue, telling a harrowing story of her life.

I played it a few times to get a feel for it, then used the pictures in the albums and those little locked diaries to add in those little details she had missed.

She had begun with a simple statement.

“Momma didn’t really want me. She never told me so, but I know. I guess I was an accident.

“It’s kind of weird to think about it like that, but it’s true.

“It almost sounds like a movie of the week -- a cheerleader and some high school kid got together in the back seat of one of those big old cars, took their clothes off, and ... well, you know.

“Momma said they had used protection despite her being Catholic, but God had punished her anyway and she got me. “I used to think that I could remember the days ... before, but Momma says that isn’t possible.

“My first real memory is of him throwing me to my mother and ordering her to make me stop crying. If she couldn’t, he hit her.

“Somehow, I understood even then that the only way to stop him hurting her was to do as he said.

“That was the first time he told me not to tell the neighbors or anyone outside our house about what he did to Momma.

“He said he would hurt her even worse if I did.”

I looked at her first school photographs, of the sullen blond-haired girl at the back of rows and rows of smiling children.

“I didn’t understand that we were different until my first day at school.

“Momma took me to the gate and waved to me as I went inside.

“The other mothers waited around for a while.

“They stood there talking, exchanging favorite stories about their children -- normal stuff.

“But Momma went straight back to make his breakfast.

“If she had stayed like the other mothers, he’d have gone hungry for a few minutes.

“Then he’d beat her.

“That’s when I started to understand.

“The other kids told me that their parents married because they fell in love.

“I guess I thought mine had, too.

“And maybe, if they fell out of love, that maybe it was my fault.

“As I started getting older, though, I realized that she had been young and pretty with a daughter and no husband.

“Momma was -- I don’t know.

“Vulnerable, I guess.

“Vulnerable, and weak, and she couldn’t stand the gossip and the pointed fingers.

“So when he offered to make her respectable, she took it even though he demanded her soul in return.

“You know, she actually told me once that even though she knew he was cruel, she thought she could change him.

“But he was the one who destroyed her.”

I looked at the family portrait again.

At that stern look, at the way Judith looked down in subservience.

“She wasn’t really human anymore, the way she’d do anything he said.

“She ... God. She degraded herself on demand.

“He’d make her do horrible things.

“I could never understand why -- I didn’t know about what it was like for a single woman with a daughter.

“He held that over her head.

“Every so often, he would get so mad and threaten to throw us out, tell everybody that Momma was a ten-cent whore who would sleep with anyone.

“She would cry and beg, and throw herself at his mercy.

He never did it, of course -- it was just a way of exercising his power.

“But she couldn’t take that risk.”

I plucked out a picture taken on someone’s backyard.

Pretty little girls in light summer dresses, smiling, laughing all except the blond, freckled Caroline.

“When I was six, he started ... he ... he started getting interested in me.

“Before that, he just used to call me “the Bastard” when we where at home and hit me if I got in the way.

“But all of a sudden he started to be nice, almost like other fathers.

“I could tell Momma was scared, but I didn’t know why.

“She kept trying to make sure we were never alone together, but he started to beat her more and more.

“Then one day he went out to visit a sick parishioner, some old woman who didn’t get a lot of visitors.

“He kept complaining that she’d almost talk his ear off, but he had to go visit her.

“After he left, Momma said we would play a game.

“She gave me a suitcase and said we would pretend to pack for a vacation and would see how fast we could get ready.

“I pretended we were going to Hawaii, and I packed all my bathing suits so that I could be a mermaid when we got there.

“We almost made it.

“We were on the stairs when he came home.

“I remember his face, and his eyes -- they scared me so much.

He ran upstairs and grabbed me, then he told Momma to get upstairs into the attic.

“I could tell she was scared -- she kept looking at me, then at him.

“Looking back on it, I now know that he was standing by the rail on purpose.

“If she put up any sort of a fight, he would have thrown me over.

“He could always claim later on that it was an accident -- kids love sliding down banisters, she must have overbalanced, slipped...

“I can still feel his hand holding my arm, almost crushing it, and how Momma slowly put the suitcases down and walked up the stairs to the attic.

“He sent me to my room, and then I heard his steps on the attic stairs.

“I didn’t see Momma again for nearly two months.”

I listened on a ghostly chill spreading through my body, the almost primeval feeling of being in the presence of pure evil.

I stopped the recording and made myself a drink.

Then I spun on.

“After Momma went up to the attic, he found a lady to come in and do the housekeeping.

“The Peterssons took Anna -- he told them that Momma had gone on retreat, and he needed help with the baby.

“They were happy to help out -- I mean, this was Reverend Conway, right?

“The nicest man in town.

“Of course they’d take Anna.

“He kept telling everyone about Momma’s retreat, how she was trying to find some spiritual strength and get some rest from caring for two small girls.

“It was summertime then, and since school was out I’d stay in the house all day long.

“I remember people would stop by and ask him questions about the socials, or talk to him about church business.

“Sometimes I went up to the attic, when I knew he was talking to someone, and I’d tap on the door.

“Once, I thought I could hear something moving inside.

“But nobody ever answered.

“Then, one day, I came in from playing in the back yard.

“He was in the kitchen, doing something at the sink.

“I don’t know why I did it, but I went up to the attic.

“The door was open, just a little bit, and I stepped inside.

“I remember how dark it was, with just a tiny bit of light coming in from the dirty windows.

“At first, I couldn’t see anything, and I thought maybe he let Momma come back downstairs.

“Then I heard the noise.

“And I turned around.

“She ... oh, Momma. She was hanging from one of the roof beams.

He had tied her arms behind her with thin cord, the kind that you used for baling hay.

“It was wrapped tight around her arms, from elbows to wrists, and the skin was bulging purple at each end.

“It couldn’t have been used just to tie her -- it was there to punish.

“One leg was trussed up tightly against her body, forcing her to balance on the other leg.

“On that foot, she was wearing the highest heeled shoe I had ever seen -- I didn’t understand how she could even stand up in it.

“Then I saw the rope above her. It was tied to her elbows, yanking her arms back at this horrible, hurtful angle.

“She had to stand there like that, her arms almost pulled out of their sockets from the rope tied to the beam.

“She wobbled a little, and I saw all these red marks and welts across her back, like somebody had been whipping her.

“Him.

“He had been whipping her.

“I must’ve made some sound, then, because she turned around, and I saw my Momma’s face.

“I almost didn’t recognize her -- she was gagged with this filthy rag, and her eyes were huge.

“They stared at me, and she tried to say something.

“I took a step forward ... she didn’t want me to come any closer.

“She tried to stop me, and she lost her balance.

“She made the most horrible noise, then, as she fell and her whole weight came down on her arms.

“I could have sworn I heard a crack as they jerked back in the air.

“She screamed behind the rag and wiggled, wriggling until she could get her foot under her again.

“It was horrible.

“She finally managed to get her balance back and stood there, staring at me.

“And I stared back.

“The only place that wasn’t bruised or welted or hurt in some way was her face.

“Somehow, I knew she wanted me to run away and hide.

“I did.

“God help me, I did.

“And I almost knocked him over on my way down the stairs -- he was coming back up for more.

“The bastard grabbed me and clapped a hand over my mouth, then picked me up and carried me into his bedroom.

“He threw me onto their bed and shoved a handkerchief into my mouth, tying it there with one of Momma’s summer scarves.

“I couldn’t stop him.