Chapter 10

After she turned sixteen, she started avoiding the process. That is: she tried to. By then love and pain were pretty much the same. She craved the sweet, breathtaking sensations of new love. But they proofed only to be the colourful wrappings of bitter disappointment.

Attention was all she looked for by then. To be seen, to be used was enough for her. It created a semblance of happiness in her heart. That was when she started falling in love with strong, ruthless women. Painful affairs started as abrupt as they ended. Affairs like the one she had with Cathérine. Hopelessly one-sided flings. They just took yet another sip of her lifeblood.

By the time she met Angique, her soul was tightly laced into a corset of reservation. Through the eyelets and laces she could see the warm golden light. It seemed to stream generously from the black haired woman. And it scared her. Her well-trained distrust blocked it with a sheet of ice. She could serve, she could please. She could be a perfect pleasure machine. But never could she allow anyone to enter her soul. Not even this woman.

During her stay at the Villa the ice had melted. The laces had slacked. She had loved the attention. She had loved the Villa. But even with Angique she never allowed the bliss to engulf her inner sanctum. When her body gave in to the overwhelming arousal, she panicked. When the deep emerald eyes lured her to the brink of ecstasy, she dragged her feet. Her treacherous body might explode in shattering orgasms. At the centre of her soul the ice never thawed.

Of course the careless request to shave her head had shocked her. But it wasn't the request that made her decide to leave. It was the knowledge that she had betrayed her mistress. She knew the moment would come for Angique to discover her secret rebellion. And she had grabbed the opportunity to escape.

Angique always found out what lived inside her slave girl. And Brigitte knew that it would render her defenseless.

She felt nothing. Her body shook. Her knees ached from scraping the floor. A huge black dildo rammed into her cunt. A long, curved cock reached down her throat. But she felt nothing. Not even the busy tongue that lapped her clit or the finger that reamed her sphincter.

She ought to have come at least three times by now. The nipples on her swaying tits ought to be rock hard pebbles. The juices should be running down her inner thighs.

But she was numb. Except for the uncomfortable irritation of her dry vaginal walls, she felt nothing. She sobbed and felt like a doll, a soulless toy. Even that might have aroused her before. The humiliation of it. The sheer degradation would have triggered her arousal. But not now, not anymore.

No one seemed to notice, though. Countless men and women used her. But she did not even once get anywhere near arousal. All her openings were penetrated. Loads of sperm kept her lubricated. She might as well have been an inflatable doll of pink, squeaking plastic.

She dripped with sweat, sperm and urine. They left her sprawled and naked on the slippery rubber mattress. She lay staring out of unseeing eyes. Her brain thought unthinking thoughts.

And her heart beat from an unfathomable distance.

No one came to look after her. The sweat and the flaking sperm dried on her skin. It made her shiver with sudden coldness. She awoke from her un-sleep and a sudden rush of loneliness invaded her. Her throat croaked a long, rasping moan. Then the numb indifference was lifted from her. A sudden tension rippled through her muscles. She rose to her knees. She shook her head. Then she lifted her face and looked around with a puzzled gaze.

She knew where she was. She knew this dark and dense forest. She knew it was the place where she belonged now.

She stood on shaking legs and stretched her arms in front of her. She tried to avoid the low black branches with their dark and slimy leaves. But wherever she turned, the black walls of the labyrinth's hedges blocked her way. The circles she walked became a narrowing spiral. They sent her back to where she had started.

She knew where she was. The place was called Loss. She sank to her knees and cried.

The next thing she saw was a wet wall of white tiles. A hot, fierce rain fell on her head and shoulders. It ran down her naked body. She was in a shower and it felt wonderful. Her head still seemed filled with the sticky cobwebs of black nightmare. But the hot water flushed them out. A new light seeped in. A golden splash of sunlight shone behind her closed eyelids. With it came sounds of chirping insects. High winds sang in lofty pine trees. The child like babble of wavelets came from a far away shore.

Her mouth curled into a smile. Her nostrils flared to take in imagined fragrances. She smelled flowers, and the exhilarating scent of newly cut grasses. Her ears pointed at the sound of snorting horses. Her lips murmured a name.

She got out of the shower and dried her aching limbs. New, expensive clothes lay draped on the bed in the hotel room. There was also the usual envelope and a one way ticket to Québec.

She slid into the silk dress and dumped the ticket into the bin. Then she phoned room service. She waited for the knock on her door. She accepted the small, slick object and the Polaroid camera.

The face she saw in the vanity mirror was pale and drawn. The once generous mouth looked thin. The lips clenched into a tight line. The eyes shone a dark blue. They had a feverish intensity.

She looked down at the object she had obtained and she pushed a button. The beautifully designed machine filled the room with its soft buzzing sound.

Alone.

She sipped the orange juice she called breakfast. Angique let the sun's golden fingers touch her face. She was too deep in thought to appreciate the beauty of early sunshine over the roofs of ancient Rome. Too deep even to know that a smile curled her lips. She painted satisfying images on the wide screen of her imagination. They were an orange sun setting over the golden vastness of a Venetian canal. They were memories of cold, tingling wine kissing her throat. And of a sweet girl's tongue expertly invading her swollen cunt.

A sigh made her chest heave inside its silk wrappings. She felt the skin around her nipples tighten. Her thighs spread just enough to make the moist skin part.

My God, had the girl been lovely.

After she had come deliciously, she'd kept Giselle crouched under the table. She waved for the young waiter to step closer. She studied the menu with him and asked him to explain a detail. When his head was close, she whispered in his ear. She startled him. But he moved his crotch closer to the side of the table. Angique slipped her hand under the tablecloth. She found Giselle's and led it to the boy's fly. The waiter's sharp intake of breath was perfectly synchronised with the one from below.

Giselle opened the waiter's fly. She carefully took out his swollen member. Then Angique lifted the tablecloth at the side of the canal. She also lifted the girl's skirt to expose her bare backside to the traffic on the water. The pale flesh tightened itself around the black dot of the plug's end. By now she always wore it.

Angique smiled and made polite conversation with the poor boy. He desperately tried to suppress his growing arousal. It was a battle he could not win. At last he groaned loudly. Tight lips rubbed up and down his rock hard stem. Soft, insisting fingers kneaded his balls.

At the same time Angique slipped a hand under the table. She started to caress Giselle's silken cheeks and the stretched rosebud between them. A smothered moan widened her smile. She slid her probing fingers down to a dripping pussy. Her keen ears picked up the wet, rhythmic sounds of the girl's sucking mouth. She matched them with her slow fucking fingers.

People on the water watched incredulously. They pointed at the pale moon that had so unexpectedly risen on the shore. Some of them started to call. Angique waved at them and smiled. But she let down the skirt and the tablecloth to avoid problems that might arise from too much attention.

Giselle swallowed at least five generous helpings of Italian sauce, that night. She also drank three cups of female nectar. Quite a number of people visited their table that evening. She spent at least an hour on her knees. Then Angique allowed her to surface with a blushing, dishevelled head and eat her bowl of pasta. One of her lovely round tits had been squeezed out of her corset. When she tried to push it back in, Angique checked her hand. She cupped the globe of golden flesh, and pinched its nipple. Her emerald gaze captured Giselle's wide-open hazel eyes. She never let them go while she fondled the breast into a state of excitement.

"Thank you, sweet dove", she said. "You have been good". She kissed Giselle over the table. She pushed her tongue deep into a mouth that was still fragrant from all the juices it had sampled. The girl's chest heaved with a sigh.

She smiled a brilliant sun against the crimson sky of her face.

That night they made love until the first rosy fingers of the sun touched the flat roof of the palazzo. Soft silk pillows lay strewn on the ancient tiles of marble. The air had been balmy. They had never felt the need to leave the roof and go inside. Under a canopy of stars they had eaten each other in the sign of the sacred number. Angique had bound and blindfolded her darling slave. She had fucked her in mouth, cunt and asshole with her favourite black strap on dildo.

The sun found them exhausted. Their bodies lay with limbs entwined. Their skins shivered from the slowly evaporating film of sweat.

Angique smiled at the innocent face of the sleeping girl. "Good morning, sweet child", she whispered in a rosy ear The girl did not respond. Angique carefully slid her arm from under the warm body and tried to unlock their legs. She placed a soft kiss on her forehead. Then she tiptoed off the roof's terrace and into the silent house.

She took a lengthy shower and dressed. Then she spiralled down the ancient stairs until she came to the loggia. A boat waited there to take her to the train station right across the Venetian lagoon.

The sweet golden haired girl at last woke up. She found that her Mistress was already on her way to Milan and on to Rome. Emptiness crawled into her eyes. Angique had gone indeed. She found a note telling her to return to the Villa and wait. Her mistress wouldn't be gone for more than three days. Kisses, a, it said.

Giselle smelled Angique's subtle perfume on the card. She hid it inside her tiny purse. Then she went down to find breakfast.

The days alone were awful. Even taking a suntan was hard. The sun refused to show itself half the time. She decided to proof her dedication by taking double riding lessons. Ennio didn't mind. The control over his ejaculations seemed to improve. Just as Giselle's control over her horse did.

The hardest thing was that there was nobody to talk to. Maria had maybe ten words of English and Arnold wasn't in most of the time. Beside that, he wasn't a person one made conversation with. His small talk consisted of three words between Good morning and Goodbye.

She was not a reader, never had been. And, most remarkably, there wasn't one TV-set to be found in the entire Villa. There were loads of fashion magazines. After two of them she lost interest. She never had been really interested in the subject.

She worked out a lot, mostly spinning and weight lifting. But when there was no sign of her Mistress returning after three days, her motivation melted. She knew that Angique insisted on discipline. She was supposed to be true to the regime even when her Mistress was away. But she started rising later. She lounged around unwashed and undressed until late morning. She ignored the disapproving remarks of Maria.

Somewhere, in a long forgotten niche a pale vine sprouted from night-dark shadows. It stretched its yellow creepers. It found hair-thin cracks in the gray brick wall that closed the niche. It grew through the wall and wound and crept. It unrolled leaves of limp parchment. No sunlight kissed its flowers. Its roots found sparse relief from thirst in bitter stains of long-shed tears. Its fruits were black. They were just wrinkled skin around alsem flesh. Inside it grew seeds of acid salt.

Giselle found them and picked them. She was a modern Eve, lost in a snake pit of coiling darkness. No one was there to warn her. No stern angel with the sword of flaming passion. There was no emerald gaze to keep her fingers from slipping the sad fruit between her lips. Her mouth was parched from sullen boredom. No soft, sweet voice kept her from swallowing the awful grapes of despairing loneliness.

It was the morning of the seventh day since she returned from Venice. Giselle lay sprawled on her bed. She flipped listlessly through an old Italian magazine. It must already have been past eleven. Maria had picked up her untouched breakfast at least an hour ago. She hadn't showered. Nor had she taken care of herself in any other way. The air in her room smelled stuffy. Her hair was a mess.

Suddenly the door opened. Before her stood Angique. Her eyes were a blazing green fire. She seemed to tremble in her black suit. She pointed a shaking finger at the girl on the bed. Her voice had an almost hysteric overtone.

"What", she gasped. "What in hell do you think you are doing?"

Giselle stiffened. A hot rush of panic flashed from her heart to all the remote niches of her body. It made the small hairs spike in her neck. Like fuzzy snapshots each of her mistakes were superimposed on her shaking mind. There was the utter laziness of her position. Her gross neglect of discipline. The unclean, unwashed state of her body. The ruin of her bed. The stench of the room. The breach of confidence. And the total impossibility to explain.

She raised her hands and covered her face. She wanted to blot out the world. She blocked the emerald bolts of rage from searing her eyes. Then she slid off the bed and crawled the few steps to the dusty boots of her Mistress. But before she could grab them, one of the boots rose. A sole pressed itself against her head. A voice growled: "Don't touch me, you pitiful cunt". And the foot pushed her back.

A wave of dry sobs shook Giselle's shoulders. She whined behind her fingers.

"Please, sweet Mistress, I am so sorry. Please forgive me. I thought you'd left me. I thought you forgot all about me."

Her voice was shrill. It seemed to rasp against her throat. Angique gave no answer. A cruel silence followed her plea for pity. She knew without words that she would not be forgiven.

Giselle sat on her knees. Her upper body bent like a question mark before the rigid exclamation that was her Mistress. Her unkempt hair fell over her hanging face. It was a curtain of lusterless gold. She had stopped sobbing. Her body was still. Then her voice droned in toneless repetition:

"This pitiful cunt has betrayed you, sweet Mistress. She begs to be punished. This pitiful cunt has betrayed you, sweet Mistress. She begs to be punished. This..."

Angique let her go on with it for minutes. Then she grabbed the curtain of hair. She pulled the girl up until their eyes locked - the hot, yet icy green eyes and the tear-filled hazel ones in their red, puffy rims. Giselle's weak lips trembled. They shone with the snot and tears that coated them.

"Get down to the cage, ungrateful bitch. Lay your naked body down on the marble slab. Wait for your well earned punishment". Angique said it in an even voice. Then she tore the face even closer to her own and yelled: "Now!!"

She pushed Giselle out of the door. There she watched until the girl had run the length of the landing and had disappeared down the stairs. Then she wiped her own eyes with the heels of her hands.