Chapter 12

There still were days when the sun mustered all its waning powers to dissolve the creeping mists. Days when it still could incite the hills with a shattering splendour of gold and orange flames. But more often now the winds thrashed the windowpanes. Thunderous rainstorms shook the building.

Autumn had come to the Villa.

Clarize.

Brigitte had cried her heart out after she learned what had happened to her lover. She had begged to see the body. At least to receive a handful of the flowing mane and dry her tears with it. Angique and her new sister Giselle had spent many hours with her in the big and comfortable master bedroom. She had slept with them in the four-poster bed.

They had bathed her over and over. They groomed her bruises with sweet ointment. They soothed her, talked to her until their throats could only whisper. And they tried to make her drift off into the glow of their lovemaking.

After two days and tear-drenched nights, Angique decided the mourning should stop. She took Brigitte out of her room. She chained her to a horizontal bar at the centre of the cage, deep down in the bowels of Villa d' Este. Her armpits were hooked over the bar. Her ankles were chained to a lower one. It made her hang with an arched back. It pushed out her upper body and abdomen.

Giselle crouched outside the cage to watch in silence.

"Listen, girl", Angique said. She walked in front of her dangling slave. "You should stop accusing me, it has been enough. I am not to blame. It was you who sacrificed Thibault on the altar of your selfishness. Do you understand that?"

Brigitte's sobs made her tits tremble. Her eyes were closed. Her head lolled from left to right.

"I presume you don't", Angique went on. She produced a short leather whip. It had a long tail of braided horsehair that trailed from its tip. She stopped in front of the girl and forced her to look up. The face was a ghastly pale. The flesh around the eyes looked puffed and red.

"I think you make yourself ugly for me to have your revenge. You blame me for his death, don't you, Brigitte?"

The girl stared, but said nothing.

"Tell me, Brigitte. You must tell me what you really feel. We need to get this out of your miserable soul. Let me help you find a way back into reality. Tell me!"

The last words rang through the vaulted cellar. They echoed all around and made the girl stiffen her body.

"I... I..." she said. Then she slumped her head on her chest and cried again.

Angique stepped back. She let the whip land on the exposed tits. They shook under the impact like pale jelly. The girl gasped, and her gasp was echoed by her sister's throat.

Angique stopped after six strokes on each side.

"You know, Brigitte", she said, her voice strained by the exercise. "This whip has been braided from the hair of your lover. Can you feel his anger?"

And she made it land on the flesh again and again.

Brigitte let herself slip off to a place only she knew. A place that smelled of lavender fields. It closed around her like the softest of pillows.

Angique saw where she tried to go. She would have nothing of it. She increased the flogging and screamed her insults. She tortured the girl's nipples with her teeth and nails. Then she drove the slick handle of the whip up her cunt.

"Don't you flee from me, you damned bitch!" she cried. She attacked the tits with her exposed talons. Their flesh shone in a glowing red. "You bloody egoist and dirty traitor. Get here, get back to me!!" By sheer will she dragged her slave back from the gates of consciousness.

"Now... TELL ME!"

Brigitte's eyes opened wide. The present seemed to flow back into her gaze. "I?", she croaked. "I did? Nooooo..."

"Yesss...", Angique hissed. She pushed her face into the girl's. She kneaded her breasts with merciless fingers. "It was you, honey. It was you who took his innocence. You, who turned him into your lover, and you who threw your arrogance right into my face. You put your disdain on display for the whole world to see. Oh, my, Brigitte... did the innocent creature have a chance? Did I have a choice? You forced yourself on him. Then you used him to ridicule me. Now he is gone..."

The girl gasped. She hung even heavier in her chains. Her sister moaned in sympathy.

"Oh, nooooo. Please Angique, nooooo... Pas moi. Pas moi!"

"Yes, Brigitte. You did. It was you. It was your arrogance that killed him. You knew you could never have him. But you were a coward. You dared not confront me over him. You preferred to betray your love and let him down. You could not find the courage to claim him. Yet you could not let him go and save him. You could have saved him, Brigitte. But you found an excuse and ran. You abandoned the both of us."

There was a long silence. Then the girl mumbled a few words.

"What did you say? Speak louder, girl", Angique said. She held Brigitte's chin in her fist.

"Please let me die, Mistress. Je veux mourir."

Autumn coloured the trees on the Italian mountains around Lago Maggiore. Night fell early. Pale wraiths of mist crawled around the Villa. All day the mountainside echoed with the shots of hunting parties. Each crack made the Canadian girl wince inside the walls of her tiny bedroom.

She had stopped crying for the death of her lover. There had been no tears left. No strength to feed her anger. The sudden insight that Angique had given her, had estranged her from herself. She was not the girl she had been. Or thought she had been. Not anymore. She felt left behind in limbo. She could not remember who she'd been. Yet she did not know who she might have become. A new woman, maybe. New, yet eerily familiar.

Of course Angique was right. She and no one else had caused her lover's death. She had acknowledged the treason in her heart. She knew the fate of sweet Thibault had been caused by her arrogance.

Guilt struck her down. She had begged Angique to allow her to take her life. But Angique had closed her mouth with a kiss. She had brought the girl's body to a shattering climax. Then she had looked down on her still twitching body. And she had declared her fate.

"Brigitte, you must live with your sin. You must live with it until I shall set you free."

She had turned on her heels and walked out of the cage. She threw a key to the crouching blonde and left. Giselle took it. She opened the locks of her sister's chains. Then she lowered her carefully to the floor.

"I love you, Brigitte", she whispered. "I forgive you. I shall always be your sister."

She then hugged the broken girl and cried with her.

Brigitte knew that her newfound guilt robbed her of the last remnants of confidence. There was a deep sense of shame in her. But there was also a contradictory pride. A pagan, bloody pride. She had made the ultimate sacrifice on the altar of her goddess. It shone with alien splendour. It dazzled her wide-open eyes and ignited a glow in the throbbing depths of her flesh. The sheer primitivism of it all appalled her. Dwelling on it made her eyes sting and her weak body tremble.

She needed the strength of the American girl to cope with this strange new world. She held on to Giselle's strong body. It anchored her to a reality that otherwise might have slipped through her groping fingers. Then, at last, she reached the very bottom of her misery. The ultimate place she could not fly from. And she found a kernel of gratitude for Angique sparing her life.

She also knew that it would never be hers again.

Two nights later Angique asked Giselle to prepare Brigitte. She was to ready her for the final ritual. A ceremony to lift the heavy sins off her guilty soul. A catharsis that would clean her conscience and flush her soul from all remnants of responsibility. It was a ritual that would set her free.

Giselle chained her sister to the marble at the centre of the cage. Then, together with her Mistress, she took Brigitte to the pinnacles of lust. They pushed her into her very own universe of ecstasy and left her floating on a cloud of bliss.

Then they branded her left ass cheek with the white-hot lily. Angique baptized her in a gush of golden showers, and named her Clarize.

Brigitte died that night. She took her unspeakable guilt with her, down into the darkest grave of oblivion.

New Clarize was welcomed by her sister and her Mistress. She was free now of all guilt and inhibitions. She was set free to serve the one who had taken her life. She would be allowed to serve Angique and please her sister. She also was allowed to serve the Great Dane and Angique's monstrous black leather strap on dildo. She would call them both Master. She would beg them to honour all her orifices, whenever they pleased.

Ultimately she had been set free to service all cocks and cunts her Mistress had in store for her. She would do that with utter pleasure, wherever and whenever the woman decided.

She thanked her Mistress and was reduced to tears. She felt proud to have been chosen.

She pleaded that she wasn't worthy to feel this free.

When summer came to an end, Clarize had turned back to the world of the living. The blush had returned to her skin, the sparkle in her eyes. Her groin welcomed the familiar need. A quick response revived her aching nipples.

Her fondness of the Dane had grown into genuine affection. She taught her blonde American sister how to submit to the spicy, unconditional love of animals. She made her lose the fear of horses. Sometimes they rode together for hours. They found secret places to drown the heat of their passion in floods of sperm and girlie juices.

Giselle for her part taught her sister how to stop thinking. How to accept this fate she knew had always been hers. How to trust even when trust was violated. How to leave disgust behind like Giselle left it behind with their Master Brynn. Or like Giselle accepted the many cock-wielding guests that Angique expected them to entertain.

The Mistress was away for long stretches of time. She left them in the care of the woman Maria. Many days, though, they depended on each other. They knew it pleased their Mistress when they made love to each other in her presence. But lonely days stretched into weeks. And in their shared pleasure grew a part that rapidly became a private playground. They did not know if they were allowed to use this playground. But it proved time after time impossible for them to do without.

Clarize's hair had grown back. When it was long enough, Angique took her to a salon in Milan. She had it changed into a warm auburn red. She also bought her an expensive wardrobe of outrageously designed silks, leather and latex. And she had ordered her left nipple pierced to wear a white gold loop. An emerald French lily dangled from it.

Angique took her to a clinic where they had lasered the follicles of her pubic hair. She also had the hair in her armpits and on her legs removed. There would never again be a single hair below her neck to spoil the perfect smoothness of her skin.

Milan was all she had been dreaming of for so long. Now here she was. She walked proudly with her Mistress. Her left tit ached with the new jewel. Her lasered cuntlips tingled with every careful step. They were two dazzling beauties. They immersed themselves in the wealth of European fashion and glamour. It was a day of pure candy and they spent it like spoiled, giggling girlfriends. When they turned in for the night in one of Milan's most luxurious hotels, they made love in all the ways available to women, and more.

But when they returned to the Villa, Angique chained her down to the marble slab. She flogged her until all of her skin screamed for mercy. Then she left her there for two days and a night.

Brynn was her only companion.

Around that same time Giselle had disappeared from the Villa. Nobody seemed willing or able to tell Clarize where she might be. She dared not ask the fickle woman she now called Mistress, even in the intimacy of her dreams.

Maybe Giselle had been lent to one of the friends of Angique. Or sold off. Or maybe she had been sent back to the States. But when she heard the cracking shots of the hunters, she cringed. She knew that with her Mistress even the cruellest things were possible.

With an aching heart she searched inside herself. Could she have given her Mistress another reason to punish her arrogance?

Bordello.

She waited for her seventh guest of the night. Or was it still afternoon? Maybe it was morning already. Maybe it wasn't her seventh guest. It might as well be her ninth, or her thirteenth.

She sat on her oil-drenched calves. Her thighs were spread. Tingling sensations echoed in her tender cunt lips. She savoured the sated feeling of being used thoroughly. It lingered in her deepest niches, in her throat, and in the stretched muscle at the entrance of her ass hole.

Her body arched back provocatively. But her eyes were modestly cast down. Her nipples stood out. The left one was pierced with a white gold ring. An emerald lily dangled from it. She was totally naked, but for the leather cuffs around her wrists and ankles. A tight metal collar clutched her throat. Each square inch of her tanned body shone with fragrant oil. Her hair was slicked back into a ponytail. Over her right foot, where her ass cheek billowed out, the brand of a French lily marked her skin.

This place was called Bordello. The old woman had told her its name. It was a room with no windows. There were no colours but red. Red damask had been stretched over the walls. A huge bed stood covered with red satin pillows, red satin sheets, and red silk draperies. Her knees sank deeply into the red carpet. And even the lovely Japanese lacquered armoire was a shining red. All was red, except for the ceiling. The ceiling was a single, square wall-to-wall mirror.

She knew of only one door. It was almost invisible when closed. When it opened, her heart would leap with sudden electricity. She never knew who or what might cross the threshold to her silent cell of sexuality. But she knew there would be yet another opportunity to serve her Mistress. That certainty never failed to moisten the lips of her swollen sex.

She had been in here for days now. She only had left the room to visit the bathroom, where she restored her ravaged body to perfect splendour. She ate in this room. She slept in this room. But most of all she was fucked in this room. Mornings, afternoons and nights a constant stream of men and women visited her. Often they came as couples or groups for her to pleasure. They fucked her and ate her. They filled her throat and the depth of her bowels. She got double penetrated or even fucked in all three orifices at once. She remembered the visit of two lesbians. They used her with huge latex strap-on dildos. And once she'd had a session with six young studs that never seemed to end. They left her with a frosting of sperm on her face and chest, her thighs and belly.

A big woman visited her with two Labrador dogs. She'd had to suck them and receive them in her asshole. Many men had tied her down to the bed. Or they found other ways to submit her to bondage. They tortured her tits. They glazed her bare cunt lips with seething candle wax.

Giselle felt happy. She felt sated. There was nothing she craved for. She just needed to serve whatever entered her little red room. Her Mistress would watch from above.

Her memory had become a limited place. Hazy walls had enclosed it. They moved and boiled with shapes too misty to declare themselves. Of course she remembered the Villa. She remembered her new sister Clarize. It was a clear memory. It always filled her with a glow. It made her yearn to have the girl with her. To have her here and share her services.

She had envied Brigitte the moment she came back to the Villa. She had been jealous. She feared the girl would destroy the special bond she had with her Mistress. Giselle had been baptized and marked. She had been pierced and branded to be the sole property of her mistress Angique. For a while she had been the one and only pet. Or at least that was what she thought she was.

But her envy had dissolved in the vast ocean of time-torture that Angique had submitted her to. When she surfaced and found the new girl in the dirt of her heart-rending misery, a new feeling had bloomed. They had grown close in the weeks after the shattering events in the stables. The ultimate baptism had glued their fate together. They had shared fears and ecstasies. Giselle saw her agonies mirrored in Clarize's eyes.

They had taught each other to accept their fate. They shared their nightmares. They fought their doubts. Together they found the courage to enter a new world of unconditional slavery.

One memory rose from the fuzzy edge of shadows. It shone with remarkable clarity. It brought back sounds and smells. It even echoed the incredible passion she had felt at the time. The lovely Summer Room of the Villa took shape before her mind's eye. The light came from a golden afternoon sun. As always it shone straight through the huge windows at the end of a cloudless day. It painted the two girls' naked bodies in stark contrasts of golden flesh and deep dark shadows.

Giselle remembered the cool slick leather of a crop against the palms of her hand. She stood very straight and held the instrument behind her back. She watched Clarize before her. Clarize had been pulled up at her wrists by a chain from the ceiling. Only the tips of her toes touched the floor. Giselle remembered now that her sister had not been blindfolded, nor gagged. Inside the new circle of short, auburn hair her face was composed. She even smiled. It was a smile that drove Giselle's heart up against her throat. She felt it throb with racing urgency.

Angique had not been there. She had not even been at the Villa. But she had left a note that morning. It showed an antique etching of two girls, both naked. One was chained up at the wrists. The other wielded a whip that touched the right nipple of the captured girl. In Angique's spidery handwriting only a time had been jotted down below it: 1700, Summer Room, it said.

Giselle had taken the note. She visited Clarize in her tiny room. They kissed and fondled each other as they often did of late. She just loved to feel their bodies' touch. To feel the warmth of it, the consolation. They usually helped each other groom their bodies. They shared showers and took each other's enemas. They dressed each other's hair and applied make up. All the while they touched and caressed their bodies to a level of arousal.

For a while they discussed the notes (Clarize had received a similar one). They decided the mistress wanted them to join in the illustrated activity.