by Gerard Houarner
(5/17/00)

"Now, Mistress Kit?" Martin pleaded, writhing between her legs, his smooth, young face contorted by the exertion of trying to please her. His T-shirt was bunched around his chest, revealing pale white skin, and his erection pushed against his old blue jeans.

Kit laughed, hooked her ankles together and squeezed. Martin coughed as the muscles of her thighs crushed his chest. She raised her hips slightly, pulled his right arm in against her breast and locked his elbow. An upper rib ground with soothing firmness against her pubic mound.

"No, not even close," she replied. He struggled, whining with pain, but her hold remained tight. Barely out of high school, he was no match for the strength of a woman in her prime, with a body honed by years of martial arts training and exercise, and a will tempered by service in the Marine Corps. A warm sensation grew between her legs, and she closed her eyes for a moment, leaned her back against the couch, and allowed the heat to pool at the base of her spine.

Martin's clumsy groping of her legs with his free hand dragged her out of her and back to the reality of his warped and stunted appetite for pleasure. After checking the wall clock over the kitchen counter, she unhooked her ankles and released his arm. A sharp thrust of her pelvis sent Martin tumbling away, to fall on his hands and knees before her.

"You haven't even begun to please me," Kit said. She stood to adjust her skin-tight, thick, high-rise rubber panties back into a comfortable position. A quick glance in the wall-mirror to her right revealed a square-jawed woman in her late twenties, with short-cropped black hair and a shapely, if thick, body. Arms and legs curved with muscle, small breasts neatly contained in a shiny bra, back broad and shoulders wide, she was far from the ideal of feminine beauty. In other times, she might have been sought after by men as a strong helper on a frontier farm. In modern times, women and men pursued her for entirely different reasons. Kit gave herself an approving smile, then caught Martin's reflection. He was on his belly staring at her polished combat boots, lips and brow shadowed by disappointment.

"Don't like the boots?" she said, whirling around. She was over him, mashing the sole of a boot into his face before he could protect himself.

"They're Marine boots. My boots. You will learn to love them as I love them. As a matter of fact, you will learn to love everything I love. Loving what I love will become the entire point of your existence."

"But...I only paid...for an hour..." he mumbled, struggling to pronounce words past the cleats in his mouth.

She pulled away, stepped over him, stood in front of the picture window overlooking the East River. The Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges seemed lit by strands of incandescent pearls, and the traffic crawled slowly over them and the FDR below her. A tanker, riding low in the water, pushed upriver. Clouds gathered, racing the night rising out of Brooklyn, pushing dusk prematurely after the sunset.

Kit put a fist hand behind her back, held it by the wrist with her other hand. Back straight, legs slightly apart, head held high, she sharpened her voice with a trace of annoyance as she said, "Is that all you want?" Her heart beat faster, and the walls of her vagina tingled with excitement. The moment of surrender had arrived. Now, or never. Would he join her stable? Would he devote himself to her support and pleasure?

The moment stretched to ten seconds, twenty. She slowed her breathing, focused on the reflection in the window of the boy kneeling behind her, looking to her in confusion. His mouth opened, closed, opened again, but no words escaped. She savored his confusion. Although a brilliant computer programmer, he was at a loss in the reality of adult relationships and responsibilities. He wanted to belong to the vast world he saw around him, but feared the world would beat him down. He craved love, but did not know what it was. Parents too busy and stressed to pay him any attention had forgotten to lay down foundations that might have given him the strength to make it on his own. He needed a strong hand to guide him, take care of him. In another time and place, he would have made an ideal soldier. In this time and place, he was a perfect prospect for becoming her slave.

The phone on the kitchen counter rang, but she did not answer it. As she had arranged, another young recruit left a message on the answering machine.

"Mistress Angelica, this is your slave Ken calling. I am naked, on my knees, with the lights off in my room. My Mom and Dad made love this morning at six-twenty, and my sister is on a date with Phil. I have not touched myself all day, as you commanded. I have your picture on my desk, with two candles burning on either side. When the candles burn down, I will call again with the homage that you wanted. Please, please, let me see you, Mistress Angelica. It's been two weeks. I saved a thousand dollars, and I have a new contact, I think I can pull in some very good money doing gaming backgrounds for this new Soho outfit, so I should have more, and I promise I won't touch myself. I want you to put the lock on me, I'm ready now, I don't want to touch it anymore, I want you to own it, I want only you to touch it, I want you to own me, so please, please, let me--"

The machine cut him off. Kit stood with her eyes half-closed, fist tightened, and the warmth between her legs stoked to a burning coal at her clitoris. So many of her colleagues focused on older, established men to provide for them. But her young, vulnerable recruits had so much more potential. Catch them while they're young, form and train them, maintain discipline and control, and they would serve her forever. The Corps had taught her so much when it came to inspiring fidelity.

"I said, is that all you want?" Kit repeated, softening her voice slightly, so she sounded like a mother coaxing her child to take the obvious path that would please her.

"No... no," Martin said, glancing at the kitchen counter, then back at her. But not once at the hallway next to the counter, which led to the apartment door. "But I...I need..."

"You need?" she asked, performing a sharp about-face and taking three long strides to him. Her knees crowded his face, and he leaned against them as he stared up her, eyes wide, mouth open. "You want?" she barked, hands on hips. "What you need and want is to make me happy, is that understood? What gives you joy is knowing I am content. What satisfies you is being with me, seeing to my pleasure. Do you understand? Do you?"

He grabbed hold of her calves, pressed his face against her knees. His saliva dribbled down her shins. He was breathing heavily, sucking in the scent of her rubber panties, her leather boots, and, if he was lucky, the musky smell of her sex.

"Yes, Mistress Angelica," he whispered.

She kicked him in the face with the toe of her boot. He flew backwards, landed on his back, forearm rubbing his cheek, tears in his eyes.

She stood over him, legs spread wide. "That's not the name I want you to use for me. That's the name I allow him to use," she said, pointing to the message machine. "I don't want you using that name, or Mistress Kit, or any other name. You don't deserve to call me anything, yet. And you don't deserve a name for yourself, either. I'll tell you what you can call me, and call yourself, when you deserve to know. Is that understood?"

"Yes," Martin whispered.

The warmth spread from the hot spot of her clit down the insides of her thighs, rose a notch up her spine, bubbled in her lower intestines. The young man's helplessness excited her far more than all the attempts he had made during the past hour to follow her commands. Equestrian training, licking her boots and breasts, and massaging her between her legs with his face and body had sparked minor moments of sensual arousal, but the raw needs erupting in the expressions on his face sparked the fires that brought light and heat and meaning to her soul's core.

"And do you know when you will receive the pleasure you so insolently demanded a little while ago? Not now, no, because I am not pleased now. You will have pleasure only when I am pleasured by you, and only if I give you permission to experience that pleasure. You will come when I tell you to, in my presence, while you pleasure me. You will come only after I have come as many times as I want to. You will come because it is my pleasure that excites you, not yours. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he moaned.

"Do you think you can follow these instructions?"

"Yes...I...I think...I'll try...I...don't know...."

Kit straddled his upper chest, pinning his skinny arms to the wood floor with her knees, pushing her pelvis against his chin. Rubber slid across the wide open mouth of her sex. She pushed harder against him, moved up and down from his chin to his throat, coaxing the fire to burn hotter at her clit, pushing the fire further up her back and down her legs.

"Do you want to try to please me?" she murmured.

"Yes."

"Do you want more than your own selfish pleasure?"

"Yes."

"Beg."

"Please...Mis -- please, let me please you, I beg of you--"

She moved herself over his face, locking his head between her thighs, and slid up and down his face. For a few moments, she clamped herself down over his mouth and nose, smothering him. He struggled, hands slapping against her hips, body twitching and kicking behind her. She held him down, then sat back. He gasped for air, blinking wildly. She slapped him once across the face. The loud crack of her hand against his cheek swallowed the sound of his desperate breathing. She slapped him again, and again, over and over, with both hands, sending his head whipping back and forth until his skin was red and his eyes glazed with pain and dizziness.

"Struggle again and I'll send you home," she said flatly. "Deny me my pleasure and you will never see me again. Is that what you want? Tell me, now. Don't waste my time. Tell me. Do you want to please me?"

"Yes," he answered, his voice cracked.

"Beg."

"Please, take me, do whatever you want with me, use me, let me please you, let me be your pleasure, I beg of you, please--"

She engulfed him between her thighs, squeezed and pressed down, then released him for a moment, saying, "Don't stop begging. I want to hear the sound of your voice between my legs."

She let him take a deep breath, sat on him again, and smiled as his muffled words vibrated up through her body, driving the heat up from her clit to her lungs and heart. She rotated her hips in semi-circles, angling down with her weight so bone pushed rubber deeper into her, so that her slick flesh slid over the hot film of her excitement. She lifted herself for a few seconds, and moaned as he gasped for air and continued to beg without protest.

So fast, she thought. He was giving in so fast. How far could she take him in just one meeting, she wondered. Could she bring him beyond the point of any desire for his own pleasure, past the need for even a tiny vestige of control over his own life? The possibility thickened the narcotic fog in her head created by her rhythmic thrusts against his face. A sharp bolt of electric pleasure shot up her spine, and she slid back on his chest, pressed down against bone, fought back against the lightning arcing between her hips. Too soon. She wanted more from him. She wanted his pleasure between her legs, as well as her own. She stood up and hid the weakness in her legs by walking quickly back to the couch. She remained silent, letting her heart beat slow down and her face and skin to cool a little while Martin struggled to catch his breath.

"My name to you is now Mistress Michelle," she said, when Martin had pushed himself up on one elbow. "Only you will call me by that name, and you will have no other to worship. Do you understand?"

Martin looked at her, nodding his head to the cadence of her words.

"Yes," he said, going to his knees.

"Your slave name is Roy. You will answer to that name, and you will give yourself completely to whoever calls you by that name, whether I use it or someone I designate uses it. You will follow all commands issued to slave Roy, at any time and at whatever place they are given. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Martin bowed his head. His hands rested on his thighs.

"Do you have any work to perform tonight?"

"No."

"Is anyone expecting you tonight?"

"No."

"Would you stay here with me, forever, starting tonight, if I asked you?"

Martin looked up. His shoulders shook, and his eyes were filled with desperation. His face, still flushed from her smothering, turned a deeper shade of red.

"Yes," he said in a pleading voice.

"But I won't," she said, relishing the wound she saw open behind his eyes. "Your life, your true self, belongs to me. Roy is what you are, Martin is what you pretend to be. You will obey all my rules. The rules will change as you progress with me. For now, you will continue to live with your parents and finish your college education. You will not have a girlfriend or any male friends. Later, you will get your own apartment, work very hard, and please me at my command. That will be your life. Is that what you want?"

Blood drained from his face. He pursed his lips, met her gaze for a moment, then lowered his head in a bow of submission.

"Yes," he said at last.

The warmth from the blood leaving Martin's face seemed to fill Kit as she watched him closely. The heat whirled inside her like a hot wind, touching off sparks at the base of her throat, the back of her neck, her ear lobes, her nipples. She smiled at his collapse, at the raw landscape of personality he was presenting to her for shaping.

Of course, with the keenness of appetite pushing him on, he would agree to anything. But excitement crackled over her body like a static charge as she considered how far she could truly take him. Beyond pleasure and control, yes. She pressed her fist between her legs, rubbed herself. Beyond even the need for her strength and power over him. Could she turn him into a thing, without even a name?

"Crawl to me, on your belly," she whispered. "Slowly. Do not use your arms or legs. Squirm."

As he approached, Kit considered her next move. In his own way, he was no different from most young military recruits, eager to prove himself, anxious to belong to something bigger and more powerful than himself. But pride or rage or fear did not drive him. He did not want to belong to a branch of the armed forces, a warrior tradition, a country. His need to serve was not based on gaining self-respect, the esteem of others, or on the fulfillment of values instilled in him by his family and community.

It was a weakness of spirit that pushed him to her, the same vacuum in which his need for her power and strength resided. He wanted to be destroyed. He wanted to lose himself.

Kit caught her breath at the enormity of what she saw as his desire while he made his way, face sliding against floor, to her. Could she reach down the flaw in his spirit and seize that need? Could she drag him beyond all the superficial fantasies and delusions he cherished and make him recognize the true nature of what he wanted? Could she take his image of her power, her strength, and whatever else he sought from her, leave him nothing, and transform him into an object that gave her everything even when she gave him nothing in return?

A chill seized her sweat-cooled body. She sat forward on the couch, eager not to loose the moment or let the fires burning in her die down. Old training came back to her. Camps, missions, freelance work. Triumphs, and disasters.

A bad time when she had been captured, tortured.

Kit stood up, walked around Martin as he continued to inch his way towards the couch. She fought back the bad memories, floated along the surface of the pool of knowledge and skills she had earned, and saw the possibilities. She could drive him over the edge. Tonight. She was certain. And if she failed, what was the worst that could happen? He would walk, or crawl, out and never return. There were more where he came from.

He hesitated, paused in his undulating progress towards the couch, and glanced sidelong up at her.

"Did I tell you to stop?" she screamed, then kicked his head with the sole of her boot.

He flipped over on his back and reached reflexively for his reddened cheek. She caught his hand in a wrist lock, pulled him, kneed him in the belly until he was doubled over, gasping for air. Using only her fingers, palms and the edges of her hands, Kit proceeded to beat Martin's body, striking at nerve centers, ribs, genitals, pausing with him in joint locks to ask, "What is your name?" and "Who do you serve?" and "What do you want to do?"

She punished him with sharp pain and whispered threats to throw him out every time he raised his hand to protect himself. In time, he opened himself up to her, gagging on his own cries of pain, stifling sobs, keeping his eyes opened as she commanded him to watch which part of his body she picked to hurt.

When she had worked herself up into a sweat, when her arms were beginning to feel heavy from the exertion and her own excitement over inflicting pain had reached a crescendo, she stopped, stood over him, and asked, "Do you want me to stop?"

"No," he said. Tears streamed down his reddened, slightly puffy face.

"Do you want a safeword?"

"No."

"No, what?"

"No, Mistress Michelle."

She walked on his face and returned to the couch, sat, spread her legs, and told herself, not yet.

"Turn the stereo on," she said, folding her hands over her belly.

It took him a minute to regain his feet and balance. Disheveled, hair mussed, blinking rapidly, he looked like a frail young hatchling awakening to a shocking new world. He staggered to the small stereo unit on a shelf at the end of the mirror wall and turned it on. Classical music filled the apartment. She told him which CD to put into the player. Fast, pulsing dance music replaced the serenity of the classical performance.

"Strip."

Martin tugged at his T-shirt with clumsy hands.

"No," Kit shouted. "Amuse me. Give yourself to me. Strip."

He stared at her, chest heaving. His lips parted, his tongue ran over his lips. Hips swaying, arms weaving through the air, head bobbing and circling, Martin danced, slowly at first, then faster, catching the music's rhythm, drawing his clothes off slowly, one piece at a time, then throwing himself back and forth across the room, using a chair, a phone, a rolled up magazine, to simulate acts of depraved sexuality. His erection grew, remained hard. But no matter how hard he humped, how desperately he looked to her, he did not come.

Kit watched from behind a stone mask of indifference. His body, thin and pale except for where she had struck him, was no paragon of masculinity, and his motions were crude and uncoordinated. It was not his performance that excited her, but the desperation in his expression. He wanted to perform, for her. She pinched her nipples to sustain the damp heat between her legs, the electric tingling that raced along her flesh.

They were progressing nicely along the path she had mapped.

She motioned for him turn the music off, commanded him to crawl across the floor back to her. She stopped him ten minutes later a foot from her feet. Stretching her legs, she used his head as a footstool and took a light nap. Without need for instruction, he did not move or disturb her rest.

She dozed for an hour, woke, beat him again with open hands and occasional kicks. This time he did not cry. He tried to thank her and beg for more, but she choked his words off with an iron grip around his windpipe. "I don't care about your thanks. I don't care what you want for yourself." After a few more rounds, she settled over him, twisting his arms and a leg into a vise-like hold, keeping him under the steady, slightly increasing pressure of pain.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Slave R--" He squealed, and his eyes opened wider with the shock of more pain knifing along the nerves she had selected to torture.

"You have no name," she said. "What is my name?"

He opened his mouth, shook his head.

"I have no name. I am you, and you are me. There is no wall between us."

She worked him over, applying pressure and pain systematically to one part of the body, then another, choking him to the point of unconsciousness, then bringing him back. When she asked him again what his name was, he repeated what she had told him. The dull, dead look in his eyes almost made her come. She threw him away, left him in the living room, walked to the bedroom and closed the door for two hours. Alone on her bed, in the silence, she squeezed a pillow between her legs and balled her fists, riding the crest of tension and stimulation, maintaining her balance on a wave of pleasure she did not allow to crash and surge again, but instead settle like the last leaf from a dead tree.

Calmed at last, she knew they had moved closer together, and further along the path she had chosen. Best of all, the night was not over.

When she came back out, he had not moved from where she had left him. The rise and fall of his shoulders told her he was alive, awake, aware of her but not daring to look up.

She threw the garments she had brought out at him. "Put those on."

Arms crossed over her chest, she watched as he put on the foundation garments, hose, dress, heels, ankle hobbles. She directed him with a wave of her hand to the mirror wall, where she supervised his application of make-up, wiping his face whenever he made an error but withholding any instructions.

When he was finished, she bound his arms and hands tightly behind his back and herded him to the couch. She put on the harness, pushed him on to the couch with the end of the dildo protruding from the harness, ripped the back of his dress open, forced his knees and cheeks apart, drove herself into him. She pumped, slowly at first, then spurring on the pace, snaking a hand under him and through the front of the dress to grab hold of his cock sticking out through the crotchless panties she had made him wear.

"Not yet," she whispered. Licking and kissing his ears, pulling at his cock, she urged his body to come with the firm, even, powerful strokes of her dildo. He moaned, and as her rhythm increased and the sweat between their bodies mingled, his voice rose to a sorrowful keening until, finally, bleeding from her effort, he lost his voice entirely and could only issue short, staccato gasps.

Kit stopped, rolled off, wiped her nose at the foul smell of their sweat mixed with his blood and soiling.

He had not come. He had obeyed her. The fact almost sent her over the edge of her control and into an orgasm.

"In the bedroom," she said, then walked down the hallway back to her room.

The moment had come. She wiggled out of the harness, stripped, lay down on the bed on top of the cover. She spread her legs and locked her ankles into the steel cuffs attached to the posts at the foot of the bed. Laying back, she waited until she could hear Martin's high heels making the endless tiny taps on the floor that were the steps bringing him to her. She locked one wrist down, then slammed her other wrist into the remaining restraint. It closed automatically. She relaxed into the helplessness of her spread-eagled position. Overhead, the key swung slightly to and fro on a chain hanging from the light fixture.

It was a while before Martin finally made it into the bedroom. Old memories flashed through Kit's mind. Moments of terror, horror, with cruel men, not all of whom had been her enemies. Again, she pushed the memories back down into the pits of ancient pain and concentrated instead on the approaching moment of Martin's surrender.

Slowly, with every step Martin took, the moment grew larger when he would give up everything of himself to her, move past the temptation to retake control of his life, to control her, throw away the promise of pain, punishment and death at her hands, give up hope for pleasure, redemption, salvation. The moment filled her vision, her heart, her soul. The soft flesh of her sex hungered for the same fulfillment.

He appeared at the foot of the bed. Frail, ridiculous in make-up and a dress, unable to move his hands, his eyes bulging while he gasped from the stress of moving while being bound, Martin teetered on the border of madness.

In his desperate gaze, Kit found a search for meaning and identity, for something to replace what she had spent the last hours removing.

She looked to the key. He fell on to the bed, between her legs, wiggled and rolled until he gained his balance and rose to his knees and then, precariously, to his feet. She did not have to tell him he could slip out of the shoes to keep his balance. He knew what she wanted, how she wanted the task done.

They were arriving together to the end of the road.

When he had the key in his mouth, she told him, "Now."

He blinked, glanced at the mound of her sex, met her gaze again. Gently, he let himself down beside her, crawled on top, maneuvered his erection into her, began to pump.

"Give me your pleasure," she said, "give it to me." Nothing else was left to him. Not pain, or freedom, or identity.

She raised her hips to meet him and merge with the rolling beat of his thrusts. He grunted, keeping his teeth clenched to hold the key in his mouth.

Hot plumes of sensation geysered through her body, exploding into spumes of evanescent pleasure at her nipples, toes, the insides of her upper arms, the sides of her neck. Thunder rumbled in the back parts of her brain, and darkness closed in, promising lightning storms and spinning tornadoes across the rolling plain of her body.

A wheezing sound wove into the fabric of harsh, gulping breaths and little cries. Scents sharpened, and Kit could smell the rug-cleaning fluid, the perfume on her dresser, Martin's sweat and sex.

A groan cut through the air. Kit rolled her head from side to side, pulled at the restraints, felt the tide rising inside her, bringing a storm of pleasure.

"Now," she screamed.

Martin thrashed against her body. The key scratched her. She caught a glimpse of Martin, eyes glazed, face flushed, moving spasmodically over her.

"Now," she cried.

Martin pulled out of her, raised himself like a snake, hissing, showing his teeth, staring at something unseen. Then he collapsed, and the key went flying out of his mouth to the floor, and he fell against Kit and rolled and slid part way to the floor.

Kit moaned, staring at Martin broken on the shore of his desire, embraced by his annihilation. Her hips still moved and thrust against empty air as she tried desperately to bring on the storm. But the clouds were dissipating and the lightning flashed harmlessly in the corners of her mind. A chill crept over her body as the air caressed her sweaty flesh.

She could tell he had not come, just as she knew he was dead.

"Now," she pleaded, chasing the end of the road, the ghosts of passion, the shadows of surrender.

If not now, when?