Otherwise Engaged

"Then who the hell...!"

She put a finger to her lips and shushed me.

"Let's just say that you're a case of no expense spared..."

She walked behind me and I felt her fingers gently raking my back.

"You heal well, and quickly, that's helpful."

Her hand moved lower, cupping my buttock, and then she was gone. The sound of the cupboard caught my attention and I twisted myself in that direction.

When I saw what she had in her hand I exclaimed.

"You have to be fucking kidding me."

She stood unfurling a bullwhip which must have been at least three metres long and there was something about the way that she handled it that suggested a menacing proficiency.

If her intent was to frighten me then she had succeeded even though it was obviously an implement that would never be used on human flesh.

She ignored my expletive and flexed her wrist.

"The rings are usually enough to keep control but some men will try to overcome the pain and seek to inflict some damage. If that happens they are given a punishment that they will never forget.

In your case there has been no serious transgression but, nevertheless, I have been asked to illustrate the consequences of failing to comply."

A slight movement drew my eye up to the cameras and I shouted up at the baleful lens.

"Who the hell are you!"

The next seconds were indelibly branded into my memory. The sound was like the wind in a ships rigging until the final crack which arrived with a pain the like of which I had never felt before. I felt it as a, precise, agonizing line across the width of my back which was immediately diffused across my whole body.

I know that I screamed but my ears tried to shut out the sound. It was a futile effort which could not suppress the evil howl of the whip as it fell across my back for a second time. I hurt myself in an effort to turn away and, as I caught sight of her, I could not believe that a woman could be capable of inflicting such pain.

I shouted "No!", rasping my throat, as I hazily registered the perfection of her movement. The whip fell again and I could feel that she was laying on each stroke lower than the last.

I wanted to beg but my voice was lost. It took strength to wield the inhuman implement but she seemed to expend very little effort as, this time, she circled it above head height and slashed it down again.

I understood, then, that it was much more than just the pain. She was putting on a performance for her unseen watcher and it was a stark and terrifying reminder that someone had paid her to do this to me.

Putting thought into deed she crouched low and pulled the whip up from the floor to deliver a back handed stroke to overlay the lines of pain that she had already etched into my skin.

A sixth stroke fell but my body must have been overloaded. It seemed less devastating than those that had gone before but I knew that every single one would eventually take its toll.

I braced myself, hoping that my body would shut down altogether, but suddenly she was at my side with her face close to mine.

I felt ashamed of the tears in my eyes as I whispered a single word.

"Why...?"

She stood a little away from me before she replied.

"I get very well paid for this, but the truth is..."

I saw then that her nipples were aggressively erect, as though they would tear the material of her vest, and she slipped her fingers just inside the waistband of her jogging pants. In those seconds I was torn between a vicious hatred and an unquenchable desire but the worst was knowing that I was totally transparent to her.

She came nearer and whispered in my ear.

"I'm almost there, and so are you, just six more..."

I swore, I pleaded, but there was no escape. She moved like a dancer but grunted with effort as she imprinted six more scorching lashes across my backside each of which felt like it had cut me open.

I tried not to scream, tried not to give her the satisfaction, but I was beaten from the start. She was the mistress of her art and I knew, somehow, that she had tempered her delivery to take me to the breaking point but not beyond.

I have no recollection of being released. I awoke in my cell and the pain had dulled to the extent that I was convinced that I had been administered an analgesic.

For the next three days my routine was restored. Meals arrived and I received regular oiled massages to relieve my discomfort. Almost every waking moment was taken up thinking about how to escape. The problem was the damn ring. I could not figure out how it worked, how it was triggered or by whom.

It seemed certain that I was being watched the whole time that I spent in the cell and I suspected that the illuminated panel probably concealed a camera or, more sinister still, afforded them the facility to sit and watch me as they wished. I conjured up an image of a two way mirror as seen during interview scenes in TV police dramas.

They left the laptop with me and I started the game again. It was now repetitive and offered no challenge but the truth was that I wanted to get to the finish to see if the video clip would be replayed. I completed it but there was no bonus.

On the morning of the fourth day after my whipping I had a new visitor. I had grown so used to my blonde tormentors that I had christened them Thelma and Louise but the new arrival was cut from a more exotic cloth.

With her honeyed skin and immaculate make-up she looked like a Bollywood film star. She was average height and wore a white linen dress putting in mind of the girls who worked on the concessions in department store beauty departments.

She smiled at me as if it were the most natural thing in the world to find a naked man held captive in the basement.

"Good morning. I'm here for your assessment."

She spoke perfect English albeit with a Dutch accent and I just stared at her in disbelief.

"Are you for real? You do know that I'm here against my will?"

She simply ignored me, took a computer tablet from her bag and switched it on.

"Unusually you are only being tested for aptitude in one particular area..."

She looked up and beamed her smile at me

"...I guess that's why they asked me to conduct the evaluation."

Still bemused by her cheery sangfroid I half turned towards her revealing the healing welts on my back.

"Do you know what's been done to me? Can't you see!"

She walked past me as if I had not spoken and, to my amazement, she began to unfasten the buttons on the skirt of her dress. Still smiling she continued as if she had just dropped by for coffee.

"I work here in Amsterdam and I enjoy my work enormously. My clients, women mainly, but some men, pay a small fortune to spend a little time on their knees trying desperately hard to bring me pleasure. The beauty of it is I offer nothing in return nor do they expect it. It does, however, make me an expert judge of technique. Now, why don't you kneel just here..."

I was simply lost for words as she parted her dress and sat down on the bed. Her long legs had a beautiful sheen, as if they had been lightly oiled, but my eyes were drawn to her expensive looking panties.

I experienced a natural, autonomic, response only to feel my fledgling erection painfully bitten back. I had never bedded an Indian girl but I would have walked over hot coals to have this one.

I had to literally shake my head in order to make myself think straight. She was a part of my nightmare and what she was suggesting was ludicrous.

"Just get yourself dressed. Get out of here and leave me alone."

Again that damned smile.

"I could make you do it....or..."

As she made her threat I felt the initial crushing numbness that was the familiar prelude to a fully-fledged jolt to my groin but then something strange happened. The discomfort moderated until I was left with a tingling sensation that made me catch my breath.

My erection reasserted itself and, whilst it was not a total engorgement, I nevertheless had the feeling that I could reach a climax. It was frustrating as hell and, unthinkingly, I tried to take myself in hand.

Immediately I did so the sensation stopped to be replaced by the threatening numbness. I looked at her imploringly and she opened her legs a little wider.

"...no hands."

I was torn by conflicting emotions. She was so self-assured, confident that I would do what she wanted of me, and her conceit was enraging. This was balanced by that teasing taste of what could be, after days of denial, and the scale was slowing tipping.

I knelt in front of her and the threat receded to be replaced by the soothing, sympathetic, vibration that seemed to promise so much.

Loathe as I was, the sight of her taut thighs and barely concealed sex acted as a further stimulus. I waited for her to remove her panties, or to ask me to do it, but she said nothing. After a few seconds I knew why.

For all her cool demeanour my predicament obviously served to arouse her. As I stared a damp spot developed in the centre of her panties and slowly expanded firstly to the size of a penny but then beyond.

I looked up at her, waiting for a lead, and I saw the glint in the deep brown of her eyes.

"Now lick me.."

I began to understand why her clients would pay for the privilege. There was something about her tone and bearing...

Still fired by the shallow ripples of arousal suffusing my manhood I bowed my head and brought my mouth to the lacy barrier that lay between us. The perfume that she wore was heady and mysterious and she had applied some to her inner thighs. Mixed with the natural scent of her arousal it had a compelling potency.

Contrary to my natural inclination I was breathing deeply through my nose infusing myself with the essence of her and I wondered, for a brief moment, if it contained an opiate as I felt almost light-headed.

I tentatively put out my tongue and touched it to her panties where the heat of her took me by surprise; it was a second or two before I registered her taste which had an unaccustomed sweetness.

I had never licked a woman through her underwear but I could now see the attraction. The silk was smooth beneath my tongue hinting at her hidden contours. I continued for some moments, almost appreciating the novelty, and thinking that I was giving a good account of myself. I was to be quickly disabused.

"Wait."

I looked up to see her rooting in her bag from where she produced a pair of reading glasses.

"I forgot to take out my lens last night and my eyes are still a little sore."

She put them on and tapped out something on the tablet leaving me at a loss. I thought that she was engaged as I was but I was seriously wrong. Leaving her glasses on she put the tablet to one side and then shimmied out of her panties.

She sat back down again with me still trapped between her legs.

"Now let's see what you can really do..."

Her sex, like her legs, had an alluring lustre suggestive of many hours of lavish attention.

It was a tight clamshell almost perfect in its symmetry and, probably for the first time in my life, I felt a genuine desire to use my mouth.

I did not want her to think me crass and so I started by licking around the mound itself and noted, not without irritation, that she had reached to record something on her tablet. Not at all sure what I hoped to achieve I tried to put it from my mind and continued with a pressure that was neither too timid nor too firm.

I could taste her arousal on her skin along with the faintest hint of salt as I licked at the creases at the top of her thighs. I thought that I was doing a good job as I put aside my usual impatience and kept this up for some minutes but she gave no sign of approval or otherwise.

I was irked by her detachment and determined to disturb her equilibrium. I purposefully licked along the clearly defined divide of her sex and the taste, immediately stronger, began to fill my mouth.

I wanted to use my fingers to pry her apart so that I could delve more deeply but I was mindful of her admonition. Instead, over the next few minutes, I alternated the flat of my tongue with the very tip and tried to enter the breach.

I knew that I was getting to her, as her scent enriched the air around me, but her toned muscles continued to hold me at bay.

All the while I was still being stimulated and I felt certain that if I could only make an impression on her I would be granted the relief I now so badly needed.

My hopes grew when I felt her relax and I was able to gain an initial lodgement. The dam was broken and she leaked her heated nectar. Overcoming my usual reticence I caught up the flow with long sweeps of her tongue which only prompted a further seepage and I was having to swallow hard to keep up with her.

Her sex now lay open to me, her slickened labia were a burnished bronze contrasting with the excited redness at the heart and there, at the apex, the engorged nub of her clitoris.

I was overcome by an uncharacteristic fervour as I fell upon her. I closed my lips at the roof of her sex and ran my tongue over the surprising firmness of the revealed hemisphere.

If I expected an immediate reaction I was to be disappointed. She was coolness personified as she adjusted her glasses and registered yet another note on the tablet. Fired with a mixture of growing resentment and a despairing need to reach a climax of my own I redoubled my efforts.

I could feel sweat beading at my brow as I slaved and, all the time, I felt ever closer to some form of release. When, at last, she gave an extended sigh, I felt an inner sense of triumph but I was left poised at the precipice with no way of tipping myself over the edge.

I looked up at her expecting some acknowledgement of my accomplishment but she simply took off her glasses and gave the tablet a final tap.

I knelt upright ready to vent my anger but before I could even begin to reason with her Thelma and Louise came back in the room as if summoned by an unheard signal. My Indian assessor offered up her laptop and Thelma took a cursory glance before barking at me.

"Lie down, now"

My hackles were immediately raised not least because I felt somehow cheated but I could do nothing about it before pain girdled my groin. As the woman casually rose from the bed and began adjusting her clothing I fell on to it clutching at the source of my anguish.

The pain eased momentarily but I was allowed no time to recover before my wrists were secured to the head of the bed. Taking her cue Celeste walked into the room looking as if she had just left a business meeting.

She wore a dark suit over a simple blue top which matched her shoes and stockings and once again I had to supress my instinctive attraction to her and summon up hatred.

She too glanced at the tablet before she spoke.

"So how did he perform?"

The woman looked down at me as she delivered her verdict.

"He shows some naive enthusiasm but in terms of breathing, endurance, and pure technique he leaves a lot to be desired."

I could not believe my ears. As far as I was concerned I had put it the performance of a lifetime and she was dismissing me as if I was a teenage ingénue. I struggled to contain an expletive and Celeste glared at me before nodding to Thelma and Louise.

They took hold of my ankles and I instinctively began to struggle but the inevitable pain immediately took its toll. As far as I could see no one in the room had done anything obvious to trigger it and so I guessed there was a least one other person, and maybe more, that I had not met yet.

I was stretched as they pulled my feet over the top of the bed's footboard and secured them there. The metal frame began to dig into my Achilles tendons and I wondered if this was my punishment for resisting but, once I was secured, Thelma left the room.

She returned a moment later carrying something that looked like an oversized conductor's baton. It was a long thin cane with a cork handle which she presented to Celeste.

"Your training works on a system of demerits and your failure today warrants another lesson."

I almost laughed at the absurdity of it.

"Can you hear yourself? This is not the bloody eighteenth century! I am well and truly fed up with your fucking game. When I get out of here I am going to sue you for every Euro you have and you are going to spend the rest of your life looking nervously over your shoulder!"

She smiled as if indulging a child.

"You are absolutely correct. It's not a game. It's a business, but one from which I draw an infinite amount of pleasure."

There was something about her dismissal that chilled me. She positioned herself at the end of the bed and I barely perceived the movement. Her arm remained still as she flicked her wrist and the cane cut through the air and slashed against the sole of my foot.

My whole body jerked at the sudden biting pain. I would have imagined my feet to be hardened by hours of exercise but she was about to prove just how tender they really were.

"Your back is still healing and so, for now, we have to satisfy ourselves with an alternative canvas."

The first strike proved to be a mere introduction. I was screaming by the time she delivered six more with deadly painful precision. It felt as if my feet were set in a tray of scalding water and I could not take them out.

Through it all I noticed that the Indian woman had winced at the severity of the punishment and I wondered if, even now, she might be appealed to. She was, after all, the cause.

Celeste paused to admire her handiwork and the Indian woman moved a little closer.

"That looks particularly vicious..."

Celeste laughed softly.

"We're just breaking him in gently for now. Would you like to give it a try?"

Her transformation from possible saviour to she-devil took place in the space of a single breath. She took the cane and slashed it experimentally through the air. I could see from the excitement in her eyes that there was to be no compassion.

She lacked Celeste's technique but made up for it with raw enthusiasm. Each slicing strike, falling on top of already tortured skin, racked up the pain to an ever higher level. When she finally stopped, her hair slightly dishevelled, she looked a little guilty, as if she had lost control of herself, but she smiled as Celeste took the cane and congratulated her.

Afterwards, I was left to my own misery for what felt like hours until, following the pattern of perversity, Louise returned and began to tend to my lacerated feet.

Chapter Four

More days passed during which, from time to time, I loudly bellowed my rage. I knew that I must not allow myself to become institutionalized; my moment would come and I would have to be ready for it.

The food continued to be of a very high standard and some exercise equipment was moved into my cell. I had come to hate the game but I could not help but return to it in the hope that there might be some more video footage which would offer some clue. I was to be continually disappointed.

I saw no more of Celeste and Thelma and Louise steadfastly refused to engage in conversation. Celeste's absence was particularly disquieting as she was clearly responsible for my fate but I was left with the distinct impression that I was not her only project.

The monotony was finally broken when Thelma and Louise arrived in company with a stranger. At first glance I thought that the newcomer was an opera singer. The woman was in her thirties with bottle blonde hair and almost theatrical makeup. I stand six feet one in my bare feet and she was only two or three inches shorter but it was the manner in which she was dressed that really got my attention.

She was wearing an emerald green velour dress that was expensively styled to disguise and firm up the extra weight that she was carrying. In the right light she would pass as very attractive but in the harsh glare of the cell I could see the signs of ageing that her makeup was intended to camouflage.