Owners by the Dozen (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 4) Read online

  * * *

  George came to Irene’s apartment on Sunday morning. “You’ve got the day to yourself.”

  “It’s your day. Do you want me to service you before I go out?”

  “No. I… I can’t do that right now. I just want you to help Adele if you can.”

  “I don’t know if I can. I told Adele that this was a desperate measure. I don’t know if the man will even talk to me, much less do me a favor. By all accounts, he hates me, and for good reason.”

  George’s eyes narrowed. “Adele told me that he’s a lord.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She also said that you were married to him.”

  “For a few years.”

  “You were a lady?”

  “Before I was enslaved. Yes. I was the wife of a lord.”

  He was astounded. “How does the wife of a lord get herself enslaved?”

  “She really has to want to be a slave. It can’t happen by accident.”

  “Did you commit some kind of crime?”

  Irene shook her head. “No. I’ve never heard of a lord’s wife being adjudicated into slavery. I think that the judge would rather have her beheaded than suffer the degradation of slavery. Sometimes the daughters of knights are adjudicated into slavery but that’s because they aren’t technically aristocrats until they get married. Knighthoods and baronetcies are not hereditary titles. Lordships, marquetteships, and earldoms are. The rules are different for the peerage. And for their wives and children.”

  “You know a lot about that stuff. High society stuff.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think that you can save Adele?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a lady now. I’m just a pleasure slave. The lowest of the low. All I can do is try. But you have my promise that I’ll give it everything that I’ve got.”

  “You better get to it, then. If you can’t save Adele, she’s going to be enslaved the day after tomorrow.”

  George left.

  Irene followed him out the door.

  She didn’t bother phoning James. There was too much risk that he would tell her that he never wanted to speak to her again. Her best bet would be to ambush him in person. The same way that she had ambushed Sir Drake and Lord Snow. She could only hope that this would turn out differently.

  It was a grim day. The air was still, but cold. Low clouds hung heavy overhead, barely moving. Rain was in the offing.

  Irene was grateful that her owners allowed her to have a coat.

  There was no protocol for a pleasure slave to visit a lord in his manor. It simply wasn’t done. Slaves stayed in their owner’s kennels until they were called up to the manor to do chores. When they were sent to another manor, a driver brought them directly to the kennels.

  It would do no good for Irene to go to Lord Fortson’s kennels. She didn’t have a key to his slave gate and there was no one there who would admit her.

  She waited outside his front gate for an hour, hoping that Lord Fortson would come in or out and she could flag his car down, as she had done with Sir Drake.

  The manor that was visible through the bars had been her home for years. It felt strange to be locked outside.

  It began to rain. After a few minutes she was soaked, shivering, and her teeth were chattering.

  She couldn’t sit outside all day without risking pneumonia.

  She mustered her courage and pushed the button by the gate that rang the bell. Climbing onto the auction block to sell herself into slavery, walking into her first orgy, even stepping into one of the professor’s torture devices – none of those had required as much courage as pushing the doorbell and asking her former husband to admit her to her former home.

  But the life of the niece of one of her owners depended on her bravery, so she steeled herself to the task.

  “Hello?”

  She recognized the voice. It was Sud, Lord Fortson’s most loyal slave. She hadn’t thought about Sud since she had left her husband’s manor. Now, knowing far more about slavery than before, she realized that Sud’s position was strange. Technically, she was a pleasure slave, but she was too old to interest the lord in that way. He kept younger slaves to serve his pleasure.

  In the year that she had been enslaved, she had never encountered another pleasure slave who was kept around as a long-term house slave. Pleasure slaves were invariably sold after a couple of years at most. Usually within a few months. Lord Fortson had owned Sud when Irene had married him. Now she was around forty years old – the top end of the age range for pleasure slaves. He should be selling her into the labor market.

  “Sud, it’s Irene. Please tell Lord Fortson that I’d like to speak to him on an urgent business matter.”

  There was a pause. Irene could imagine Sud’s shock at the other end of the intercom.

  “Please come in, Lady Irene,” Sud said.

  “I’m no longer a lady.” But Sud did not hear Irene’s protest; she had already released the intercom button.

  The gate lock clicked open.

  Sud opened the manor door as soon as Irene stepped onto the porch.

  “Lady Irene.”

  “Please don’t call me that. I’m a slave. I’m only Irene.”

  “You’re always Lady Irene to me.” Sud took her coat and hung it by the door. “I’m too old to change my ways.”

  Irene smiled. If Sud really considered her to be a lady, then she wouldn’t dare question her order to stop calling her a lady. But she didn’t think that Sud was being subtly ironic. Rather Sud didn’t see her own inconsistency.

  The manor looked both familiar and strange at the same time. Familiar because James had changed nothing. The décor was identical to the day that she had left with him to attend the slave auction.

  Strange because she had never before seen the manor through the eyes of a slave. As a lady, chairs had been used for sitting and embroidering or reading. As a slave, a chair was for bending over to receive a whipping or a fucking or both. As a lady, she could only imagine what happened when her husband entertained guests in the billiard room. As a slave, she had submitted to each and every sexual perversion that a male guest had desired.

  The manor looked far more dangerous now. And more exciting.

  So did James.

  He received her in his study. He didn’t bother commenting that she was dripping rain on his study floor. Maybe he didn’t notice that she was soaking wet and shivering. “Why have you come here, Irene?” He sat behind his desk, making no gesture of welcome.

  “I’ve come to beg for a favor.”

  “Beg?”

  “On my knees if you wish. With my face pressed to the ground if you wish.”

  “What’s this great favor?” He twisted his lip into a cold sneer.

  She dropped to her knees. “Please. I need a loan of nine thousand plaquettes sterling.”

  “How can a pleasure slave need a loan of nine thousand plaquettes?”

  “It’s not for me. It’s for a young girl, a university student. The woman is my owner’s niece. Sir Drake and his son inveigled her into borrowing nine thousand plaquettes by telling her lies and making false promises. He is foreclosing on the loan and has summoned her to court on Tuesday. He will press her into slavery if she cannot repay the entire amount.”

  “Tuesday? You mean the day after tomorrow?”

  “Yes. My need is urgent.”

  Lord Fortson was silent for a long time, staring at Irene on her knees. Finally, he said, “You didn’t come to me, first, did you?”

  “No. First, I begged Sir Drake for better terms – that he delay collecting the loan until after the woman graduated and took a job. He refused. He stands to gain a great profit from selling her at auction. He sees no reason to jeopardize that profit. He cares about nothing but money. Then I asked Lord Snow for a loan. He also refused. He fears that it would set a bad precedent. If he saves one debtor from enslavement, then others will follow.”

  “So I’m your last resort
.” His voice remained cold and unforgiving.

  “Please. I’m begging you. I didn’t mean to hurt you as badly as I did, but please don’t hold that against the young woman who needs your help so badly. She’s terrified of enslavement. I’m afraid that she might kill herself to cheat her fate.”

  “What about you? Do you think that enslavement is worse than death?”

  “No. And I’ve told her that it’s not as terrible as she fears. But I don’t think that she believes me.”

  “Do you think that enslavement is better than marriage to me?”

  How could she answer that question? She had publicly chosen slavery over their marriage. The insult that she had delivered to him when she climbed up onto the auction block was clear and brutal.

  “The answer to that is complicated.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She had thought about this many times but didn’t know how to explain it. “I thought that it would be different. I was naïve when I put myself up for sale in that auction. You’d just paid an enormous amount of money for a slave. She was young and beautiful and you were going to take her home and fuck her every way that you could imagine. I wanted to be in her place. I wanted you to take me home and fuck me over and over in all kinds of different ways. I was even ready for you to force me into a threesome with your new slave if that was your pleasure. When I enslaved myself, I thought that you would buy me. I wanted to be owned by you. I never wanted to be owned by anyone else. When you refused to bid on me, when you walked out even before I was sold, I was devastated. You abandoned me to strangers. But I had rolled the dice and lost and I had no choice after that but to be sold to someone else and service them and their friends however they wished. But a day never goes by that I don’t wish that you owned me instead.”

  “You thought that I would buy my own wife? That I could buy you?” He shook his head in disbelief. “You aren’t stupid. I never would have married you if I hadn’t admired your intellect. So why in hell would you say such a stupid thing?”

  “I loved you. I still love you. I guess love made me stupid.”

  “If I did own you, I’d beat you black and blue.”

  “Would that make you feel better?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then you should do it and find out.”

  “I don’t own you.”

  “You have my owner’s permission to beat me.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “You can do whatever you want to me as long as you to listen to my plea to save his niece. If you need to beat me or fuck me or humiliate me, then I’m begging you to do it. I’m on my knees begging you to do whatever you have to do to me.”

  He flushed red. “Get to my kennels.”

  She knew what happened in slave kennels and her heart beat hard in fear of what he would do to her. She scrambled to her feet and scurried out of the study. She almost ran through the manor to the back door where the slaves came and went.

  The only part of the manor and grounds that were unfamiliar to her were the slave kennels. As a lady, she never came near to them. But, once inside, they didn’t look strange. They conformed to the standard layout. The outer door opened on a common room with a table, chairs, and some kitchen facilities.

  Two naked slaves were seated, sipping tea. She didn’t recognize either. “Is that the pleasure room?” She pointed to a closed door at the back.

  “Yes,” one of the slaves said. If she was surprised to see a strange slave in the kennels, she didn’t show it. Slaves have no authority to throw around, even in their own kennels, so they tended to accept whatever happens without comment.

  Irene rushed to the door, stepped inside the pleasure room, and shed her dress and shoes. Slaves were always naked in the kennels.

  The pleasure room was called that only because that was where the owners took their pleasure. Slaves were as likely to experience pain and degradation as pleasure in these rooms.

  James was hurt and angry and she had given him a free hand. She did not expect to experience much pleasure here today.

  He followed her into the room by less than fifteen seconds. “On the bench.”

  Not the bed. A whipping bench was a standard feature in pleasure rooms because owners needed to punish slaves. When a slave was kneeling, bent over the bench and raised to a height that was convenient for the owner, her back, butt, thighs, and calves were offered for chastisement with the whips, floggers, and canes hanging from hooks on the wall. Straps kept her hands out of the way and held her body immobile for as long as the owner cared to administer her punishment.

  No slave ever wanted to be ordered to the bench.

  Irene trembled with fear as James buckled her wrists, ankles, and waist as tightly as he could. Painfully tight.

  Once secured, James could administer as severe a beating as he wished for as long as he wished and there was nothing that she could do but suffer.

  She whimpered when she saw him select a cane from the wall.

  The cane was used only to deliver severe punishment. It cut and scarred.

  Irene had only once been caned as punishment and still bore a handful of reddish welts across her buttocks.

  A severe caning could cut a slave’s back to the ribs, scarring her back so terribly that it would forever look like furrowed earth.

  She could only hope that Lord Fortson would not scar her so badly that it would reduce her value when her current owners sold her. They had paid eighteen thousand for her. If they received less than that when they sold her, then Adele would be morally obligated to repay that shortfall because Irene was suffering this on her behalf.

  In the next few minutes, James could increase Adele’s debt by ten thousand plaqs. And make Irene suffer in agony for every plaq lost.

  He did not cane her back. The first stroke fell hard and sharp across her buttocks. The pain was intense and Irene shrieked.

  The second stroke was worse and she shrieked again.

  By the fifth stroke, she was howling continuously.

  He didn’t stop until he had raised a full twenty bright red welts, every one excruciatingly painful.

  She couldn’t tell if he had cut her skin or not. She didn’t care. Her ass was burning like the fires of hell She lay limp on the bench and wept from the pain that didn’t end when the beating did.

  James unbuckled her but she didn’t move.

  “Suck me off,” he ordered.

  She slid from the bench, wiped the tears from her eyes as best as she could, and crawled to James’ feet.

  He remained standing while she unfastened his britches and slid them to his ankles.

  She worked hard to ignore her suffering and give him the best blowjob that she could. She was an expert cocksucker and could manipulate a man’s response like a master potter shaping clay. Today, she didn’t try to tease James or extend his pleasure. She didn’t think that he would want that. His goal wasn’t his pleasure; it was her humiliation. He wanted only to see her on her knees servicing him while she was still suffering from the beating that he had inflicted.

  She brought him to orgasm within a few minutes.

  She began licking him clean, but he pushed her head away from him and pulled his britches back up to his waist.

  She was still on her knees when he said, “There’s only one question that matters.”

  She looked up at him.

  “If it’s your money and not mine that is lent to this woman, would you do it?”

  It was a nonsensical question. Slaves didn’t have money. It was illegal for them to own anything. But she understood what he was asking. Did she consider the loan to Adele to be a safe investment?

  “Yes. If I had the money, I wouldn’t hesitate to lend it to Adele to save her from slavery.”

  “Even if it meant that you couldn’t use the money for anything else for several years. Even if it meant that you couldn’t purchase something that you might want far more than this girl’s freedom?”

  “There
is nothing that I want more than to save her from enslavement.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re certain about that?”

  “Yes.”

  He drew a business card from his pocket and threw it on the floor. “Call this man tomorrow and arrange the details of the loan.”

  She was still on her knees when he left the room.

  As soon as she was alone, she collapsed to the floor and curled into a ball.

  Her ex-husband’s cum tasted sweet in her mouth and she was grateful for that small gift from him.

  She put her fingers on her aching ass and brought them around to look at them. There was blood. He had cut her with the cane. But it was not flowing too freely. She would bear a few more scars, but would not be badly disfigured.

  When all was said and done, her reunion with him had not gone nearly as badly as she had feared.

  * * *

  Monday was a little frantic. She phoned the number on the card that her ex-husband’s had given to her. Mr. Llewellyn Smith, Esquire, was not her husband’s usual business manager, but he was aware of Irene and knew that she had permission to arrange a loan for Adele Bishop. He was not aware of the exact circumstances, so Irene had to spend some time on the phone explaining in detail what the loan was all about.

  “Just so that there is no misunderstanding,” he said at the end of a long call. “I will arrange a loan of nine thousand plaquettes sterling to be paid directly to Sir Clay Drake to satisfy a promissory note held by him against Adele Bishop. You will not receive any part of this money, either directly or indirectly, nor will you personally receive any benefit that has any monetary value.”

  “That’s right.” She didn’t know why it was so important to him to emphasize that she not be paid anything. It was obvious. Slaves couldn’t receive or own money.

  “As well, Miss Bishop will not receive any money directly. The entire sum will be transferred directly to Sir Drake.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Miss Bishop will be repaying this loan, including accrued interest of five percent per annum, in monthly installments beginning two years from today.”

  “Yes. She understands that.” Irene had not yet spoken to Adele about the details of the loan, but they had discussed it in general terms before so that wouldn’t be a problem.