A League of Ladies (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 5) Page 8

  Irene had never before felt such a fool. But she wouldn’t be feeling that for much longer.

  * * *

  Irene didn’t bother talking to Geoffrey on the short drive to the city dump. She wedged herself against the front and back seats of the car as best she could to keep from being bounced around and spent her last ten minutes thinking about her life.

  She had felt more alive in the past year as a slave than she had felt as a respected lady in a great manor. She was proud of her accomplishments. She had given many men pleasure, saved a young woman from enslavement, and even co-authored a book on the art of torturing women.

  She had been amused to see her book sitting on the shelves in both Professor Preston’s and Professor Cable’s offices. Not tucked away among the heaps of sample textbooks that publishers routinely send to professors, but on the shelves close to their desks where they kept the reference books that they needed daily.

  Her name would live on long after her flesh had rotted from her bones. That was immortality of a sort. The same immortality that the wives of officers had achieved during the Foundation War when they had documented the rise of slavery in their diaries.

  Her greatest regret was that she had never had a chance to talk to her husband after he had saved her life. She wanted to know if he meant it when he said that he loved her. She wanted to know why he had worked so hard to establish the trust fund to purchase her instead of just buying her himself. She wanted to know if she had misunderstood him when she had been the lady in his manor or if she was misunderstanding him now when she was the slave whose life he had once saved.

  The car lurched to a stop. When Geoffrey opened his door, the cab was flooded with the stench of decay.

  Irene had no doubt that they had arrived at the city dump. Her place of execution and final resting place.

  The rear door on the passenger side jerked open. “Get out,” Geoffrey said. “Let’s get this over with so I can get out of here. The place stinks.”

  Did he think that the dump would smell like a rose garden? At least the offshore breeze was blowing the bulk of the smell away from them.

  “I told you to get out.”

  How did he think that Irene was going to get out of the car when she was hogtied, her feet bound together and bent back to meet her hands?

  She squirmed a bit and he realized that she wasn’t going anywhere when she was tied like this.

  He reached in and pulled at her, but he wasn’t strong enough to lift a hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight off the floor of the car.

  He opened the front passenger door, flipped open the glove compartment, and pulled out a butcher knife.

  She looked up over her shoulder when he leaned into the car. The eight-inch blade looked enormous. It would cut through her neck with ease. He wouldn’t be able to sever her head in one stroke, but a series of deeper and deeper cuts into her throat and around the vertebrae would get the job done in a bloody minute or two.

  He didn’t cut her in the car; that would make a mess that he’d have to clean up. Instead, he used the knife to cut the rope where it bound her ankles to her handcuffs, then cut again to part the knot that fastened her ankles together.

  A quick unwinding of the severed rope and her ankles were free.

  “Get out here,” he said again.

  This time she could obey the order.

  She exited the vehicle as gracefully as she could with her hands still cuffed behind her back and stood before the young man. She held her head high and looked him in the eye. “I’m tired of waiting on you,” she said. “Just do it now.”

  He put the knife to her throat.

  She knew that the blade would be chilled by the autumn air, but the edge felt hot where it was pressed to her skin, hard enough to draw a drop of blood.

  “Aren’t you going to beg for your life?” he asked.

  “No. You can’t humiliate me any more.”

  “Pity. I’d like to hear you whine and plead so that I could stop your noise with a slice of my knife.”

  “I told you to get on with it.” Her calm acceptance of her fate surprised her. Now that she was down to the last seconds of her life, she only wanted to be done with it.

  “You’re a slave. I’m a gentleman. You don’t tell me what to do. I tell you what to do.”

  “No, you don’t. You can kill me but you can’t make me do anything. If my husband were here, I’d do what he asked. But not you. You’re not man enough to make me obey you.”

  “Your husband? You made him the greatest cuckold in the history of Arctus. You made him a laughing stock. You know what my father calls him? My father calls him Lord Cuckold. Isn’t that a laugh? But you don’t even get to die as Lady Cuckold. You’re going to die as nobody. Not even as Irene when I take this dog collar off the bloody stump of your neck.” He reached up and fingered the golden band.

  “So get cutting.”

  “Get down on your knees. Beg me to spare your life. Beg me to take you to a brothel so that you can spend the rest of your miserable life bent over, letting man after man fuck you in the ass.”

  “No.”

  “Do as I say or I’m going to cut you apart piece by piece. Nose. Ears. Tits. Fingers. You’ll suffer for hours, begging me to kill you quick.”

  Irene was resigned to die here, but she had little desire to be tortured to death. She dropped to her knees. “Kill me, please.”

  “Look at me.”

  She looked up at him.

  He grinned down at her. “That’s more like it, bitch.”

  She lowered her eyes. Her head was at the level of his crotch. She wasn’t surprised to see his pants bulging from the pressure of the erection contained within.

  He was turned on by the prospect of killing her. That was the only reason that he hadn’t slit her throat as soon as he put the knife to it. He wanted to prolong his pleasure.

  She obliged him by leaning forward and rubbing her cheek against the bulge in his pants.

  “That’s right, bitch. Worship my cock. That’s all you’re good for. Sucking cock. That’s all you’ve ever been good for. Beg for my cock. Beg for it.”

  “You don’t deserve my service,” she said. “You’re not man enough for it.”

  He dropped the knife and used his hands to open his pants. His rigid cock sprung out. “This is how much man I am. More man than you can handle. Get sucking bitch. Every minute that you spend sucking me off is another minute that you get to live. That’s the best offer you ever got in your whole life.”

  “That’s not so big,” she said. “I can take that whole thing.” And she did. She opened her mouth and slid his whole cock all the way down her throat. She had mastered the art of suppressing her gag reflex by swallowing when the tip of his cock hit the back of her throat.

  He moaned in pleasure.

  When her lips reached his pubic hair and her teeth were at the root of his cock, she bit down with all her strength. Her teeth cut deep into his flesh. It felt like biting into a chunk of raw meat.

  He screamed and grabbed her hair, trying to pull her away.

  She kept her jaw clamped tight and shook her head like a terrier killing a rat. She was unaware that she was growling like a wild beast.

  Blood was spraying everywhere, painting her face and filling her mouth.

  He released her hair and punched at her head, trying to beat her off.

  She twisted her head sideways and pulled down with all her weight as though trying to dodge his blows event though she still had his cock in her teeth.

  His cock ripped free of his body. His hands darted to his crotch, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

  She was in a frenzy. Berserk. She spit the cock, now deflated of blood, on the ground and lunged back for his balls.

  He was paralyzed with horror, screaming and staring at his cock lying in the dirt like an oversized maggot.

  She sucked both of his balls into her gaping mouth and bit hard again. They crushed between her molars,
one testicle on each side.

  Again, she snarled and pulled and twisted.

  The rest of his manhood was ripped from his body and spit onto the ground.

  Her hands were still cuffed behind her back, but her legs were free. She got her feet under her, sprang at him like a flesh and bone spring tempered by adrenaline, and butted his chin with the top of her skull. In her mindless frenzy, she was moving as fast as a snake.

  His teeth smashed together, chipping an incisor.

  In the instant that his head was knocked back, she twisted hers sideways and seized his throat between her teeth, chewing hard on his adam’s apple.

  His screams stopped when the air ceased to flow from his lungs. The only sound was her snarls and growls.

  The two were knocked to the ground by the force of her assault. His pants had dropped to tangle his ankles; he was off balance; and he was in shock, barely conscious.

  She was a mindless beast.

  She landed on top of him, her teeth still sunk into his larynx. She opened her mouth and thrust forward to get a bigger bite of his throat.

  A third time, she ripped and twisted, tearing a huge chunk of his throat out of his neck.

  Blood poured from him, top and bottom. His heels and fists beat against the ground in his death throes.

  She rolled off him and gasped for breath, choking and coughing blood out of her throat. His blood.

  His arms and legs fell limp.

  She looked at him and said, “Only an idiot would put his cock in the mouth of a woman that he’s raping.”

  He turned his head to look at her blood-coated face. His eyes rolled up into his head and he died.

  She never knew if he understood her last words or not.

  * * *

  Irene pawed through the dead man’s pockets. It was awkward with her hands cuffed behind her back and his pants tangled around his ankles. Her one advantage was that, though her face and chest were thick with clotting, sticky blood, her hands were clean. She could feel the keys through the material in his right front pocket, but it took a long time for her to find the pocket opening by feel.

  She had to drop the key ring on the ground and turn to look at it. There were only three keys on the ring – a car key, a house key and, presumably, an office key. There was no handcuff key.

  She wriggled her fingers back into the pocket and felt a separate, smaller key. This one fit the cuffs. She pushed her wrists out to her side so that she could watch as she contorted her fingers to get the key into the hole in the cuffs. She dropped the key twice before she finally succeeded in freeing herself.

  She had no time to waste. Everyone had access to the dump and someone could come along at any minute.

  She was a slave and she had killed a gentleman. There would be no trial. No pleading of self-defense. No justice.

  If she were discovered, the sheriff would take her directly to the back wall of the courthouse. Within the hour, nails would be pounded through her wrists, ankles, and knees into the thick oak planks, spreading her open and defenseless. Young men would torment her, shoving objects into her, torturing her breasts, nicking her skin. She would be left pinned to the wall until she died. Which would take a long time. For murder, the authorities would want her to suffer as much as possible. They would force water into her to keep her from dehydrating and push food down her throat to keep her from starving. With her knees pinned, her weight wouldn’t be borne by her arms so she would keep breathing. A guard would be posted to ensure that nobody stabbed or strangled her. They would even light a bonfire to keep her from freezing on winter nights.

  The record was a slave who had been crucified for two hundred and six days before finally dying. They said that the unfortunate woman had lost her mind after the first few weeks and had no idea what was happening to her for the last several months of her life.

  The sheriff would try to break that record with Irene.

  She picked up the knife. She would cut her own throat before she would allow herself to be taken.

  It was late on a dark, overcast day. Night would fall in another half hour. She had good reason to hope that no one else would come to the dump today.

  Geoffrey’s body weighed half again as much as Irene. She couldn’t even drag him away. Her only choice was to set to work with the knife.

  As soon as she had severed his head, she carried it into the dump, climbing over filthy garbage and the occasional body of a discarded slave. Those were all labor slaves, men over the age of twenty-five and women over the age of forty. There were no corpses of pleasure slaves; they were too valuable to be killed casually.

  As soon as she entered the field, she lost the benefit of being upwind. The stench was overwhelming. The rotting garbage underfoot was slippery and she fell down several times, getting covered in filth. The garbage was crawling with rats feasting on the banquet of offal. They were bold and barely paused in their gluttony to glare at her as she passed within a couple of feet. She could have kicked at them if she had the energy.

  A hundred yards into the dump, she dug a two-foot deep hole in a stinking pile of food waste – probably from a restaurant – with her bare hands and threw Geoffrey’s head into it. Fittingly, she noticed that his head was nestled against a roasted, half-eaten pig’s head. She buried it as quickly as she could.

  It took her another half hour to remove Geoffrey’s arms and legs at the shoulders and hips and carry them into the dump in three trips.

  His torso was heavy – about sixty pounds – but Irene had little problem dragging it far into the garbage before discarding it.

  She didn’t bother burying any part of Geoffrey but his head. Dead and dismembered, a highborn body looked no different than a slave’s.

  Twenty feet back toward the car, she glanced over her shoulder and saw that a couple of rats had already begun nibbling on the raw meat where she ripped Geoffrey’s cock from his crotch with her teeth.

  Good of them to finish what she had begun.

  Before she got into Geoffrey’s car, she removed her filthy housedress, used the inside to wipe her face and hands as best as she could, and threw it into the dump. The butcher knife and handcuffs, which she had wiped of fingerprints, followed. Lastly, she discarded her bloody, filthy shoes.

  She drove back to town naked in the stolen car. Naked but for the golden collar that still ringed her neck.

  * * *

  “What in hell are you doing here?”

  Jack Everley, her former owner, stared through the window at Irene, lying on the floor in the back of Geoffrey’s stolen car.

  She rolled down the window. “I need help.”

  “Is that blood?” He was staring at her filthy hands.

  “Don’t ask me any questions,” she said. “The answers would be dangerous to both of us.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” She was – she had various bruises and abrasions – but nothing compared to the injuries that Geoffrey had suffered before he expired. Her greatest fear now was infection. She revised that. Her second greatest fear, after crucifixion.

  “What do you need?”

  “I need to get hosed off, get shoes and a dress, and I need you to dispose of this car.”

  Jack was an auto mechanic who owned his own business – in some part, thanks to her. She had parked in his lot among other cars that were waiting for repair.

  “You have keys?”

  She handed him Geoffrey’s key ring.

  He drove the car into a bay and closed the door. “We better hurry. Hans, my other mechanic, will be here any minute.”

  She scrambled out of the back seat. “You can afford to pay another mechanic?”

  “I hired him just last week. Business is good.”

  He literally hosed her down. She stood over a drain while he doused her from a hose. The water was freezing but she’d suffered worse. He gave her a bar of heavy-duty mechanic’s soap. It stripped the blood and gore and filth from her with wonderful efficiency. She used th
e soap to wash her hair as well, rubbing the bar along the full length and working suds into her scalp.

  She was shivering uncontrollably when she used a hand towel to dry off.

  Jack stared at the big purple bruises where she had fallen and the scrapes where her skin had been abraded but asked for no explanations. “We better get you into the office. It’s warmer in there.”

  The office had big windows facing the street. Anyone who glanced in would see the naked slave sitting behind the desk. Maybe it would be good for business. Until she got arrested for indecency.

  “I assume that the car in my third bay is stolen.”

  “I inherited it. Can you make it disappear before someone comes looking for it?”

  “How hard will they be looking?”

  “Not too hard right now, but they’ll start looking really hard within a day or so.”

  “Then I don’t think that changing the numbers and giving it a new paint job will be good enough. It’s better not trust a chop shop; they’ll squeal if someone offers a decent reward. I’ll strip the parts out of it myself and cut the body up before disposing of it. It’ll take me a couple of days. I’ll do it over the weekend. I hope that nobody comes looking to hard for it today or Friday. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She watched through the window as he drove the car out of the bay. A minute later, he came back into the garage and fetched a big grey tarp that was fitted to cover a whole car.

  He returned to the bay with the license plates in his hand. It took him another few minutes to cut them into pieces with a pair of tin snips.

  “I’m sorry to be causing you so much work,” she said when he came back into the office.

  “I only have work thanks to you.” He waved at the garage around them. “If you hadn’t helped me get this space, almost for free, I never would have been able to get started.”

  “It’s not free now. I’ve seen your recent rent statements.”

  He grinned ruefully. “Yeah. It’s costing me a lot now, but not more than I can afford. Better to be paying now when I have the money than paying before when I didn’t have any income.”