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“Yes, Laney,” he answered her as quietly.
Had he forgotten to call her ‘slave’?
“How long will this last?” she ventured the tiny question hoping he wouldn’t find her disrespectful for speaking without permission.
“As long as we want it,” he answered.
“And does it please you?”
“Yes, it does. Very much.”
The room fell quiet as though Erik planned to sleep. “Come here,” he said instead.
A simple command. Laney peered over the end of the bed so Erik could see her in the shadowy darkness and remember the collar and rope at her neck.
“Untie the rope at the bedpost,” he said.
Laney moved quickly, undoing the knot and scampering like a kid to the top of the mattress.
“Tie it here,” he said, reaching to the railing of the headboard above them.
Accomplishing that quickly, she snuggled down into her husband’s arms. It had only been two days, but it felt like years since they’d been this affectionately close.
“Aren’t we breaking some rule here?” she wondered thoughtfully.
“Rules? I make up my own, Laney,” Erik replied flatly. “No book or master speaks for me.”
“Then you’re conscious of what you’re doing?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. I’m so thoughtless, like I’m not myself, out of my head, almost delirious.”
“You’re holding an intelligent conversation now,” he reminded her.
“But I also want to drift away.”
“Then do that, slave. Your days on the island are hardly over.”
Chapter Six
“Chapter Four—Bridles, Tethers and Disciplinary Devices…”
There was something about Erik Priestly’s voice and the darkness of his Eastern European heritage that gave these readings of Barth’s book their erotic feel. Almost haughty, almost tongue and cheek, almost reverent, but none of these. The discourse rode a fine thread between sanity and insane, between serious and laughable. But regardless of how his audience perceived his mood, as he spoke, the mind began to work and pictures began to form. Perhaps this was the magic; this the spell. Perhaps it was in the spoken word where the longing began; and from where it flowered.
“Bridles, tethers and other such devices are for containment. What cannot be beaten from a slave, can be squelched with bodily restraint. In this, the spirit for rebellion dies. A caged slave is soon a conquered slave. Bound, within their body alone, they become lust driven, for it is only in the physical pleasure of the body that they find satisfaction and release.
“I have often caged my initiate livestock for many weeks, knowing that when they are finally freed from their bondage, they are at peace—not listlessly so, but content. The slave who has had this ‘uncertain nothing’ wishes for little and is satisfied with small things. Simple pleasure hangs on them like stars hang in the night.
“No well-behaved and well-mannered slave learns their duties without experiencing the utter emptiness found within extreme restraint.”
Elise listened thoughtfully to Erik’s reading as her eyes gazed about the room. There was little to see but her husband restlessly moving every few minutes to calm his impatience. Jason was behind her, out of sight. Sitting in straight-back chairs, back to back to back in a tiny circle facing out, the three slaves couldn’t see each other. Erik, while reading, strolled around them making it appear he was wrapping them in the message from the book—containing them, restraining them with unseen bonds.
Elise’s thoughts were no longer independent of the group of six. Some symbiotic relationship united their beating hearts. This gave her reason to wonder as Barth wrote of weeks in bondage, and days of cruel punishments, if she and her two best friends weren’t on the fast-track to submission and sexual servitude—better than Barths’ slaves that they could zoom through the requirements to become surrendering and dutiful with so little training.
Finishing his last sentence, Erik stopped in front of her and stared over the top of the book into her eyes, as if he’d caught her mind wandering and needed to bring it back. His look was sensuously frightening.
“There are numerous devices that will suffice to arrest the freedom of the slave. Bondage can be accomplished easily with rope—rope having an earthy quality unsurpassed in bringing a slave to their metaphorical knees. Dozens of positions are useful. Hog-tied and displayed like a museum artifact, a slave will learn to draw within herself even if there are a hundred people milling about them, humiliating them with their eyes. Hog-tied and thrust in a closet, a slave will understand their worthlessness to the master as he goes about his business with no concern for the discarded chattel.”
