Into the Dark Wilds Read online

  There is such a strata in my century. Often I’ve wished it were different, like when the sexual servitude and slavery of women and men were not regulated as thoroughly as they’ve come to be. Then, it was possible to be both a libertine and an ordinary woman. Some things could be done in secret, and no one would know. Knowing that it’s necessary for women to declare themselves one way or the other, I felt caught in a duplicitous lie. To the world, I remained pure from tawdry lusts. And yet as these things bubbled to the surface, I wondered how long I’d keep the driving need in me quiet. I was afraid my journalist’s instincts to publish my thoughts would eventually get me in trouble.

  Going home that night, I found my partner, Logan, reading the newspaper almost as furtively as I’d been reading the journal that remained lodged in my pants. I told him I had to pee, which was an excuse to rush to the bedroom where I could hide the journal. With the volume of lust safely hidden in my treasure chest beneath the second loose board under the bed, I threw the heavy wool rug back over the compartment. Completing my turn in the bath, I returned to the dayroom to greet Logan.

  He’d been after me to make our relationship official so we could receive the benefits of a partnership contract. Giving me a hundred reasons why we should take this step, I could still not see one good enough to sway me. I was content to share his room and have sex with him as often as I could engage him in the act. He was much steadier than me; and I considered him a good foil from my more exotic talents and choices. We often joked that he kept me from flying away, or worse yet, going crazy.

  Horny as I was at the moment, however, I planned to make him a little crazy before I returned to a more sane existence.

  Straddling his lap, his newspaper crunched underneath me. I leaned in, my long dark curls, floating in front of my face, my black eyes peering out from underneath, my red lips moving closer to his lips. With a kiss to his mouth, he accepted my advance without much protest even though he was annoyed that I’d interrupted his evening ritual with the wide world of news. By evening, I’d always had enough of it. After long hours on the paper editing copy, I was too fed up with it to read the final results. I certainly never paid any attention to the stories I’d written. Even so, at least part of the message always seemed to seep into my brain cells anyway.

  I did a lap dance on Logan’s thighs, one that reminded me of out-moded flicks that are posted on the telly wire, some hacker retrieving them off the old Net. They are grainy pieces, but erotic ones of women in little sequin brassieres and thin bottoms, pushing their groins into men’s. You can only assume the penises are hard, or becoming that way—just like Logan’s was at that moment—and they’d be getting skin to skin, erections slipping inside slippery holes. I wish public places like those hadn’t been outlawed. But they say we have a safer sexual climate with the regulations and sex businesses strictly in private. Being a journalist, I’d hear stories of places like the ones in the pictures; they’re still considered private, but it hardly takes much to get an invitation. In my mind, while I danced on Logan’s lap, I was thinking of being in one of those sex joints.

  It took a while for Logan to respond to me, not physically, but mentally. He hated interruptions. The ruse was only good if I could short circuit his other plans with enough erotic enticement to have him sexually activated. I planned to take him off to bed, or at the very least, get a good ride on his erection right where he was, whatever happened fastest because I had such a rip-roaring need. He put up with me and my sex-crazed behavior. Though I knew that I rode a fine line between having him as a legal partner, and having him bolt on me.

  “You shouldn’t be doing this,” he told me.

  “Why not?” I spat like a sassy cat. I was in heat, tearing off my sweater so he could see my breasts and press his head between them. Logan particularly loved that part of my anatomy so I knew he’d get past his objections. Just in the nick of time too. I felt the first orgasmic wave when he buried his face between the bouncing mounds. When his hands squeezed hard, I jerked hard against him, my head dropping back so I felt my hair tickle my rear.

  Logan shot off afterwards groaning softly. He pushed me off just after he came. I’d crumpled his paper.

  “You might want to get a hold on your lust,” he said, as he looked up at my nakedness.

  He was zipping his pants, zipping away all that fine meat. I might have licked it dry if he weren’t in such a hurry to get it over with.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because you’re dabbling in dangerous territory,” he said.

  “Dangerous, why? It’s between you and me.”

  “It defies the regulations. Sometimes I think you’d rather play in that element than the proper one.”

  “You mean, I’d rather be a sexual deviant?” I smiled naughtily at him.

  “Yeah, look at you.”

  “Well, wouldn’t that be a fine fix? You find out something nasty like that after you’ve signed papers linking me with you for the next five years.” I waltzed away, sashaying my bouncing ass before his eyes.

  Chapter Two

  “Chloe, get your ass in here!” Ginnis barked across the city room over the telly conversations that made the room a din of aggravated sound.

  I looked up over the top of my rimless glasses seeing my editor looking like a fat devil as he stood flushed faced in front of the foreman’s office. There was a new administrator. Damn! What a moment for introductions.

  Five minutes later—five minutes too late as far as Ginnis was concerned—I was settling into the leather office chair in front of a wide wood desk I’d viewed from my side a dozen times in my stint on the paper.

  “Max Gatov,” an official looking sort of guy stood to shake my hand. I rose just enough to accommodate his need for this formality.

  “Gatov? Humm. The name’s familiar,” I said, thinking it odd that he shared his name with the proprietor of my favorite antiquities shop. “So you’re the new magistrate.”

  He looked almost as if he was going to laugh at me, calling him magistrate.

  “Administrator,” he corrected me.

  “Yeah, I know the routine,” I said.

  “Cockiness makes for good reporters,” he stated. He was complimenting me and commenting on my lack of formality. Max Gatov was a sure of himself know-it-all. Having him pegged from the outset, I knew all I needed to know about him to figure how I’d treat him. Though he did have supreme power over me as a lowly beat reporter and copy editor, I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of my personal schemes. The paper was one place where a slightly off-beat woman like myself had a lot of latitude. There was so much rough stuff on the streets we reported, no one expected me to be prim and polite the way good women are suppose to be.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “Let me inform you, Chloe, is it?”

  “Chloe Duchet, yes.”

  “I’m a hands-on administrator. Which means, I’ll be looking over your shoulder much more than you probably want me to. Don’t be hassled by it, because I’m not going to change the way I work. I have a reputation of getting loose organizations like this one running smoothly.”

  “I didn’t realize that we didn’t run smoothly,” I added to the conversation, showing off my flippant frame of mind.

  “I don’t think that anyone around here knows what smooth is,” he said.

  My god, he was breathtakingly stern. He had professorial arrogance: brown close cropped hair, a burrowing pair of eyes, the appearance as black to me as the bottle of new ink on his desk, and a sculptured face so handsome that it was hard to look at and not feel a little embarrassed—much the way you feel embarrassed when you’re caught looking at someone with a disfigured body. I tried keeping my eyes from looking too fixed. The saving grace was his elegant cool, which would keep me and everyone else perpetually distant. He said “hands-on” but I knew what he really meant. He’d be as hands-off as all the other administrators until something didn’t go his way. Then he’d barge in with f
ear flying to the four corners of the city room and blame the mess on the peons like me who do the lion’s share of work with little guidance and lots of freedom because we’re used to having to make our own decisions.

  “I’m game for whatever you have in mind, Gatov, or is it Max? Be straight with me.”

  “Either one’s fine. You’ll be calling me a lot less complimentary things before our association is over.”

  “Hey, we’ve hardly met and you’re speaking of endings?”

  “I only meant that to make a point.”

  I challenged him as much as I could. I wanted him to think I was a challenge, not readily won over, a woman he’d have to either coddle, or out and out fight for control. Though I can be very easy, I refused to lose ground with any man. Still, I wouldn’t go too far, since I suspect he had the authority to fire anyone who he thought would be too difficult for his plans.

  “Do you always walk in the door and warn people away from you?” I asked him.

  “I walk in the door and take control,” he replied. “I know newspaper people, trained observers. You’re casing me out as much as I’m figuring you out. You’re stubborn, willful and hardheaded, with a sad streak of vulnerability and inherent kindness to people you like. Don’t think you’ll get away with anything on me, Ms. Duchet.”

  That information hit me square in eye so I’m sure he saw how startled I was. I recovered easily. I left his office not knowing if I wanted to screw the man out of his job, or get screwed by him in bed. I had the feeling that either act would be one hell of a good ride.

  ***

  I came home to “Logan the Morose” that night. Seeing his moodiness, I went to the bedroom to get off by myself while furtively perusing the pages of Rowena’s journal. Letting my hand dip between my thighs I was happily in other worlds, just that first sight of the journal making my belly spasm.

  10/23 - Boheme’s nothing like Charlie. He told me right off he wants me for a personal slave not to give away. I take it he’s wealthy, the diamonds he wears. I’d never seen diamonds until I saw his, but my intuition told me that they’d look like stars if they were close enough to really see. He held my hand so tightly in the car that I could feel the jewelry press against it, a ring digging into my flesh. I told him I wanted a closer look, thinking my curiosity might interest him. He said he’d be giving me my own.

  My quarters here are plush. The house is ancient, built some time at the turn of the 20th century. I’m not surprised it survived the fires. Some fore-thinking individual crept even further back in time to design this place like a truly ancient fortress. While the stone walls are cold, Boheme keeps fires burning in all the rooms. My suite consists of a bedroom, which has been fully fitted for a number of activities I’m sure he has in mind for me, as well as a bath and a closet of clothes that I’m not yet allowed to see. My bed looks like a lavish oasis, though there are reminders all around me of the harsh realities that I’ll face. A whipping post is central in the room, with a dozen rings and eyehooks at different heights. A small seat on one side suggests the variety of ways in which the post can be used. There are also many hooks and chains hanging from the rafters and embedded in one stone wall. A second major apparatus is in the corner, a wide leather bolster implies some highly submissive positions draped over the comfort of the horsehide cushion. A locked cabinet with glass doors displays cuffs and crops and whips that will soon move my body in the ways my master designs.

  I couldn’t sleep last night for the ghosts and nightmares that appeared before my eyes when I closed them, and even when they were open. Feeling the anxiety in my stomach so rich, I would have rather had Boheme use me to the limits before I tried some sound slumber. He told me we’d begin today. But the morning has already dawned and he’s not yet arrived. There’s nothing here to clock the time, but I imagine that it’s nearly mid-morning by the look of the day outside my window. I was relieved that Boheme would allow me my journal. Actually, I think he was fascinated by the fact that I’d want to chronicle my life as a slave. For me it’s more of a diversion than anything, a way to put my thoughts at peace in a place where I have no one to share my soul with.

  10/24 - Ah, how twenty-four hours changes things. My first session with Boheme and his bag of tricks began yesterday afternoon and did not end until daybreak today. He began by giving me an odd liquor which I was required to drink quickly even though it burned my throat. Bending me over the edge of the bed, I took a shot of Devil’s Spice in my ass. This pellet was a large one, so I was clued that the session would be long. Charlie’s thugs would give them to me regularly, but theirs were a poor quality. I knew Boheme’s would not be.

  After my master was sure that the drug had taken, he had me straddle the seat at the whipping post so I could rest my ass, while my legs were wrapped around the post and fastened in cuffs to a low eyehook. My arms, lifted above my head, were attached high so I was stretched taut. A wide leather strap around my back pulled me tight to the post, the thick wood rod separating my breasts. Boheme, having left me there, did not return until the liquor and drugs had their full effect. Then, with a few changes in my position, I was stretched taut standing against the post to take the first flogging. That beating was rich. I couldn’t see the implement, but I imagined a many taloned cat. Boheme was efficient with his stroke against my skin, so there was no place save my head not rewarded with a vicious sting.

  When he was finished, his hand fondled the roughed up skin, and like that master years before, his whispers filled my ears with desire. “I’ll whip the other side soon, my darling, those breasts, the swell of your belly and all that is below them to your knees. It’ll feel as though you’ve been struck by lightening. Of course such love happens only when you’ve earned the privilege of that pain, only then.”

  I desired it then. In my youth I might have begged for the favor. But more seasoned now with submission, I know how futile it is for a submissive to beg a master for anything when it is the master’s whims and the submissive’s desires that keep the union alive. I had to be satisfied with having my rear channeled cleaned. Filled full of fluid in my bowels, I was refastened to the post, required to stay there for what seemed like an hour. Boheme gave me two tall glasses of ale before he left me so that soon, not just my rear, but my belly was in agony awaiting release. So humbled. So depraved. Tears ran down my cheeks as each minute passed and the ache became more complete, more all consuming. When he came to release me, I should have figured that he wouldn’t be content to let the waters pass without another painful treatment. This one was a spanking to my bottom alone, delivered swiftly with a wooden paddle until I was sure all my bodily fluids would suddenly gush forth. Perhaps my master was telling me of my power to endure. I did hold on to the body waters and passed them only when I was ordered to, releasing them into the shiny brass pot that sat waiting nearby.

  Boheme watched the whole time, making the humiliation more real. There was no emotion in his eyes, nor any suggestion if he was pleased or displeased with my efforts to obey him. Once I finished, he brought me back to the post again and planted a thick rod in my ass. This time he tied my hands around the post, my feet below, and there I was to remain alone in the dark.

  While I was still cognizant I thought of my position as this man’s slave, wondering if my days would all be filled with this kind of reviling treatment. If he was intent on submerging my identity, he was already succeeding in that effort. Layers of myself seemed lost, falling away one by one. Thinking I might be reaching that bare core of my being, I wasn’t sure whether to rejoice or despair. At some unknown hour I fell asleep, drifting into endless dreams with pictures of one horror after another. They blended into a montage of images, so I believed that they would never stop but keep repeating over and over until I went mad.

  I fell asleep as Rowena had, lost in her thoughts and nightmares making them my own. I jerked awake, realizing that Logan hovered over me. Having taken the journal from the bed where it lay opened, he read, his respon
se chilling.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  I snatched the forbidden book from his hands and clutched it tight to me. “None of your business.”

  “Why do you have it, Chloe?” You would have thought someone died by the morose look of his dark features. There was no handsomeness left, just anger and judgment pouring from his eyes, heaped on me.

  “Because I wanted to read it.”

  “You’re one of those …” he spat out.

  “Those what!” I spat back.

  “Whores.”

  “There are no whores, there are only women,” I leveled my best response at him.

  “Sure. That’s the way the rules are, but everyone knows better. Is this the life you want? Is this why you’re always after me to take your ass and spank you? Why you climb on my lap and play slut? Why you dream up this depravity to trade for virtue?” He spoke with such disdain.

  Unmoved, I replied, “What would be the harm in it?”

  “I hate it Chloe. I hate the way you come on to me now, throwing your lust at me. She was not a saint,” he said pointing to the volume in my hand. “She was a woman who groveled at the feet of men and ruined them. She took sacred things and defamed them. Nothing but a depraved tramp who pretended to know things so people would pay attention to her.”

  “You believe none of her visions?”

  “I think her visions were a hoax.”

  “I’ve never known you to be so cynical.”