Now I could see how the huge reception rooms, so quiet and echoey when we checked in hours earlier, had been transformed by their colourful guests into a bacchanalia of lust. Skin was everywhere, including bouncing nipple-clamped breasts and striped buttocks, cocks in cages or strapped on to slim female waists. In between the expanses of bared flesh, strips of leather or latex ran cunningly, providing some form of “dress”. Others were more formally attired, in flouncy ballgowns or Regency breeches, with wigs and masks, while others still swished in schoolmaster robes or flirted in tiny pleated skirts. They fell into two ultimate camps – the displayers and the displayed. The dominants and the submissives. The doers and the done-to.
‘Right,’ said Justin, finding a path through the crowds for us, fending off greetings and well wishes while I had no choice but to accept the curious hands that landed on my body, patting my bum, pinching my hips, as we passed. ‘We need to find the Slave Market.’
‘Market?’
‘It’s just the name they give the area. It’s where all the slave stuff happens. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sell you. Unless you want me to.’
‘No, no.’
‘We’ll play the scene there – oh, right, I think I can see it. Hang left.’
We moved past a variety of stalls and small alcoves with different activities occurring in each one. Tattooing and piercing was next door to wax play followed by a mock schoolroom where two rather overgrown schoolboys had hairy bottoms bared for the cane. Small knots of people stood watching each tableau, applauding, or groping each other, as they played voyeur.
Our alcove consisted of a wooden platform on which a number of men and women in varying degrees of nudity were standing, hands on head, collars around necks, while their handlers stood by waiting for … something.
‘Here,’ said Justin. ‘Up on to the stage then, Keris. Hands on head. What you have to do now is wait.’
I stumbled up the steps, prodded in the bottom by Justin’s martinet, and found myself a space between two totally naked women, one of whom had a pattern of raised welts all the way up her thighs and stomach and across her breasts. She had been recently whipped and her eyes were as red as the marks.
A flutter of fear made rapid progress from my stomach to my throat, closing it up. But Justin wouldn’t let that happen to me. Not unless I wanted it. She had to have wanted it … Didn’t she?
From the dim light of our niche, we got a surprisingly good and clear view of everyone that passed by. While Justin and Maz sipped at flutes of champagne, I watched as various slaves were pointed out by passers-by, brought to the front of the stage and examined. One pretty young man was taken away by a group of leather doms, while his owner followed in their wake, slapping his hands together with glee. I tried hard to forget that I was a guest at an unusual kind of house party, a Twenty-first century girl who made her own choices and decisions, and tried hard to slip into the mindset of a piece of property to be used for sex. The continuing tenderness of my whipped clit helped, as did the heat at my rear. All the bare flesh, goosepimpling a little despite the warm air, added to my rapid backward fall into meek submission. I didn’t even think about taking my hands from my head, or demanding a glass of wine of my own. That’s what Cherry would do. Keris is not Cherry.
I saw one girl bent over and spanked, another fingered to orgasm before my turn for the limelight came.
A tall, spare man in a Victorian frock coat and mutton-chop whiskers glared at me through his monocle, then let his eye follow the line of my chain to Justin’s hand. Justin nodded amiably and the man spoke to him.
I quivered, unable to hear the discussion, but desperate to know what was being said. Maz winked at me over the rim of her glass and moved her free hand under the skirt of her toga. This was turning her on as well.
I felt the chain tauten and my collar yank me forward by the neck. I stepped up to the front of the stage, an item for inspection, watched by an increasing group of interested deviants.
The Victorian Gent stood about a head lower than me, tilting his neck to aim a dispassionate stare at my elevated body. Now that he was closer, I could hear what he was saying to Justin.
‘And this is her first time?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘She has good posture. Have you trained her?’
‘Not really. We haven’t known her long, but she’s a fast learner.’
‘A fast learner. Hmm, I like that in a submissive.’
I didn’t dare look at him. I know we’d discussed the possibility of my finding an exclusive master at this shindig, but for me it had been more a case of “remote possibility” rather than probability. I hadn’t given it that much serious thought, content to bob along with my two new pervy friends until our arrangement became unviable. But a master of my own – could that really happen? So soon?
He had a gold-topped cane – not one you could use for thrashing, too solid, but it looked good – and he pointed it up at me, tapping me on the shoulder with it.
‘Turn around, keeping your hands on your head,’ he said.
I did as I was told, presenting him with my back view.
‘All the way around,’ he added. His voice was low and authoritative, with the weight of age in it. I supposed he might be in his fifties or thereabouts, with that well-preserved, distinguished air that can make middle-aged men a more attractive proposition than their younger counterparts.
His cane prodded at the underside of a breast.
‘Lower your bra cups and kneel for me.’
I knelt, knees either side of the fountain of material, my legs completely uncovered, and slowly pulled down the spangly slave harness, baring my breasts to him, and the rest of the crowd.