Harem School Ch. 03

Author's Note:

The identity of the car is left purposefully hidden as an exercise for the reader, although it shouldn't be too hard for the right devotee. Indeed, vague devotees will guess in the first paragraph, while only true devotees will get the full answer.

It is probably best to read at least the original "Harm School", and probably also "Harem School 2: The Sale", to understand this world. But I hope that this will stand as a good story in its own right.

In fact, I hope it will work in its own right. This bloody story took me about two years to write. I can't even blame the full-time job I got just after starting it, or wanting to spend time with my girlfriend. It just plain didn't work. I had the opening, it worked, and then I ground to a halt just as they got to the library. It was stale. Incredibly, boringly, mind-numbingly, oh-my-god-what-do-I-do-now stale. I had been there and done it already, and once is enough. Twice is getting a bit tedious if I change the details. Three? God help me. So it took me months of shying away from the thought of thinking about it to actually get anything happening, and in the end it turned out to be a clumsy scene-ender. And then in came Angela.

God bless Angela. She wrote herself, she really did. I have been saved by characters before, but rarely one so sexy. And not only that, but she suggested a /fourth/ story. Four? No, dear god, no, but I may have no choice.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering: Isis is not named for a certain adult star of the same name, but for one of my cats, and she was named after the Egyptian Goddess of the Dead. Angela is not named after anyone in particular.

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Chapter 3: "Combat" or "The Meeting Of Old Friends"

The car speared along the road fast and purposeful, long shapely bonnet leading the way, gaping chrome-toothed mouth snarling at the horizon and sucking in air to feed and flame the fires of all twelve cylinders. So low to the ground, even travelling this fast felt faster, chrome-spoke wheels blurring into mirror disks or transparent silver haze with the blink of an eye, wide wood-rimmed steering wheel feeding delicately precise commands from string-backed leather-sheathed long fingers to the front wheels as each endlessly successive corner was dispatched with the effortless smooth speed of a talented, passionate driver.

On the way up over the mountains each corner had been met with a check in the velvety engine roar as gears were taken or given back, the thin round fluorescent needle of the tachometer dancing up and down as the speed climbed or dropped with the vagaries of the road.

But here, coming down, descending once more from the cool, bracing air of the crest to the flatlands where the open top of the roadster might have made more sense to those who would never appreciate this car enough to own one and would huddle away from the blast of wind that whipped through the short silver-white hair of the driver and set the long white silken scarf about her neck dancing, the gear-lever stayed where it was, torque swelling to push the car out of a bend, higher revs turning the thrust into a heady rush that hurtled car and driver towards the next, before once again four wheels bit the tarmac to lose that speed, another corner, another squatting of suspension across the apex and another heady rush of acceleration beckoning.

Grass-covered hills or rock-faced cuttings flashed by close on the left, only white railings blurring across another lane on the right. twice a car slogging up had received an impression of menacing but somehow laughing speed in a black blur of sound that made the pulse quicken, and once on the way down the weary driver of a family-laden van had been startled out of his fatigue and his complacency by the explosive, tearing crackle from close-set twin exhausts and a confused impression of a great beast that charged around outside his door and dived in front across the corner, disappearing into the distance and bewildered, frightened memory before the van had negotiated that bend itself.

At last the bends grew fewer and further apart, the wooden-topped gear lever called once more into play, the engine note stretched from frustrated, caged growling to full-throated ecstatic roaring even before the final corner was passed, the tarmac stretched into the sun-blurred distance and the car, without needing to gather itself, joyously leaped forwards as the trees by the roadside blurred unrecognisably.

At last the car's brakelights glowed red once more, in a spot like any other on a stretch of road distinguished only by the tall, old trees lining its verges and blanketing it in cool shade. Another driver might have missed the narrow little stretch of asphalt into which the car's long black snout was swung, now sniffing ahead at barely more than walking pace, this velocity making it seem pendulous as the earlier speed had seemed to compact it.

The stretch of tarmac curved, the wrought-iron and ivy-covered gates hidden from the road, but even so they were swinging open as that long nose was swung between them, the asphalt under its warm black tyres changing to immaculate paving stones that added their own rumble to the now lazy, contented growl of the engine.

The trees overhead thinned, then dropped in height and then pulled away from the road, so that sunlight one more caressed the black metal and the view opened up onto open parkland and a magnificent old mansion more imposingly grand than the mountains that gave it a backdrop.

The paving stones gave way in their turn to gravel that crunched in friendly fashion beneath the wheels, and the gravel parted, the car sniffing its way to the left of the fork, around an enclosed circle of garden that boasted at its centre a statue of the goddess Diana.

At the head of the circle of gravel stood a short but wide flight of steps in front of which the car stopped, the engine dying with a final cough and the car, at last, at rest, at peace save for the ticking of hot metal.

One long leather-covered hand peeled the glove off the other. Fingertips capped with burgundy-painted nails touched briefly to muted red lips and then transferred the kiss lovingly to an engraved plaque on the dashboard.

The long door opened and a tan riding boot was placed upon the gravel. The boots covered the bottoms of camel-brown riding pants, the pants below a dark brown leather jacket that covered a lace-trimmed white blouse. The woman inside these clothes carried herself with unthinking, easy confidence in her own sense of style and her face with pride, each crease and wrinkle upon it a hard-won trophy of a life lived to the full, spent doing whatever occurred to her at whatever expense was necessary. Her skin betrayed a touch of leatheriness beneath the deceptively minimal makeup, but her eyes, betraying energy and authority, so dominated her face that such matters were simply irrelevant.

Her lips, however, aristocrat-narrow, were curved in a smile so broad that her eyes crinkled with humour as she went up the steps two at a time, pulling off her other glove.

The man at the top of the stairs, elderly but regal and statesman-like, dressed in a scarlet satin dressing-gown tied at the waist, over charcoal pants and black shoes, over a burgundy smoking jacket and a white silk shirt with its own ruffs at collar and cuffs, leaning on an ivory-headed, brass-tipped wooden cane, wore a smile just as large.

Even the woman standing a little to the right and two steps behind him, young and nubile and slender, in a simple long dress of maroon satin and the faultlessly elegant poise of a statue, had an abashed smile upon her dark red lips that threatened to impair the smoothness of her alabaster skin.

"Darling! I told you I'd be on time!" Her voice was warm, but by emotion not habit, the tones round through breeding not affectation, the timbre rich through confidence not arrogance.

"I never respect your promises where driving is concerned," the man replied, his voice dry but warm, sardonic but not sarcastic, soft but not weak. "For I know how you plan to keep them."

The woman laughed, genuine and self-mocking, as she cleared the last steps and reached out to hug the gentleman of the house, bending at the waist so that he didn't have to.

"But I've never let you down yet, have I, darling? Admit that!"

She turned to the young woman in the satin dress, who blushed and then dipped her head apologetically, bowing smoothly at the waist and murmuring "Mistress," without keeping the happiness out of her tone.

The older woman raised the young woman's chin with her hand and kissed both cheeks, smiling. "You don't have to treat me like that, child. Now give me a kiss in return."

The three passed through the large wooden double doors and into the house, passing from warm sunlight but air with a lingering chill into electric light warm by tone only, and air cool and still. The corridor down which they walked was panelled with pale woods and carpeted with fibres more yellow and green then red or brown, but in its short length enfolded the three in a blanket of hushed reverence and respectful humility.

At the end of the corridor, double doors stood waiting wide open, all other doors, to the left or right, closed. The three passed through those open doors to find themselves in a foyer of sorts, another set of doors at the other end, a staircase leading up in a long, graceful arc, and a richly exuberant Persian carpet underfoot.

They continued at their stately pace across the chamber and through the gaping portal, into a richly furnished room with sunlight streaming through French doors on the opposite wall, an expansive garden visible through them. The sunlight betrayed otherwise hidden depths of colour in the carpet, the leather of the well-padded furniture and the oiled wooden panelling. It played also over a black and white photograph upon one wall, a small framed head, shoulders and bust portrait of a naked young woman with long, straight hair, firm and heavy breasts, proud posture and confident gaze.

A smile flickered briefly, unnoticed by the others, across the lips of the woman in the leather driving coat as her gaze passed just as briefly across the portrait, before she turned her attention to a folio, bound in dark green leather, resting upon a round wooden table underneath it. Her long fingers opened the cover to reveal a series of black and white studies of young women, each naked, one photograph to a page, no labels or writing of any sort to identify them. As she flicked one by one through the pages, turning each with precise care, each photographed pose was different, and some taken not in a studio but outdoors, in a garden, an ancient tree or old stone wall highlighting the beauty of the photograph's subject.

The old man, walking across the room to a small mahogany bar on the other side, paused in his deliberate stride to turn his head half over his shoulder towards his guest. "Dry sherry?" He asked.

"As always," she replied, adding: "It never ceases to amaze me how you find such consistently exquisite girls."

"They find me. How do you find your men?"

"Oh, they also cum when they are called."

The man's face, turned once more towards the bar and hidden from view, creased in a half smile at the nearly forty-year-old ritual just enacted.

She was still standing when he turned around, a glass in hand, another waiting for him on the bar. Knowing his routine, she didn't offer to help, accepting the glass graciously and waiting for him to pick up his before sitting down in an armchair to one side of another small, round, wooden table, with another leather-covered folio on it, this one bound in rich red with gold trim.

His fine-boned hand rested lightly on the folio, just his fingertips touching, his parchment-like skin almost rustling as he caressed the leather.

"How easily do they learn," he asked, continuing where their little ritual had left off, "To cum on command?"

She smiled ruefully. "Not as easily as your women, of course, darling. That would be too much to expect. But they learn, eventually, they learn. The researches of psychologists have been good to our professions, yours and mine."

He merely nodded his assent, taking a sip of his sherry as punctuation.

"Of course, I find my greatest asset to be your dedicated, professional and highly skilled girls."

That, too, was part of the ritual, the Master now free by unspoken habit between them to continue on to business.

"You need new trainers?" He asked, curious. "Your letter invoked in me some surprise, I must admit. When I visited you last I found only signs of a positive future."

His visitor smiled ruefully. "Lynette fell in love with a student, and used her Favour to buy him from me and retire. I gave them the standard assistance, and they have moved to where their talents can be best utilised. After we sent them away, of course." She finished this last sentence gleefully, and her host's lips twitched in a smile and his eyes grew faintly unfocused as he remembered other such celebrations. His attention returned, however, as she continued speaking.

"My beloved Mary retired, of course, deciding that she had nothing more left to give, and everything still to live for.

"Then Jeanne - Jeanne developed breast cancer. Quickly found, of course, but she didn't respond well to treatment, and she spends most of her days in hospital."

A shadow passed over the Master's brow at this news. Jeanne was well and fondly remembered by him, one of his favourite instructors, a girl trained from the first bloom of youth by her mother, one of his old alumni, to the life of a courtesan but far, far better suited to the instruction of others, a girl possessed of all the graces and style that her French mother could give her, but also the dominant, incisive mind of the true Mistress.

The Master closed his eyes briefly in remembering, then half-unconsciously brushed a speck of dust off his jacket, symbolically brushing the sands of time into the past. He made a mental note to send flowers to her hospital - he rarely left his house himself, these days.

"So I need three more instructors," his guest finished. "My order books are, you understand, full."

The Master well understood, and made no comment about his own order books, each by long agreement able to call upon the other and take immediate priority. He was, indeed, grateful that some more of his girls were going to such a home, where, if nothing else, he could follow their careers closely.

"Have you anyone in mind?"

"Three names did command instant attention."

This, too, was ritual, the cold hard facts of business, of performance and of assets bought and sold, an open book between them, far more so than the personal lives of their old friends and students.

The Master rested his hand on the book on the table between them, letting his old palm touch the new leather as if to absorb the contents.

Then he straightened in his chair, adjusting his jacket with fingers suddenly purposeful. "Well," he said, draining the contents of his glass which, a casual observer might suppose, had drunk themselves, so unpretentious was his appreciation of the amber liquor, "You may like to meet them."

#

Angela was sweating hard, the liquid running into her eyes and dripping off her nose and chin and adrenaline-erect nipples, making her skin slick to the touch. The stark lights around and above her reflected off her like brass. Her raven hair, long and normally worn plaited, had been wound into a bun on top of her head. Her chest was heaving as she breathed hard and deep, sucking air right down into the bottom of her lungs, swelling her belly as well as her breasts.

The lights were hot, but the room was vast and the air cool. She had sweated from exertion. She always had sweat copiously, even now that she was far fitter than the average, and it had always made her more attractive during the more involved varieties of sex.

Now it had stood her in better stead, giving her a key edge, making her slippery and difficult to hold on to. She had also thought to tie her plait into a bun, something her opponent had not, and now Angela was reaping the benefits, her opponent submitting to the consequences.

Angela was fit, strong and had a good sense of her own body, but she had been nervous before this trial.

"You will be tested," the Domme had told her, stony-faced, as she sat nervously awaiting what she had been told would be outside her experience so far.

"We need to know if you are just another little fuck-toy sub bitch, or if you're worth more than that."

She had needed to concentrate then, concentrate to stop herself get warm and submissive when he used those command phrases. So much effort had been put into making her respond without thinking, and it took all the self-control she had not to bend at the knees and beg for him.

But she had held on, stayed standing, and the glint in his eye might have told her that she had passed the first test already.

"We need to find out if you have the concentration, the focus, and the self-discipline to be a Mistress. And we need to know if you want it hard enough not to fold as soon as someone sticks their fingers in your wet cunt, you pathetic little bitch."

Somehow, from somewhere, she had found the strength to stay standing, and to look him in the eye. Deep inside her, a spark of dominance had flared up, hidden since she enrolled in this school for slaves, and plastered over by the united efforts of a teaching staff determined to make her will utterly subservient to everyone else. Somehow, her knees didn't even shake.

The Domme looked at her with a sneer.

"We might have to go through with this after all. Move! Through that door! And get those clothes off, slut. You won't be needing those in there."

So she had halted before the door, peeled her bra and panties off, deposited them in the usual expectantly waiting clothes hamper, and walked on through to... A gymnasium?

What was this? For a moment, Angela was bewildered. There was a large square area of mat in the middle of the floor, and a clear space around it. What could this be for? Everything else she had done so far had involved some sort of equipment.

Then another slave entered through a door on the other side, also naked, her hair tied back but not plaited. Isis. Angela knew her well, in all senses of the word.

Angela felt a pang of natural apprehension along with the conditioned twinge of arousal. What was this to be?

A Domme walked out of the shadows, burly and dressed in black, cotton pants and T-shirt and canvas shoes that made little noise on the mat. "Stand at your places," he ordered without looking at them, pointing at two straight black lines marked as place holder on the pale brown surface. Angela could see that he held a stopwatch in each hand.

Hesitantly, Angela stepped forwards and put her toes just in front of it, remembering the decorum training that had been such an integral part of her early life here.

Neatly lined up in front of each line was a pair of minimalist canvas shoes.

"Put the shoes on," the Domme said, still without looking at them. "We don't want you to break a toe."

What? Angela's mind screamed at her as, feeling slightly numb, she complied. The shoes fit her snugly and perfectly (of course) and slipped on quickly, securing firmly. Were they serious? Some sort of fight?

"Kneel," the Domme said, impassionately. Angela's knees reflexively buckled, and she was pleased to see that Isis was no slower; may, in fact, have been faster.

They knelt at each line, facing each other, in the standard position, hands on knees, back upright, head dropped slightly.

"This is a personality test," the Domme said. "We need to know how tough your minds are. We need to know if you'll only ever be sluts, fuck-toys, cum-buckets and playthings for your superiors,"