Six 07

Dearest Mistress Diana,

I'm so very glad you encouraged -- actually ordered -- me to come here. I'm learning so much, about the art of domination and about myself. Not the typical vacation self-knowledge sort of retreat, is it, yet enlightening all the same and in such a variety of ways. To continue where I left off . . .

I met Celeste as planned at 10 a.m. by the stables. After some confusion as to whether we wanted to ride human horses or actual horses, a young stable hand set us up and off we went.

We rode for about an hour along a dirt road and then on a trail a guide had taken me to my first day. At a break in the trees marked with a discreet red paint splash on a chunk of pinewood nailed to some bark, we turned left.

"Watch your head, hon," I warned her as we ducked below some low branches.

Soon we came to a stream and dismounted. I pulled a cloth sack out of my saddle bag, spread out a thin blanket, and some crackers and cheese and grapes. "Just a little snack, OK?"

Celeste beamed. "More than OK, what a lovely treat. Thank you."

"Do you drink wine?" I brought out a bottle of Cabernet. "I don't think it got too warm. And we haven't any glasses, so we'll just have to swig from the bottle like two old winos."

Celeste laughed.

We snacked and lolled in the shade. I asked her about her studies, and she told me about the field research she'd done on agricultural virus control in Ecuador. She speaks fluent Spanish, as it turns out.

"I'm jealous," I said. "I don't speak a word of Spanish, and it would really help me in my work. A little French and even less Chinese. I'm third-generation so it was a point of pride not to speak much Mandarin around the house when I was growing up. Now, of course, I regret that. What a lost opportunity."

Celeste had been lying on her back, her eyes closed, munching on some gouda. She sat up, took a swig of the wine, and asked me to say something to her in Chinese.

I considered for a moment. "Wo neng ai shang ni," I said and looked over at the creek, unable, for a moment, to look my submissive in the eye.

"What does that mean?"

I took a few good gulps of the wine. "I'm your mistress, Celeste, lest you forget. I don't have to tell you everything, now do I."

"No, Ma'am. I'm sorry. I thought we were in -- what was it you call it? -- free talk."

"We were. Not to worry. I'm just messing with you. The thing is, now we're not any longer. We're in session."

"Oh," she said, looking startled. "I didn't understand."

"You weren't meant to. What time is it?"

She pulled out her phone. "Almost 11:30, um, Ma'am."

"Perfect. Then I'll need you to strip to your underwear, Celeste."

"Now? Here? Aren't we in a public place?"

I kissed her on the forehead and then slapped her.

"Don't ever question me, and as I said, we're in session. You speak only when asked a question, remember? Just because we're not in a B2 dungeon doesn't mean the rules change. We're still on Ranch property -- trust me, I've looked into the matter carefully. ... Look me in the eyes as you undress."

She stood and, keeping her eyes fixed on mine, took off her running shoes, her socks, and her jeans, leaving just her panties and her T-shirt with a psychedelic flower graphic in muted colors.

'I'll help you with that," I said, pulling it up over her head and, for a moment, using it to pin her arms behind her. I pulled it the rest of the way off and kissed her cheeks and her neck, brushing her long red hair over her ear as I did so. Then I kissed her ear and nibbled at the lobe. She tried to reach her arms around me and I took her chin roughly in my hands and spit in her face.

"How dare you!" I screamed. "What are you doing?"

"I'm so sorry," she stammered and started to cry. "Your kisses felt so good. I wasn't thinking, Mistress. Please forgive me."

We heard the exhalations of horses and the crackle of branches, then saw Richard and Jenny. Celeste looked mortified, the universal naked in a public place nightmare suddenly a reality. She reflexively covered her breasts with one arm and the crotch of her undies with the other.

"Put your hands back at your sides," I ordered.

"But ..."

"But nothing. You're a slave. You don't have the luxury of modesty."

I turned to my co-conspirators, dressed in traditional southwest riding gear, down to the chaps over their jeans and the Stetson hats. It was as though they'd stepped out of a specialized clothing catalog.

"Thank you for joining us," I said to them, and a look of scared recognition came across Celeste's deeply flushed face.

"First things first," said Jenny in an almost motherly way. She brought over a bottle of sunscreen and applied it conscientiously all over Celeste's body. Jenny tugged Celeste's undies down and rubbed the cream into her bared flesh front and back there too. Celeste shook in embarrassment and confusion. Then Jenny pulled the undies back up, saying, "You never know if and when those might need to come off, dear."

She and Richard paced around the creek-side trees and murmured to each other. "I think it was this one," he said, then pulled a generous looping of rope out of his saddle bag and threw it over a high branch. "Bring her on over here," he said.

He bound her wrists, then stretched them with the rope high enough up over her head that she had to rise partially on her tiptoes on the red clay dirt.

Richard and Jenny walked over to the blanket. She picked up the wine bottle and took a swig. "Not much left, Richard. Why don't you bring that zinfandel over here. He did so, popped the cork, and they turned back to me and Celeste to watch the show.

I resumed kissing her where I'd left off, her neck. I kissed her smooth armpits, and squeezed and sucked on and nibbled at her tits. Then I knelt before her and kissed her belly, then stuck my tongue in her belly button and swirled it around, which aroused me considerably, never mind the faint artificial coconuty smell of the sunscreen. She squirmed and whimpered and I told her to shut up. I worked my way down to her thighs and shins and even down to her feet, as though I were the submissive.

"Turn around," I commanded. She did her best considering her tiptoe position, and my kisses slowly ascended the other side of her, lingering, particularly, on the backs of her thighs. I gathered her undies into her ass crack, revealing her lovely bottom, which still bore the faint red memories of her dungeon paddling the day before. Then I pulled the undies back to their natural state, slid my face up her back, kissing her stark shoulder blades and, pulling her hair aside, I snacked on the back of her neck too, feeling its warmth and, if I didn't imagine it, the little quakes of her pounding pulse.

"Good luck," I whispered. "Remember to breathe through it. I'll take pictures on your phone so that you'll have a souvenir from your New Mexico vacation."

I walked back to the blanket and sat with Jenny as Richard set to work. With a rodeo cowboy's panache, he wrapped the rope around the trunk of her body in outline above and below her breasts, visually setting off in a not unpleasant way her light pink aureolae and her now high-beam nipples. He cinched her arms behind her, folded together and drawn up high, high enough that it looked a tad painful and probably was, given her whimpers.

"Now I don't want to have to gag you, honey," Richard said with a quick punitive slap of her ass, "because I like to hear a slave count off when I whip her, so do hush." The word whip brought terror and tears to her eyes. I almost wanted to go and comfort her. Jenny could tell that was my impulse, and touched my hand in gentle restraint on the picnic blanket.

Richard withdrew from his saddle bag a small flogger and held it up for Celeste to examine carefully. She sniffled as the sight of it registered in her imagination.

"You afraid of this little old thing?" Richard asked dismissively. "Heck, girl, I've got a much bigger one in there. This is just to warm you up."

He started with gentle, experimental swats across her abdomen and thighs, noting, I now understood from my lessons with him and Jenny, how quickly blood flowed to the place of impact and if anything bruised or wounded unnaturally quickly. Those preliminary lashes firmed up into tougher ones and Celeste's scared breaths were visible up and down her crazy-skinny abdomen as she braced herself for the next. Richard would taunt her with fake-outs, striking for real when she was least expecting it.

He dropped the rope rigging so that she could come down off her tiptoes. But if this provided any physical or emotional relief to her, it was short lived as he instructed her to spread her legs, then brought the flogger's eager strips up first gently, then considerably less so, right into the crotch of her panties. She let out a scream, as much, I suspect, at the idea and the indignity of this as at any physical discomfort.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked casually.

"I'm OK, Master," she said through her now significant tears.

"Well good," he said. "Hey, would you mind holding this in your mouth for a a few minutes?" Not waiting for an answer, he stuck the flogger handle between her teeth. "Now don't drop that, honey, it's expensive. Bite down tight whatever happens. Jenny, dear, would you mind coming over here and helping me out?"

The two of them expertly tied Celeste's ankles together, picked up her feet, let down the the rope from which she'd been suspended, and with little ceremony hoisted her upside down. Her arms were still tied tight behind her though. The blood rushed to her face, accentuating her long dangling scarlet hair like the drippings of an abstract painting. She let out a high grunt but could do no more without dropping the crop from her teeth, and she could well imagine the consequences that might result from that.

Richard and Jenny toyed with her, swaying her back and forth like a pendulum, joking about whether any of these tree limbs had broken in such a situation. "No, not yet," she said. "First time for everything, though," said Richard.

Celeste stared over at me and, as she was swung side to side like a tether ball, saw, I suppose, her mistress, upside down, blurry, munching on a cheese cracker and taking another swig of wine. She grunted and whinnied in helplessness. I wanted to go to her and put a stop to the madness I had unleashed and to comfort and protect her. I also wanted just to watch her squirm in terror. Then I myself squirmed as I decided, all too quickly, which course to take. I folded my hands together and enjoyed the grim, sweet spectacle. Who exactly had I become?

Jenny took the flogger from Celeste's teeth, worked on the abdomen and the thighs a while more, rotated her, and spent about 15 minutes on Celeste's back and the back of her legs. At my request, they left her ass alone and her underwear on. I remembered the girl tying herself to a chair in her panties, imagining being held captive, being tortured, then fingering her pussy-drenched cotton crotch in ecstasy. I wanted to bring that fantasy to vivid life.

**

We all rode back together. Celeste was allowed to wear pants -- no point saddle-chafing the poor girl, even if she is a slave -- but she wore no top. She was gagged and, after we were out from the trees, blindfolded as well, with her hands tied behind her, the thump thump thump of the horse's trot being absorbed right into her legs and her crotch. I led her horse for her alongside mine. "Somewhere along the ride," I whispered to her as we set out back for the Ranch, "I want you to come. And when you do, I want you to let me know with a loud screech. Do you understand?" She nodded.

It was about half-way back, on the dirt road, that she made a fine, beastly noise similar to that she'd made during our paddling session.

"What the hell?" Jenny said.

"It's OK," I answered. "It means she just came. I told her to let me know when that happened. What a piggy little bitch slut, huh?"

"Not very mannerly, I'll say," Jenny grinned.

Celeste blushed wildly at the humiliation, her pale naked petite tits bobbing up and down with each bounce of the saddle.

The three of us escorted Celeste back to her room, but on the way we passed in the B1 hallway a body builder looking fellow standing nude with his balls, and a massive erection of a massive cock, pulled through and tightly fastened into a standing wooden cock and ball pillory. His arms were pulled tight behind him by a leather arm binder fastened around his neck.

"Celeste," Jenny said, "This is Miguel. He has trouble calming his cock down, as you can see. So we're trying a little cock-milking therapy. After you've showered and collected yourself, you are, at two and three and four 'o' clock on the button, to come and take some of these nice sterile vinyl gloves here, with a generous amount of that lube there, and jerk him off into one of these Dixie Cups. Then you're to bring the cup to his lips, lean his head back, and have him drink his cum. Do you understand?"

Celeste looked at the massive man, the massive genitals, and at her own skinny pale hands. She nodded, looking dazed and disoriented.

**

Mid-afternoon, beneath an umbrella on the patio , I read a delightful series of three novellas by Isbeth Mitella. (You wouldn't like her, Mistress -- you'd find her precious -- but I think of her little vignettes as playful improvisation.) My chubby friend was touching up the cuticles of my toes after my equestrian exertions. I was wearing the gold bikini again and a white cover-up top, and I made sure to give her now and then a nice view of my crotch. She tried in vain not to let me catch her looking.

I scribbled a note and handed it to her. "Deliver this to Celeste, a slave in B104, would you? If you hand it to her directly and don't dawdle, you may come back for your reward."

She scurried off. The note read: "Dinner by the pool with me tonight. 7 sharp. I've bought you a little something that you can pick up at the front desk. Wear it. No tricks, I swear. Just dinner, with free talk."

Foot-fetish girl returned and looked bashfully at me, like a dog not sure whether it was about to receive some love or be toyed with.

"Sit," I said. giving her my lounge chair.

"Really?"

"Don't make me ask twice."

When she'd made herself as comfortable as her anxiety would allow, I squatted down at her feet and unzipped her makeup bag.

"What color polish do you like?" I asked.

She grinned at me shyly. "Burgundy, please, Madam. I like Burgundy."

**

I stood when the hostess, wearing nothing but heels and a light pink thong, brought Celeste to my table.

"You look even lovelier in it than I'd pictured," I said, taking in the vision of her in the pearly sheath gown with spaghetti straps that accentuated her gorgeous long neck. "Please sit down."

"Thank you, Mistress," she said, eyeing me warily. "It's a beautiful dress. More elegant by far than anything I own."

"Tonight you may call me Sharon. Tomorrow it will be Mistress again. ... Are you angry with me for what I put you through today? Remember, honesty above all. I have a pretty good bullshit detector."

We ordered gin fizzes from a toned waiter in a Speedo. The delicate dusk light gave his chest tattoo and his nipple rings the aura of being lit from within.

"Honesty above all, hmm. OK," she said. "You tricked me. And when that man ..."

"Richard."

"Yes, Richard, first used the word 'whip' I came close to pissing myself I was so terrified."

"I saw you shaking, yes."

"And hung upside down like some animal that had been caught in a trap. I mean that's what I was, right? An animal caught in a trap!"

"Yes. You were. My trap."

"But then, seeing you, even seeing you upside down," all I could think about was, "I want to please Mistress Sharon. I would do anything to please her. If she wants to see me punished, degraded, humiliated, wounded, then so be it. I'm hers. I am owned by her. And then the strangest feeling of warmth came over me. It was like I was outside my own body looking at what was going on. Yes, I felt the flogger. Yes, a few times especially it hurt like shit, and I think I have a stripe on my thigh that's going to take weeks to heal. And yes, I had to contract my muscles and prepare for each blow and try to keep my voice steady when I counted off. But I realized that it was my way of making love to you. This is how a submissive makes love, by proving her devotion. By giving herself utterly."

She took several sips of the potent cocktail and went on.

"And that's when the pleasure started comingling with the pain. By the time Jenny -- that's her name, right?--"

"Yes. Jenny."

"By the time Jenny took the big flogger and went after my backside, the whole thing felt like some spiritual fucking, through the air, as if by just watching it happen, you were receiving my love. And with the pleasure and pain all knotted up together inside me, I got so excited. I felt my juices soak through my panties."

"Yes, I saw."

"It was my most vivid nightmare and dream braided together. I felt like I was going insane. But I also felt like I was, for the first time, really myself. And I just had this overwhelming feeling of love for you. That's what it was, pure and simple. And I'm sorry if I'm overstepping by even saying it out loud."

She brushed her long red locks over one ear and looked at me intensely, with the confidence not of a submissive but of a passionate young woman who'd made up her mind about something.

"But that's when it sank in for me. Upside down, beaten, utterly humiliated, in tears. I realized that I was deeply in love with you and that everything you were putting me through felt right and perfect and thrilling. Then later, I looked at the pictures of it all that you took on my phone and thrilled to the whole thing once more. What kind of horrible pervert am I, Sharon? What have I made myself into?"

We ordered the paella for two with arugula, pear, walnut salads and a prosciutto appetizer. We'd worked up an appetite, it seemed.

"White or red?"

"I decide?"

"You decide."

"I think white would be best with the paella," she said. "The Carrington Mountain? Is that too expensive?"

"Whatever you like. Carrington Mountain it is."

I took her hand as we awaited our order.

"You're not a pervert. You're a human, a mammal. We want twisted things. We're sacks of bone and chemicals and instinct that we don't acknowledge most of our day to day lives. But it's there. And it comes out. In BDSM, it emerges, and emerges in a way that we can loosely and safely dictate -- the need to be predator and prey. The need to control and to surrender. It's all natural -- natural in the most primordial way.

"I wanted," I said, "for it to be like your high-school fantasy."

"I know. That's why you let me keep the panties on, right?"

"Yes. But then I was afraid I'd gone too far. That even if you wanted to use the safe word you never would because you'd fear it would sound like Game Over. When we brought you back, you looked so shaken, I thought you might refuse to have any other sessions with me, that you might not be my submissive anymore. I was afraid I'd lost you."

This time it was my turn to get weepy. She kissed my hand.

"It was very, very intense, I won't deny it. I was exhausted. I napped, setting my alarm each hour to go jerk off Miguel and make him drink his spunk, which even by the third time, by the way, was pretty impressive. Needless to say, it all made for a strange afternoon. And I had vivid dreams from which I awoke with a jerk or a cry or a moan, sometimes of agony or fear, sometimes of bliss. The last time I sat up awake, I'd relived my orgasm on the horse."

"Stay with me tonight, Celeste."