This will make more sense if you have read the previous parts of the story.
By the time Liana caught up with Anne-Marie, her heart was pattering in her chest, and she was breathing fast. Anne-Marie kept herself very much in shape, and the height of the heels on her elegant ankle boots did not seem to affect her stride or her pace, while Liana still found the stilettos Anne-Marie bought for her almost a torture in themselves, and was forced to trot with ridiculous little steps that made her body— her ‘jiggly bits’ as Anne-Marie had described them once— made them move in the most obvious ways, her breasts in particular; the half-cup brassiere left them unfettered while pushing them up and out, and they jounced wildly, their natural sway having a timing different from that of her feet, making for all sorts of eye-catching shivers and jumps under the thin cover of her skimpy dress.
It was mortifying, but a part of her knew that this was what Anne-Marie wanted, and resolved to learn just how to make that movement even more obvious. There was so much about her that was unsatisfactory, which must be attended to, so that Anne-Marie would not find her uninteresting, unattractive; the grip of this need on Liana’s mind was fierce, unrelenting, harsh; she must not permit herself to fail.
Liana only did catch up because Anne-Marie had slowed— they had arrived at Mme Fermier’s establishment, a rather old-fashioned, heavy shop front, clearly expressing exclusivity— this was a shop for those with few concerns about cost, a shop which did not advertise itself at all.
Thus it was that Liana, destabilised mentally, panting noticeably; flushed, sweaty, hair in disarray, felt herself completely crushed by the superiority Fermier’s emanated as a very self contained, smartly dressed, sharp-faced older woman approached. Liana felt rather than saw the amused, sneering judgement in the woman’s face (accepted it; she knew she was not deserving of respect; a particularly dreadful knowledge for the educated, middle class Frenchwoman Liana was supposed to be) as she was immediately passed over in favour of the immaculate, cool Anne-Marie;
“Chére Madame, we are sincerely grateful for your visit. May I fetch Mme Fermier to attend you today?”
All the woman’s superiority had gone in a flash; for Anne-Marie, she was all humble and grateful service.
Several young, pretty shopgirls, identically dressed in neat, old-fashioned uniforms, awaited them in a well appointed, pretty salle d’attente— still with no hint that they were in a shop; one of them was instantly despatched, while Anne-Marie was ushered into a pretty semi-curtained alcove off to one side, where she was treated with a respect bordering on obsequiousness, and offered a place on an elegant upholstered banquette. No-one spoke to Liana or even seemed to have noticed her; the invitation was obviously not directed at her, so that she was abandoned, alone, immediately obsessive about presenting herself as well as possible in the circumstances, shame biting into her, as she knew that presenting herself as she knew she must for Anne-Marie would only cement the judgement of her this whole place as definitely beneath it; a low-class tart in the wrong place.
Quite soon, a dried-up old stick of a woman in a full length, very confining black dress appeared, the style deliberately antique, it seemed— speaking of a time before feminism; a time of femininity that was not without power, but which was also tightly constrained. The woman’s hard, hatchet expression had softened remarkably upon seeing Anne-Marie, and she entered into very fulsome welcomes, and polite, genteel enquiries. It was clear she was delighted to see Anne-Marie, but somewhat nervous, overdoing it a little. Her eyes kept darting at Liana, which made Liana very uncomfortable, as the look in those was entirely impersonal; sharp, calculating and entirely unsympathetic.
Anne-Marie endured a little of the welcome speech, then cut the woman short, politely enough, with a gesture at Liana;
“I want a pretty little dress for my young friend— pale, very deep décolletage, extremely short flared skirts— the very shortest, you know? Indecent, almost. A narrow corselette, laced very tight, to push her breasts up from below, but not constrain them— I want to see them shift and jiggle when she moves even slightly. If you can find something I really like for her, I’ll order a few in different colours.”
“Also, I’d like her measured for a hard leather training corset— the hardest; her waist is to be notably reduced. It must fit her very well, for I intend to tighten it with a winch, and I don’t want to break her. You can put her in a tight pret-a-porter one today— narrow, pale coloured, pretty.”
“Oh, and some very high heeled mules, too, fixed at the toes only; I am not interested in their practicality for walking— it is all about the shift in her hips, making her legs look so long that she becomes visibly fragile, vulnerable— you understand? But of course you do, forgive me.”
The old woman— presumably Mme Fermier, was almost overwhelmed at the off-handed compliment from Anne-Marie, and Liana saw that there was power in Anne-Marie which was not just imposed on herself and (presumably) on the young women she managed at the club she ran, but generally in life. Her sense of awe at being granted the attentions Anne-Marie granted her— no matter the way in which those attentions manifested themselves— became physical in her, an upwelling of intense feeling which had no name, but which filled her, owned her, demolished her, so that for some seconds she was nothing, nothing at all, but the sense of being totally possessed, of being lost in Anne-Marie, of giving herself to that feeling, of knowing that she had lost so much of herself, had aided and abetted Anne-Marie in demolishing it, again and again, that she would be nothing, nothing at all, should Anne-Marie lose interest in her, and once again rededicated her whole being to her lover.
Not ‘mine’! Not ’lover’ either! It is her that has me*, and as a possession; it is an ownership of me, not a love she holds for me. She has me, utterly. I am her creature, nothing more; it must be, however much it hurts. She is my Queen,* Ma Reine, Ma Reine forever.
It hurt; it was terrible— crushing, disgraceful— to accept this about herself, but -many times more important than simple pain, pain which she must simply bear— was the pathway it offered Liana; a pathway to the possibility of peace, despite the loss of everything; peace, as a reward for letting go of everything— for becoming pure service, pure submission, pure acceptance; a being which enacted Anne-Marie’s desires of it without resistance, without reserve, without thought, save that which might be needed to find its way to more complete delivery of itself to Anne-Marie, of its own service.
And this possibility became Liana’s only hope, beyond the hope of attention from Anne-Marie, which was so often impossible to achieve. It sustained her as she stood, ignored, in the lobby, while the Mme Fermier talked rapidly, firmly, but quietly to the woman who had let them in, who in turn instructed one of the young shopgirls, a pretty redhead who dithered a little before ushering Liana into a small boudoir room, entirely without the respect or kindness offered Anne-Marie, but rather as if Liana was a pretty porcelain doll, to be moved, rather than spoken to, the girl clearly nervous and uncertain.
Once inside, slightly flushing, only half-looking at Liana, the girl said;
“Madame … Madame said that you; you are not to do anything for yourself— that; that I should strip you— take everything off. Not … not that there is much, is there?”
Her giggle was nervous, too, as, without waiting for Liana to respond, she began to undo simple fixings of Liana’s dress; clearly as frightened of delay in obeying instructions as she was of her task.
Clearly, the situation was unusual and uncertain for the assistant, which only multiplied Liana’s humiliation. They were not used to dealing with degraded girls at Fermier’s; it was clearly only Anne-Marie’s great influence which made it possible for Liana to be tolerated at all, and it was this young girl’s duty to lower herself to touch Liana.
They know I am a slut.
It was a bitter, difficult realisation; one thing to be scorned while in the aura of Anne-Marie’s awesome presence; quite another to be alone in this tiny room with a girl younger than herself, and see the girl so obviously ashamed and embarrassed to be dealing with a slut.
Nevertheless, with her commitment to perfect service and submission newly refreshed, Liana swallowed her shame and behaved as sweetly and meekly as she could manage, allowed herself to be taken along with everything, making it as easy as possible for the hesitant assistant to render her naked.
That state achieved, the girl then floated the tiniest, lightest, palest grey satin slip over Liana’s head; all but transparent, it hardly covered her breasts or the curve of her buttocks. Its only function, Liana saw, was to keep the things that she would be a mannequin for unsullied by contact with her skin. Liana blushed deeply as the girl tentatively wiped a small cotton cloth between Liana’s sex lips, removing the slick moisture there, adding yet another layer to her shame. Finally, Liana’s hair was brushed, her make-up lightly touched up; the girl was clearly shocked that Liana could have presented herself in such a state.
Liana prepared, the girl opened an inner door and gestured Liana into a larger room, where Mme Fermier and the senior assistant were selecting from a small pile of clothes; Anne-Marie was seated to one side, at ease, with a cup of aromatic tea and a plate of tiny biscuits; a small, bright coal fire burnt in the grate of a fireplace with an ornate mantel-shelf.
The long mirrors around the perimeter of the room gave Liana many images of herself, her state of undress contrasting sharply with the others in their long dark dresses, Anne-Marie in her chic couture. She was the least important person in the room, present to serve everyone else’s interests, despite the fact that it was she who they were all looking at. Looking at without meeting her eyes looking at completely impersonally.
Over the next three quarters of an hour, Liana spent much of the time naked or near naked, unable to avoid the many images of herself in the mirrors, or the knowledge that four women were staring at her, judging her— not for what the various options she was dressed in and undressed from would do for Liana, but for whether they would do to her what Anne-Marie desired; whether they would make it obvious that she was a thing to be used for sex, more than she was a person.
All the old insecurities about her body came up for her again, the images reinforcing the doubts raised over the past fortnight as she had worked her body in front of her mirror at home, following Anne-Marie’s harsh regime; deep doubts that she was worthy of Anne-Marie, imperfect, ugly, not svelte enough, not toned enough, not shapely enough, not sexy enough to deserve Anne-Marie’s interests or attention, and Liana resolved once again to dedicate what free time she had to the gym, to her yoga classes, to find out what more she could do to improve herself, in hopes of making herself more what Anne-Marie might want.
While the young girl remained nervous, unsure about how she could or should touch Liana, the older assistant was quite the opposite; assured and unhesitatingly manipulative, going so far as to pinch at Liana’s nipples to make them more obviously stiff, to put her fist in Liana’s hair to force her head up, to clamp Liana’s wrists or elbows behind her neck, at the small of her back, in order to display her to advantage in the various skimpy, almost nothing dresses (dresses which might be almost nothing in terms of fabric, but which were so exquisitely cut, detailed, put together, that Liana doubted she could be worth being dressed so beautifully, and more than once looked, terribly shy, at Anne-Marie, to be lost in the bounty of the reassurance granted her by the complacent satisfaction evident in the relaxed set of Anne-Marie’s face, even as she was frightened— and, undeniably, excited, too— by the impersonal gleam in Anne-Marie’s eyes).
The experience of being manipulated as if she were a true mannequin, the way in which they talked about her, but never to her, the continual exposure, casual and pragmatic mentions of her sex parts, all married with her own deep need to please Anne-Marie to distract her from her fears about her body, and took Liana instead to an infinitely more welcome place, where her own opinions were meaningless, where all that mattered was pleasing Anne-Marie, and she gratefully lost herself there, only to be brought back with a shock by the realisation that Mme Fermier’s fingers were very directly investigating the slit between her tender labia; through realisation that she was shamefully hot and wet there, through hearing herself let out an unmistakeable sighing moan of pure sexual arousal, through replaying Anne-Marie’s last comment, not directed at herself of course, but at Mme Fermier;
“See for yourself, Madame, just how helplessly sexual the little slut is— and her all untrained, save by working to please me in the sweetest possible ways.”
It was one thing being certain that they all thought her a slut; it was entirely something else having confirmed in such an obvious and shaming manner; but despite Liana’s intense humiliation, the bloom of gratitude in her chest at the implicit approval of Anne-Marie’s direct description of her sexuality overwhelmed her with soft joy and she knew that she must not permit herself to do what every part of her knew so urgently that it must; that she must not make any attempt to hide her condition, but rather must deliver to Anne-Marie every evidence that she was correct, that she, Liana, was indeed ‘helplessly sexual’, and so she let her hips do as they so dearly desired, which was to softly but deliberately thrust forward, her thighs parting a little, opening her sex to the invasion, to let her head fall back, her mouth slacken, her whole body expressing its welcome to the bony fingers as they made free with the most intimate, most tremblingly sensitive, most shameful parts of her.
She must let them all see, Liana knew it, how aroused she had become, how ready to be sexually used, how weak she was, how unable to hide the humiliating neediness, the degrading openness, to let them laugh— as they all did bar the young girl— at the slut who was letting them make more of a slut of her, and who was so far gone that she could not control her hips, or her throat, as she sighed and twisted, as Mme Fermier grabbed the young sales girl’s wrist;
“Come, child, see how she feels, how she responds.” as Liana, burning with embarrassment, opened herself freely to the cool, slim, tentative fingers of the pretty innocent in her sex, heard herself moan again at the gentleness, the shame of that touch, felt herself revelling in the contrast between such softness and the memory of the violence— experienced just that morning— of Anne-Marie’s hard hand, forcing itself into her pussy, so ruthlessly, so deep, the pain and shame and wonderful, the crushing defeat of it, and back, again, to the present of that gentlest, most hesitant caress, and lost herself in the dream of being Anne-Marie’s creature, to surrender all over again, hearing, in the dream, Mme Fermier speak to the girl, her friendly tone not disguising the powerful import of the question;
“So, the question for you, little Minotte, now that you have seen this, experienced it, is whether you are prepared to give yourself, as this one has, to older, wiser women, who know just how they will use you, if you will only give yourself to them. No, child, no— I do not want an answer today, nor tomorrow, but rather next Tuesday. On that day you will— or you will not— stay after the shop has been put to bed, and come to tell me what you want— whether you want to be transformed like this one; transformed into something special and lovely and helpless; whether you will give yourself up to be used and abused by those who know the world so much better than you, who will look after you so carefully at the same time as they diminish you. Think about it, pretty girl, will you— in your grey little suburban appartement, still with Maman and Papa. Whether you will let us make a beautiful, valuable, special slut of you; or whether you will be let go. Whether we let another one on the waiting list come through?”
“You will see, now, why I ask you to wait until then, to think, because our chère Anne-Marie has asked if we will prepare this lovely toy, before we dress her in the selection. You will see just how you yourself will be treated, before you agree. For this pretty is now to be whipped. To have her flesh marked with deep red weals, weals which will stay for long days, which will mark her as a creature so far gone that she will take even this treatment from her Maîtresse.”
“And you, p’tite chienne immonde, you will face the fire, please. Good; now reach out, to take the edge on the mantel— just between thumb and fingertips, mind— control yourself, stay elegant.”
Ridiculously, given the extreme strangeness of everything, it shocked Liana beyond measure to hear such filthy words from the patrician head of an establishment like Fermier’s; it made the harsh meaning of the words bite deeper, savage in their import.
“Very well; you will step closer, now; feel the heat on your thighs, on your pretty cunt, and now, now you will spread your legs— little steps, wider and wider; the whip must taste you where you can bear it least, of course; to show you just how low you have fallen; just how little care you will be afforded, never mind your beauty, for you have forfeited all care.”
Liana, although completely naked, still had on the stiletto mules they had decided for her before any item of clothing; mules with cruelly high heels, and spreading her legs, wider and wider, encouraged to continue by taps at her inner thighs was increasingly painful and awkward.
But she complied, in part because she had quickly understood that the taps at her legs were from the end to be some sort of stiff whip or crop, trembling and quivering and panting as she complied, each breath helplessly vocal, pathetically weak, as she let them all hear her fear, as she tried to convey her submission, made sure to keep all the urgency of so much of her to deny this outrage, to resist this barbarism, this horrible insult to her dignity— such as remained of it having become ever more desperately hard to relinquish— to keep all that out of her voice, knowing that it would be unacceptable; complied, almost desperate in her wish to be perfect, knowing she was failing at all times, that she could never be good enough, hearing Anne-Marie talking, sotto-voce to the older assistant, unable to hear the words, but hearing the unmistakeable tone of Anne-Marie ordaining the future, Liana’s future; calm, certain, inevitably to be obeyed.
And then Anne-Marie was at her side, gently caressing her flanks, stroking Liana softly, slowly, as one might a horse one wanted to calm.
“Lovely girl, this will be a scene, an experience which will stay with you your whole life; your first whipping; your first experience of degrading physical cruelty; your first chance to realise just how vulnerable you are, how lost, that you are subject to such treatment. You have no choice at all about this happening; simply; I wish to hurt you, to see you suffer, and so you will suffer, no matter how hard it is to bear. If you cannot keep your position, you will be tied, which will make everything worse, so do your best, pretty.”
“Your only choice is how you react to it, and this is what I am talking to you about. I want your memory— as far as possible— to be one of beauty; of the beauty only you can bring to such a sordid scene— the beauty of acceptance. Violence is always crude, ugly; the destruction very real and terrible; the cruelty; my cruelty, my enjoyment of my power over you, of your suffering is, honestly, grotesque; to harm one as sweet as you, intentionally, in a way calculated to be psychologically as well as physically damaging, for no reason other than my entertainment, is the act of a monster.”
“Any beauty there can be about this is in the sweetness of your acceptance, in the way you control yourself in the experience of brutal savagery, cruel sadism. I want you to do everything you can to retain your beauty, your calm, your pretty compliance, as I do this terrible thing to you. Of course, however well you do, however hard you try, I will break you; have you broken, reduced to hysterical screaming and begging; but you can make the beginning, and perhaps some other passages, something like beautiful as you control yourself, open yourself to the cruelty, the way you opened yourself so sweetly to my fist, earlier.”
“We will all see; we will all judge you. Make me proud, little Liana, make me proud.”
And Liana, already crying softly, found it impossible not to respond to Anne-Marie’s tone, her sensual stroking, almost hypnotic, hearing herself say;
“I … I promise I will try.”
“Good girl, good little whore. Don’t disappoint me,” is Anne-Marie’s merciless answer, as the older woman’s hand slips between Liana’s spread buttocks, and softly, relentlessly, cleverly brings Liana, once again, to a state of sexual excitement which she could not hide, even with the prospect of pain and humiliation so immediate, and her cries are particularly hoarse and urgent as her fervor mounts, her hips thrusting needily, her breasts swaying beneath her, and she hears Mme Fermier;
“Quick girl, get down there!”, fuzzily understanding that young Minotte has been forced to her knees, her head under Mme’s rucked up skirts, jammed between the boutique owner’s thighs before, out of nowhere, the appalling shock of her first ever taste of a whip lands directly between her own thighs, directly onto her soft and engorged sex lips, her stiff little nubbin, and it takes everything she has not to wrench herself out of position and fall to the floor, to curl around the horror of the hurt of it, not to scream and yell her pain, but to bite her lip, so that it comes out as a strangled, desperate wail, her fingers white where they grip the marble, her whole body wincing and jerking as she refuses to let herself break posture.
“Just so, pretty; you will think on this in the small hours, alone and cold and hurting; that you led yourself to this, that you accepted it so well, that you held yourself for it. You can be proud of your strength, but you must also understand this as proof of your terrible weakness, that your erotic intoxication, your needy nature, have brought you to this, that you will always know you are vulnerable to such treatment. You may think that it is some sort of obsession with me which has brought you to this point, but you will learn, soon enough, that you must thank your stars that it was me you fell victim to, and not some brute man. You may thank me, now, and ask for the beating to begin; ask to be hurt.”
It took the longest time for Liana to believe that she could control her voice, but Anne-Marie was patient, the only sounds in the room the soft shifting in the fire as the coals settled, Minotte’s stifled gasps and moans, and Mme Fermier’s almost animal grunts of pleasure, but at last, Liana felt the words come, and they came with a crazy rush of such warm soft weakness that her voice broke on a sob of pure emotion— not pain, but submission as she spoke;
“Thank you, ma Reine; Thank you. I … I am yours. P … please, hurt me; beat me. Thank you.”
