This will make more sense if you have read the previous parts of the story.
“Guest or toy this evening, Madame?”
The Maîtresse d’— so very Parisian, forty-five or so, hair drawn back so that the bones of her face were clear and unsoftened— had greeted Anne-Marie by name. Her voice was low, unhurried, certain; the voice of someone who had never needed volume. She inclined her head the exact distance required by courtesy and no further.
“Toy,” had answered Anne-Marie.
The woman had not looked at Liana; did not even seem to have noticed her presence; it was as if Anne-Marie was alone, but still, the question had been asked. Liana had become invisible; beneath notice; a non-person.
She felt the high mules shift her weight forward, felt the corselette’s pressure under her breasts, felt the absence of anything between her sex and the air of the room, and understood that these facts had been instantly inventoried by a woman who seemed unaware of her existence.
Liana had known, in the abstract, that this was how it would be. She had already accepted it, she realised, in the new way of things: by standing where she was, by holding her hands clasped behind her back; the exquisite but so revealing dress on a cold day, the fabric so thin that the tight corselette was present through it and the high mules, too, had announced what she was before anyone spoke. The woman had a perfect memory for previous guests, had welcomed Liana by name before; being ignored so completely, deserved or not, was a small, precise hurt.
The Maîtresse d’ opened the thin book on the stand and Liana heard herself written off as a stroke of the pen, a single neat mark which had required neither her confirmation, not her consent, nor her name. Something in Liana’s chest made a small, involuntary movement, as if her body had expected to be consulted and had only now learned the new lesson— that consideration was no longer her due. She kept her eyes lowered, no matter the shame that a part of her still protested. The woman reached beneath the stand and produced a narrow armband of pale leather, with a dangling little fob— a small, fully articulated marionette, exaggeratedly female; a mean little joke at the expense of those who would bear it. She held it out, still not acknowledging Liana’s existence, still speaking only to Anne-Marie.
“You understand, I know, Madame, but it has been a while since you introduced a toy here, so I’ll confirm for you; I’m sure you’ll forgive me."
Her tone was not in the least apologetic; simply certain of what she was. Anne-Marie gave a small, indulgent smile; Nouriat, the Maîtresse d’ of Le Salon des Amies (more generally known as Les Amies), the quietly notorious and very exclusive club where powerful women whose special interest was in younger, weaker women came together, was in point of fact a former protégée of Anne-Marie’s; they had more than once shared a bed and a number of younger girls, too, in the distant past, but Nouriat was nothing if not a detached professional; Les Amies was her Temple, her Church, her sacred place, and nothing and no-one would ever be permitted to disrespect it; Anne-Marie respected Nouriat, and her commitment to a place which was important to her, too, without in the slightest feeling disrespected herself;
“She will wear this, visibly. No underwear is permitted. She will not sit, but will stand, kneel, squat or go on all fours; floor, footstool or table only. Demure, reticent behaviour is required of her at all times. She may be intimately handled by any member or guest, and will co-operate without complaint. The basement is members only; if you leave her there, ordinary rules of temporary availability will apply.”
She. The pronoun settled over Liana like a change of temperature. Not cold, exactly, simply administrative; impersonal.
I have ceased to be a full person… it was remarkable to discover that, alongside the social pain, there was a relief; a relaxation, stupidly welcome, absurdly desirable, once felt; Nothing, apart from acceptance of disrespect— is expected of me. I am free.
Free to be a little cunt, at least… came the kicker.
But that, too, once expressed, was not all bad. Not at all bad, the thought surfaced, along with a little sexual frisson; Little cunts get fucked.
Part of the freedom that had come over her as they had been in the taxi on the way from Mme Fermier’s— the taxi wherein she had been expected to kneel on the floor, not sit on the seat; remember the stickiness on the chair at L’Auvergnois, darling, and don’t ever risk it again, will you?— the freedom which, it had to be accepted, was one result of the fact that she had been whipped, now, had been taken down, was no longer in any way at all a creature which deserved respect; rather the opposite; part of the freedom was that she could just be a slut, now, without hiding it from herself; I’m a slut, and I like being fucked; like having my pussy played with; I like it hard and greedy; yes, I like to be stroked and caressed as much as the next girl, but after a little of that I get impatient; I want to be rutted; slammed, pile-drivered; it’s true… she had got quite hot and bothered, thinking those thoughts in the taxi, and of course Anne-Marie had noticed, and had laughed at her; not unkindly, but very frankly indeed, and spoken loudly enough for the driver to hear;
“That’s it, little cunt, lose yourself in dirty thoughts; keep your pussy wet. that’s what you are for, after all— as long as you remember that it is all for me. I’ll have to thrash you harder, in future, if you are already thinking about being used again.”
Anne-Marie did not take the armband. She made a small, dismissive gesture toward the waitress on duty for the Maîtresse d’s— an almost intimidatingly gorgeous young woman in the house uniform (a very fetching micro-mini cliché waitress outfit) who had been waiting, silent, a little behind the stand— and then turned and walked into the club without a backward glance. The abandonment was complete and casual. Liana felt it as a soft drop in her stomach, the sudden knowledge that she had been left to be managed, that Anne-Marie had not considered it necessary to remain even for the fastening of the thing that would mark her.
The Maîtresse d’ did not appear surprised. She held the armband out to her assistant.
“Fix this, then take her through to table twelve. Wait until she’s properly settled, within the rules. No exceptions, not even for Anne-Marie.”
The waitress stepped forward. Her fingers were careful, almost apologetic, and somehow that was worse, as she buckled the armband just below Liana’s shoulder, made sure the marionette hung free.
Of course, waitresses at private gentleman’s clubs always have a question around them; are they there simply to serve, or are they at some level ‘available’ to the members? This relationship is a old as the hills. At Les Amies, the question was newer, and sharper, and a deliberately frank policy had been made— though never written down. of course; interviews and long-list selection was completely and rigorously professional, while final choices were entirely subjective, and carried out, in person, by a Members’ Committee behind closed doors.
Competition was fierce for these jobs among young actresses, artists, models and ballerinas of a particular type— the club’s name and character was well-known. The outcome of this system was that every waitress was very definitely ‘available’, and definitely understood the special interests of the membership. The uniform had been designed to advertise this fact (by an haute-couture stylist who was a senior member), without being overtly slutty. It was a requirement that each girl wear panties and a brassiere of some sort, and this was enforced, Nouriat making random inspections as she pleased— simply pushing her hand between the legs or into the cleavage of a girl as she passed, and doling out rather harsh spankings to those who chose that punishment over a cash fine (which was all of them; it was known that selecting a fine would result in a termination of contract soon afterward). Precisely which sort of underwear though was (deliberately) not specified; the custom was that only the tiniest fragments of lacy nothings were worn, the more to encourage attentions from the members.
Members were very strongly abjured to stay ‘vanilla’ with the staff, on pain of instant expulsion; the continued existence of the club must be protected— it had not the connections deep into politics that enabled The Castle to allow far greater and more violent liberties to be taken with its girls.
The arrangement led to a slow but constant turnover, as waitresses who had signalled their desire, or— at least— willingness, as part of some agreement, to be taken well beyond ‘vanilla’ resigned their positions and became ‘properties’ of one sort or another to older women— anything from public marriages to 24/7 dungeon existences. The young woman who had buckled Liana’s armband was on the one hand trembling at the thought of what Anne-Marie was free to do with this pretty girl in her revealing little dress— imagining (not without a strong frisson how frightened she would be in such a position of vulnerability— and on the other hand fiercely jealous.
The buckle snicked. Liana felt the slight weight arrive and, with it, a soft, spreading clarity that was almost relief and almost grief and entirely humiliating: she had been written down. What had been said in the taxi, alone with Anne-Marie, kneeling at her feet, permitted to lie her head on the lap of her Queen, was sharper, harder, more hurtful to experience for herself in the setting of Les Amies, where everyone knew just what sort of liberties cruel women could take with the young women they suborned. The small protection she had once possessed in this room— the protection of sitting in a chair, of being spoken to, of being, however precariously, a guest of a renowned member— had been removed by a pen-stroke, a buckle and a cute, cruelly symbolic little poupée.
The waitress touched her elbow, lightly, to turn her. “This way.”
Liana walked with the short, mincing gait which the mules imposed, aware of the dress moving against her bare sex, of the way her hips switched, the movements of her stiff nipples very obvious through the slinky fabric of the slip-dress, their movement exaggerated by the blatant push upward the corselette imposed on her breasts (Minotte, under instruction from Anne-Marie, had tied strands of Liana’s own hair tight at the base of each nipple, after having hesitantly first nibbled, then, after a slap on her rear, really bitten into the points of Liana’s breasts to tease them into maximum stiffness; ‘Safe for a few hours,’ the girl had whispered to Liana; ‘… but don’t forget to remove them before you sleep; it will burn fiercely then; you’ll see’).
Liana was sharply aware that she was being conducted by a girl who would not meet her eyes, aware that Anne-Marie was already somewhere ahead in the warm light of the room and had not waited, aware that the eyes of more than one older, greedy and dominant lesbian were on her as she walked; that they would understand that things had changed with her, that she was now, to some extent at least, fair game. At the table Claudine and Vernesse were already seated. Between them, on a low footstool, knelt a girl Liana did not know; young, dark-haired, hands rather awkwardly held behind her back, her dress even shorter than Liana’s, she looked the exact model of Vernesse’s type; Anne-Marie and Claudine had often teased Vernesse with the rate at which she used her young amours up, a new one very few months it seemed. The girl did not look up, seemed in the grip of some strong emotion which she was ruthlessly suppressing. No-one was paying her any attention at all; her desperate struggle was her own; no-one cared; she was just another stupid young slut to be played with; she would either manage to be interesting or be dropped (there was no shortage. Young women react differently to insolent approaches from older lesbians than they do to even careful approaches from older men; it appeared to be taken as compliment, to be casually and carelessly propositioned by an obviously rich and powerful woman; a surprising number said yes, just for the experience).
Liana was led to the second stool, and— deeply, horribly self-conscious, knelt down onto it, knowing that her knees must be at each end, not on the padded central section, but on the bare wood; hard under her knees. She arranged her spine, her shoulders, and felt the arrangement itself as a kind of speech she was making without words: I have given up any claim on dignity, on self-respect. Claudine— who had always looked at Liana with a predatory, cruel gleam in her eyes— especially when Anne-Marie had stepped away for a moment to converse with another— Claudine reached across without preamble, took the hem of Liana’s short pale dress and lifted it high— past the tops of Liana’s thighs, past the tight line of the corselette, until the whole of her sex was bare to the table (footstools were generally well set back from the table, so as to afford such views). She held the fabric there for a moment, head tilted, examining with the mild, unhurried interest of someone satisfying a casual curiosity.
“A pretty enough little cunt,” she said. “It’s good to see that you’ve put the whip to her there already; I hope you made her scream and cry. Something’s shifted since you last brought her here, and it’s about time; I was beginning to wonder if you’d gone soft!”
The tone was chaffing, and Anne-Marie smiled, genuinely entertained, and— gloriously to Liana, watching from under lowered lashes, acknowledging something in her friend’s teasing accusation; I did, I do, maybe still, mean something to her— some tiny thing, at least! It was a tiny, uncertain treasure, but it helped carry Liana through many hard moments over the following weeks.
Claudine casually let the dress fall, then flicked the hem once so it rested higher than before, exposing almost the whole of Liana’s slim thighs. Everything about Claudine’s actions had been entitled, casual, unapologetic. Liana felt heat flood her face and throat and did not move to cover herself, though parts of her twitched with need. It will be normal, now, for people to do things like that to me, and I must not just let them, but help them, encourage them, or I will be failing Anne-Marie. The thought was at once obvious and impossible. Anne-Marie had presented Liana in a different mode, and it was as if everyone had been expecting it; as if the times when she had sat with them as at least a superficial equal had been mere tolerance, as if they had been toying with her even then.
Anne-Marie settled herself, took off her scarf, unhurried, waved for a drink, as further small pleasantries were exchanged; Liana was ignored again, dying inside at the abruptness and totality of the withdrawal of attention.
Some while later, gossip momentarily exhausted, the other girl having been discussed, her inadequacies ruthlessly catalogued by Vernesse, so that the girl was crying silent tears, seemingly dying of shame, Anne-Marie bethought her self of Liana, looked at her for a moment with the mild interest she might have given an object whose position she was still considering, checking it was still satisfactory, then turned to the others, saying, very simply;
“Tell them, pretty— tell them how you got yourself into this state— how easy you made it for me— just the headlines.”
Vernesse’ mouth curved into a small, greedy grin. Claudine watched with that gleam in her eyes, sharper and harder than ever.
Claudine is going to ask Anne-Marie for me, and Anne-Marie will lend me to her, I know it; it happened the other way, before, so why not? It had distressed Liana terribly, only a couple of months into her relationship with Anne-Marie, when she had no idea what sort of a ‘relationship’ it might be, but knew that she was deeply emotionally engaged, and terribly, horribly vulnerable, knowing that there was nothing at all which gave her any hold or security with Anne-Marie beyond the luck that Anne-Marie looked at her and smiled, marginally more often than not. Anne-Marie, the first time ever she had taken Liana to Les Amies, had admired a willowy blonde girl, terribly young, maybe only 18, almost an albino, desperately shy, with breasts far too large for her thin figure, wearing only a man’s white work shirt, half-unbuttoned, kneeling awkwardly on the stool, beside Vernesse, blushing at the slightest attention. Vernesse, as if it were completely normal (which it of course was), had suggested to Anne-Marie; Have her for the weekend if you like— I have to go to Brussels anyway; the Commissioner is embarrassed again, and demands that I rescue him, conasse that he is. And Anne-Marie had simply said; Thank you, I’d like that; can I hurt her? I’d like to? to which Vernesse had replied; Oh, as you wish Anne-Marie, don’t mind me; do what you like with her; liven her up if you can; silly slut is ashamed of her own shadow, despite having told me she wanted me to do everything.
The week after, Liana had broken down in front of Anne-Marie, told her the desperate truth, which was that she was obsessed with Anne-Marie, dependent upon her smile even to feel alright in the world, begged Anne-Marie to tell her what she could do for her that the albino girl had not; offered to do anything, more than anything. It had been the point when Anne-Marie had introduced her to the double-pronged dildo, and the drawer full of other toys; the point when Anne-Marie had told Liana that she was going to become a sex-addict, under Anne-Marie’s guidance, at which Liana had simply quivered, and— all without being asked, in the middle of the day, in her apartment, in the messy, cosy living room that she had shared with three other girls— had simply stripped herself naked and knelt at Anne-Marie’s feet.
Liana could only speak because speaking was required of her; she would dearly have preferred to stay mute, be nothing, but she could not disobey. She started further back than she had meant to, because the silence after Anne-Maries’s softly uttered but certain comand felt like a space she was obliged to fill.
“It … it was my fault,” she said, and her voice was very low;
“I kept asking where she— Ma Reine, now— went; what she does. She told me it would change everything if I knew, and I still asked. So she told me.”
Liana swallowed; it was going to be hard, but something in her wanted to give them the truth about her, to give that as a gift to Anne-Marie, as a sign to her friends, that she, Liana, knew that she had crossed a line; that she belonged down on her knees. And so she made herself tell the truth, use the hard words. It was another giving to Anne-Marie; difficult, shaming in the extreme, but proper, and it gave Liana a sort of peace again, to be letting everyone— even the silent dark haired girl, whose eyes were round in her now lifted face, looking at Liana, lips parted chest heaving— let everyone know what she was, now, what she had been revealed to have been, all along.
“And then she… Ma Reine put her hand in me; I mean … right … right in me … deep; so deep. All of it, inside me; the fist … stretched me so it hurt. And it was terrible and it was wonderful and it has changed me, forever. I came; I couldn’t stop it. Afterwards I couldn’t think. Everything I had thought I was just … stopped. I kept seeing it.”
“The next morning, I … I told her she could do it to me again; any … anytime, and she she did; harder; much, much harder, hurt me, and … and it was good… I wasn’t even properly awake. I … I angled my hips for her, so … so she could do me … more deeply. I came again; lost myself in it. I thanked her. I meant it, even though … even though it hurt so much— the shame, I mean. The shame that I am … "
Liana made herself say the words;
“I am her fist-fuck slut. I am. It destroys me, but … but it is right for me to be … to be done that way; hard, painful, without care.”
“Ma Reine went away, but … she told me; told me I wasn’t allowed to come again, only to … to do myself a lot; in the mirror, naked; always naked. And remember it, and I did remember it, all the time, and it—”
Liana’s chest suddenly heaved, deep and noisy, her breath caught. She felt the heat between her legs, sudden and unmistakable, the way the memory still lived in her body, and she shifted on the stool before she could prevent the movement. She knew they had seen; seen just what sort of a weak and helpless slut she was, and it hurt and it was good, too; fit and proper, that she should not be able to hide what she really was from Anne-Marie’s friends; those same friends she had heard discuss sweet young girls in the most vile and greedy ways, utterly without concern for the wellbeing of the pretty innocents whom they used like toys. It was good that they should know, because it would trap her more; make her even more inescapably Anne-Marie’s poupée, just like the tiny doll she wore on her armband - a plaything, to be manipulated for casual amusement, but not serious; nothing more than an entertainment.
Claudine’s mouth curved further. “Oh,” she said, soft and delighted. “She’s getting wet just telling it. How cute, the little slut.” She leaned forward a little. “Are you, pretty? Is that little cunt wet again already?”
Liana’s face burned, but she nodded, a difficult but complete acknowledgement; because a lie would have been worse and because the nod itself was another small surrender she could feel the meaning of. Claudine reached, unhurried, lifted Liana’s hem again; the inspection was brief and as entitled as before.
“So she is,” Claudine said, and let the dress fall. “Poor thing. And you her ‘queen’, now, Anne-Marie! Oh My!” she was teasing Anne-Marie, but Liana could hear the lust in Claudine’s voice, the excitement, the admiration for Anne-Marie at what she could do to a girl, and Liana’s heart thumped inside her; if she was to be anyone’s whore, it was good that it was Anne-Marie, her queen indeed.
Liana’s hands tightened behind her back;
“When Ma Reine came back,” she said, “I opened the door naked. I always do that now. I stood there and she looked at me and I was already wet. I could feel it. She put her hand in me; right there, in the hallway, and I— she didn’t let me close the door. I just let her; right there, in the hallway, my face to the wall; she did me again, like that; so rough with me, it … it was magnificent, and … and she won me, forever, then. I have… rules, now, her rules. I am hers; I’m not in charge. She is ma Reine, toujours.”
She stopped. The stem of the glass blurred. Anne-Marie made a small sound, only a breath, and Liana went on because the sound had told her she was not finished.
“In the street, today, she had me kneel. More than once, grovel at her feet. I had to go right down, and the skirt… the wind… everyone could see I had no underwear. I stayed there until she smiled. I smiled back. There was a smart woman, very haute. She called me pute. Salope. Anne-Marie ignored her. I could not. I … she was right.”
The words sat in her mouth, ugly and accurate. She swallowed and kept going, because it had to be done.
She had begun to speak of Fermier’s, of the shop and the girl with the cloth, when Yvonne arrived.
Anne-Marie. An unexpected pleasure!”
Yvonne was older than tAnne-Marie and her friends, perhaps sixty, her hair silver and perfectly coiffeured, her clothes expensive in a manner that did not announce itself, but simply emanated. Something in the way she stood, cool and yet tight, made it impossible not to understand that there was something hard and difficult between her and Anne-Marie; Overtly, everything was as it ought to be— small pleasantries, body language, mention of shared acquaintance— and yet the dislike was palpable; it was in the air, acknowledged by both of them in the precision of their courtesy. Liana felt the interruption as a small mercy and a fresh exposure at once: she had been mid-sentence, kneeling, obviously aroused, blushing, and now another woman— a total stranger (and yet a member of this particular club, with its particular character)— was looking at her as if she was something on a skewer; a piece of meat.
“I had heard rumours you were favouring something rather new these days, Anne-Marie. I presume this p’tite morceau is it…”
“You are well informed, as always, Yvonne.”
“One tries. And so this is she,” Yvonne’s gaze travelled over Liana— the puppet armband, the stool, the hem Claudine had left high, the flush— without haste;
“Pretty enough, in a soft way. Though I confess I am surprised. I had thought your tastes ran to girls who required less— obvious— management.”
Liana shrank, then urgently, stupidly, tried to do better; pathetically obvious (Anne-Marie trains slave-girls to be perfect; she has not trained me; I’m a sloppy mess by Anne-Marie’s standards, and this awful woman, who so clearly dislikes ma Reine, wants to use me to embarrass her! It’s too much! If only I was not so useless!)
Anne-Marie’s smile was small;
“She manages herself adequately, once the terms are clear. You would be astonished how little is required, with the right girl.”
“Would I?”
Yvonne’s tone was light;
“I find most of them still need reminding. But then I have never had your particular gift for making them grateful for the reminder.”
She tilted her head;
“May I play? Only for a little while. I should so like to see whether the gratitude survives a change of hands.”
The request was for use. Liana heard it clearly, and the hearing settled in her as something so far beyond what she had only just been able to accept about Claudine: that she could be asked for, by a total stranger, and that the answer would not be hers to give;
“I’m sorry, but not this time. I haven’t finished with her myself this evening, and I must leave shortly. Some other time, perhaps, when I can spare her.”
Anne-Marie was not horrified at all; simply bland, her regret perfectly measured. The request was perfectly reasonable, would be granted another time.
“Of course.” Yvonne’s eyes returned to Anne-Marie; the courtesy did not soften;
“One would hate to interrupt a work in progress. Another time, then— when you are less… occupied.”
The older woman moved on, the rebuff not troubling her one little bit; she had achieved what she had come for. The exchange had consisted of almost nothing, but had conveyed a great deal. Liana felt the after-image of it remain: she had been requested, assessed, and refused, and the refusal had been a matter of Anne-Marie’s convenience and a small, precise insult rather than of any value, specialness, still less rights she herself might still possess. Liana’s voice, when she tried to resume, did not come at once. The place where she had been interrupted felt newly raw.
Anne-Marie waited. When Liana did not immediately continue, she said, gently;
“You were telling us about this morning.”
Liana’s mouth was dry.
“Ah yes… today. At the shop. The girl had to take everything off me. She wiped me. Between my legs. It was wet. I let her. I opened my legs more so she could do it properly. There were mirrors. I watched them pinch my nipples until they stood up. Everyone was fully clothed, but me. Madame Fermier put her fingers in me and I… I made a noise. I couldn’t help it. I pushed onto her hand. I couldn’t help it; I wanted it. They could see, and I … I have no right to … to hide that sort of thing, anymore. The young one— Minotte— they made her touch me too. I held myself open for her. I made another noise. Then they put me by the fire and made me hold the mantel and spread my legs. Wider. I knew Ma Reine was going to hit me there; on my… on my pussy. And I couldn’t close my legs. I somehow held on.”
Her voice had gone small and ragged by the end. She stopped because she could not make the next sentence come.
Anne-Marie took the account from her without abruptness, which was somehow more exposing than if she had simply interrupted.
“The first stroke was here,” she said, and indicated, though she did not touch. “Directly across her pussy. She had been made ready for it. She was open, engorged, sensitised, and she had already promised me she would try to be beautiful. She held the mantel. She did not fall. The sound she made was quite small. Afterwards she thanked me, and asked me to continue. She was crying by then, but she asked clearly enough.”
Liana felt the tears arrive before she had decided whether to permit them. They filled her eyes and ran, and she kept her eyes open because closing them would have been a retreat, and she understood, with a fresh, sick clarity, that retreat was no longer one of the things she was allowed to do. She kept her spine straight. She kept her hands clasped. She kept the small, desperate smile she had been wearing since they sat down still fixed in place, while the tears ran down her face, again, make-up ruined again, because no one had told her she might stop smiling, and the absence of permission felt, in that moment, like an instruction.
Claudine laughed, softly. The laugh was not cruel in any loud way. It was the laugh of someone who had seen this before and found it, still, greatly pleasing, though not in the least surprising. Vernesse reached out and brushed a tear from Liana’s cheek with the side of her thumb. The touch was almost tender. She licked the salt from her own skin afterwards, thoughtful.
“Pretty,” Vernesse said. “She cries prettily. And she is trying so hard not to.”
“She always tries,” Anne-Marie said. “It is one of the things I like about her. She helps with her own destruction so sweetly.”
Something in Liana broke open on those words— not dramatically, not into sobbing, but into a small, wet, ridiculous sound that was half sob and half giggle. It escaped her before she could stop it. She heard herself make it, and the hearing was a fresh humiliation: she was laughing, or something like laughing, while the tears were still moving down her face, because Anne-Marie had said she liked the trying, said she was sweet, and some ruined, starving part of her had seized on the approval as if it were kindness. She giggled again, helplessly, horrified, grateful, feeling her breasts jiggle, knowing how obvious that was, her nipples burning with tightness, the stiffness a soreness now, a sensitivity, rather than any sort of pleasure when Vernesse gripped them, twisting just a little, just a little, until Liana heard herself whimpering like a frightened puppy.
And still, still, she was grateful, still she was giggling, halfway to hysteria, until she clamped herself, suddenly, lost in shame and confusion.
The three women watched her. Their attention was cool, knowing, almost affectionate in its cruelty. Liana felt them looking; both flinched from it and leaned toward it at the same time, the leash of her own need pulling her in two directions while she knelt on the hard little stool and tried, still, to keep the smile in place. She felt them seeing into her as if she were a clear pool— all her hidden weaknesses on show, obvious, trivial to exploit, and knew that she was as glad that they knew just how they could manage her as she was appalled, that she was trembling for them, that she was so terribly, terribly weak, and they all knew how weak she was, that they would greedily and casually exploit that weakness without the slightest care for her, beyond what care it took to make her suffer and grovel for them.
Anne-Marie let it continue a little longer. Then she glanced at her watch.
“I must go. There is a stupid little crisis; I cannot be away for a week without the place losing its mind, it seems. Boys, all of them; well, nearly all.”
Vernesse turned her glass once between her fingers. Her voice was mild.
“You know,” she said, “simply telling Yvonne she may not have the girl is almost a kindness, a weakness on your part, that you cannot trust the little one to behave, that you have not yet managed her completely. If you truly wished to be unkind to Yvonne, you might do the opposite. Leave the toy with her for longer than an hour. This little slut is deep, deep in already; she will not be able to help responding to Yvonne. Let the dried-up old chienne see what you have made, and with so little effort. She will be twisted more by the knowledge than the refusal.”
Anne-Marie was still. Liana, through the blur of tears and the aftershock of her own pathetic responses, saw the stillness, and then the slow twist at the corner of Anne-Marie’s red, red lips— the expression of a woman who had just been handed a hard, sharp tool she had not known she wanted and was already imagining its use. The pleasure was visible, if cool and calculated, and it settled over the table, over Liana’s wet face and her armband and her knees on the wood, like a change in the weather she could not step out of.
Liana, for whom the decision would be so consequential, remained where she had been placed, smiling as best she could, irrelevant, while the idea took root.
