This will make more sense if you have read the previous parts of the story.
Nothing more was said about Yvonne.
Liana was left to wonder; no-one was interested in her reaction, it seemed, although because she dared not openly look up, she could never be sure. It was hard; bitterly hard, to have to contemplate the possibility that in just a few minutes, she, Liana, a being who until very recently had considered herself to be in a loving, (if profoundly unequal) relationship, might be handed over by that person— formerly her lover, now effectively her owner— handed over to a complete stranger for the specific purpose of being subjected to sexual abuse, that stranger understood moreover, as having a deep dislike of Liana’s owner; dislike which— it seemed to be accepted— would result in harsh treatment of Liana in order to test to breaking point her dedication to her owner, her queen.
The bitterness had no impact on Liana’s dedication to Anne-Marie— that remained complete, unassailable; there was no doubt in Liana’s mind, no stepping back from her commitment. The bitterness was more straightforward; simply the anticipated hurt, shame, pain and devastation that she, Liana would be put to as a result of this decision, of the mental and emotional strain which being tested by someone she already hated would cause her.
It was too much, and she could feel hysteria building in her, and knew she must not let it, must not fail Anne-Marie by losing control here, in front of her friends, her social group, and sought feverishly for some train of thought that could lead her into safer territory.
Yvonne .. was she so bad? Do I really hate her?
Yes! came back the answer, even if it made no sense to hate someone she knew nothing of, but there it was, and it was obvious too; anyone who thought ill of Anne-Marie deserved Liana’s hatred, simply as a matter of loyalty, it was obvious, and the unarguable certainty of this gave her something to distract herself with; for this simplicity was welcome, and it was a part of the relief, the liberation which came with being owned.
For, having given herself to Anne-Marie ment - obviously and immediately - that she had no right to opinions about such serious matters as to what could be shoved into her pussy and when (or her throat, or her ass, equally obviously), or over when she would be beaten, and how violently, from which it logically followed that it was ridiculous to imagine that she could have opinions on any subject at all; her opinions must be perfectly aligned with Anne-Marie’s; she had only to think what Anne-Marie thought about everything, and absolve herself of thinking.
It was strange to realise that her left-wing political views - which had been a big part of her life since her college days - no longer meant anything at all. They were the only thing she and Anne-Marie had ever argued about, until Liana had simply decided to keep her views to herself. But they were gone; evaporated, simply empty words now, and along with them almost everything she had thought mattered to her. It was strange, but she felt no loss; rather the opposite in fact; more freedom, more liberation, from what in hindsight looked like dead weight.
More simplification; this new Liana was almost nothing, free as a bird; nothing but the desires and urges of her body, her devotion for and submission to Anne-Marie and the demands upon her which flowed, naturally and by decree from that. Nothing else, now; even the powerful feelings of shame nd humiliation which worked in her were not hers; she had no trouble herself in using the word whore about herself, or slut, cunt; the pain of those words came from knowing that others would - correctly - use them when they thought about her; the awful feelings which social rejection and scorn engendered, deep inside, were not anything she had control over.
The old Liana was revealed as been little more than something she had worn; a superficial patchwork cloak of borrowed ideas which worked among the people she knew; more evidence that Anne-Marie was an infinitely superior being; for Anne-Marie’s opinions were very much all her own; either Anne-Marie cared about something, in which case she had thought carefully about it, and was prepared to defend - or, more likely, simply impose - her view, or she was uninterested in it. There were almost no grey areas. Everything about Anne-Marie is real and hard and has impact on the world. Nothing about me was ever real, except the things I had no choice about. It is only the fact that I have chosen to be hers which begins to make things about me become real.
Everything is real, now; being corseted so tightly is real, kneeling on this bench so that everyone can see I am subject to sexual abuse without consent is real. Everyone around this table knowing that I am a slut who gets fist-fucked, hard, begs for it, and orgasms helplessly from it; that is real. Being given to Yvonne so that she can be cruel to me, cruel to my pussy and breasts if she wants, even; that would be super-real.
The fear of devastation was back, then, with a rush, her whole body physically shrinking from the insanity that such a thing could become real for her. But, awful though the feelings were, her new understanding made it possible to simply let the feelings have her; it was ridiculous to get hysterical; if Anne-Marie chose it for her, well, then it must be right for her, however awful; that was just how it was, now.
I could never have been real, before, because I could never have stood up for anything I thought was true— I never did the thinking, so I just said I believed what my friends said they believed. Hard, frightening reality, even if I do have to let Yvonne use me, is better than no real at all. God I’m so lucky m Reine picked me. I might have lived my whole life without this.
The fear was overrun then, by a sudden flush of soft, warm gratitude and - undeniable - sexual arousal, leaving Liana all but breathless, her heart thumping, her body urgently inflecting itself toward Anne-Marie in her need to convey her debt to her queen. The fear was no less powerful— it was still there, stranded all through the gratitude; part of it; part of her; it would always hurt, she saw; this freedom, this absolution, this reality; the price of absolution was to let herself be hurt, to open herself to Anne-Marie’s cruelty, to understand Claudine and Vernesse’ cruelties as Anne-Marie’s will, and thus Anne-Marie’s freedom with her; to accept Yvonne’s cruelty, if it came to pass, as just another extension of Anne-Marie’s power over her.
The dark thought that had been building inside her in the taxi surfaced again; I can, if I let it happen— I can try to do something terribly dangerous; I can let the squirmy feelings about letting myself be abused for Anne-Marie’s sexual entertainment be sexy for me, too, if I let that little flame that burns in me when she hurts me grow. I can give that to her, too..
And she was breathless again with the thought, as she realised that simply to have thought it, to have let it surface, was to commit herself to making it come true; that she had no right not to work to make it true, if she was to be true to her Queen.
She felt herself trembling— uncontrollable— with the enormity of it, of the idea of making herself learn to let cruelty and shame and abuse get her sexually hot, and knew that her shaking must noticeable, that if she were asked, she would have to tell the truth, the whole appalling train of thought..
Appalling— but real.
Everything is real now! Every minute, every second is hard reality for me— because of her; because she has taken me, because I am subject to her; it’s like being on fire at all times. I was so frightened of living that I used to let myself off the hook all the time, just pretend, without ever committing to anything. Being committed to Anne-Marie means I am ON the hook, at ALL times; a sharp, greedy hook that digs into me, that holds me to the truth, to my giving my whole self to her, with nothing at all held back. Even when I’m away from her— even if I am with Yvonne, and Yvonne is hurting me, it will be Anne-Marie who is doing it, and I will have to open myself to the hurt, because it will be her. I don’t know if I can live this reality, but it doesn’t matter because there is no escape; she has me until she gives up on me now.
Such would be the stuff of Liana’s thoughts, at times when nothing but stillness was required of her, until, years hence, Andrew would change her again; there was freedom in having been enslaved, but it did not come for free; the cost was the constant and impossible need to reconcile the gift of liberty with the fact of being a pleasure toy for a sexual sadist, that openness to casual and brutal cruelty was the necessary gateway to living in reality; for there to be no other imaginable way to live.
Claudine’s voice cut in to Liana’s reverie;
“Looks as if your little sex toy is having a sexy moment, Anne-Marie. Just look at her, all pink and twitchy, the horny little thing. Maybe the idea of being given into Yvonne’s cruel hands is turning her on, eh?”
Liana’s blushes and quivering only increased at that, at the shock of feeling all eyes on her, even noticing heads turning at a neighbouring table, humiliation threatening to overwhelm her, blinking away tears even as she opened her legs a little wider, refusing to let herself deny Claudine’s accurate observation, desperate in case anyone asked her to explain.
Liana would learn, in time, that there is usually little interest in a dominant’s mind for what is going on in the heads of submissives, that the fact of submission, the removal of dignity, is license to a dominant to cease to consider anything that might be going on in the submissive’s head; after all, who would imagine that a toy had a mind?
Anne-Marie, of course, is a specialist in paying attention to such matters, and would often require her girls to serve up all their inner workings to her, so that she might more powerfully manipulate them. But at that moment, although her eyes were as thoughtfully focused as ever, Anne-Marie was not asking questions, but making decisions;
“That’s decided then; little Liana will be sacrificed to the bigger game. Vernesse, does your girl come with a leash? Ah! Excellent. Would you be a darling and collar Liana for me, fix the leash — I’ll settle up at the bar while you ready her, for I really must be going.”
Things moved swiftly after that; Vernesse had Liana bend her neck by the simple means of grabbing a fistful of her hair and forcing her head forward, deliberately brutal, Liana’s pathetically weak gasp of shock making Claudine snigger;
“Sticky little cunt— sitting here so smug and pleased with herself all those times, talking as if she were a real person! She’ll need to learn fast, now, or pay in pain.”
With Anne-Marie out of earshot, it seemed Claudine needed to relieve a little of the same envy of Anne-Marie’s lazy supremacy over the girls she chose that Yvonne held.
Then Anne-Marie was back, and an almost contemptuously symbolic tug at the leash was all she gave Liana to tell her she was to rise from her lowly position; it was awkward, and she failed in her attempt at elegance, earning another casually cruel laugh from Claudine. The high mules made her first steps uncertain, too; her knees ached from the bare wood of the stool, she felt the dress shift against her bare sex, the hair-ties at her nipples giving pain with every movement.
There was no softness in the reality of being a sex-toy; none at all; it cut into her, and she felt that dark squirming connect the cutting to her groin, felt her chest tighten, felt her old self desperately denying the feeling, and made herself accept it nevertheless; embrace it, even, as if to punish her old self for all the wasted years.
Being led on a leash through the clubroom, which had filled a little since they had arrived was agonising and arousing at the same moment; to be almost dragged along at Anne-Marie’s usual brisk, smooth pace, forced to half-trot in the unaccustomed heels brought intense shame to the fore; fear too, knowing that she was required to accept what the Maîtresse d’ had called ‘intimate handling’ from any member, but alongside it was an undeniable, if ridiculous flush of excitement; Anne-Marie was acknowledging that she, Liana, was her choice, at least for now.
Ma Reine chose me as her toy, and all these powerful women know that she is ma Reine, and she can have anyone she wants. She uses me hard, and buys me clothes, and she is giving me to her her enemy aa a weapon, and I am going to do all I can to serve her.
All the feelings were wild inside her, while she fought to maintain her gait with at least a little elegance and a weak little smile too, tears wanting to fall so hard it almost hurt, knowing she was failing on all fronts, feeling again how all this fed the slow twisting, deep in her pelvis, unable to deny it;
I’m going to learn to be turned on by being humiliated; actually, its not so much learn, as let what is already there get stronger, feed it, until it takes over. And then I will really become a helpless slut. Compared to abstract thoughts about this on the footstool, lost in her head, the reality was dizzyingly more powerful, and Liana stumbled a little with it.
Anne-Marie did not turn her head. The leash remained slack enough that Liana could have slowed, could have made the clip pull, and the knowledge that she would not— that she was rather working to recover without causing Anne-Marie to change anything she was doing, with the short, careful steps the shoes allowed, hands still clasped behind her because no one had told her she might unclasp them— sat in her chest like a weight. She was still smiling, though it felt stupid; it was necessary.
Yvonne’s table was near the far wall. She was not alone. On the footstool beside her knelt a young woman, almost radiating her humbled condition— she was older than common for one in her position, perhaps thirty, pale hair cut short, dress reduced to little more than a band of dark silk, hands tied behind her back with a pretty ribbon, head bowed. It was salutary for Liana, to see someone years older than her, reduced to such a state; her condition was not a youthful phase, this told her; but a turning point which conditioned everything; more hard reality.
Perhaps I’ll never again be more than a cunt; a nothing.
She was getting the hang of taking these shocks as she needed to; as reinforcements of the reality she was living. Perhaps for some, being a sex toy was like a wild fling, a temporary madness - Vernesse’ girls seemed that kind. But Liana knew, somehow, that she had been permanently simplified, that she was never again not going to be a whore, subject to the desire of others; it was not the terrible realisation it ought to have been, but weirdly reassuring.
So many revelations, in a single day.
Across from Yvonne sat a woman of about fifty, fair and angular, her clothes were supremely elegant; stiff and immaculate. Her accent, when she spoke a low word to Yvonne as they approached, in a voice which was as stiff and immaculate as her dress, carried the precise, slightly formal cadence of Swiss French. Beside her sat a younger woman— twenty-three or four perhaps, with some facial similarities, though her face was significantly less bony, her manner much less rigid. She was dressed in a simple but clearly expensive frock that was perfectly proper, yet something in the set of her shoulders, the way she kept her hands folded in her lap and her gaze carefully soft, suggested she was not entirely free of the room’s expectation of women her ages. She looked up, questioning, nervy, when Anne-Marie and Liana arrived, then at once down again.
Anne-Marie halted, effortlessly the centre of attention - whatever conversation there had been stalled; it seemed she knew the older woman; the recognition was immediate and cool.
“Hélène. It has been some time.”
“Anne-Marie.” Hélène’s smile was small. “Yvonne was kind enough to receive us. We have been speaking of Ottilie.”
“So I understand.” Anne-Marie’s glance moved to the daughter, brief and assessing, then returned to Hélène. “She presents well enough; prettier than her pictures. The Castle has a place for her, if the final evaluation is satisfactory. You understand the conditions, I assume. There will be no special treatment; the opposite, if anything. It will be very hard for her. There are those who remember her father without .. shall we say .. kindness.”
“I understand everything.” Hélène’s tone remained even, though there was an undernote of stress; she had winced, just a little at the mention of the girl’s father (her husband? Was sh the girl’s mother? It seemed likely).
“The match requires it. He is quite specific: six months rigorous training before the wedding, so that she arrives already… accustomed to his .. requirements. He is paying for everything, of course. She knows it is part of the arrangement. She is willing. Or she believes she is willing. I leave the distinction, and the outcome, to you, Anne-Marie; your competence is trusted to by M. Azarovich.”
Ottilie’s hands tightened in her lap. She did not speak. Liana, standing at the end of the leash, heard the exchange and felt it chime with her own situation: another girl, still in a chair, still dressed, a businesslike discussion about her being subjected to cruel training as a contractual preliminary to marriage with a man who had paid in advance; Liana herself was already marked, already cruelly degraded, and about to be loaned out.
It was Liana’s first intimation of the strange sisterhood she would find at The Castle, where no girl could pretend that she was not to some extent complicit; where Anne-Marie’s training rendered all girls subject to their unleashed and exposed sexuality, not permitted to hide their responses to brutal and greedy abuse a place where all girls witnessed and participated in each other’s abject degradation, and had to know that the others judged them as they themselves judged.
Yvonne watched them both with mild interest. “You always did prefer to settle these things in public, Anne-Marie. It saves time.”
“It saves illusions,” Anne-Marie said. Then, to Hélène: “Have her brought to me next week. We will see whether the willingness survives contact. He is paying for the full six months, I take it, and he will want to visit as a guest once she is in residence. That will need to be timed. Not in the first weeks. She will not be presentable, and he will not enjoy what he sees if he comes too soon.”
Hélène inclined her head. “Of course. He understands the process takes time. I will await a firm date from you once have a settled view as to her progress.”
Ottilie’s breath had gone shallow. A single tear escaped and ran, quick and bright, down her cheek before she could stop it. She did not wipe it away. Anne-Marie turned her head, regarded the girl for a moment, then reached across the small distance and drew the backs of her fingers slowly along Ottilie’s jaw, a light, steady stroke, the kind one might use to settle a nervous horse.
“There,” she said, voice low and almost kind. “It is only six months. You will be carefully managed. You will learn what he requires, and you will learn to give it. You will survive, and afterwards you will be married. Many girls manage far less certainty than that. Dry your face before we continue. There is no need to begin crying in front of strangers before you are forced to do so.”
Ottilie nodded, a small, rigid movement. She lifted one hand, dabbed at the tear, and folded her hands again. The colour had left her mouth. Anne-Marie withdrew her fingers and turned to Yvonne, holding the leash handle out to her as if the moment had been nothing more than a practical adjustment.
“Yvonne,” she said. “I find I must leave sooner than I thought. A meeting. It would be inconvenient to take this one with me, and equally inconvenient to leave her here unattended. Would you care to have her overnight? You could deliver her to the Castle tomorrow, whenever it suits you.”
The offer was made in the same polished register they had used earlier. Liana heard her own name pointedly absent; her name was irrelevant; just another ’little cunt’. She stood at the end of the leash, the clip a small cold point at her throat, and understood that she was being described as a planning problem with a convenient solution, in front of strangers. Yvonne’s eyes moved over her once more— slower this time, since the possibility had become real— then returned to Anne-Marie.
“Overnight,” Yvonne said. “And to the Castle in the morning. That is possible, yes. Hélène, you don’t mind the interruption?”
Hélène’s smile remained small, though one corner turned down a tiny notch. “Not at all. It is rather to the point, in fact. Ottilie may as well see how these things are arranged.” Her glance toward her daughter was brief and without empathy. Ottilie’s ears had already begun to colour; she did not speak.
“It is practical.” Anne-Marie’s smile was small. “She will be good, I believe, but of course you you will not permit her to disappoint you; feel free to force her to anything she does not deliver willingly.”
“I doubt she will let you down.” Yvonne set her glass down. “Very well. Leave her with me.”
Yvonne took the leash; the transfer took less than a second. Liana felt the change of tension, minute and absolute, and the sensation moved through her as a soft, spreading blankness: the hand at the other end of the leash was no longer Anne-Marie’s. She was attached, now, to a woman who had looked at her earlier with open dislike for the person who owned her, and who was looking at her now with the pleased, proprietary interest of someone who has just been given a gift toy she had not expected— all while her own girl knelt motionless beside her, with Hélène watching, an avid gleam in her eyes belying her rigid expression.
The transaction was over - momentous in the extreme for Liana, seemingly casual for Anne-Marie and Yvonne.
Anne-Marie said nothing to Liana, did not even look at her. She inclined her head to Yvonne, then to Hélène, then turned and walked away. Liana watched the straight line of her back until it was lost among the tables. When she looked down again the leash was in Yvonne’s hand, Yvonne was watching her watch, and Hélène was watching both of them with the same cool interest she had shown during the discussion of her daughter, while Ottilie was studying the tablecloth with the fixed attention of someone determined not to be seen looking.
“Kneel,” Yvonne said.
There was a second footstool, placed already, as if the table had been prepared for the possibility. Liana went down onto it, beside the other girl. The wood was hard under her knees. She arranged her hands behind her back without being told. The other girl did not glance at her. Yvonne settled the leash so that it lay across her own knee, the leather dark against the pale cloth of her skirt. She did not speak for a moment, but simply looked, the way one looks at an object that has been successfully acquired and may now be examined at leisure, in company.
“So,” she said at last, to the table as much as to Liana. “Anne-Marie’s little project. And she leaves you with me. How very sure of herself she must be.” Her voice was mild. “Or how very sure of you. Which is it, do you think?”
She did not wait for an answer. Her gaze drifted, almost idle, toward the room. “It is a curious arrangement, when one considers it. The members pay her extremely well to supply what they require, and yet she continues to keep the choicest pieces for herself. One would have thought a woman in her position— dependent, after all, on the wage we provide— might be more careful about such… private reservations. Old money has long memories. Even the newer fortunes notice when they are asked to subsidise a housekeeper’s personal amusements.”
Liana’s mouth was dry. The question, and the remark that had followed it, were not things she was ready to hold. Was she being used as a channel to Anne-Marie? Liana had just found herself astonished at how it felt to have been simplified. She had nothing, nothing any more to help her deal with this.
She retreated into reality; the collar, the leash, the stool, the silent presence of the other toy, the weight of Hélène’s interested gaze and Ottilie’s careful non-gaze, and understood that any answer would be heard by a woman who hated Anne-Marie and who now held the other end of the thing around her neck— and by the mother of a girl who might soon be sent to the place Anne-Marie ruled.
“I… I don’t know,” she said. The words were small, and true she had nothing else.
Yvonne’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “No. I don’t suppose you do.” She reached, unhurried, and lifted Liana’s chin with one finger so that their eyes met. The touch was light and entirely unkind. “But you will be good, won’t you? You will do as you are told, and you will not embarrass her, and you will not embarrass me. Because if you do either, I shall be obliged to tell her exactly how you failed, and I should so dislike having to do that.” The finger left her chin. She glanced at Hélène. “They are always so worried about the report afterwards. It is rather sweet. You will find Ottilie much the same, I expect, once she has been properly started.” Then, back to Liana: “Nod if you understand.”
Liana nodded; it wasn’t a small thing; she felt it; Yvonne had taken something from her; a surrender - a real surrender. It was no longer a simple proxy; Yvonne as an avatar of Anne-Marie; the woman had her own strength, her on ruthlessness, and, in her new state, Liana knew herself to have been conquered by Yvonne to have acknowledged it; a small, but real surrender, offered to a stranger, in front of other strangers, and the offering itself produced a weak, shameful heat low in her body that she hoped did not show. Yvonne’s gaze dropped, briefly, to the hem of Liana’s dress, then returned to her face with an expression of mild, satisfied interest. Beside her, the other toy had not moved. Across the table Ottilie’s ears were pink.
“Good,” Yvonne said. “We will sit here a little longer. I find I am enjoying the view. Then I will take you home. Hélène, you and Ottilie must come another evening; it has been too long. I will look in at The Castle sometime after she has been initiated; I shall be curious to hear how the willingness holds up.”
She picked up her glass again and conversation resumed, low and unhurried, between Yvonne and Hélène— something about a house near Geneva, about a girl who had not worked out, about the practicalities of Ottilie’s evaluation, about nothing that required Liana’s attention and everything that made the chair Ottilie occupied feel temporary.
Liana remained on the stool, spine straight, hands clasped, the leash a dark line between her collar and Yvonne’s knee. The other toy breathed quietly beside her. Ottilie answered when spoken to, her voice soft, deferential, the voice of a girl who had had to list while she was discussed as a future resident of the Castle and who was trying, carefully, not to show what the hearing had done to her.
And Liana, kneeling, found herself watching the girl.
Not merely seeing her. Following her. The tear that had been wiped away. The rigid nod. The way her hands had returned to her lap as if that were the only safe place for them. The colour that had not yet come back to her mouth. Liana felt, with a clarity that frightened her, the exact shape of what was coming for Ottilie: the first night she would be told to undress and would obey because the alternative had already been priced; the moment a hand that was not kind would open her and she would discover she was wet; the week she would spend trying to be good and would still be found insufficient; the morning she would wake already afraid and would thank someone for the fear because gratitude was safer than refusal. Liana saw it, felt it, almost tasted it, and the seeing moved through her own body as heat— sudden, shameful, undeniable. She wanted to be there. She wanted to watch Ottilie taken down, conquered, defeated, used until the willingness she currently believed in had been replaced by something simpler and more ruined. The want was vivid. It sat between her legs and in her throat at the same time, and there was no sympathy.
She kept her eyes lowered after that, because if she looked at Ottilie again the want might show on her face, and she did not know what Yvonne would do with the knowledge. But the want remained, frightening her and, she could not deny, exciting her. She knelt in it, smiling as best she could, while the conversation continued above her head and the leash rested, casual and absolute, across Yvonne’s knee.
A girl, an innocent, condemned to Anne-Marie’s ruthless training; to the service of the rich sadists who were the members of The Castle; much darker than Liana’s submission to Anne-Marie herself…
And yet I have not sympathy for her. I’m just hot thinking about it, when some version of that fate awaits me, very soon, from Yvonne.
The heat did not leave her. Neither did the fear. They sat together under the polite, lethal attention of the woman who hated Anne-Marie and who now, for the night, owned the leash, while another toy knelt in silence at her side and a daughter who had just been offered to the Castle tried not to be seen imagining what that offer would cost.
Liana felt herself melting; the day had been long, and filled with trauma; highs and lows; unimaginable lows, but met by her own body, time after time, with a breathless, heart-stopping welcome.
There was nothing to do but submit.
