Bitterly, she saw its anchoring lock would keep her from touching her love. Each of them were attached to one of the barn's vertical timbers. "I suppose the handcuffs don't matter much." She mused ruefully. "We aren't going anywhere."
"With this hardware on our necks they didn't need to cuff our ankles." Cicely sniffed. "And the only reason they make us sleep here on the straw is to rub my nose in the dirt." She sniffed again. "We could figure on being chained apart. No way they's let us get at each other? the sons of bitches!"
"Do we want to?" Ilona mourned. "After what they've done to us. Oh, Cicely. .!"
"Of course we want to, pet. But that's beside the point."
Cicely was still testing the new restraints by which she was made prisoner. "I asked for chains." She confessed bitterly. "So I suppose I can't complain. Two things to do, sweetheart, sleep and watch for chances."
"They mustn't whip you tomorrow, Cicely. They mustn't!"
"How we going to stop 'em!" Cicely paused. "Darling. . being whipped like that. .? It's damn awful, isn't it?"
"It's unimaginable. A girl can't bear it." Realization hit Ilona like a bomb.
"Dearest, you've never been whipped, have you? Not ever in your life? Oh, Cicely. .!"
" 'Fraid not, Pet. I don't expect to enjoy it, or be the noble heroine. They'l make you watch, and I'll disgrace myself."
They sat on the straw, chained, prisoners of the padlocks, looking at each other in dolor. Surveying the morrow, and the next day and the next. .! Unhappily they slept.
Sometime in the night a gentle hand shook Ilona awake. She sat up, startled and afraid. Smiling at her in the gloom was a face she could not believe.
It was Susan Carmody.
Chapter Nine
"I can't help feeling ashamed of myself." Ilona Paisley observed ruefully. "I mean. . well, look at me. My hands tied behind my back. . and this collar! It won't come off, not ever. It's terribly revealing, about me."
"It's darling. You look sweet with it on your neck." Susan said firmly. "I'm going to ask her to rivet one on me." She sighed ecstatically. "Isn't Cicely just super! She does everything so absolutely right."
"Mmmmmmm. . yes, she's? oh, I don't have words. ." Ilona gazed up lovingly at the eager young face that could not go away. "She's loaned us our? I mean, her bed, so we can talk for the afternoon, and she's left us free enough to do what we like."
Susan giggled. "I'm more free than you are, Mistress. You've got the collar and chain to that ring in the floor and your right ankle is handcuffed to my left."
"That's not so bad." Ilona sighed. "You can't run away."
"As if I'd want to!" Susan sighed dreamily. "I'm going to eat you some more in a minute." She rattled their handcuff happily. "I can't stop thinking how lucky we were.
That split link. . jeepers!"
"I never got the rights of that." Ilona admitted. "And I don't think you should call me Mistress any more, Mistresses don't wear collars, not iron one's."
"Well, never mind." Susan used a free hand to caress the two nipples pointing up at her from the bed. "I think you're gorgeous, and the split link is a dohickey you screw up or down so you can splice a chain or take it apart. They're supposed to be tight but this one wasn't, I could screw it with my fingers. I discovered it the second day, but I was really naughty. I didn't let on. I kept it for emergencies. I have to be punished, of course."
"Damn the punishment, you saved our lives."
"It was awful, wondering what was wrong and what I ought to do. I felt so guilty setting myself free. Cicely's so adorable. I knew about the blacksmith shop, so I picked up those bolt cutters." Susan stuck out a tantalizing tongue. "Darling Mistress, how'd it be if I untie your hands, I do so want them?"
"I want them too. But, no, we'd both be punished."
"I could tie you again before Cicely came?"
"The only reason they're tied is to tempt us." Ilona laughed. "No, leave 'em be.
They don't really stop me doing anything I want."
"I'm glad those men won't die. I thought Cicely was going to kill them when she went for the gun? she should have killed them but there'd have been such a fuss."
Susan mused happily. "We're all so terribly lucky."
It was true. Ilona looked up in adoration. She wished her hands weren't tied. She longed to hold Susan's vivid nakedness in her arms and squeeze it tight. But she would not complain, they had it good. Still puzzled, she asked:
"And Cicely bought you when she bought me. . and kept you hidden?"
"Not really, Ilona dear." Susan grimaced. "We wondered if we should tell you, but I guess it's best. I got sent to the brothel."
"You! Oh, Susan darling. . !"
"Well, don't take on too badly, beautiful Mistress. I refused to let it get to me. If I couldn't stop men sticking their ugly damn things in me I'd just pretend it wasn't happening. Darling, all sorts of men fucked me but I never once climaxed."
The girl was glowingly immaculate, eternally virgin, radiant. Ilona thrust from her own consciousness thought that Susan's plump neat cunt had been pierced by other than a female tongue. Her shining bush of pubic hair and the pouting lips below remained unsullied, they enticed her now. But there were still questions: "Then how. . How did you get here?"
Susan giggled. "When Cicely discovered how much you and I were fond of each other she thought I'd be a useful hostage to make you behave. But after she'd fallen in love with you she decided to give me to you as a present? but even then. . !"
Susan shrugged and gave her pixie grin. "That's where we are now, darling. Don't let's worry about it. Poor dear Cicely will have to sort us out. She's so wonderful, and I'm so grateful to her for buying me. She paid the most awfully huge sum of money?
Gosh, all that for just a girl!"
"You're not just a girl. You're Susan, you're special."
"Mmmmm, that's what I mean about us all being lucky." Susan's face clouded.
"Poor 'Tonia and Griselda, they're still in the brothel. They hated it so much, and they'l never, never be able to escape. Do you think Cicely would buy them too? I've been afraid to ask."
"She won't punish you for asking. Susan, tell me about. . that place. I know it's morbid, but I want to know what I missed."
"I don't know much about it, only the place where we were imprisoned and the things we had to do. They whipped us horribly if we didn't behave. It wasn't a nice sort of whipping to make a girl's pussy excited, it simply made you want to curl up and die. Poor 'Tonia, they had to whip her something awful and tied her down before she'd let a man get inside her."
Ilona could envision it, seeing herself in similar plight, fighting hopelessly the female fight before conceding victory to the whip and lying passively with open legs and surrendered sex. In vivid sympathy she asked: "Did she adjust? Did it become bearable for her?"
"No. They weren't a bit pleased with her. They'd probably sell her real cheap."
"But how did you know??"
Susan laughed. "Oh, it was all very well set up. We were kept in a row of cells, one girl to a cage. The walls were mostly stone, but the one to the passage was all bars and a bit of each sidewall was bars too so the girls could talk and see each other. They figured we'd perform better if we weren't isolated, we'd be happier. They threatened us with a solitary cell but Griselda and I never gave 'em an excuse to put us in there." Susan chuckled. "I'm afraid we weren't a bit respectable. We did what we were told."
"You were just locked up, otherwise free?"
"Gosh, no! The door wasn't even locked? except at night after the last customer had gone. Every girl was chained some way to the wall. Her wrist, her neck, her waist or her ankle. The chain didn't have to be all that long to give us the run of the cell but it was never long enough to let us get to the door. When a customer came we had to kneel down and bow our heads until he told us what he wanted. My chain was on my wrist. I suppose you'd call it a shackle. Anyhow, there was no way I could get out of it, they locked it tight. Griselda's was on her neck, sort of like you are now, darling, 'cept her collar wasn't as pussy perking as your's. It was just a round ring, but there was no way she was going to get out of that either. Poor 'Tonia, they put all four chains on her just to show who was boss."