Anna, Used

Anna, used.

The woman with the copper skin seemed in her early forties. Her half-long hair had the straightness and the raven blackness of her indigenous ancestors. She sat in a rattan chair next to the glittering rectangle of a swimming pool, one slender leg crossing the other. The late summer afternoon softened the sun's glare, but the air was still balmy. Behind a freshly sprinkled garden and a row of hedges the desert stretched out into reddish infinity until it fused with the ghosts of distant mountains.

A pale young woman in a red dress walked along the pool towards the seated figure, her heeled sandals clicking their progress on the wet tiles. A petite girl with a black flag of wavy hair accompanied her, wearing a white cotton shift that left most of her tanned thighs free. Her feet were bare.

When the two reached the woman in the chair, she rose, smiling. Her hand was cool, her voice warmly sweet.

"Please be seated, my friend," she said, addressing the woman in red. Then she looked over at the girl.

"Anna, please meet Alicia," the young woman in red said. "She is a girl I'd love you to get to know better."

"How precious she looks," Anna said, reaching out to collect both of Alicia's small hands in hers. "Please be welcome, Alicia. I am certain you are exquisite; Angique wouldn't have brought you otherwise." The girl blushed, standing around awkwardly until the hostess offered her one of the chairs. Angique raised her hand with a smile.

"No, please Anna, the girl prefers to kneel at my side. Let's indulge her."

"Of course," Anna said, "how gauche of me. Let me pour us some tea."

Angique let herself down in the chair opposite Anna's. Alicia knelt right beside her legs, caressing them with her dress. The golden tea danced in the glasses while Anna poured.

"You have such a gorgeous place, Anna," Angique said, looking around. The older woman smiled.

"Well, thank you. Yes, I just love the desert. I often get on my horse straight from work and ride into the sunset. You two should accompany me one day. Should I pour the girl a glass as well?'

"Oh, well, Anna," Angique answered grinning. "I'm a city-girl, really. Horses aren't for me, they scare me! And as to pouring li'l Licia tea -- not yet. I think she should earn it, don't you agree, Licia?" The girl didn't respond, but her blush deepened.

"To begin with," Angique went on while nibbling on a biscuit, "I think the girl is ridiculously overdressed, wouldn't you agree, Anna?" The older woman smiled, her eyebrows rising. Angique brought her lips to the girl's ear and whispered a few words. The blush turned crimson. Then Alicia rose and pulled the white shift over her head. It proved to be all she was wearing. Anna sucked in her breath, then she softly started to clap her hands.

"She is beautiful, Angique. My God, she is sweet."

"Turn around for Anna, honey. Step closer and let her feel you," Angique said, lifting her glass from the table to take a sip.

As Alicia took the few steps to the woman, she started to slowly spin and show off her naked body, shivering at the woman's touch. Angique turned to Anna.

"Licia has started her training to become my slave, you know? First and foremost, she has to get rid of her silly shame; it is such a useless emotion, don't you agree? So, exposing her body to a total stranger might be a nice first step." Anna said nothing; she just stared as her hand touched a soft belly. Then she mumbled,

"She's lovely, my friend. So lovely."

"Do with her as you please, Anna," Angique said, smiling. "Let's say she is my gift to you for the afternoon." Alicia's face yanked towards Angique, concern widening her eyes as her arms automatically started to cover her private parts. Anna seemed just as alarmed.

"Oh, but..." she said. Angique waved her objection away and turned to address Alicia. "Licia, honey, I am sure Anna's feet must be killing her after a full day's work, and I am certain you know what to do about that."

After a few delicious moments of hesitation, Alicia went down on her knees. Her fingers undid the straps of Anna's sandals and while she started massaging the woman's ankles, her tongue reached out to lick her toes, the space between them, the insteps and the elegant arches.

Angique smiled as she heard Anna sigh. The woman's eyes closed, and her chest rose and fell with quickening speed. Angique leaned forward. Her open palm caressed the raised ass cheeks of the kneeling girl before fondling the crack and the shaved, oiled plum below.

"Isn't she a gem?" she asked Anna, but there was no answer, just sweet sighing. Angique picked up her glass of tea and sat back, watching. The tip of her foot softly caressed the tender insides of the girl's thighs, causing her skin to ripple.

Alicia then rose on her knees and sat back on her heels, holding one foot against her soft chest as she massaged the calf. Anna's eyes returned to the world. She sighed a smile and thanked Angique, who returned the smile, remarking that feet massages, however relaxing they might be, always left her hot and horny. Anna answered with a nod and a frantic fanning of her hand. They both laughed, making the girl look up with a puzzled little smile.

"I think the lady needs more, honey," Angique told Alicia. "You left her all hot and bothered."

The girl's eyes shot from one woman to the other until understanding dawned on her face. She slid forward on her knees, spreading the seated woman's legs and pushing up her skirt. Anna looked at Angique with wide, surprised eyes. Then she pulled at her skirt to help the girl find her soaked panties.

Soft kisses sounded as Alicia worked her way up the creamy insides of Anna's thighs. She nuzzled the wet panties, drawing hoarse little moans from Anna's throat. Soon the panties were off and Angique saw the older woman push her cunt into Alicia's wide-open mouth.

It didn't take Anna long to come hard and make the blue sky echo with her ecstasy. Alicia's mouth was by now slurping the leaking juices, sliding her shining face up and down the weeping slit. Anna's hands clawed into the girl's hair until they relaxed, as did the rest of her body.

"Wwwwow oh wow..." she gasped. Then she pulled Alicia up across her body and sent her tongue down the girl's mouth.

"Lie down," she panted when they parted. "On your back." Angique chuckled at the dominant streak that suddenly seemed to possess the woman. Alicia obliged, lying down in the still lukewarm puddles of water bordering the pool. Anna pulled her skirt up further and sank down on the girl's face. She started riding her nose, lips and chin, eager to find another orgasm.

Angique rose from her chair and knelt down at Alicia's lower body, spreading the girl's legs and cupping her flowing cunt. She kneaded it, extracting muffled moans. Then she entered the slit with two fingers, starting to saw, making sure her thumb hit the swollen clit. Alicia fucked back by raising her hips, as she chased Anna's cunt with her tongue.

Soon Alicia came, arching her body off the tiled floor. The vibration of her cries must have pushed Anna over the edge, for she too started shaking, adding her throaty voice to Alicia's clear song of bliss and abandon.

Angique grinned as she got closer to Anna's face, kissing her. At the same time, she reached past her to get an empty tea glass.

"Raise your sweet ass, Anna," she said and shoved the glass between the girl's gasping face and the woman's drooling cunt.

"Fill it up, Anna," she said, and Anna's confusion only lasted seconds. The inner lips pouted, and a sudden spurt of golden liquid hit the bottom of the glass. It soon was filled to the brim, spreading its pungent fragrance.

"Sit up, Licia," Angique said. "Please." The girl slid forward and rose to her knees. The afterglow of her orgasm colored her chest, while her face shone with Anna's juices. Her eyes were misted over. Angique grabbed her hand and placed the warm glass into it.

"Your tea, honey, as promised," she said. "Drink it while it's still hot, you earned it." Reality dawned on the girl's face. Angique took hold of the hand with the glass, fearing she might drop it. Alicia's head shook from left to right. Her eyes were saucers. Angique just nodded. She felt the girl's hands tremble. Nodding once again, she brought the glass up to Alicia's mouth. The rim slid over her lower lip and Angique tipped the glass, so the first wave of piss streamed into the half-open mouth. The girl gagged, then swallowed. Tears ran down her face.

"Good girl," Angique said, tipping the glass again.

Anna, revisited.

"A pity she isn't with you; she seemed such a sweet girl," Anna said, sipping her tea.

"Oh, that she is," Angique agreed. "She is sweet as candy for you and me, and for any woman who asks her to crawl between their legs and eat them." Anna smiled.

"You sound bitter." Angique looked up and shrugged.

"I guess that's because I am," she said.

Anna had phoned her and invited her back after the poolside meeting they'd had with Alicia, just over a month ago. She sounded disappointed to hear that the girl would not be there this time, and she was sad about the reason why.

"The two of you were... amazing," she'd said over the phone, pausing to find the right expression. "It felt like an honor to be part of what you had. There was so much sexual energy, so much easy trust."

"Yes," Angique had answered. "Rather a bit too much trust, I gather."

Today Anna wore black denim jeans. They were tightly wrapped around her slim hips and legs. Her blouse of gauzy white cotton however was wide-sleeved and loose fitting. Undone buttons exposed a deeply bronzed V; Angique saw no signs of a bra holding the modest breasts. A necklace of silver and turquoise betrayed her native heritage, as did her deep dark eyes. At her feet were heavily heeled Spanish riding boots.

She'd taken Angique out to a shaded patio to protect her pale skin from the still potent autumn desert sun. Angique thanked her for remembering, but Anna smiled and answered: "Of course, I remember. How could I forget even the smallest detail of that delightful afternoon?"

They shared a lingering silence, looking out over the reddish desert, sipping tea. Then Anna rose and walked to the huge bougainvillea that spread its limbs all over a sand-colored wall, exploding in clouds of purple blossom. Angique's eyes followed the movement of her firm ass-cheeks until they came to a halt. Anna rose to the tips of her boots, picking wilted flowers from the bush, crunching their dried, crispy petals in the palm of her hand.

Angique watched her every move, wondering who this woman really might be, living behind a proud amazon/business façade, maintaining this perfect wife-and-mother's charade. Last time and today again she had watched Anna's secret looks and unguarded responses. There was a dark side to this woman, she'd noticed, maybe even more than just that.

"So, she cheated on you?" Anna asked, not looking back. The question shook Angique out of her musings. Its implication of failure annoyed her more than she allowed her face to show.

"Let's not talk about her," she said, looking away. Then she also rose and moved to the other end of the patio, hugging her teacup. "Let's talk about you." Her eyes were fixed on the deep blue sky, where a lonesome predator circled on unmoving wings, a hawk maybe, or a vulture?

The sound of heels told her that Anna was getting closer. Angique's nostrils flared, as she picked up the woman's scent. She didn't look back, nor did she change the casual tone of her voice, but her mental fingers were crossing.

"Please undo the buttons of your blouse, Anna," she said. "I need to see your tits." The slight gasp made her smile into her teacup. She counted to ten, then turned around in time to see Anna slide the soft cotton off her shoulders, exposing a darkly tanned chest and two handfuls of slightly sagging, lighter colored breasts. She caught the woman's eyes and held them with hers. Without looking down, she reached for the left, exposed tit.

"Such long and excited nipples you have, Anna," she whispered, stepping in and feeling the heat the woman exuded. Her hand went up and started tracing the breast's curve from the delicate collarbone to the dark nipple. She hardly touched the skin and never took her gaze away from the woman's eyes. "Such a sweet gentle slope; such nice swollen areolas," she said, lowering her gaze and palming the flesh. "You must be a passionate woman." She cupped the breast as if weighing it. "Do I feel your heartbeat, Anna?" Their faces were very close now, Angique's breath caressing Anna's skin. She answered her own question and smiled as she looked down to where her hand felt the speeding pulse. "Yes, I do. And how fast it beats." She looked up again, smiling, but Anna had closed her eyes, a blush darkening her face. Angique leant in to find the woman's mouth with hers. The trembling lips yielded instantly as they kissed; an open-mouthed kiss that lasted for minutes. Angique pulled Anna's topless body into hers and only let go of the mouth when they both needed air.

"Oh God," Anna gasped.

"Oh God," Angique agreed.

Anna, questioned.

"Tell me about Anna," Angique said after their breathing had slowed down to normal. Her right hand still fondled the woman's breast, making the nipple slip and slide through her fingers. Her other hand disappeared under the long black hair, fingertips massaging the skull. Anna's eyes sparkled. Then an ironic smile replaced the afterglow of their kissing.

"What's to say about Anna?" she asked, shrugging. "I am just a boring hausfrau, a mother and an overworked Human Resources manager at a shipping company. I fight for my share of respect in a macho men's world." Angique shook her head, frowning.

"No," she said, almost breathing the word. "No. Tell me about Anna." Emphasizing her name, she held the woman's eyes until Anna's lashes fluttered and her throat jumped, swallowing. All irony had disappeared.

"Uhm, well... Anna," she tried. "Anna is a native American woman, married to a sweet guy of German stock. She loves him gently and has so for over twenty years, carrying his children -- dutifully opening her legs for him."

Angique pulled her hand back and smacked the woman hard across the face, making her head snap. She ignored the surprised yelp as she calmly restated her question.

"I asked you to tell me about Anna."

Anna looked stunned. Tears popped from her eyes; it must have been the shock more than the pain. She had never been treated like this; she should be furious, shouldn't she? A dark spot bloomed on her cheek where Angique had struck her. There was no anger, though, no indignation, just shock. The breathless silence following the cracking slap was filled with distant sounds of birds and crickets, and finally with Anna's gasps. She just stood, allowing tears to streak her cheeks; she did not protest, she didn't run. A sense of relief washed through Angique; she had been right about Anna.

"You know me, Angique," Anna whispered at last. "Do I have to tell? You see through me and you know who I really am with you." Tears now ran freely down her face.

"Say it, Anna," Angique said, touching the bruise. "You know you have to say it." Anna swallowed twice.

"I am Songbird too," she said, and her face grew younger. "I am this very young Indian girl that lives with the ghosts of the earth, the spirits of the heavens. But I guess that wouldn't be the Anna you're looking for?" Angique kept staring into the woman's eyes, capturing them.

"Too many Anna's," she then murmured. "Now tell me, who is the true Anna? Not the workaholic Anna, not the cowgirl Anna riding out into the sunset, not the wife or the mother, surely. Not even the bird girl singing of her ancestors." She reached for Anna's throat, feeling its pulse throb against her palm as she slowly closed her hand around it. Her gaze pinned down the shifting black eyes, cutting off every possible route of escape. The ribbed windpipe massaged her palm as the woman swallowed. Angique just squeezed harder.

"Tell me of your darkness, Anna," she whispered. "Tell me all the sweet and dirty traits you harbor in your secret niche; I'm sure you have many." Her hand closed tighter, and she had to hold up the gasping woman as her body turned limp. The dark irises floated up into her skull, leaving two white, vacant orbs staring out. The mouth worked; the throat gurgled. Then Angique let Anna sink to the ground, protecting her head from hitting the stone.

She knelt next to her, caressing the paled cheeks until a sudden convulsion wrecked the body. Anna raised her head, gasping for air. She coughed and milled her arms around as she got up to sit, dry heaving and gagging. Angique wrapped an arm around her, nudging Anna's face with hers.

"Welcome back from where you truly live, Anna," she whispered. "Dark, secret little Anna girl." Anna looked back at her, wide-eyed and panicked; not a trace of the woman-of-the-world to be found. Her shoulders started shaking. She pushed her face into Angique's chest, sobbing muffled sobs that drenched the flimsy fabric of the sundress. Her face was ruined when she at last looked up, trying to talk through hysterical heaves.

"Sssssh," Angique said, stroking her hair. "Shhhh, honey, later." She rocked Anna in her embrace, kissing the salty tears off her face, waiting for the woman to calm down enough for talking.

"How... how did you know?" she asked haltingly, her voice the voice of a very small girl.

"Know what, honey?" Angique answered, smiling.

"That I love to be strangled, to have my breath cut off? That I get off on that? Who told you? Nobody knows. Nobody but a woman I was with last year? We stumbled on it by accident. How could you know?" Angique chuckled as she rocked Anna in her arms. The woman curled up against her like a child as they sat on the warm flagstones of the patio, Angique's back leaning against a sunbaked wall.

"Anna," she said, caressing the bare arms and shoulders. "There is no secret, no magic. I saw it in your eyes. I already saw it when we played with the slut, last time, and today I see it again. You love to be helpless; dark and forbidden rituals intrigue you. You need to hand over control." Holding Anna's eyes, she took in the growing blush.

"Strangling you," she went on, "is just one means to an end. You need someone to take over; you need pain, humiliation to feel alive. You want to be exposed, restricted, punished. So many women do, especially women who fight for a rightful place in their jobs, in society. Stressed out women who need the excuse of helplessness to let go of themselves, to let go of the guilt and the pretense to find their sweet climax."

Angique chuckled as the woman lowered her eyes. She lifted her chin until the contact was restored. "I know you, li'l Anna," she said in a whisper, her lips close to Anna's face, "even if you don't know yourself. Now open my dress and lick my gushing cunt; it yearns for your obedient tongue." She leaned back on her hands, pushing out her body. Anna hesitated, looking over her shoulder.

"Here?" she asked. "They might see us. The stable hand, the..." Angique grabbed her head, pulling it down to her crotch. Smiling she said:

"Just do it, Anna. Leave the worrying to me."

***

With trembling fingers, Anna opened Angique's dress to reveal a pale, naked body. She sucked the surprisingly dark nipples into shining erection and let her lips travel down the torso to a slick, bare mound. Her tongue spread the pale cunt lips, extracting a growl. Angique folded her hands over Anna's head to pull her in. Climax came soon; juices gushed into the woman's mouth, making her chin shine like polished copper.

After that they went inside where they played their bodies like instruments on a huge white bed, surrounded by a flurry of curtains and mosquito netting. Wide-open windows allowed the desert's breeze to kiss their skin.

"You love Licia, I know. I saw," Anna said when her breath finally allowed her to shape words again. The cooling sweat sent a shiver through her body. Angique's hand parted Anna's hair to uncover her face.

"Ah, love," she said with a sigh. "I loved only three times before. There is nothing sweet or romantic about it; it's a cruel thing to live through. My first love was murdered. My second love was raped, ending up in the nuthouse. And my third, she took her own life, you know." The silence was sudden and seemed endless. Anna screwed up her eyes to look beyond the white hills of Angique's breasts. They were gently sagging sideways, opening a path up to the dark-framed, emerald gaze. Anna's drooling mouth rested on Angique's cunt lips. There were bite-marks and they were swollen from intense sucking.

"So sorry to hear that," she whispered.

"It scares me," Angique went on. "I fear having those feelings again; maybe they are what killed the girls?" Angique stroked Anna's hair. She smiled ruefully. "But it seems I don't have a say in it; I fell in love again anyway, wide open to her treacherous whims." From the gathering darkness, the desert wind filled the white curtains and gauzy nets with its cool breath, making them flap and billow. It felt like sailing a tall ship at sea.

"Maybe," Angique went on, "maybe it scares Licia off too?" She grabbed a fistful of black hair and pulled Anna up to her chest, drawing a moan from the woman's throat. "But this is you, Anna," she said, forcing her lips to smile. "There is no need to mourn a dying love when I have you to pleasure me, is there? I have you, don't I, even if I don't love you and never will?" Anna stretched her tongue to reach a nipple she was close to now.

"Oh yes," she said. "Oh yes, you have me, Angique. You can take me. Please do." Her lips closed around the dark nub, sucking it in.

Anna, visiting.

Could Anna heal her? Could she get her out of her funk and make her forget the unfaithful girl? Angique folded one bare leg under her as the embers of the dying hearth warmed her flesh. They were in Angique's hidden penthouse at the Club, the apartment she loved to call Villa. Winter dragged its feet, hitting the tall windows with billowing sheets of icy rain. No mosquito nets here, no desert wind to caress them. Her fingers absent-mindedly traveled downwards to comb through black, sweat-soaked hair. She felt a tongue running up and down her calves.

"Would you say you could heal me, Anna?" she asked. Dark eyes looked up, strands of saliva dripping from a half-open mouth.

"I guess I can't even hope so, Mistress," the naked woman said. "But I do hope li'l Anna pleases you." Her voice was sweetly pitched, breezy and childlike. Why did it annoy her? Anna using the word Mistress irritated her, her voice irritated her, all about her seemed to irritate her. Why would it, though? The woman was sweet beyond sweetness, greedy for every chance to please her, but the more obedient she got, the more Angique's irritation grew. It was irrational and unfair, she knew, but it was there, always there. Why?

Angique leaned down, scooping the spittle off the woman's chin and feeding it to her weak, wet mouth. Her fingers were greedily strangled, a fat tongue running all around them. How unfair indeed.

"I know why you hope to please me, Anna," she said. "You want to replace Licia; you are jealous of my love for her, aren't you? Admit it; you want that love for yourself. You are a jealous bitch." She chuckled at Anna's fierce, head-shaking denial, the panicked eyes, the pouting lips. She slapped her face hard. "Don't lie to me, bitch," she said. "Never lie because I shall always know." Anna bowed her head, staring at the rug between her kneeling legs.

"Yes, Mistress," she mumbled, touching the bruised cheek. "Thank you, Mistress." Angique sighed. The woman was like a soft pillow, taking in whatever she did to her and bouncing back. But she wasn't truly like that, was she? Not really? What was wrong with her? What was wrong with herself?

"Forgive me, honey," she said, turning up Anna's face. "It is not your fault. It never is."

***

Later on, Anna asked about the road she'd have to take to become Angique's slave. It caused another wave of unease with Angique.

"Do you really understand what you're asking, Anna?" she said, studying the woman's open, almost innocent face, prying for traces of irony, finding none. Anna nodded.

"I want to know," she said. "I'm stuck in my life; I need to follow your road for a way out."

So, Angique talked to Anna about the Journey of the Gates, like she had done with Licia and others before her. She explained the seven stages that would lead her through shame, pain and humiliation into a state of erased ego and a totally selfless existence, losing all respect and responsibility and becoming the happy property of her owner.

"Do you understand what I'm saying, Anna?" she finally asked. "It will change your life fundamentally. You will lose everything, your job, your family, your pride. Everything." Anna raised her eyes slowly, fixing them on Angique's; they were calm, dark and wide open. Then she lifted a hand and touched her forehead, right where her dark brows met.

"Mistress," she said, stretching the word. "Missstress... please believe me. I know that whatever I lose will gain me what I really need. As I surrender my mind, I will have no worries or concerns. I trust that you will give me everything I really yearn for. You, alone." Then the hand covered her eye.

"My eyes," she whispered. "They will see no other but you. From now, I have my eyes solely to adore you, and you only." The fingers traveled across her temple until they touched her ear.

"My ears are yours," she said. "They only hear your sweet words. You may command me or rebuke me, even punish me or humiliate me, my ears will only hear sweetness." Touching her mouth, Angique heard the woman's voice break with a sob.

"My... my lips," she said, almost moaning. "My lips are yours, that they shall never kiss another woman but you... unless you wish it. These lips shall address you with respect and obedience; these lips shall adorn you with words of praise and thankfulness." Then her fingers caressed her throat on their way down to her chest.

"My breasts are yours to have and to own," she said.

"My long, bronze nipples will always be aroused for your pleasure." Further down her fingers went.

"My belly," she said, "that inner being is yours." And further down she went, touching her clean-shaven slit, starting a slow rub.

"My cunt," she sighed, "shaved and always open for you to take

liberty with at all times, anytime you wish." Her fingers sped up, and when she took them from her cunt, she pulled a thread of shining moisture. Spreading her legs wider, her fingers found the tight star of her asshole.

"My ass," she said, "open and willing to be your pleasure

at all times you wish, clean and trained and ready. My entire body is yours." Sitting up, her one hand cupped her crotch, while the other went up to her chest, touching it under her left breast.

"My heart you know," she exclaimed with a sudden fierceness, "my heart has been and is always yours to have and to hold, to mold into a rich, serving slave's heart." She cried out the last words, then slumped back onto the bed, tears running from her eyes.

"And, last but not least," she whispered, "I yearn to be your girl... YOUR girl. I love you."

Stunned is a word, but it hardly explained how Angique felt. She found no words to express the overwhelming mixture of shock and embarrassment she felt. All she could do was embrace the sobbing woman and utter her name.

***

So, Anna had surprised Angique. Every word she'd used sounded genuine and deeply felt, so, why did she feel embarrassed? Should she really believe Anna to be this meek, subdued and entirely dedicated child? Her character and her past showed nothing that Angique had seen in the girls she'd trained and sold before. Nothing like the trauma's and demons was there, nothing of the crushed personalities looking for guidance. Anna was a woman of pride and intelligence, a wife, a mother for God's sake.

On the other hand, there was this dark side, strong and always lurking. Stuck, she'd said she was, wanting out. She was a sensuous creature with a wild imagination, absolutely fearless. All in all, she was a wonderfully complex and interesting person, a great friend to have. Who would risk losing such a friend to only maybe gain a struggling slave?

Should Angique doubt her own motives? Why did she so stubbornly go on distrusting Anna? Maybe, she thought, maybe I am just using her for revenge. Maybe I am just being cruel, consciously embarking her on a journey that will lead to disaster, sacrificing an innocent bystander to dissolve my frustrations and heal myself from wounds caused by a lost love. Maybe I am just causing collateral damage, as they say in the news.

Then she shrugged and muttered: "So what?

Anna, ridiculed.

Quite contrary to her usual self, Anna was out of breath, acting like a child on Christmas morning, racing through the ritual of getting undressed before crawling into Angique's penthouse apartment. She almost tore her skirt when the zipper got stuck. It left her balancing on one bare foot.

"I did it!" she gulped. "I went there and did it."

Angique looked up from her sketchbook, smiling and yet embarrassed again by this grown-up woman acting like a breathless teenager. Her eyes followed Anna's hasty hands spreading fragrant oil all over her body, turning tanned skin into glowing copper. The liquid highlights shifted with every move; gleaming darkness set off her valleys and niches.

"You did," Angique said with cool irony. "Bravo, my little daredevil." Her hands came together in a slow, mocking applause. "Now crawl over here and tell me about it." Anna's face was flushed with excitement as she settled at Angique's feet, hugging the tall leather boots.

"I drove there in my pick-up truck, totally naked as you ordered, but for the old Stetson hat and my snakeskin riding boots. Knowing where I live, you must excuse me for taking the shotgun with me, strapped to the back of the cabin, and my cousin Mary, who kept repeating how silly she thought the adventure was. But I know she is like me; she kept grinning all the way there."

Anna's breathing was still ragged when she started her story. Angique removed strands of hair from her upturned face. She felt very uncomfortable with the childish excitement of a woman she had always found mature and reserved. It was hard to imagine her driving down to a porn shop naked and aroused like a little girl in a merry go round. Angique had sent her there to buy the largest dildo they had and try it out for all clientele to see. It was a standard test to prepare a girl for the first gate, the Gate of Shame. It was just a frivolity; there would be more and harsher tests, more serious, more rewarding. Conquering shame always proved to be a stubborn key to open the first Gate of the Journey with.

"There were about five customers at the shop, all dirty old men I guess, quite confused to see me running in stark naked," Anna went on, chuckling at the memory. "The guy behind the counter was younger, though, and tough-looking; shaved skull and lots of tattoos. He took his time explaining the different types and shapes of his dildo collection, all the while assuring me that none of them could beat the "genuine stuff," as he put it, his eyes darting from my tits to my shaven cunt." Anna grinned, caressing the leather of Angique's boots.

"It sounds as if you had fun, honey," Angique said evenly, not a trace of a smile touching her lips. Anna rolled her eyes.

"Fun to tell you now maybe," she went on. "But right there I thought I'd die. The dirty shoppers formed a half-circle and they started commenting as soon as they lost their embarrassment, even cheering me on when I put up one leg to insert the plastic monster. 'Need help?' they yelled. 'Wanna feel the real thing?' You know the stuff men come up with when they have to prove they're not nervous. One or two were stroking their cocks through their pants' pockets."

"Did they scare you, Anna?" She shook her head at the question.

"No, never scared me," she said. "But then again, there always was Mary, waving the shotgun." She chuckled at the memory.

"Did you bring the dildo, honey?" Anna let go of Angique's legs and scurried to the purse that lay with her clothes. She produced a very big and very pink cock, made of a firm but supple, shining material that almost glowed. There were fat veins on its shaft and crinkly-packed balls at its base. The flaring head ended in a prominent ridge. It was ugly; it looked more monstrous than erotic.

"Show me what you showed the men, Anna, please." Anna lifted one lean, strong leg and put her foot on the arm of a chair. Then she spread the lips of her cunt and placed the bulbous head against her pink inner flesh. She slowly sank down on it, making inches of plastic disappear inside her. A soft humming sounded when she activated it.

"Look at me, Anna. Never look away." She looked at Angique, while slowly driving the monster up her cunt. A deep flush spread on her chest and her gaze wavered as the last inches disappeared. There were little spasms in her face, but her groans were not from pain. The adventure and the story telling must have left her wet; the shaft started gliding up and down easier. Angique rose, leaning in until her face was close to Anna's.

"You look like an idiot; you know that don't you, Anna?" Angique commented, her voice as cold as her eyes. "Look at you, a grown and respected woman being excited about how she fucked herself with an ugly, cheap monster dildo, standing naked in a dirty porn shop, while old men jerked off, cheering her on." Angique stood back. Anna's eyelids fluttered and her eyes turned down. Her hand stopped fucking. The dark blushes reached her face.

"But you said... I only... " she said, losing her bravado.

"Don't you stop, Anna," Angique said, towering on her heels over the naked woman. "Fuck yourself with that ridiculous thing and keep your eyes on mine." She stepped forward and lifted Anna's face. "It was easy, wasn't it, Anna?" she went on. "All good fun at a place where no one knew you. You sold it to Mary as a joke, didn't you? Maybe as a bet? It was a prank, a burlesque behind the sweet masquerade of anonymity." Angique let go of Anna's chin, gripping her throat.

"You thought you were being tested there, didn't you?" she proceeded. "But the real test is here, slut. It is here where you feel how ridiculous you are, you, a grown and intelligent woman fucking herself with a bizarre piece of vibrating plastic at the kinky orders of a much younger woman, me, a girl, really. I laugh at you, Anna. You thought the world of what you did, didn't you? It is nothing. You are pathetic." Angique spit into Anna's face.

The glob joined a tear that welled up from Anna's eye and leaked from her cheek. Now sobbing she resumed the fucking. Angique watched it; then she once more pushed her face into Anna's. Her hand squeezed the throat tighter. From the periphery of her eyes, she saw Anna's hand speeding up the fucking, a rhythm she could feel through her strangling hand. With the thumb and finger of her other hand she mangled a nipple, torturing the flesh with her nails.

"You are a stupid slut, Anna, and a really comical one at that. So, you think fucking yourself in the nude for strangers will get you through the Gate of Shame? Don't be silly, bitch, this is nothing. You'll have to show me your shamelessness where it really counts. Will you fuck yourself like this in front of your husband and children? Your family and friends? Your business associates?"

Anna's mouth opened wide, gasping for air and producing a long, wailing moan. Angique felt the spasms and knew the woman was coming hard. She opened her hand and because it had become the only prop to keep her up, Anna's body crumpled like a boneless sack, balling up on the cold, indifferent floor, convulsing with after-shocks. The banal pink dildo slid out of her cunt with a plop.

Angique looked down, wondering yet again why it all felt so wrong. She kicked the woman with the tip of her boot, then, stepping over the shaking body, she left the room.

Anna, disappointed.

The rims of Anna's eyes were red; a pale ghost seemed to live under her copper tan. Angique let her finger run around puffy half-rings under shadowy eyes.

"You look poorly today, Anna," she said softly. "Why do you neglect yourself so much, appearing before me like a wretch? Don't you care?" New tears welled up from a place that seemed to have produced quite a few of them, lately.

"I love you, Angique," Anna said, her voice thick with emotions. "But it hurts." Angique spread her leather-wrapped thighs and allowed Anna to rest her face against the insides. Her fingers started to untangle the messed-up hair.

"I told you it would," she said. "What happened, honey?"

"I... " Anna started, but her voice drowned in the quicksand of her emotions. She tried again. "I did what you told me: I showed my husband the dildo. I also showed him what I did with it at the porn shop." Angique's roaming hand stopped.

"But I never asked you to do that," she protested. Anna looked up.

"I know," she said. "But you certainly made it clear we would be going nowhere if I didn't." Angique stared at her. Then, after a long pause she said:

"How did he take it?" Anna sighed.

"He was... shocked." She rubbed her wet eyes on the leather- clad leg like a little girl and looked up again, utterly lost. "I can't say he took it well." Angique resumed the stroking. She was silent, just waiting for Anna to proceed. After a minute Anna went on. "I don't think the biggest shock for him was me driving naked to a shady porn shop. I don't even think that the description of what I did there upset him much..."

"You told him that?" Angique asked, stunned by the unexpected.

"Yes, I did. I thought I should," Anna said, her eyes staring pensively over the black, shining ridge of Angique's upper leg. "I felt greatly ashamed, but I suppose that was the point of the exercise, wasn't it? It was very hard to find the words, until I decided to just give it to him straight."

"What did he say?"

"I guess he didn't know what to say," Anna said, her hand now searching for Angique's. "Then, when I lifted my leg to repeat what I did at the shop, and started to insert the dildo, he rose and left the room." Her voice seemed to choke on her last words. "I threw the dildo away and ran after him. I begged him to forgive me, but also to understand why I did it; why I had to. Of course, he hardly listened and of course he didn't understand, but I made him sit down and told him about my dark side. I did not tell him about me wanting women, nothing about you or us, but I said I had fantasies and needs. I told him how doing shameful and taboo things arouse me. How they make me feel alive, young again and how they satisfy me. I begged him to allow me this. It was then that I realized I had made a huge mistake."

"A mistake?"

Anna's hands did an erratic butterfly dance in front of her face.

"Mistake, blunder, whatever, I don't know, but I guess it was the word "satisfy" that triggered his sudden reaction. A reaction that made me feel so very, very disappointed, Angique." The word disappointed was a twist Angique didn't see coming.

"You felt... disappointed?" she asked, puzzled. "You mean he was disappointed, surely." Anna sighed, raising her shoulders.

"No. It was I who was disappointed by him. What it all boiled down to, Angique, was that he was jealous of the size of my dildo. His ego was hurt. Me using the word "satisfy" while applying a dildo that was inches longer and thicker than his penis clearly destroyed him. All I said and did to convince him that I loved him and that it had nothing to do with him fell on deaf ears. He once again rose and left the house. I haven't seen him since." Anna sagged against Angique's legs, sobbing. Angique pulled her up and hugged her limp body.

Alarm bells should be ringing, shouldn't they, she thought. Things were getting way out of hand. She should feel things, about where she'd obviously pushed this woman - guilt, maybe? Anna had done exactly what a dedicated slave should do. So, why wasn't she proud? She should put an end to all this, she really should.

"You don't have to do this, Anna," she whispered. "Whatever you choose, it's all right. I'd love to accompany you on the Journey because I know it fulfills your needs, but you shouldn't do it when you believe the prize is too high. It might very well destroy your marriage and estrange you from your family." A sad smile cut through Anna's misery.

"I know I don't have to, Angique," she said, for a minute regaining the calm confidence of old Anna. "You don't have to tell me; it is what I've told myself all my life. It was always the others first, my husband and family, my damn career. All my life I tiptoed around this black, gaping hole inside my soul, reminding myself to look the other way. I married him when I was sixteen, had my first child at seventeen, and all the while the hole grew deeper, wider. I tried to stay away from it, but it grew and came to me instead." She chuckled, bitterly, pushing herself back a little. Angique's fingers massaged the skin of her head, extracting a sigh.

"Then I met you," she went on turning her head. Her eyes searched for Angique's, holding them. "Your green eyes rose right out of that sucking blackness, Angique. Instead of scaring me, you calmed me down. Even without words you explained it all to me. How it was all right. How it wasn't a hole at all, but just the place where my true self lived. And then you visited me with Licia."

The Villa's old clock chimed. It went unnoticed.

"It was one of the most revealing moments in my life," Anna said. "No," she went on. "Let me rephrase that. It was the most revealing moment of my life. I know you visited me to teach the girl a lesson, to test her, but I was the one being taught, it was me who felt tested. I told you how I met this other woman last year and how we stumbled on things that opened my eyes, but with you..." Her voice petered out. Then she looked up, smiling widely, allowing the child inside her to struggle through her distraught mask. "It felt like... it felt," she said, searching for words. "It was as if I walked into a storm and it tore my clothes off, but not just my clothes. It peeled me like an onion. Layer after layer was pried loose and hurled into the storm. I never felt so naked. I never felt so... right."

Angique watched the change with stunned amazement. Years seemed to drop away. She opened up like a pale, precious orchid in a deep, dark forest, flaunting its vulnerability, unabashed, unashamed. Lightness invaded her as if she might float away any minute. Almost unconsciously Angique hugged her tighter.

"You make life so easy for me, Angique," Anna whispered in her ear. "I don't ever need to be afraid again. I feel I could place all I am in your custody. I could gladly lose all I ever had and be your property." Angique smiled, looking over Anna's shoulder into an out-of-focus distance.

"Are you sure, honey?" she said. "Are you really sure?"

Anna, introduced.

Angique looked down on what seemed like a nest of snakes. They were narrow straps, braided into a harness, the supple leather waxed and polished. There were gleaming steel eyelets, buckles, studs and rings, big round ones that connected the straps; well-worn D-rings that suggested limitless applications. Before laying the harness out on the rug, Angique had taken it to her face, inhaling the leather's arousing age-old scent. Then she rubbed it with her thumbs, kissing it, remembering.

"How I envy you, Anna," she murmured, letting her eyes roam from the wide collar at the top, down to the bundle of straps that begged to be filled out with naked, intimate flesh. She picked up one of the cuffs, testing its buckled strap before putting it down again. Her fingers caressed the lovely lace tops of sheer black nylons, and the curved instep of patent leather, high-heeled platform hooves.

"Everything is ready for you, li'l Anna," she whispered, "but are you? Am I?" As if to answer her question, the door opened and Anna crept in on all fours, naked. Her hair had been tied into a ponytail; her copper skin shone with oil.

"You are right on time, honey," Angique said, smiling. She stepped aside to show the girl her wardrobe. "Let's get you into this."

***

It was still early evening, but the Salon was as busy as any weekend night. Most women were drinking and talking around the bar, but some were already dancing to canned music on an improvised dance floor.

Suddenly the music stopped. In the hush a voice resounded. "Dear God, look!" making eyes turn to the entrance of the Salon, where a crouching, almost naked creature crawled in on hands and knees. Its body shone in the warm, low candlelight, wrapped in a labyrinth of leather straps. Rings and chains dangled from it, as did her free-swinging tits. Each time one knee slid in front of the other, a veritable carillon of tiny bells chiming. Her muscles rolled with ease; her high naked ass cheeks churned and dripped with oily highlights. There were gasps and little cries of amazement as some of the guests recognized the crawling woman.

"Anna," they hissed, their hands in front of their mouths. "My God, it is Anna. What on earth is she doing?"

The name ran through their ranks, sometimes accompanied by a short explanation for the few who didn't know her. Anna had never been a frequent visitor of the Salon, but she often lounged at the poolside or the wet bar which were also part of the Club, and open to men. Anna had a longtime reputation of being a dominant, self-assured businesswoman. She was well respected and known to be a morally impeccable wife and mother. She of course had her flings; what would be the point of visiting the Club if you hadn't? But she was always extremely discreet about them, condemning anyone who blatantly flaunted their affairs, calling them sluts.

No one would even in their wildest dreams have imagined her like this. Not Anna, surely not her, but here she was, crawling naked. She dragged her oiled tits across the shining floor, shaking her ass to the score of merry chimes and ringing chains. Her wrists had been cuffed in leather, as had her ankles; whorish platform heels squeezed her feet. And from her collared throat hung a leather leash that ran between her knees to slither behind her.

The throng of women parted before her, staring, gasping. They were torn between disgust and intrigue, but totally spellbound either way. In passing, Anna's body issued a shameless cloud of cheap, whorish perfume. It was spiked with the musk of her arousal, the scent of virgin oil and ancient leather.

As the women closed their ranks behind her again, their backs turned to the entrance. That way they missed the appearance of yet another figure. It moved catlike, and as quiet as a shadow.

Angique leaned against a post of the wide-open entrance, folding her arms before her chest and chuckling. From chin to toes her body was wrapped in black kid leather, supple and tight enough to show off her body's curves. Her hair was slicked back, her green eyes dramatized by the darkest kohl, her lips shining with purple lipstick. One of her knees was over-stretched, the other one bent; the sole of her soft, flat ballet slipper rested against the paintwork. Her eyes followed the crawling woman with an unwavering gaze. One gloved fist held a braided whip, its tail coiled up in her hand.

Anna reached a low table at a corner of the Salon and crawled onto it, using it as an impromptu stage. She rose to her feet, folding her hands behind her head and pushing back her elbows. She spread her legs on her skyscraper heels and arched her back, making her tits stand out, encircled as they were by the leather straps. A bare expanse of shaven mound and shining belly undulated as she slowly churned her lower body. She looked around, taking in the stunned faces before her. Finally, her eyes found Angique, who still watched from the entrance, unnoticed.

"I am Anna," Anna said, her voice hoarse, but gaining in strength. "You know me... or at least you thought you did." She chuckled and shook her head. "But you don't really know me now, do you?" There was a smile on her face. Her hands moved from her head down her cheeks and throat to her tits, kneading the oiled flesh, making the excited nipples slip in and out between her fingers.

"Noooo," she went on, stretching the "o's" into a low and breathy sigh. "You know me as the high and mighty, girl-teaching, would-be sophisticated, uptight hypocritical know-it-all prick; and now look at me!" She moaned as she pulled out her nipples with cruel darkly painted fingernails. Her eyes never left Angique's.

"I am Angique's li'l Anna now," she went on, almost whispering with a childish inclination. "I am her slave and property. I am proud that she owns me, and I am working my naked ass off to be worthy of her trust. I hold on to her hand like a scared child as she takes me down my road to perfection, a road I have always craved to walk but never dared to." Her fingers now traced her body, down to her crotch, where they disappeared between her baby-bare cunt lips. She shivered as she went on, while fingering her clit. "I fuck and whore myself out for her, you know. I embrace the pain and humiliation she deals me and take it with a smile. I beg for it; it is my sole pleasure to please her. Today I am not ashamed to let everybody know who I am and what I ache to be. My family knows, my friends... and now, you."

Her final words echoed into a breathless silence. The last syllable stretched out and turned into a sigh as she came hard, her knees trembling. It set off a muted murmuring. Women watched each other and started talking, a few turning around, following Anna's gaze. For the first time they saw Angique, who pushed herself off the post, unrolling the long whip. It slid across the floor like an uncoiling serpent, making the women recede.

Angique never took her gaze off the group of women gathered around Anna. They showed all the signs of indignation, but Angique knew it was a healthy lust for sensation that stopped them from leaving or even protesting. They just had to see, they had to know. They were human.

Angique looked up to Anna, who was smacking her lips as she cleaned her dripping fingers.

"Get down to your position, darling," she said sweetly, collecting the whip again and walking up to the low, improvised stage. Anna lowered herself on it, going down on her elbows and raising her naked ass.

Under the tinkling of Anna's chimes and chains, the muttering of the crowd died down; all eyes were on Anna. She had turned her naked backside to the onlookers, both her hands reaching around her ass to grab the slippery cheeks and open them. Her cunt was on display, as was the tight star of her asshole. Every inch had been oiled and smoothly shaven. The leather framed her exposed flesh, as did the lace trimmings of her stockings.

"Tell them why you do this, Anna," Angique said, "a mature and sophisticated woman like you, a wife and a mother." While talking she slid the whip's handle through the gaping crack, pressing the slick knob against her clit. Anna groaned. It took her a while to answer.

"I do this because it pleases you," she then said. "Pleasuring you makes me forget the world and all its silly concerns. You make me feel nothing and everything. You make me be myself. I'm free!"

Her last words were punctuated with loud, wet slaps, as Angique painted purple handprints on her ass cheeks. Anna cried out. Only the women in front understood that she said, "thank you."

Anna, exposed.

Baby wavelets kissed the boat as it calmly parted the water. Slender and ancient houses rose from the canals' quays, left and right; trees hung their branches low, their leaves allowing sunlight to dapple the water. Then the vista widened as they reached the river. Summer was here at last, and the green riversides were full of people sunbathing, drinking and swimming.

Anna leant into Angique's embrace as they watched the city glide along in its unique splendor. They both wore thin flowery dresses and wide-brimmed sun hats. Angique had her arm around her guest's back, her fingers slowly fondling an awakening nipple on a new and very round fleshy orb that stretched the dress's fabric.

"You like my city, darling?" she asked. Anna nodded, her eyes shining bright from the dark shadow her hat cast on her face.

"It's amazing," she whispered, pushing her body deeper into Angique's embrace.

"My city needs to be seen from the water," Angique said, waving towards the bridges and houses with her free hand. "Looking up to it as we calmly glide down here takes my breath away, each and every time anew." Her hand found an opening in Anna's dress and she cupped her naked breast from the inside, feeling its new, fake firmness and the pounding heart beneath. Anna gasped and turned her face to Angique; they kissed leisurely.

"Now, please get up and undress for me, sweet Anna," Angique said, feeling the body she held stiffen. She smiled into the woman's face as it paled, the eyes widening.

"H-here?" she stammered. "Now?" Angique smiled encouragingly.

"Why not, honey?" she said. "It is such a sweet, warm day. And you are so beautiful. Don't be selfish, sweetie, my beautiful city has a right to see your new glorious tits, don't you agree?"

For a while, nothing happened; then Anna carefully rose inside the unsteady boat, her sandals searching for a safe foothold.

"I'm scared, Angique," she said. "M-mistress?" Angique chuckled; leaning in, she caressed a deeply tanned calf.

"Just do as I ask," she said with a smile. "I'll keep you from falling." Another minute went by as the summer breeze tugged at Anna's flimsy dress. Then her fingers went to the first tiny button that wasn't open already. Angique looked up, as did the young student they'd hired to navigate the boat. Angique turned to him and winked, before giving Anna her full attention again.

The first button had gone, as had the second and third. The wind blew the flowery fabric aside, exposing one impossibly round breast, crowned with a long, dark nipple. The fingers stopped.

"Please," Anna said in a very small voice. The boat just drifted now, right under a grassy quayside full of relaxing people. Some eyes turned in their direction. Angique rose too, holding on to Anna's shoulder as she leaned in until her lips touched the woman's ear.

"Remember what you promised me, bitch," she whispered. "Big words; did they mean anything? Don't let me down, girl." She slid a hand into the open top, pinching the aroused nipple. Anna winced, and five more buttons opened. "Good slut," Angique said, kissing Anna on the cheek.

The warm breeze made the dress billow, causing it to slide further off her shoulders. It was just her hand that kept it from falling down entirely. More eyes turned their way from the riverside, people making others aware of what happened on the boat that drifted past right under them. Topless sunbathing was more or less accepted but stripping in a boat must be considered quite a bit more... provoking. Angique smiled as she saw the face of their young blond captain.

"No reason to stop now, Anna," she said, loud enough to be heard by many. "You got the assets, honey, and you got the fans; don't disappoint them." Somewhere a seagull tore up the sky with its maniacal laughter. A few whistles came from the riverside as the dress finally rustled down into the well of the boat, leaving Anna naked but for her baby blue tanga panties.

"Don't be stingy, girl," Angique said. "Raise your arms above your head and show my city what I bought you." She chuckled when Anna looked daggers at her from a crimson face, but the arms went up, and she slowly turned left and right to more whistles, her high fake tits pale against her copper body, the nipples like dark eyes. Some people rose and started walking with the boat.

"Oh, sweet girl, you are such a big success already," Angique said, clapping her hands. "Now get out of those silly panties."

When you're being relentlessly pushed in a direction your mind resists, but your aroused body yearns for, there comes a moment of, let's call it short-circuiting. Living in constant conflict will wear you down; one of the two has to give, usually the mind. So, Anna just stopped thinking. Her fingers crawled down to her waist and slipped under the narrow strings of her last flimsy vestige of virtue. Rolling the fabric down her tanned thighs, she sighed, causing Angique to chuckle.

"Great, li'l slut," she whispered, kissing a calf. "Now feel how carefully we shaved your naughty cunt this morning." A last flicker of confusion washed over Anna's face, but her fingers had their own mind now. Soon they travelled up and down and inside her slit, feeling how incredibly wet she already was. Forgetting the world, she threw her head back and groaned, a wide, lustful smile brightening her face.

"Good girl, sweet filthy good girl," Angique encouraged, but Anna didn't hear it, just like she didn't hear the catcalls from the riverside, or the boat's motor, or the wavelets' gurgling. A hot cloak of bliss shut out the world, and her fingers slipped inside. She used both hands now, three fingers fucking and a thumb electrifying her clit, her other hand pulling and clawing at her new tit, mauling a nipple. Life was so good; her mind was so empty. Then she came, crying out like a seagull and flying just as high, until the air got too thin and she crumpled into the arms of Angique, her lover, her road sign, her Mistress.

Angique ran her fingers through tousled hair, kissing her toy's moist brow. "You did well, pet," she whispered. "I am so proud of you." A fluttering smile appeared on Anna's face.

"I love you," she mouthed, but Angique closed her lips with a finger.

"Now, listen, slut," Angique went on, her lips close to Anna's ear. "You had your li'l selfish pleasure, but as you can see, your performance left our blond young captain in quite a worrisome state. Look..." She raised Anna's head, making her see the guy at the helm. "You gave him quite the tent, didn't you? Wow, the boy is packing. Go ask him if you could help him out; it's all your fault after all."

Her eyes as empty as her mind, Anna rose to her knees and crawled to the boy, unconsciously rolling her ass.

"Dear sir," she lisped, her voice like a little girl's. "I am so sorry I gave you a problem." She giggled and reached for the boy's crotch, touching the bulge in his shorts. He blushed, looking left and right and then to Angique, who was his client, after all. The public stripping and the shameless masturbation had stunned him, but it had all been so surreal that he hadn't known what to do. He also was only nineteen, so there was the massive attack of hormones and whatever nature had up its sleeve to make an innocent boy go crazy. So, he froze as the wriggling fingers of one hand kneaded his raging hard on, while the other opened his fly.

"I..." was all he said. Angique rose and sat down beside him.

"Ay," she said, draping an arm around his shoulder. "I knew you'd agree." She chuckled, bringing her mouth to his ear and sending her tongue tip down it, while her hand caressed his chest. "I knew you'd love to be sucked by my world class li'l whore." The boy swallowed, his Adam's apple doing a flip.

With the last of his sane senses, he steered the boat to the shore, where a merciful growth of branches might hide them somewhat from curious onlookers, he hoped, before sinking into a swamp of hormone-ridden daymare.

While Angique hugged the scared boy, mumbling reassuring words into his ear, Anna had freed his cock, admiring its youthful rigidity, and its promising girth. All reservations had long left her dizzy mind as she licked the straining pole from its balls up to its tip in one wet go. Angique smiled as she felt him shudder in her embrace.

"Good boy," she whispered, giggling. "Now, my pet is a great li'l sucker, so, don't spill the goodies too soon, you hear?" One hand tickled the boy's neck, the other nudged her pet closer to his cock. "Take him in, Anna dear," she said. "All of it." Anna widened her mouth and slid her lips over the slippery glans and down the veined stem. The boy groaned, involuntarily raising his hips to sink deeper into the hot wet cave of this crazy woman. He felt lips strangle his cock, going up and down in an increasing rhythm, as fingers kneaded his balls. "Oh God," he mumbled, his breathy moans following the fast and faster sucking of his cock.

His eyes rolled up as his climax neared. A cool hand gripped his balls, twisting them painfully, and the urge to come faded for a minute. The sucking slut never slowed down, though, taking his cock deeper and deeper past the narrow gate of her throat, straight into heaven. Did he moan or was he sobbing; did it matter? Through the hot storm in his ears, created by his boiling blood, he hardly heard the whispering voice, chuckling and giggling. A tongue tip licked, making him crazy; a hand slipped under his thin shirt, nails pinched his stiff nipple.

Then he came, roaring, weeping. Hot spunk soared through his cock, straight down the slut's throat, on her tongue and on her obscene tits. Black dots danced before his eyes, his rasping breath almost painful. All energy seeped from his body as he sank limply into Angique's embrace. She clucked and fuzzed, praising the boy incessantly.

Anna rose from his crotch, her flushed face and chest shining with his semen. She panted, making her fake breasts rise and fall. From beyond the branches a modest applause reached them; their privacy hadn't been perfect after all.

Anna, soiled.

She heard the distant murmurs of the dinner party, laced with soft string music and the sounds of crystal glasses, china plates and silver cutlery. Every now and then there would be outbursts of laughter. All sounds were muffled, probably by the rows of coats that surrounded her. They were damp from the wet weather, their wool and fur emitting a subtle smell of swamps and rainy forests. At least, that was how they smelled before her nostrils got clogged up with the musky scent of sex, provided by numerous globs and strings of male come that covered her hair, face and naked chest. It was even running down her belly and splattering her thighs.

Anna swallowed the last traces of goo that had been deposited in her mouth. She tried to remember the first load of the evening; its taste and slimy constitution, but all she could remember was the numb shame and humiliation that remained after the shock wore off.

Angique had taken her there in a limo, as naked as she was now. The windows had been tinted, but nothing protected her from strangers' eyes after Angique pushed her out of the car and led her across a red carpet, under the awning of a well-known local hotel, and into its crowded lobby. The bare nipples on her now even bigger tits had been clamped, a set of fragile silver chains dangling between them. Similar clamps bit into her outer cunt lips, three on each side, connected with hooks to close up her shaven slit. Silver bells dangled from them, chiming sweetly after each wobbly step she took.

Her feet stood on tiptoes. They were raised by crazily heeled ballet-shoes that made it hard for her to walk at all. Mincing steps proved to be her only option, a way of walking she was not used to. Silver padlocks ensured she would not be able to get out of the cruel shoes by herself. Not that such a wish ever entered her mind; nothing entered it by then. She just floated in a steaming cloud of shame, the impossible heels pushing up her implanted ass cheeks. Her eyes were focused on the few feet of floor in front of her; her skin tingled all over with the pinpricks of embarrassment.

When they'd arrived at the wardrobe adjacent to the dining room, Angique told her to kneel down. She instructed her on her task that evening with a voice that was both sympathetic and to the point.

"Tonight, sweet slut, you will prove to be worthy," she had said. "You will be part of this wardrobe. The racks and hooks behind you will service the needs of visiting guests to get rid of their coats, your new fat lips and curvy body will serve their need to release themselves. Men will fill your mouth and throat with their hardening cocks and leave their sperm on your face and sweet fake tits. Women will ride your tongue and smear their juices over your face. If any guest decides the toilets are too far for comfort, they might use you for that as well. You will always thank them afterwards -- remember: always." Angique had lifted Anna's chin to make eye contact.

"If you have questions, li'l slut, " she'd said, smiling, "ask them now." But Anna just swallowed and said nothing. So Angique smiled and tapped her cheek softly. "Good," she said. "Make me proud tonight, honey cunt." She bent forward and kissed the girl deeply on her newly filled glossy lips. Then she patted Anna's big platinum blond extension-enhanced hair and turned to walk into the dining room. Left on her own, her heavily made-up eyes stared into the scariest future she had ever imagined.

Her first cock was attached to a fat, short man in a tuxedo. He hung his damp coat behind her and grabbed her hair, growling that she should open his fly. The unwashed, sweaty cock she fished out of his pants with her long-nailed fingers was as short and stubby as he was. After swallowing her disgust, she had no trouble taking it all in. He gushed his slimy goo straight down her throat in less than a minute, only to make way for a younger man, whose penis was almost twice as long. He grabbed her head and started fucking her face, never minding her gagging. His come covered her face and hair in ropes and globs. They were the first to adorn her in an ever-growing number of deposits. She cleaned the cock before putting it back into the man's pants. As instructed, she thanked him. He left a ten dollar note.

That was how it started and now she just knelt and waited. Her knees ached, so did her jaws. After the first five or six men she had stopped looking up for their faces. She just tried to focus on their crotches through the mist of her crusted eyes. Her hands became parts of an automaton, opening zippers and buttons, pumping cocks or licking clits. Her throat was slick; her voice had to struggle through a swamp of goo and saliva to murmur her thanks.

She remembered a woman slapping her huge tits. Men had pulled at her hair and at the cruel clamps that bit into her nipples. But most of them just used her, often having a conversation over her head. They relieved themselves, got her to clean them up and walked into the room. Dollar notes and coins started covering the floor around her.

After dinner started, the constant stream of guests petered out, but she wasn't often alone. Waiters, busboys and even the hotel's receptionist obviously knew about the big-titted wardrobe-slut and didn't want to let a free blowjob pass them by. One of the men had the largest cock Anna ever saw. But by then she had become so indifferent that she just gaped wide and let the monster shut off her breathing. The shaft slid down her throat, creating a massive bulge that traveled up and down as he fucked her like a piston. Anna lost her consciousness, hanging off the cock like a wet coat from a peg. After it came and slid out, she fell sideways, gagging and convulsing from lack of air.

But the next customer already kicked her with the tip of his brogue. She groaned and staggered to her knees, opening her mouth like a hungry little bird. The man proved to be the first of a second shift, men who, after drinking their beers and champagnes had a more urgent need to empty their bladders than their balls. Anna gulped and swallowed as hard as she could, but the yellow piss gushed from the corners of her mouth down her chest and belly, dampening the rug she knelt on.

All the coats were gone now. The umbrella stands were empty. Anna was alone, surrounded by a cloud of aroma's, smelling of sex and sweat and piss. Her hair lay plastered to her face. Her eyes were dead. Her body shivered with cold now. There was no thought left in her mind, but her big pouty lips smiled, cracking the crusts of dried slime.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Anna, tested.

So, Anna was perfect, her dedication genuine. All the ambition she once employed to succeed as a businesswoman she now used to complete the slave's Journey that Angique had reluctantly started her on. She was at the apartment as often as she could. Her husband hadn't returned, she neglected her family and had even called in sick and finally given notice to devote herself entirely to the girl she called her Mistress. It should have convinced Angique; with any other girl or woman she would have been. And yet, she wasn't. The devotion felt forced to her; a fragile façade that might shatter if only she'd find the right test.

She knew Anna was more than ready to pass the first gate, the Gate of Shame. In fact, Angique was well aware that the only obstacle was Angique herself. For sure, Anna had been more soundly tested than any of her other girls. She'd taken her everywhere. She had shown her naked, by now almost caricatural body off at parties, left her with friends to be used any way they wanted and even had her strip in the streets, offering her body to passing strangers, both male and female. She had already prepared her for the next gate, the Gate of Openings, by giving her as many cocks to suck as could be found and by having her cunt gangbanged. She made her flood her bowels with daily enemas and stretch her sphincter with ever widening plugs.

Deep down, Angique knew that she was stalling. Even deeper down she knew there was this shameful notion that, perhaps, she needed the poor woman to fail because her own heart was elsewhere.

A soft knock at the door interrupted her musings. She looked up, watching it slowly swing open to admit a naked girl. It was dark where she stood, but Angique at once recognized the cascade of black hair and the stance of the petite body.

"Licia," she said, ignoring the sudden quickening of her heart. The girl didn't move. She had obviously oiled her body, her limbs catching the reflections of the hearth's fire. "What are you doing here, girl?" Angique asked. "Last thing I saw of you was your little ass running away from me. When was that? Two months ago? Three?"

A sob broke the silence. The girl went down on her knees, crying.

"I," she said. "I... I'm sorry." Her voice drowned in a torrent of tears. Long, heartbreaking howls of misery filled the room. Angique tried to just look on, unmoved, taking a sip from her teacup. When the crying at last trickled into mere moaning and the body stopped shaking, she said: "Should I be upset now, girl, because you are so sorry once again? Should I feel pity because you make a mess of your life every other few weeks?" She put down the cup carefully and rose, walking over to the miserable creature. She touched her with the tip of her booted foot. "Tell me, should I bother, Licia, when other girls give up everything just to be with me?" The girl just hick upped. Then she raised her face, showing Angique a ruin of tears, snot and smeared make up.

"You are right; you are always right, but please, Angique," she said with a forlorn voice. "Please forgive me; I am a silly girl, always ruining the good and choosing the bad. Please forgive me for being stupid." Angique chuckled as she looked down, cleaning stray hairs out of Licia's face.

"I guess yet another lover dumped you, slut? Did she get as tired of you as I am?" New tears flooded Alicia's face. She gave no answer. Instead, she rose to her knees and hugged Angique's nylon-clad legs.

"Please," she whispered urgently. "Let me pleasure you. Let me serve you. It is all I ask. Don't send me away, please allow me to please you, at least for now." Angique rocked the girl, her fingers grabbing her hair. Then she pushed her away, making her slide on the marble tiles. Sitting down again in her chair, she shirked up her skirt, spreading her legs, so her pale thighs were exposed.

"Crawl over here, slut," she said, picking up her teacup again. "I may have some use for you after all." Alicia's hot, glowing face made her shudder when it touched her shaven crotch. The snot-slicked mouth slithered over her cunt lips, opening them. A long and very wet tongue ran its course straight up from her ass hole to her clit. The sobbing aftershocks of the girl's misery sent delicious shivers up Angique's spine.

"Good girl," she muttered, pulling Alicia's head tightly against her, humping hard, searching friction to make her climax build. "Sad, poor, stupid girl."

What happened next was no surprise for Angique. It was a surprise for Alicia though, and it sure was for the naked woman who walked into the room through the still open door, her body a riot of abundant, oil-gleaming curves. It was Anna and she stopped as if struck by lightning. Her hand went to her pink, enhanced lips as if to help find the words she could not utter. Angique looked up from her lap and smiled; a slow, wide smile that opened her face.

"Hello, my sweet bimbo honey," she said, pulling Licia's head even tighter against her gyrating cunt. "You are just in time. While this li'l whore pleases me, you might go down on your knees and lick her lovely ass." The blush on Anna's face deepened as Angique softly tapped Alicia's ass cheeks, nodding encouragingly. Then the blood drew away and left her face ashen.

"I.., we...," Anna stuttered. "I," she tried again. Angique grinned.

"No need to thank me, darling," she said. "Now kneel and lick her sweet ass."

Anna just stood, moving her head left and right as if looking for a way out. Then she stepped closer. "I..." she started again, her fingers fumbling. She sighed softly and went down on her knees, her hands touching Licia's ass cheeks. Closing her eyes, she finally put her face between the shining orbs and started licking. Licia gave off a muffled moan.

"Good girl, Anna," Angique said, pushing Licia away from her crotch. Rising, she pulled the girl up with her, leaving Anna embracing air. "Rise, Anna, and listen carefully. I have decided that from now on you'll be Licia's servant, you understand? I want you to prepare her for me so I can fuck her. Can you do that?" Anna started to sink to her knees, but Angique held her up.

"No. You are not my servant, remember? Go to Licia, kneel and beg her for the privilege of preparing her. Call her Mistress when you do." Angique saw the flash of subdued pain in Anna's eyes. It only lasted a second, but it had been there. Then the woman bowed her head and knelt before an embarrassed Alicia.

"Please, allow me to prepare you, Mistress Alicia," Anna whispered. Alicia didn't respond. She blushed.

"Give her your answer, Licia," Angique said.

"You may, Anna." The voice was a mere breath.

"Now, Anna, lift her foot on your head. Then thank her for allowing you to serve."

The stiffening of Anna's body at that command didn't last long either, but again, it was there. Then she lowered her head, face down, ass up, and took Alicia's bare foot in her hands, placing it on top of her head.

"Thank you, Mistress Alicia," she mumbled into the tiled floor, "for allowing me to be your servant." Alicia's eyes looked away in utter embarrassment.

"It... it is all right, sweetie," she stuttered.

Angique had Anna oil every inch of Alicia's body and inspect her cunt lips, the crack of her ass and her armpits for stubbles -- with her tongue. There were none. She also had her push a finger into Licia's ass hole and suck on it afterwards to see if the passage was clean. It was.

All the while Angique carefully studied Anna's reactions, noting the slight hesitations that never entirely disappeared. She was amused by the obvious unease of Alicia to be treated like a Mistress by a woman she thought way superior to her.

"Take your Mistress to the chair and fold her over its back. Then spread her legs," Angique said. Anna obeyed, exposing Alicia's bare ass and the puffed slit that showed between her thighs.

"Now lick her cunt and asshole while you rub her clit." Another fractional hesitation, then Anna started licking and her fingers disappeared between Alicia's thighs. A muffled moan rose from the chair's bottom, accompanied by the wet little noises Anna's tongue and fingers made.

"Enough, Anna. Now crawl to me and undress me."

Angique studied her flushed face at close up while Anna undressed her. The woman carefully avoided Angique's eyes. Her fingers worked fast and soon she was naked, but for her black stockings and heeled leather ankle boots.

"Get the Black Master from the chest, Anna. And the harness to fit him with." Anna returned with the huge leather dildo. She slipped the strap of the harness between Angique's legs, tightening it to make the cup press into Angique's clit.

"Suck the Master, Anna, so he will be wet enough for the cunt of your waiting little Mistress." Anna studied the fat leather cock for a second, before sliding her lips over its head.

"Deeper, Anna," Angique said, watching intently. "I want you to honor him with your gags."

Right now, Anna looked outright miserable. The big black brute made her throat bulge as she tried in vain to get it all the way in. She heaved and gagged, making her huge tits sway. A load of slimy mucus gushed from her mouth when she pulled the cock out. She coughed and retched, making even more slime gush over the dildo. The air filled with a sour stench. She crumbled to the floor, gasping, but Angique kicked her.

"Get up, slut. Put your Master in his place and lead him to your little Mistress's whoring cunt." After a second kick, Anna rose to her knees. Coughing and retching she placed the dildo in the harness. Spittle and vomit ran over her hands as she held it to lead Angique over to Alicia who waited in silence.

"Open her cunt for me, Anna, and place the Master's head at her entrance." Anna was by now sobbing. Her hands trembled as she did Angique's bidding. The black head slipped between the tight cunt lips, lacing them with foaming saliva. It made Alicia moan; a moaning that quickly turned into high-pitched wails when Angique sped up the fucking. She placed both hands on the girl's ass cheeks and rammed the leather monster in until the front of her thighs touched Alicia's backside.

"Mmmm," Angique chanted. "Mmmmm, so much tighter than yours, Anna-slut. Mmmm, good! Nice young cunt, not the loose, flabby hole you call a cunt, you pathetic plasticized whore. Oh nooooo... mmmmmm... who needs an old granny's gaping canyon when there is this sweet tight glove to milk my cock? I could forever fuck her. I don't think I'll ever use yours again. This one is soooo much better."

It didn't take Alicia long to come. Her body heaved with spasms that seemed to never end. The chair moved and groaned while the dildo slammed in and out. The knob at the back mashed Angique's clit and soon she shared her lover's delirious orgasm. Alicia cried like a bird -- high and piercing. Angique's cries were hoarser, like a predator's growl.

When at long last Angique sagged down on the spent girl, it was only the chair that held them up. Their bodies shook with ongoing shivers; their legs trembled without control.

"Oh God," Alicia stammered. "Oh God, dear God..."

When Angique finally looked up, Anna wasn't there anymore. She had left, taking her clothes. Angique sighed, burying her face in the girl's soft back. Her flat hand slapped the chair's leather.

"I knew it," she mumbled. "I knew. I knew it."

Anna, dismissed.

Angique cursed, when the heavy clouds of her orgasm lifted. She pushed Alicia away from her crotch. The girl slid out of the chair, her eyes misted over, her body shaking with after-shocks.

"So, are you glad now, slut?" she asked, angrily tearing the harness off her hips. "Was that why you came back? Is this your revenge on Anna? Did you find out that jealousy is her weakness? Or did you return so you could plunge yet another knife in my back later on?" She kicked the naked girl away from her.

Alicia didn't even wince. She crawled back to her knees and knelt in front of the angry woman. Her forehead touched the floor, forcing her to talk into the marble, which made her words hardly audible. Angique kicked her again.

"Speak louder, bitch!"

"Please, Mistress," the girl repeated, lifting her head, but keeping her eyes down. "Please, forgive me. I am a selfish and silly girl and I have acted selfish and silly. I am sorry for Anna; I would never come between you and her, but please take me back. I won't mind being a slave to you both. I found out I just can't live without you. I missed being your slave. Please forgive me."

Angique smiled without humor. Her eyes were hard.

"Forgive you?" she said, stressing the 'give.' "Why should I? And what for? Should I forgive you for being the cheat you are, for being unable to keep your promises? You are a disloyal, cheating slut looking for her own satisfaction. That's who you are and always will be, whether I forgive you or not. So, what's the use of taking you back?"

She walked away, turning her back on the sobbing girl. She went to a black, ominous chest that stood next to the fireplace and opened it. It had huge iron rings and a vaulted lid. The inside was lined with purple satin, the outside carved with French fleurs-de-lys.

When she returned, she held an ancient riding crop in her hand. Angique grabbed the girl's hair to pull up her face, forcing her throat to arch back. It rippled when the girl tried to swallow. Angique waved the crop in front of her.

"If you need to talk so much, talk to this crop, whore. Maybe it could become your Master if you beg hard enough." She teased the girl's face with the flap at the crop's tip. "Taste his tongue, bitch. Suck on it." She pushed the soft flap past the girl's teeth and onto her tongue; Alicia automatically started sucking the leather. Her eyes never left Angique's while her mouth worked on the coarseness of the dry, ancient leather. Angique pulled the dripping flap free and struck her across the face with it, raising an angry welt that made the girl cry out in pain. Angique dropped the crop in front of her.

"Pick it up and hug it close to you, bitch. It might be your only companion in here for a long time to come. Its name is Angelthorn and to you it's a he and he is your Master. You are his; you will always have him with you. His handle will be between your bare tits when you go to bed. That way his tongue will touch your clit, always, every night, whether you're alone or not. And whenever you feel you should be punished, you bring him to me and beg me to use him on you. Do you understand?"

It took the girl two seconds and three blinks of her eye lashes to slowly start nodding.

"I understand, Mistress. Thank you." Angique kicked her once more.

"No! You don't understand at all, whore!" she said, her voice ice cold. "Calling me Mistress proves you don't. You are not worthy of calling me Mistress, silly twat. You can't even talk to me; you lost that privilege. All you do from now on is talk to your new Master. You are so far below me that I would never hear your voice. Understand?" There was another kick, another bruise. Alicia winced. Her face sank to the floor. She hugged the crop, mumbling inaudible words to it, her lips touching the leather. She'd stopped crying, although her shoulders still shook. Then her voice became clearer. Sitting up, she fixed her eyes on the riding crop in her hands. It looked like praying.

"Master," she said. "Sweet Master, please tell your Mistress how sorry I am for betraying her. Please make her see that it was weakness, not evil planning. It was wrong and thoughtless and hurtful and stupid, but please, I beg you, Master, ask her to take you and punish me with you until I lose consciousness. Let her make your cruel leather break my skin and my will and teach me obedience. Please let her use you to purge my body and my treacherous mind. Please, Master? Please..."

Angique looked down on the groveling girl. Her heart was in turmoil, but her face was a mask. She gathered a mouthful of saliva and grabbed the girl's chin. Forcing her mouth open, she spat the ball of slime straight onto it. Then she turned on her heels, grabbed her coat and bag and left the apartment, trying to close her ears to the soft sobbing behind her.

Anna, hurt.

Angique never intended to go into the Salon, but while getting down the stairs to reach the Club's lobby she was confronted by Anna. She saw pain and indignation on the woman's ruined face. Angique swallowed down the returning flush of guilt, or was it shame? Anna's plastic doll's face was pale and tight with tension, making the smeared puffed-up lips stand out like a duck's. She went straight in.

"You are a cruel woman!" she cried out. "I gave you everything. I abandoned my life, my loved ones, my pride, my career, my face and my body. What gave you the right to treat me like shit?" Her voice trembled. It was half an octave higher than usual.

Angique raised a hand, hesitating. Part of her mind insisted that the woman was right to feel hurt and humiliated, wasn't she? But wasn't hurt and humiliation the very name of this game; wasn't this what the creature had even begged for? It was, and it was the way it should be. So Angique redirected her feelings of shame and guilt to Anna, blaming Anna for making her feel them in the first place. Maybe it was unjust, even ridiculous to do that, but it was what being a slave is all about. Anna had begged her to be made her property and Anna had failed. There was no way back, no reason for regret. All her feelings of sympathy evaporated; the cold Mistress reclaimed her reign. She lowered her hand and looked back at Anna, smiling an icy smile.

"Hello, Anna, would-be slave of mine," she said in a friendly voice. "I don't think I owe you an answer to that. I don't owe you anything at all, do I?" The calm remark seemed to shake Anna. But the injustice she felt blinded her too much to back off now. She went right back into attack-mode.

"You do!" she blurted out. "You owe me an explanation. Now! I won't let you leave until we talk this out. The two of us." The sheer aggression blew away the last remnants of Angique's doubts. Her mouth shaped itself into an O of mocking surprise.

"Oh my, Anna, such indignation," she said, watching the anger in the woman's face trying to force itself through months of Botox and surgery. "One might assume injustice has been done to you."

"You betrayed me!" Anna cried, hysterically. Her fat lips trembled, as did her huge tits. "After all I did for you, you had to fuck the little slut in front of me, mocking me, humiliating me. I bet you did it on purpose!" Angique just watched in silence. Tears started running down Anna's chiseled cheeks, adding new rivulets of running mascara. "I did everything for you -- everything!" she went on. "I stripped in restaurants. I masturbated in front of strangers. I sucked cock in public places. I got pissed on in public, I whored myself out on street corners, just to show you I was worthy of you. I even lost my husband and my children's respect... my job. I did everything for you!" Her voice broke with a sob. Then she shook her head and a cold gleam returned to her eyes. "All for nothing!" she cried out. "You just laughed at me and pushed me aside for a cheating slut. Was she good? Is she better than me? Are you back with her?" Anna totally forgot where she was. Her voice now filled the silence that had entered the Salon. People turned their heads; eyebrows rose; ears were pricked up.

"You betrayed me!" she cried. "You said I was yours and then you fucked the bitch and told me to suck her ass! You humiliated me in front of..." The last words were cut off by a loud slap. Angique hit Anna across the face, making her head swing sideways. A sharp hiss came from the bystanders. Anna crumbled to her knees, her hands up to ward of new blows that never came.

"Now you listen to me, you ungrateful bitch," Angique said into the breathless silence. "I repeat I owe you nothing. I warned you, didn't I? All you did you did because you yourself begged for it. And if you don't understand that, you'll never understand anything. Now, what did you want to tell me?" Anna rubbed her face with closed eyes. She shuddered, staying on her knees and saying nothing. Then she looked up. The tears had gone.

"I... I guess I failed you, Angique," she said, almost in a whisper. "I have no right to criticize you. I should have obeyed your command. I betrayed your trust. I... I let my jealousy come between us, my ego, my pride. I... I am sorry."

Angique looked down on the crushed woman, suppressing once again her doubts about judging Anna's motives. I am right, she said to herself. I must be right; I am a Mistress. I have to do this; it is the way, the only way.

"You are a jealous bitch, Anna," she said. "You let your devotion for me be clouded by your primitive envy. You let the high and mighty Anna come between little sweet Anna and me. Big Anna's morals ridiculed me, and you allowed it. Your body did everything right, Anna, but your mind failed. You learned nothing. You made a complete fool of yourself and I have no patience with fools. Now pick yourself up and leave. We are through."

Anna gasped at the last words. She cried out "No!" and fell forward to hug Angique's legs. But Angique pushed her and distracted her feet from the grasp. She turned and walked away from a defeated Anna, whose body was by now a sobbing heap at the base of the stairs. Visitors of the Salon formed a half circle around her, not sure what to do. Then a petite girl came down the steps and knelt next to Anna. Her black, curly hair fell forward, obscuring her face. The words she uttered were lost to the onlookers, but they made Anna's body stiffen.

"Please," the girl said. "I am so sorry I hurt you. I was a thoughtless bitch to come between you and her, please forgive me." A tear-streaked face rose from the floor to meet another tear-streaked face. Their eyes locked.

"Why did you?" Anna asked, her voice rising like a bubble from a bottomless swamp. Alicia shrugged.

"I tried to stay away," she said. "I really tried, but I couldn't. I am so sorry." Anna reached for Alicia's face, pushing aside the night-black curtain of hair.

"You feel it too, don't you?" she whispered. Alicia stared; then she nodded. They hugged. Then they rose and left the Salon together.

Anna, defended.

Winter would be around soon, but inside the Salon the regular visitors and their invited guests ran around half-naked. Halloween has a way of bringing the extreme out in people, just like Mardi Gras and other masked functions. Gary knew how to make the place nice and warm to allow his guests a safe evening of uninhibited exhibition. He also went out of his way to decorate the place as deliciously horrifying as one might expect for the occasion. There were candles and torches, skeletons and ghosts. There also were free drinks to quickly create a pleasant buzz.

Angique hadn't planned on celebrating Halloween. To be honest, she would have preferred to be elsewhere, but she had people to entertain. She hardly ever mixed business with visits to the Club, but tonight she'd made an exception.

Her guests loved to dress up; it was why they were good customers of hers. To be sure the dressing up wasn't just for Halloween. They were full blown transvestites, using Angique's custom made corsets to convince the world of their feminine curves.

One of them was huge, standing six feet four in daring heels. He also weighed about 250 pounds, only part of it bones and muscles. Angique dubbed him Ms. Fatty. He made her feel like an engineer when she took up the challenge to fit him with a corset the first time. Designing a good corset wasn't unlike designing Golden Gate Bridge, she thought -- you only weren't allowed to show the suspension cables.

Seeing him in drag always made her feel proud. As so many fat people, he had a certain nimbleness about him, a weird, light-footed elegance whenever he decided to become a she and lace himself into a corset.

Her other guest was tall too, but skinny. The only reason he wanted a corset was because of his waist-fetish. He'd even had two lower ribs removed to enhance the wasp-like effect. Angique mused that he could be quite a convincing mature woman if he'd forget about wanting a twenty-inch waist.

Tonight, Ms. Fatty wore a gold-embroidered green silk corset over a long, straight skirt she stretched with her ample behind. At every step a black sheer nylon clad leg peeped out from a split. The legs ended in five inch heeled, size 12 golden pumps. Her wig was a piled-up heap of platinum, her make up a riot of colors on a chalky-white base. A clever construction inside the corset's top gave her quite a convincing set of tits and cleavage. Green satin opera gloves reached past her elbows.

No one would mistake him for a woman, but his appearance was so theatrically entertaining that it pushed him way past petty doubts of gender. When he wasn't in drag, he was the CEO of an international corporation you might know from the financial pages.

Ms. Skinny had opted for the Roaring Twenties in a glittering flapper dress that did justice to her very long and quite feminine white-nylon clad legs. She wore a short auburn wig. It disappeared for the most part into a pearl-gray cloche that hooded her eyes. She walked with excellent nonchalance on her strappy vintage heels, wielding a slim cigarette holder and twirling a silver boa. No one would imagine there was a well-known concert pianist inside the outfit, world-famous for his Beethoven interpretations.

When Angique arrived with her guests, the Halloween party was already under way. She saw the usual contingent of hookers. It made her smile. For the vanilla bunch Halloween must be a safe excuse to dress like the sluts they truly are, Angique supposed.

One of the first hookers she saw was Aura. She sported hardly more than fishnet stockings, a garter belt and a silk red top that fought a losing battle with her spilling tits.

"Hi, Aura," she said, smiling. "Such a pity you decided not to dress up for Halloween this year."

Lee was Count Dracula, of course, just adding a cape to her usual black suit -- and an extension to her teeth. She didn't need much either, Angique thought, to look the part.

Angique introduced her guests to the people she knew, amused by their confused reactions. The Salon was a female-only place and although they all knew that Ms. Fatty and Ms. Skinny weren't female, they were at a loss about what to do. This was Halloween, wasn't it, and they were all in a kind of drag. Angique didn't help by explaining that her "lady friends" had come dressed as transvestites. Betsey was the only one grinning at that. But then again, Betsey had come dressed like a man.

The evening went smoothly. Angique relaxed after noting how easily the crowd accepted her guests. They got more and more popular when they proved to be great dancers as well as fashion lovers and hilarious gossips. Ms. Skinny was the center of high-pitched praise while playing and singing a number of Noel Coward songs. Angique grinned when she watched her climb the stairs with two very young girls, both scantily dressed as kinky Goth elves. She withdrew to the bar, sipping champagne and chatting with friends. They of course all wanted to know who the two might be, but she just told them they were "friends and business associates" -- which they were, in a sense.

It must have been an hour later when Angique felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked around, straight into Alicia's eyes, or rather, the girl's dark eyebrows as she was looking down. Alicia was naked; there wasn't a stitch on her body. In both hands she clasped the black stem of a leather riding crop, its handle snugly hidden between her tits. The flap pointed down, touching the top of her slit.

"Hello Alicia," Angique said, turning on her stool towards her. "You wear a remarkable costume this year, honey cunt. Who are you supposed to be?" People stepped back to make room for the naked girl. They murmured, being too surprised to say much, for the moment. Alicia blushed, dark blotches spreading on her chest and throat. Then she sank down on her knees, addressing Angique's knees.

"I am my Master's slave," she said, her voice slightly slurred. She stretched her hands forward to present the crop resting on her open palms. "I beg my Master to tell you I need to be punished." Angique picked up the crop and swished it through the air.

"Angelthorn," she said, swishing it again. Then her eyes returned to Alicia. "Look up, girl," she went on. "I need to see your eyes." The girl obeyed. Her eyes were dry but shining. "Why would you need to be punished, slut?" Angique asked. The word sent a murmur through the small crowd that had formed around them. Alicia's eyes went down again. The girl must be confused whom to address, the crop or her. "You may talk to me," she whispered.

"Because..., " Alicia started, but Angique slapped the crop's flap hard on the bar.

"Your eyes, slut! I don't see them," she said. Alicia jumped. Her eyes flew back up.

"Because I am a cheater and a traitor, Madam. May I call you Madam at least?" Angique ignored her question.

"Who did you betray, cunt?" she asked. The girl's eyelashes fluttered, and she swallowed a non-existent lump.

"You, Madam, I betrayed you," she said. "And I betrayed a sweet sister of mine. You know her, she loves you." Angique sat up straighter. She gathered her thoughts, tapping the palm of her hand with the crop's flap.

"Kneel up, slut," she then said, softly. "Push your tits out." The girl obeyed. Her chest gleamed with oil; her nipples rose in a circle of goose bumps.

The flap hit the oblong areola of the left tit, making the girl wince and groan. But she pushed her chest out again and said: "Thank you, Master." Angique hit the right nipple, but when she prepared to strike again, a hand closed around her arm. Two women dressed like hookers, pulled at her arm, trying to wrestle the crop away from her. Two others, one looking like Count Dracula, grabbed the naked girl and dragged her away. Alicia's voice cried out "No!" but they never stopped, taking her up the stairs.

Anna, revealed.

The place was packed with people. Some sat, but most ran in and out buying coffee in tall containers -- coffee with odd flavors and spices, chocolate, milk and sugar. Or they stood at high tables and counters, talking while they guzzled down their brew. They weren't drinking coffee, Angique thought, they were having shots of caffeine.

She sat at the back of the room in leather club chairs, a low table before her. Anna had invited her to talk at this downtown coffeeshop. It was her lunch break; she worked in the same block at a new job, she'd said. Angique wondered what job it might be.

The woman entering was spectacular, sporting a wavy riot of big platinum hair. A white blouse hugged her huge, wobbly chest, a short skirt tightly embraced her impressive hips. She wore very high heels that turned her gait into a rolling affair. Her tight, shiny face held a frozen smile as she came closer, recognizing Angique. Her lips were glossy red and puffy, her dark, long-lashed eyes were cast in exaggerated make-up. Angique rose.

"Anna," she said. "Is that really...? Why?" Anna's smile widened.

"Why still this?" she said, long-taloned fingers pushing a white shining curl behind her ear. "I guess because I decided this is me." She leant in, spreading an overly sweet cloud of perfume. "It makes my life so much easier." They air-kissed and sat down, Anna crossing her long, tanned legs, pulling at the hem of her skirt. She raised a hand and ordered coffee, then looked at Angique with wide open eyes, never losing her plastic smile.

"This won't work, Anna," Angique said when the silence got too long. The smile didn't yield.

"I know," Anna said. "It is not why I asked you to see me, though. I am quite happy with my life now, you know; so much simpler. But I still have this... nagging feeling I have to apologize." Their coffees came, causing a pause. Then Anna said she was sorry and felt ashamed of her silly pride and jealousy that had destroyed what they had. She sounded contrite, using a voice that contrasted sharply with the voice Angique remembered. It was light and innocent, a girl's voice, or rather, a Hollywood starlet's voice. Angique cut her off when she started repeating herself.

"Why, Anna?" she said. "Why invite me almost half a year later to tell me you feel ashamed? I assume you think it means something to me. Why should it? And if so -- what could it possibly mean?" Angique sipped her espresso. Its taste reminded her that Italy was far away. She stopped Anna's reaction with a raised hand before going on. "Why exactly would you tell me you feel ashamed, honey? Is it because you want me to know you didn't live up to your own standard? That could very well be, you are a proud woman. Or maybe it was because you failed my standard?" Angique smiled. "Anyway," she went on. "I guess you blame yourself for not having been as strong as you always thought you were. You were weak and that worried you. You never saw yourself as weak, did you?" Anna slowly nodded, her long-lashed eyes down.

"Yes, Angique. I disappointed you," she said. "And I disappointed myself. I thought I was stronger. It was a bitter lesson; it still is." She shrugged, making her tits do things to her blouse. Smiling as sadly as her face allowed, she strangled her cup with garish-nailed fingers. Angique looked around the room and to the street outside.

"These are precious insights, Anna," she said. "They may help you become a better person. I don't know if that is a goal of yours, becoming better. I always find it rather abstract, as a goal." She leant forward. "You see, honey," she went on, "I don't know a single person who ever really changed, be it for better or worse. I would not advise you to try, Anna. It might end up being just a lot of work and no results. It might even become another source of disappointment and shame."

There was silence; it wasn't a comfortable one. At last Anna settled her gaze on Angique.

"I have come here to ask you to forgive me and take me back," she said. Her eyes already drifted away again before she reached the end of her sentence. Angique emptied her cup.

"That's another word you often use, Anna -- forgiveness," she said, carefully keeping sarcasm out of her voice. "I have been rather familiar with that word over the last years. I have forgiven Alicia at least four times." She chuckled. "But I guess that doesn't prove that I am a forgiving person. It only proves that she cheated a lot, and that I was besotted with the little bitch, of course. I still am, I fear." She chuckled again, rather bitterly this time. Then she reached out for Anna's hand, caressing its back.

"Sweet Anna," she said. "I have to disappoint you yet again. You see, my bad experience with forgiving has left me pretty calloused. So, please don't count on it. The little bitch finally succeeded in making me a cynic, you know, and cynics are wounded romantics, as you may have heard." Angique paused, smiling sadly. "It might take me quite some time to heal," she concluded, patting the hand. "Too much time, I fear."

Anna protested. There were tears in her eyes; they sparkled like jewels against the blackness of her mascara.

"I have made mistakes," she said with a thick voice. "And you have every reason to be disappointed in me. But the things you talk about are Alicia's doing. What she did can't be added to my faults, can it? I have been weak, but I never did what I did on purpose. I never sought to hurt you."

Angique's hand let go of Anna's. She watched the woman in silence, a silence she allowed to thicken until it dangled like an invisible sword over Anna's head, swinging from an unraveling thread.

"Stop it, Anna," she said at last. "It's no use lying anymore. I know what you did; what you're doing." She studied the woman's reaction. First, she noticed surprise; then the automatic urge to protest; then surrender.

"The little bitch told you," Anna said.

"Of course, she did, Anna," Angique responded. "She has no choice. But if she hadn't, you would have, maybe even today. You would have needed to tell me; it was your revenge, wasn't it? I humiliated you too much and too often, so I had to feel the pain too." Anna looked away, blushing through her ample foundation, but Angique didn't let her off the hook. "You ask me to forgive and to forget," she went on. "Those are noble concepts, Anna. But did you ever consider them for yourself? You hurt me and you knew very well what you were doing. You knew about my history with Alicia. I confessed my deep love for her to you. We even discussed what to do. So, you knew how vulnerable I was. Still, you had to do it. Not once, but for months. I bet you fucked her while I was around, maybe on the same days you begged me to forgive you. You crawled to me with her taste on your tongue, using that very tongue to tell me how much you loved me and how sorry you were. Tell me, Anna, did you fuck her today? Do you plan on doing her tonight?"

Anna didn't answer. She also didn't get up or run off. She just sat, staring.

"Congratulations, it worked, "Angique said. "I am hurt, don't worry." Her voice was a whisper hardly audible over the lunch hour's racket. "You hit bull's eye, but even now I can understand you; your need for revenge after I tested your jealousy, humiliating you into serving the slut I preferred over you, praising her younger body while denigrating yours. Believe me, Anna, I understand. I could even forgive you, because I have been the cause of your grief. But you never stopped at that, did you?"

Anna's eyes ceased their drifting off as Angique ended summing up the causes of her pain. A hard look replaced the softness of contrite surrender she had shown up till then. It didn't go unnoticed by Angique, whose mouth thinned into a line, her eyes narrowing.

"This is just another game, isn't it, Anna?" she said, sitting up straighter. "You set up this meeting to tell me. You planned to crow over me like the frustrated little would be cocklette you really are. In the end you are just the same ego-driven fuck as all these girls that fill the seedy rooms at the Club. When the little bitch told me she had been "intimate" with you all the time, I did not get the impression you intended to stop anytime soon. I know she begged you to dominate her, be her Mistress and your ugly heart started racing. Wow, imagine you replacing me as her Mistress! Revenge complete." Angique swallowed hard before continuing, never leaving Anna's eyes alone.

"You are a pitiful, revenge-ridden creature, Anna, a jealous monster. I once worried if I might lose a friend if I gave in to your wish to be trained as my slave. You never were a friend, though, Anna, were you? You were always your own friend. Even sitting here, begging to be forgiven, you plan to go on. Well, let me rob you of your dream, honey. The girl ridiculed your efforts as a Mistress. She dumped you. Then she handed me another bunch of her worthless sorries, soaked them in tears, and ran."

A new and different Anna emerged when Angique ended her bitter diatribe of accusations. A smile stuck to her bimbo face, but it was a frozen rose in a field of ice.

"You can't claim her," she hissed. "You can't plant a flag. This is the Club, you know? Don't be silly about loving her; the girl is for the taking. She doesn't know about love if it bit her in her whorish ass. She just wants to fuck and forget; she doesn't give a shit."

Now it was Angique who stared speechless, waiting for Anna to go on, and she did.

"You really hurt me, Angique," she said. "And in the end, I am only human too. I couldn't live with the thought that you'd always prefer the little cheating slut over me, whatever I did for you, whatever I gave up. She fucks anyone who wants her. She betrays you without a thought and laughs behind your back because you stammer your precious love for her. You have to know that Angique, I had to show you. You don't know her. I do! I was entirely devoted to you, but you had to have her and ridicule me while you fucked her."

Anna wept. The frozen rose melted; the ice field cracked. Angique once more reached out for the lonely, powerless hand on the table.

"You may be right, Anna," she said, squeezing the hand. "And I may be wrong, but I lost the courage. I won't be this pathetic fool all over again. Not with the slut, not with you. Honey, I may sound cold and distant; believe me, that was never I. But I feel so terribly betrayed, all through this horrible year. I remember what we had, fondly. And I know that maybe I should give us another try. I also know that maybe I sell you short when I compare you to Alicia. I might even be mistaken in distrusting you, but where can I find proof of the contrary? Where can I even find the energy to look for it?" There was utter helplessness in Angique's eyes, finding its mirror in Anna's.

"Believe me, Anna," Angique whispered. "There is no one in this world wishing more to be wrong than I do. I am very sorry things went like they did, but it was unavoidable. You see, Anna, if your jealousy was the only flaw, I might keep you and try to help you; I would even have taken part of the blame for your betrayal. But there is more, isn't there? Things have been fundamentally wrong from the start." Angique took a deep breath before going on.

"The real question is: who's Anna?" she said. "How many Anna's are there? There is the proud businesswoman. She can't be subdued, however thoroughly I changed the package." Angique's hand indicated the woman in front of her. "She will always lurk in the background and suddenly pop up to lecture me sternly." Angique smiled. "There also is li'l Anna, the sweet would-be sub, always ready to tell me how much she loves and adores her Mistress while at the same time big Anna plays the domme with Alicia, manipulating the silly girl to help you getting back into my good graces." Anna cringed but kept silent.

"Once," Angique went on, "once there was even Anna the little sub trying so very hard to prove she could be my slave, modifying her body at each of my whims, sucking every cock I made her take, until she was really tested. That's when she suddenly turned into stern Anna and planned her revenge."

Angique sat straighter in her chair.

"So, who am I talking to right now? You tell me. What tone should I use? Should I be the dominant Mistress, or the so much younger girl accepting a wise and older woman's advice? Or am I allowed the hurt tone of a woman cheated upon? Could I trust my friend Anna? Or should I mistrust the friend who stabbed me in the back? Who's Anna?" Angique's voice had risen and the name Anna lingered in the air.

"Who's Anna?" she repeated. "Not an easy question at all. Especially since her opinions seem to shift as well. One moment she warns me against the girl she knows I love by painting her black and calling her a thrill seeker who's only in it for the fuck. Then suddenly she defends her and tells me I am treating her unjustly. Who's Anna?"

New tears filled Anna's eyes. Her fat, shining lips trembled, but she kept silent. Angique leaned in, once more reaching for the woman's hands.

"Is she the sweet poetic Songbird?" she asked. "Or the bitter rival, the hardnosed career girl, the horse taming Amazon? I don't know. Is she Licia's or is she mine? Is she the toe-kissing slave or the good Christian mother, maybe? I don't know. She might be a crypto lesbian in the straight corset of marital convention. Or the wildly fantasizing spirit that roams the rooms at the Club. Who's Anna? You tell me."

She knew Anna couldn't tell her and to be true she didn't expect an answer. All had been said and, more importantly, all had been done. Watching the wildly bimbofied, once strong, proud woman cry gave her no satisfaction. She pulled up the cold, limp hands and kissed them.

"You must forgive me, Anna," she said. "I should never have tempted you by giving in to your reckless wish. I should have known we would fail. When I made you serve Licia, and prepare her for me, knowing how it would devastate you, I already regretted what I did. It started a downward spiral that in the end destroyed all trust between us. And you know that if you tear up a fabric as delicate as trust, it is gone. Some things are unique, Anna. They can't be replaced."

Angique rose. So did Anna. The kiss was short, but the hug lingered. For once, the noise around them sank into silence.

The End.