Wild Game

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

She is the river I swim n.

It is a weirdly idyllic moment. I stand naked in the sun, perched on a low cliff by the river’s edge, staring down at the curling black water. The climb was difficult. Sharp stones stabbed my soles and tore loose from the bedrock to roll underfoot. I am sweating and slightly out of breath. That takes care of the easy part. I think ironically.

I look back toward the beach, a sand bar that the river has deposited where it bends. She is lying there on an old blanket, shading her eyes with a strong brown hand, admiring me, I hope, but I know she didn’t command me to climb up here just to see how I look posed on the horizon. This is another one of her games, another test of my resolve.

I am Crystal. I was Chrissy a lifetime ago, when acquiring baubles was my sacred mission, and promiscuity was my grand quest. Now I serve a higher cause—amusing her. Crystal is the name she gave me. I have been re-christened . Pardon the pun. You might say that now I am her bauble.

I wonder for the thousandth time where I would be if we had never met. Decorating the deck of some rich boy’s yacht probably, or finding creative ways to spend Daddy’s bundle. I never loved anyone when I was growing up, only the pleasure men could bring me. Dr. Helen Cornell changed all that. I entered her service naked and humble. She keeps me that way most of the time. I gave her my body to improve my GPA, but she took my heart and mind as well.

And my soul.

“Attention!” she commands. I snap smartly into position, clapping my hands to the back of my neck and spreading my legs. From a hundred feet away, she isn’t likely to perform the intimate inspection that this posture solicits. There isn’t an inch of me that she doesn’t already know by heart anyway. She only wants my surrender made visible. She told me once in a moment of weakness that she still doesn’t believe she really possesses me. Constant proof is required.

I remember the day I told Daddy. He wasn’t exactly happy for us. Finding out that his pride and joy is a dyke was bad enough, but the news that I was moving in with a lowly professor was insult after injury. I think he sensed something new in me, though, a sense of purpose, a determination to commit to something for a change. Then again, maybe it helped when he found out Dr. Cornell had plenty of her own loot.

He visits us now and then. I dress demurely for the occasion, and Mistress is properly charming. When he is around, she carefully avoids any butch behavior. Even though she is a widow, she hasn’t forgotten how to flatter a man. Though he isn’t in complete denial about us, Daddy dear doesn’t have a clue about the true nature of our relationship. He doesn’t know that his car is barely out of sight before she orders me to strip and present.

When I am at attention, I am not supposed to look at her, but at this distance she really can’t tell where my eyes are. I throw another furtive glance in her direction. She reclines on the blanket, tan and gorgeous in white Lycra. Her eyes are masked behind prescription sunglasses. (The better to see you, my dear.) Even at this distance I recognize the calculating grin that always makes me wet. It would be easy to let her long legs and tight brown tummy distract me, but the vase beside her draws my gaze.

Sometimes I wonder if her cruelty is the real glamour of my enchantment

“Pick a bouquet for me.”

My shoulders twitched when she spoke that command, and she laughed at the unspoken plea in the glance I threw her way. We both knew she wasn’t asking me to gather flowers.

The willow tree was behind me, about a hundred feet away, a mournful monster that had been hulking at the river’s edge for decades. Its tendrils swept nearly to the water as the breeze stirred them. After one quick look, I had spent the rest of the morning deliberately not looking at it.

Mistress had, though. Leaning back against the trunk of a fallen tree, propped on her elbows with a glass of iced tea in her hand, she had thrown back her head to take in the full height of the thing. Conversation lagged as her contemplation became all too obvious. I tried to come up with topics to divert her, but her answers turned to monosyllables and goose bumps started crawling over me in spite of the heat.

It didn’t help that I had marched to the picnic spot ahead of her wearing nothing but my collar. We had traveled perhaps a mile downstream from her Summerhouse, a secluded estate in the middle of a great forest. I knew her eyes had been on my ass as I plodded along with the ice chest bumping my thigh and the blanket tucked under my other arm. I wasn’t even comforted when she stripped to her bikini as I spread the blanket by the river’s edge. No one was likely to see us here. Dr. Cornell owned both sides of the river for a couple of miles, and her nearest neighbor spent most of his time back in the city. She had seen me in my entirety many times before, of course. It wasn’t embarrassment that my nudity inspired, but an acute awareness of all that utterly unprotected skin. I felt very bare.

Her raised eyebrow was the only warning I needed. She had delivered a command, not a suggestion. Hesitation was a misdemeanor. Protest would be a felony.

Yes, Mistress.” I worked very hard not to let my voice betray how unhappy I was with the whole idea.

As I rose from my genuflection and stood, she sipped her iced tea, studying me for signs of impertinence. Then she flipped open the cooler with her free hand and felt around until she found the vase and offered it to me. The hand I extended to take it from her was shaking a little.

“You’ll need these, too.” She handed me a pair of garden snips.

I accepted them ruefully, realizing that she had planned this whole thing, even to letting me believe that it was only a whim. Doubtless she had been wet with anticipation as she slipped these items into the cooler this morning. I knew that I was in for a hard time. Premeditation always makes her cruel.

“Put some water in the vase first,” she said. “It will keep them fresh.”

I could feel her studying the parts I displayed when I crouched in the shallows to dip the vase. My bottom was pink and pristine as a newborn’s. She had been neglecting that part of me lately. No doubt she was fixing the image in her memory for later review—before and after. It wouldn’t have surprised me to hear the click and whir of her camera.

The water was icy around my feet. The white peaks shimmering in the distance told me why. Glacial melt feeds this river.

I knew better than to ask her how many wands I was expected to cut. If the vase wasn’t overflowing, my hedging would be apparent, and she would probably find a bucket for me to fill instead. She has used willow wands before. They are effective, but not durable. She can shred a dozen of them warming up.

I carried the vase to the tree and started snipping, trying not to dither too much about thickness and length. The thicker ones are stiffer and heavier, more like school canes. The good news is that the area of impact is comparatively small. The bad news is that the force is greater. The slender ones wrap, though. The tip can really bite curling around hip and thigh.

I knelt to present the vase, looking down. Normally she doesn’t mind if I look at her. As a matter of fact, she usually prefers making love face to face. Sometimes she orders me to look into her eyes while she works lube into me, opening me with a finger, two fingers, three, observing the parade of my emotions and physical responses, grinning while I stiffen and gasp. She leaves me squirming on her bed with a pillow under my ass to raise it while she selects a shaft from her collection, invariably choosing one that makes me gnaw my lip.

Now I averted my eyes because it never hurts to show respect, and because reading my fear might whet her appetite. She thanked me sweetly for the gift, and set it aside for the time being. Anticipation is always a part of her rituals. She drank iced tea and ate melon balls. She popped melon balls into my mouth when I begged for them, and shared sips of tea, giggling when it dribbled down my chin. I tittered in unison with her, my eyes darting occasionally to the vase. The command I was anticipating was not the one she finally gave. She removed my leather collar and placed it on the blanket beside her.

“Do you see that boulder over there?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Climb up on top of it.”

She has been moody and unpredictable all morning. That bothers me, because I can usually read her emotions better than my own. Today I can’t imagine what is troubling her. So here I am, greeting the dawn like some Maxfield Parrish nymph as I attend her next whim. She plays arcane games with cryptic rules. I am not expected to understand, only to abide.

The river’s voice is deep and cold.