Puppet On A String

Chapter Three-1

Chapter Three

The night of her capture and incarceration, Shelby Ryan lay on a cot in a dark room, in an unknown location. For a long time sleep eluded her. Still wearing the dress, the crotch piece and the thigh bands, her body could not relax; her fear was just too great. While waiting for dawn to come, she prayed that when the sun rose, she’d be rescued from this awful nightmare. With the same breath, however, she knew there’d be no rescue.

As hours slipped by in the uneasy darkness, her mind drifted back ten years to the first time her life had been so irrevocably changed. The events that began that extraordinary time were much less dramatic than the swift change that had just taken place…

“I’m Mr. Darcy, your employer,” the man spoke in a low monotone. He sat behind a large ebony desk, while stood before him. “I suppose you saw my name and immediately thought of that fairytale gentleman of English literature. You can see plainly by my looks that I have few attributes in common with that pretty boy. I’m neither pretty nor a boy. Then again we do share a healthy degree of pride.”

About that he was quite right. A bold and craggy face, deep-set eyes, bushy brows, a hard expression; these features did not describe a handsome man. And yet, there was an energy about him that was intensely alarming. was shaken from the moment she laid eyes on him. She felt it in her gut; a huge burning sensation grew from there and spread outward, all the way to her limbs. She trembled nervously before him, unsure what to do – although the thought of fleeing the scene had certainly crossed her mind. Still, despite the tattered nerves and alarming fear, wildly erotic sensations were moving quickly through her body and she could simply not budge.

She held her ground. Probably as much in fear as determination. This was a lot for a nineteen year old innocent to handle, but she was determined to do her best. Mr. Darcy’s job offer was something to cheer after a long string of disappointing interviews.

“Let me be quite clear, Ms. Ryan,” he looked down at the paper on his desk, “, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve been chosen for this job because you scored high in our qualifying examination. The exam was intended to weed out aggressive, overachieving females with any sort of penchant for domination or control. What I need for this position is a woman capable of loyalty, discretion and a high degree of integrity, who is otherwise submissive in disposition, willing to do as she’s told without question.

“And you’re young. I like that. I like the woman who works so closely at my side to be moldable, something easier to accomplish with a younger woman who may still be unsure about themselves. I assure you, that at this point in time, with what you have told me in your application and the qualifying exam, I know you far better than you know yourself. I know your mind, your heart, even your s****l inclinations.”

’s eyes widened but she made no reply to that remark.

“See,” he attempted to smile. “A more assertive woman would have objected to that last statement. But you did not. A lack of response is appropriate for your naturally submissive disposition. We are going to get along just fine…”

Only in the days ahead would she realize just how true that statement was.

***

was stripped of the thigh-irons and hateful waist and crotch belts. Though the tattoo was going nowhere, at least she had the dress and her brown boots. Some semblance of normalcy, she wryly thought. Yet, the cell into which she’d been roughly thrown was as cold as the interrogation room in , and not nearly as comfortable. All she had now was the bare floor and the cold walls, and her crazed mind. If it weren’t for the water dripping somewhere nearby there’d have been no sound at all. A quiet so deep as to drive one crazy.

’s eyes were closed when an unfamiliar noise suddenly jerked her body awake. Then the sound of boots striding across the concrete floor, the turn of the key, the clang of the door. She looked up to see a striking male figure in riding jodhpurs and a tan work shirt. In his fist, a leather strap. Her s*x went suddenly wild over an image straight from her past, from dreams and nightmares created in another place and time.

The man stood over her for a long while, gazing down expressionless. When he kicked her with the toe of his boot, she scrambled to her knees and he backed off.

“I’m Col. Jessup.”

She’d already guessed as much. Some things you know without having them spelled out.

“You tell me now what I want to know,” he spoke in perfect American English. Tough as a cowboy kind of American, certainly not the kind of man she had expected. “It’s your last chance to avoid a lot of pain.”

“I wish I knew what to tell you but there’s nothing, I swear! You have to believe me, you have to!” She looked up at him through desperate eyes. “I thought the was music, nothing else. I swear to you, you have to believe me…”

“I don’t have to believe a thing,” he cut her off, and grabbing her by the arm, he jerked her to her feet. His free hand was raised about to strike. Even without it connecting with her left cheek, she could feel her flesh burn hot. One good look at Col. Jessup and she knew exactly where the terrifying moment would lead. She’d met this man before, not in the flesh, but in her nightmares many times.

He pushed her away, then strode before her menacingly, eyes hard and firm, his chin sporting a day’s growth of beard. Across his right cheek was a small scar. He was hardly taller than , but his build was muscled and fierce, a man not given to kindness or pleasantries.

“So you don’t want to talk. You want to keep up your lie. That is fine with me. My job is to torture females who refuse to cooperate.” could see a smile forming at his lips. “Being sadistic by nature, I’m very good at my job. In fact, I love my work. Right now it’s just you and me. I’m more than happy to work on you all night if that’s what it takes to break you.”

“Sir, please, I’m begging you,” she dropped to her knees and clung to his booted feet.

He kicked her away.

“Grueter!” He barked into the dungeon air and a young man in a grey uniform appeared. He was a much less rugged man than Col. Jessup, more polished like the well-trained guard at the airport.

“String her up by the wrists!”

While Grueter swiftly moved in and grabbed for ’s wrists, Jessup stood by watching. The cell had been previously fitted for torture with eyes bolts cemented into a number of places along the concrete walls, and an apparatus for suspension ready to pull down from the ceiling. Straps and hooks and two sets of heavy cuffs all attached to pulleys in an ominous array.

shuddered, but she did not resist as the young Grueter lifted each wrist and secured it into a thick cuff. Then moving to a set of controls on the wall, he hoisted her until she was standing on tiptoe.

“Stop!” Jessup snapped. “You can leave us be now. But stay close should I need you.”

“Yes, sir,” he said with an officious nod to the Colonel. Then his boots clicked sharply as he left the cell.

Before could get her bearings, Jessup flashed a knife before her face. “Oh, gawd, please, no!” she whimpered.

“Just going to cut off the dress so I can have a clear target when I whip you. I’ll start with twenty lashes, then see if you’re interested in talking after that.”

It was only a matter of time before the dress would go; had been certain of that. And yet, she mourned the loss of decency and the dress’s scant protection. Naked but for the boots she could feel Jessup’s callous eyes burning into her body like lasers, tearing her skin to shreds long before the first cut of the lash.

He used a wide leather strap like a flaming sword. Hardly before she could catch her breath the first twenty had blazed across her naked back leaving a swath of hurt that made her entire body burn.

“Please no!” she screamed, twisting inside the cuffs to no avail.

A moment later, a slap to her cheek and she opened her eyes on Jessup’s cruel face.

“Anything you’d like to say?”

“I can’t tell you what I do not know,” her plea was heartfelt and sincere, but he wasn’t budging from his stance.

He backed off, “Well see if forty will do what twenty could not.”

Col. Jessup moved around to her back side and began again, delivering the blows with skill that comes from plenty of practice. As he worked, his body felt a cruel satisfaction from the activity; the longer he laid on the hefty sentence, the more he relished the feelings generated by each measured strike.

The forty lashes dug in deeper. For a long while Jessup refused to change his aim, but then once her back was scorched with rising welts, he gave her some reprieve, dropping his aim to her thighs and calves until those places suffered as painfully.

“Oh, God, no! No! No!” she repeated again and again, her vicious cry rising up to fill the cell with sound.

She thrashed in angry rebuke, twisting and turning so violently that the lashing clipped her sides, even her belly when she turned nearly 180 degrees.

Jessup was right on that. “Enough!” He moved forward and stilled her with his hand.

Then moving to the winch that worked the pulleys, he raised ’s body above the concrete floor. The strain pulled her shoulder muscles until she thought they might jerk from their sockets. “I’d suggest you exercise a little restraint if you want to stay in one piece,” he taunted her, his breath hot against her ear.

Her body heat rose with his awesome display of savagery.

“This will kill me!” she shouted.

“Oh, I doubt that.” He remained amused by her anguish.

Another twenty lashes came down against her back, then he moved to her front side and stared into her frightened eyes.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Please, have some mercy.”

“Mercy,” he chortled. “You expect me to be merciful. I’ve told you who I am, don’t doubt that, Ms. Ryan.”

Facing her with brutal determination, he picked up another, shorter strap and began to whip the tender skin of her thrust-out breasts.

“Yeeeeeeeeawwwwwwwww! Nonono!” Unable to control her physical response, she jerked erratically despite his warning, while her screams bounced off the walls, reverberating through the entire prison.

Lowering his aim to her belly and thighs produced the same anguished response from his helpless victim.

When finally the whipping stopped, Jessup moved to the side of the room and lowered her feet back to the ground. But he was on her again seconds later, snapping two clamps on her reddened n*****s. From the clamps he dangled heavy weights. He then picked up a Billy club and began to work the head of it at the opening of her p***y.

“Well, I see you’re not dry,” he sneered.

He pushed a little and the head of the club moved inside the slickened space of her v****a.

“You’re making this too easy,” he taunted. “Maybe you like this too much. Is that is, Ms. Ryan?”

“No, you’re wrong.”

“Really?” He observed her with a careful eye. “What I think is that you are a real masochist. Could that be true?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t take me for a fool.” He jerked down on the n****e clamps to hear a genuine whimper, then a frightful shriek when she felt a whip s***h against her back. Grueter had returned to the cell. “Maybe the bullwhip will make you talk,” Jessup proposed.

“No!” she shrieked again.

Using the Billy club to f**k her cunt, Jessup quickly tore away her fear and forced her down a road of masochistic gratification. Her twisted mind worked against her. She wanted to scream to make him stop, to make Grueter end the painful whipping, but the strange pleasure centering in her love hole turned any screaming into condemning moans. Her chest heaved with lust, as did her entire turned-on crotch.

“We got a real live one here, boys.”