INTRODUCTION

 
Her feet weaken, and the manacles tighten on her wrists as if they are alive. She watches a rivulet of sweat run down between her full breasts and pool in her navel.
Don't show him you're afraid! That's what he wants.
She tries to calm her breathing. It sounds loud in the room's eerie silence. She feels her ribs straining against her skin, her abs tightening. Despite her resolve, a low moan escapes her lips. A wave of rage passes through her mind and she yanks furiously at her bonds. The links in the overhead chain click together taunting her.
Smarten up, her mind screams! He wants you to come apart, to lose it. Don't...
She forces a crooked smile as if she's still enjoying the game.
It's a mistake...
He raises the paddle and steps behind.
"Wait, please, no, wait..."
Is he really going to... Terrified, she clutches her muscles raising magnificent dimples in her ass cheeks. A blinding flash of white light explodes in her head and she screams with pain disguised as indignant outrage. The chain links click furiously, laughing at her sudden pride.
She twists her body trying to throw off the burn. A moment more and she opens her eyes; the burn is gone replaced by a tingling reminder of its effect.
He's watching her, assessing her reactions. Their eyes meet, and he smiles pleasantly. It's the same handsome, stupid grin she found so enthralling all evening.
"The rules are different here in the dungeon, Margot. You want to play by the rules, don't you?"
The dungeon...
"It just another room," he had explained, "like 'the bathroom,' the bedroom,' the library.'...
"I know, it's a bit Medieval and dramatic to say, 'the dungeon,' but what else would you call a room designed for bondage and pain? 'Dungeon' fits, don't you think? I thought about calling it the playroom, but that seems awfully disrespectful to those who suffer here. This is not play, it's reality, don't you think?"
She trains her eyes on him and tries 'the voice.'
"Let me down, Logan," she orders sternly. "This is unacceptable."
It sounds false coming from someone so beautiful, so vulnerable.
He runs the back of his hand over the crest of her ripe tit lingering on her nipple. She can feel his hair. She shudders involuntarily. There is no escape, no pardon for her without his agreement, she realizes suddenly. She feels stupid again; she agreed to this.
Her mind races to find the right combination of words, the right plea. Logan is no brute, no common sadist. He's a gentleman, someone she can reason with, someone...
A ball gag suddenly appears in his hand.
"No, please ... don't."
The thought of losing her voice is more terrifying than the paddle. He waits patiently holding her nose. She opens her lips to breathe and he pushes the rubber inside, keeping on the pressure until it's deep. The ball stretches her jaw and traps her tongue. He pushes it in and it touches her uvula; she gags and her eyes water with tears. Her inability to communicate, to reason with him is scary. Expertly, he gathers her hair and lifts it off her neck then he reaches behind and straps it in place.
She watches his eyes through the operation searching for the savage lust she sees at The Bayou. It's not there, only a quiet resolve and a controlled excitement. She finds the look in his eyes more intimidating.
"Your fear is the catalyst," he whispers. "It what we need to break through."
To break through...?
There's confusion in her eyes. She breathes hard through her nose and around the gag trying to calm her runaway emotions. He kneels and wraps a belt twice around her ankles then runs his hand admiringly over the arch in her pointed foot.
"Fear, pain, and helplessness...," he says quietly as he rises. "They are working on your mind now, stripping away your defenses, your disguises. People think they know themselves; they don't, there's another person inside you hiding behind your walls. We'll get her to peek out tonight."
Her eyes widen, and her breathing quickens. Is he a madman? She shakes her head trembling like a trapped animal. What has she done...!
He pulls slowly on a chain and her body lifts another inch; she needs to stretch her legs and arch her feet to get her toes on the ground. Saliva spurts over the gag propelled by the forced air from her lungs. She can feel her thighs and calves hardening creating muscle lines and shadows on her skin. Long hours of stretching at the Bayou have given her well-defined calves. She sees herself in her mind's eye as if she was looking into a mirror; she knows the effect of the suspension; it's lifting her tits, rounding and hardening her ass, pushing out her hard nipples and her swollen mound. These things are going to spur his lust. The stretching is stripping her a second time.
"Your body is amazing like this," he whispers. "I need to sit back a few minutes and appreciate it."
He's serious. He backs to a leather sofa, pours himself a drink, and sits then he studies her. His eyes move admiringly from her long coltish legs up to her cunt onto her tits then settle on her face. He shows no reaction, he says nothing; there's no need--she knows the effect her body has on men.
"Beautiful girls are not used to surrendering," he says quietly, sipping. "Rich or poor, people adore and cater to them; soon, they forget their place. This fosters the mistaken belief that they are always in control."
She is listening closely, focusing on every word. Rather than dull her, the aching pain of her suspension has sharpened her mind. She finds this surprising.
"Believe me, it's true especially for a gorgeous mulatto like you."
How dare...? She bristles at the implication of his words and her nostrils flare angrily. He's not deterred.
"A girl like you needs the adulation of white men; it counters their prejudice, their unfair rejection. The problem is, it makes you uppity. A white girl can get away with being a little uppity, but not someone like you, not in the South."
She glares at him. She doesn't like anyone calling her a mulatto. It means mixed breed. In the South, there's a specific word for every generation of mulatto. Rednecks have made color into a science. Logan finishes his drink and stands close, running calming hands down her bare sides, along her flanks. Incredibly, she feels the tension in her body easing under his touch.
"It's time, Margot. You ready...?"
She opens her dark eyes wide and shakes her head violently even while knowing his question was rhetoric. He ignores her protests as he steps to the far wall.
"This obviously is my whip collection. Let me explain what I've got here.
"These are the canes. I prefer the natural bamboo and rattan. Their sharpness can take your breath away although the pain dissipates quickly. We'll leave these for another time."
He steps to the side to reveal more of the wall.
"These are my straps and paddles. I favor the barber's strop and the leather paddle. This is what I used to get you attention before."
His voice fades off as if he's in thought then it returns.
"Pain focuses the mind, you know. Tell me the truth; have you ever paid such close attention to a man before?"
She shakes her head again, twisting her body in angry protest. He waits for her to calm.
It's true--she never has paid such close attention. It's as if he was holding a cocked revolver between her eyes--nothing else matters, nothing else exists. His voice resounds again in her mind.
"...Paddles burn a large area of skin, but again, like the cane, the pain is short lived. For targeted pain, you want to use a crop or a quirt. They are the most precise instruments."
He takes another step to the right to reveal the crops.
"The best overall tool for pain, however, in my opinion, is still the classic whip. For someone new like you, I prefer a flogger." He takes one off the wall and hefts it respectfully. "In the right hands, this beauty can make a girl cry and cum for an entire evening. It's magical..."
He touches the long strands, stroking them then he moves to her front and flicks them the ends playfully against her bare skin. She twists away from their gentle touch; there's a new fear in the pit of her stomach. He smiles knowingly.
"It's not just the fear of pain that makes you afraid of this, Margot, it's your instinct. Men have been whipping women since the beginning of time. After a while, they developed a fear of the whip, like fire, and passed it on. After a thousand generations, it became an instinct." He looked up at her. "Tell me you don't feel it in your gut."
She straightened her body refusing to answer. She did have a fear in her belly, but it wasn't instinctual, it was logic. His flogger could hurt her.
"I have a good feeling about you, Margot. I could be wrong, but I sense the slave in you. I can smell it coming off your skin. It sounds demeaning, but believe me, there is nothing more precious in the world than a beautiful girl who is a natural slave."
She glares at him again, angry; this maniac called her 'a slave.' She's nobody's fucking slave!
He steps back and shakes out the whip's tails. Instantly, her anger changes to terror. She shakes her head wildly and her toes dance a frantic tattoo trying to move back out of range. She hyperventilates and flares trying to draw enough air in through her nose to satisfy her growing panic.
He waits patiently until she calms then strikes.
She stiffens but doesn't scream; the relative lack of pain caught her by surprise. Is this it? The timidity of his strokes is welcome and ... disappointing. That's understandable she tells herself; after this buildup, she expected more. He strikes again and again and again. The whip hurts more with each stroke, but not with the ferocity she expected. She begins to relax--it's just a game for him. There's nothing to worry about here. He's just a playboy having fun at her expense.
"Your back and your legs are red or as red as they are going to get with your complexion. The blood dissipates the pain," he explains. "It's important. We can begin now."
The words had hardly registered when the next stroke lands. It sends a blast of raw agony shooting into her brain. She tries to scream, but the only sound she can manage is a great gurgle of air and drool. He strikes again, waits a moment then continues. It's as if she's caught in a river of molten lava, the pain is indescribable. She hears his voice faintly in the distance.
"The pain is causing a huge surge of chemicals... I think you're ready."
Ready...?
The whipping begins again with redoubled ferocity; she starts to zone out, losing awareness, retreating into...
Suddenly, something hard is inside her and her cunt is vibrating with an intensity she has never known. The orgasm is sudden and fierce, arching her body like a bow. Her mind retreats and all thoughts and feelings disappear; she is alone and naked in a world of endless light.
Her contractions come with blinding intensity. Her back and legs are on fire; her arms hurt. She stares out with unseeing eyes and feels as if she is floating, unable to regain her feet. Her fatigue is total. Her first conscious thought is a profound awe and relief that it's over...
...But it's not.
The whipping begins again spurring her to a new round of gurgled screams. Her body reignites from the pain like a smoldering fire. A second orgasm brings on a new, even stronger pattern of explosive contractions. The agony and the ecstasy continue.
She returns slowly feeling strangely satiated. She has no idea how many times he's whipped her and made her cum. So this is what orgasm is all about, she thinks, realizing that this is her first. She suspected that it was more than she had felt, but never knew for sure. Now she knows ... this is her first.
Another aftershock pushes all thought out of her mind and she shudders dreaming of strong arms carrying her...
She awakes not knowing where she is or how she got here, but she doesn't feel afraid. On the contrary, she feels strangely content and misinterprets the feeling as relief that it's finally over. She is naked, lying on an incredibly soft bed, in a room fit for a princess. She lies still, luxuriating in the bed's warmth and comfort. Finally, she turns her legs out and sits up. Someone has left a bathrobe and an elegant set of street clothes folded neatly on a nearby chair.
Logan...? Where is he? She imagined waking naked beside him.
There's an envelope on the night table. Inside are 50 one-hundred-dollar bills. She feels hurt and disappointed but takes the money.
A man, his chauffeur James waits in the hallway and stands when she walks out.
"James, Miss," he says without emotion or explanation. "I will be happy to drive you home."
She smiles politely and follows him out.

Chapter 1

Morgan City, Louisiana was a town of twelve thousand--7,500 whites, 4,000 blacks, and 500 others. People always laughed that "MC was too big to be a small town and too small to be a real city." This was the standard line for anyone who wanted to leave, which was just about everyone. The town's largest and only industry was growing and packing Louisiana youngberry, a successful competitor of the California loganberry. It was hard, dirty work in a place so hot and so humid that it rotted the brain ... according to some. This was usually where conversations ended in MC--people didn't have much more to talk about than the miserable weather and leaving.

Margot Lee Delaunay was born in Morgan City, the only child of Jackie Lee Delaunay and Charlotte Baker Delaunay. Jackie was a distant cousin of Robert E. Lee. He was the foreman of the local youngberry packing plant.

Charlotte had no family other than her long-dead maternal grandmother. She was a stunningly beauty, way out of Jackie's class. People commented on it all the time then knowingly assumed she was with him because of "her color." She was a light-skinned mulatto which normally would have precluded any marriage, but as everyone knew, Jackie had been born ornery and stubborn.

They had met in a New Orleans cabaret where she was dancing. After a night of steamy sex and a liquid breakfast, Jackie had proposed marriage and she accepted. To his credit, he remembered the proposal when he was sober, married her, and took her back with him to Morgan City. The white community and his family rejected her of course; no decent person tolerated a mixed marriage in Morgan City.

As his momma said, "Are you fucking stupid, Jackie, to bring a dark girl like her here? She is too damn white to be Black and too damn black to be White. You and your drinking are going to ruin all of us. Smarten up...! This is Morgan City not some Yankee toilet. Get your head straight, boy."

People speculated at the time that if the old lady had not riled him with her insults, he would have sent Charlotte packing. Instead, he walked out and never returned. Mulatto or not, Charlotte was the best-looking woman and the best fuck in Morgan City. What did he care what his ignorant family thought? Charlotte didn't care that much either; she had a thick skin, hardened by years of dancing in front of drunken men. Charlotte thought the family might relent when Margot was born, but her smoky complexion put the kybosh on that idea.

Over the course of a confusing childhood, Margot developed the same hard shell as her mother. It became tougher and thicker each time a classmate or their parents rejected her for being "colored." She didn't understand; aside from being a shade darker, she looked like them. It didn't matter, no matter how many drops, she had black blood in here. Over time, she became a loner and a little standoffish, which in the South people called "uppity" when you were black.

Eventually, no one in the Jackie Delaunay family had much interest in getting close to their neighbors. Although it made things uncomfortable at times, it wasn't a big deal. They could have lived the way forever it wasn't for the aneurism in Jackie's heart. One minute, he was alive screaming orders at his redneck crew; the next, he was dead, lying in the sticky youngberry waste on the juice-room floor.

Overnight, Charlotte and Margot were poor. Jackie, like most people in Morgan City, lived paycheck-to-paycheck; when his heart exploded, the money stopped. In most situations like this, Southerners could count of their neighbors for help, but the surviving Delaunays were outcasts, spurned by blacks and whites. For the next year, they lived on charity from the local parish.

Charlotte's growing desperation made a lasting impression on young Margot. Eventually, she made the decision that they had to return to the New Orleans' cabaret scene to survive. "It won't be easy," she told Margot, "but it's necessary for us to survive." Ten-year-old Margot didn't understand much of what she was saying, only that the men in New Orleans would pay good money to see her mother, still a smoldering knockout, dance in skimpy clothes.

The day before they were to leave, Mr. Jackson Forrester, the owner of the local youngberry packing plant where Jackie used to work, knocked on their door.

"Let me get right to the point, Charlotte," he said abruptly over iced tea. "I'm a widower as you might know," (His wife had died of mysterious causes two years before.) "And I've admired you from afar, respectfully, since Jackie brought you here to Morgan City. You have great beauty and great courage and. Well, I'd like to call on you if you'd allow."

Charlotte was shocked. She had no idea Mr. Forrester "admired" her any more than the other Morgan City men who leered at her.

"Margot and I are leaving tomorrow, Mr. Forrester. I have a job lined up in New Orleans."

Forester nodded; he knew. It was clear that her imminent departure had spurred this visit.

"I will make it worth your while to stay, Charlotte."

He reached into his pocket and produced a cash roll then peeled two one-hundred dollar bills off the top. Charlotte smiled at his rough ways then sat for a minute thinking.

"I, ah, I can hold off for a week. I have a job lined up and Margot's supposed to start school there..."

"That'll be more than enough time," Forrester said quickly, grinning back at her.

Over the next week, Charlotte embraced his advance like a dying man grabbing for a life preserver. She had no desire to return to the seedy, dog-eat-dog streets of the French Quarter. She had thought Jackie was her way out of that life, now Forrester might be her way out.

They married the following week.

The union, which everyone knew was driven by carnal desire, sent shock waves through the white Christian community. Jackson Forrester, like Jackie Delaunay, ignored them. He had lusted for Charlotte from the day Jackie brought her to town and, like him, he wasn't going to lose the unique beauty to a few wagging tongues.

In the beginning, the marriage had all the earmarks of "romance conquering racial prejudice," but it was nothing of the kind. Jackson was no saint, In fact, he was a closet sadist and, as it turned out, an incestuous pedophile. No one was ever able to prove it, but he had driven his first wife to drink. It was a scandal and when she fell down the stairs to her death, everyone assumed drinking was responsible. In any case, her early grave left Jackson free to pursue whoever he wanted. He chose charlotte.

Charlotte, determined to make the marriage work, endured his mental and physical abuse for five long years. Margot watched everything, but at her mother's urging, remained quiet. Men were pigs, she said, nursing her bruises, but we need pigs. The abuse on charlotte only subsided when Margot's youthful, sexy body began to mature.

Margot, who had watched her mother endure Jackson's tyranny, stayed quiet even as his touching and leering intensified. It was subtle at first--shoulder rubs, hand holding, long creepy glances--but got worse over time. Charlotte noticed everything but stayed quiet--they all needed to make compromises to survive.
Margot accepted this. She understood that sacrifice was necessary especially for a mulatto and her daughter living in the finest house in town. However, as Jackson's lust increased, cracks developed in their relationship. When Jackson finally stumbled on her "accidently" in the bath and insisted on sponging down her naked body, Margot had had enough.
The confrontation that followed was ugly even by Southern standards. Margot, now 18 and scheduled to attend college in the Fall, threatened to go to the police, the state police if necessary to avoid Jackson's political friends. She insisted that he pay for her to live in the dorm even though the school was nearby.
Jackson, incensed by her demands, refused to pay claiming the added expense was an unnecessary waste of money, that she could live at home. He argued that her mother had spoiled her rotten, that she was an ingrate who just imagined the filthy accusations she was spouting. This went on for a long time until he used the word "uppity"--a well-understood derogation of black people. Margot turned in rage and frustration to her mother for help.
To her shock, Charlotte sided with her husband.
They spent the next week arguing, trying to negotiate one compromise after another, but there was no hiding the truth--Charlotte had betrayed her. As much as she tried to rationalize her mother's actions, it always came down to the same ugly truth--Charlotte was not willing to give up the easy life they had with Jackson, and she was willing to pay for that easy life with Margot's sexual cooperation.
Margot couldn't live with this.
Not that she valued her hymen so much--she had lost her virginity months before to a local boy who had the good sense to treat her kindly. Not that she skived Jackson's touch so much--she had developed her mother's tough skin after years of bullying in school. Not that she objected to the evil quid pro quo arrangement he demanded. None of these things would have driven her away. It was the idea of submitting to such an inadequate and flawed man that finally pushed her over the edge.
That night, she packed and quietly slipped out of the house into the humid Louisiana night. The bus trip to New Orleans gave her time to think; she was 18, smart, beautiful, independent, and penniless. She knew her mother expected her to come crawling back when her money ran out, but she was wrong. She could survive on her own especially if she was willing to accept the harsh reality of a single woman living alone in a big city. College was out; she had enough money for a week in a fleabag hotel. After that, she would starve if she didn't find work.
FUCK HER, fuck them both! Her anger flared once more then subsided. People are always going to fucking disappoint you, she whispered to her image in the window, deal with it.
Deal with it...
There was only one acceptable choice for her. Her mother had given her good looks and the image of smoldering sexuality. She needed to use these now to survive and New Orleans was just the place to do it.