Something else clicked into place at that point: the reason he had really from the moment Will told him that he should be patient with Maud rejected the advice and delayed breaking up with her partly to make sure that he could do it gently and partly to humor Will. Only a fool thinks he's always right, he knew — though David tended to be right more often, it seemed to him, than most people. Now he knew that indeed his opinion had held the essential truth about Maud: David didn't have the power to show her how badly she needed to submit to him.
After all, David Ross couldn't force Maud to come to some chateau in Connecticut on Valentine's Day. He couldn't have her boyfriend waiting upstairs, watching on a video monitor as Maud turned around desperately and tried the locked door behind her. He couldn't force the issue that appeared so clearly in Maud's face as, still trying the doorknob she turned to look at the girls behind her: her hope of escaping the preparation she could see she must receive, between her thighs, for the things that she, like David, could only assume awaited her tonight, there in her eyes right alongside her craving for those same things.
Before this moment, David would have assumed that no one could do that, but apparently he had yet again underestimated Will Garland.
The girl in the pink panties continued waxing Mandy as if Maud were not trying to flee, until at last Maud gave up on the door and turned back around as if to see whether this lovely bathroom had another exit. With Maud, David noticed an enormous claw-footed tub in the corner from which he saw steam rising, and a mirror that ran the length of one wall, and — next to the mirrored wall at a right angle from it — a rack upon which hung a marvelous panoply of the sort of lingerie Maud never wore.
At that point, whether because Mandy's pussy and bottom-crack were now entirely smooth and bare — which David could see they were — or because the girl on the stool could sense that Maud's reactions had reached some proper stage for it, she said, casually and still without turning, "Mandy here had to have her clothes taken off for her. I'd ask her to tell you what happened then, but unfortunately she made too much noise, and the attendant had to put her panties in her mouth, as you can see. Do you want to have to taste your panties, Maud? Whenever a girl gets a panty-gag here, we make sure that the part that's wet goes right on her tongue, to teach her that she must learn not to refuse her master's commands, no matter how shameful."
Maud shook her head wildly, her back against the door and her hands clenched in front of her chest. She had apparently taken off her winter coat for the drive to Connecticut, and then not thought to fetch it from the car when she got out here at the chateau: she wore her usual work outfit, which David always found incredibly cute and even hot, in a sort of fucking-the-secretary way: a gray knee-length skirt and a white silk blouse, with a string of pearls. On her legs, David knew, she wore pantyhose over the modest gray boy-short panties he rather liked though, if she had obeyed him on either of the occasions he had offered to dominated her, he would in short order have required her also often to wear the sort of lacy thong he really preferred. On the rack by the mirror in this bathroom, he saw with a little thrill that went straight to his cock, hung several of those thongs.
"Mandy's lacy panties were soaking," continued the girl on the stool calmly and inexorably. "Come see, Maud." Then, to David's delight, she began gently to rub the pussy she had just bared. "There you go, Mandy," she murmured. "See how nice it feels to be bare down here, the way your master likes?"
Little whimpers came from Mandy, around the panty-gag, and she closed her eyes as if she couldn't bear to look at Maud on the other side of the room. For her part, Maud had taken what seemed a nearly involuntary step forward, and her eyes did seem fixed on what the red-headed, pink-pantied girl did with her fingers, cooing gently all the while to the girl for whose preparation she clearly had responsibility.
Chapter Five
Tribunal
The door of David's bedroom opened, and Will walked in. He wore, to David's surprise, a black robe, belted at the waist, like a dressing gown but somehow of a more official cut. He also wore a Cheshire-Cat grin.
"Sorry to make you wait, man," he said. "Society business, you know."
"Society?" David asked.
The grin widened. "Welcome to the Secret Society of Saint Valentine," Will said. "The strangest, most awesome non-governmental organization you never heard of before." He glanced at the video monitor, and David followed his eyes to see that Maud, with her lower lip between her teeth, had come even closer to the little tableau of the now-moaning Mandy and the redheaded girl in the pink panties, the strange chair and the stool.
"Do you want Alice to teach Maud to eat pussy?" Will asked abruptly. "They'd probably have to whip her first, but I'm telling you, the first time you see your girlfriend kiss another girl's cunt because you said she had to, it's like…" He made an explosion gesture in front of his midriff.
David cleared his throat. The image of Maud on her knees, with the marks of a whip upon her creamy, perfect bottom, made to do the shameful thing between the thighs of a girl she had never seen, made to smell another girl's arousal and use her mouth to please a pussy, had gotten him terribly hard. But Will had a tendency to move things ahead less deliberately than David's analytic mind liked.
"Hold on, Will," he said. "First things first, please. Let's talk about whether I need to call the police."
Will laughed. "Alright," he said. "Just so you know, the video feed is being recorded, so you'll be able to watch everything later, if you have to miss something because of your boring tendency to figure stuff out. And you'll want to watch it all with Maud on her knees in front of you, of course, once you get home tomorrow."
David shook his head to try to clear it of yet another image so arousing it threatened to make a mockery of his analytic ability. The movie camera clicked on, but the images on it seemed so outlandish that he found it hard to make the slightest sense of them. He glanced again at the screen. To his astonishment, Maud had started to unbutton her blouse, her eyes troubled but still fixed on the two other girls. The pink-pantied girl — Alice, Will had called her — said, "That's enough, Mandy. We've got to get you dressed and into the chamber of discipline. The white lace set on the end of the rack is for you." She started to unfasten the velcro straps that bound Mandy to the chair.
At the words chamber of discipline, a shudder had seemed to go through Maud. Her eyes went to the rack: behind the white lace bra-and-panty set hung a black one that David could see immediately would look stunning on her.
He shook his head again, and returned his attention to Will. "So tell me why whatever this is isn't kidnapping and, as seems likely to be about to occur in one way or another, assault."
Will's face became as serious as it ever could, which wasn't all that serious because his eyebrows always seemed on the verge of going waggishly upward. "Have you heard Maud ask to go?"
"What about the girl in the chair?" David demanded.
"When Alice takes Mandy's panties out of her mouth, I promise she won't scream or yell. Mandy Parker will go into her disciplinary hearing like the good girl she wants to be for her master. Just like Maud came here like a good girl despite getting a paddling last night from Officer Liam Miller of the Boston Police and this good society."
"What?" David's mind went back to the strange way Maud had said she would come over and then changed her mind.
"Why don't we watch that now?" Will said. He picked up a remote from the table under the wall-mounted monitor. "What Liam said to Maud will probably help you understand. Also, there's this." From the pocket of his robe, he produced a card that looked like a wedding invitation.
David read, and watched, in silence. The video Will called up with a few button-presses seemed an edit of shots from Officer Miller's body-camera and the cameras in the supposed police station. When he saw the paddle for the first time, David had to clear his throat and fold his arms over his chest, but otherwise he managed to keep his gaze stony through all the amazing shots of Maud's beautiful bottom, in the gray boy-shorts, writhing under the stern correction meted out by the police officer.
The video ended. David turned to Will, anger rising in his chest. "I need to say that I'm not thrilled that you, and your friends, took it upon yourself to do that."
"Of course not," Will said, actually looking grave for the very first time in David's experience. "It's never fun for a dominant to see someone else punish his girl — unless of course he's specifically arranged it, in which case, let me tell you, it's awesome." The solemn expression departed for a moment, replaced by an impish grin, which in turn vanished as he clearly saw David's failure to be amused. "But I know you're too honest to deny that you were going to break up with her."
"That's not an excuse!" David said, losing his calm just a little bit.