Puppet On A String (12 page)

      
The women sighed again, “So,
Shelby
, Victor will be along shortly to get you ready for tonight. And please,” her brow furrowed as if she were perplexed, “do put a little sweetness into your expression. You’ve looked like nothing but a dour urchin since you’ve been here. Certainly we’re a far cry better than that grimy detention facility the Colonel runs. Here, my whores can’t afford to wear their emotions on their sleeves. So whatever feelings of gloom and doom you might be entertaining because fate has led you to me, rid yourself of them now. If you enjoy sex at all, you might even enjoy the night. There are no injunctions against a few good orgasms, so why not indulge yourself? Most of the men are clean and well kept. Not those rugged-smelling brutes you normally find. I’m very particular about my whores and my clients, which makes my brothel one of the finest in
Eastern Europe
. I think you’ll find it a rather pleasant place.” Her attempt at a smile was strained but reasonably genuine. And then her glib speech was over.

      
For one brief moment the bizarre thought flashed through
Shelby
’s mind that she was in the presence of a country club wife arranging a cocktail party. Weird, how the mind twists itself in extreme circumstances such as these. Only after Madame Pavlenco left and Shelby shook herself back to reality did she let that crazy thought go.

      
As far as
Shelby
could tell, the Madame of the house was quite sane, alarmingly sane in fact. Everything else was just a show, intended to throw the rest of her world off guard so that she could remain in control. For God’s sake the
woman even spelled it out in plain, and, yes, very articulate
English. Who could argue with that? If she hadn’t feared her so much,
Shelby
might have admired her cunning.

Of course, there was Eugenia still huddled in the corner of the cell. Her white shift had ridden up so that
Shelby
could see the marks from her beating, savage welts that would take days to heal. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, until
Shelby
’s staring eyes penetrated her somnambulant stupor and the girl awoke.

      
“Oh, damn! My pussy aches!” Eugenia sat up, grimacing. Suddenly wide awake, she launched into an amazing monologue. “You know the way she stretched my labia? She likes to do that, she likes to make it hurt like hell. She’s teaching me to absorb the pain. I’ll bet that you didn’t know that she attached the weights to my inner labia, did you? Not the outer ones. That’s what everyone would think. Those
 
wouldn’t have hurt at all. No, it’s the inner ones that arouse her, that caught her fancy because mine are so naturally pronounced. She says she’s only enhancing what God has already given me. She’ll stretch them out until they are dangling between my outer lips, until they are red and swollen, signaling my sexual ripeness, my fertility.” Eugenia laughed for a moment before being reduced to tears again. “Isn’t that ironic. I’m not fertile at all. That was taken from me…” her sad voice drifted and she gazed down at her bruised knees, picking at the skin in a disturbing way. Then her face transformed again, and she looked up with a lighter expression, speaking wistfully. “Sometimes I think she’s making me into a freak. She does that, you know. Turns us into freaks, when it suits her. Watch your back, Shelby Ryan, make sure you watch your back. I was once a little American girl from
Maine
.
Maine
, what a nice sound that has, firm, steady. It’s a very sober place, but not nearly as sober as Madame’s Pavlenco’s house.”

      
Shelby
shivered from the base of her spine to her fingertips. The warning from Eugenia’s lips might have been so much nonsense, just like much of what she said. But in that instant, the redheaded girl was brutally honest. As sane as
Shelby
would ever know her to be. And her warnings were not ones that she would take lightly.

For nearly three days
Shelby
was on call in the house as resident whore. Because she was new, all the regulars had to try her out. They took turns, rolled dice to see who had the right to initiate her as a prostitute, then rolled the dice again to see who had her next.

      
In a few hours, once word got around that there was a sexy American in the brothel, a fight nearly broke out.
Shelby
was huddled on the sidelines, her eyes wide with fear as the men tussled with each other, trading barbs in a foreign tongue.

      
Suddenly, Madame Pavlenco appeared on the scene in the common room, hands on hips and a withering smile on her red-painted mouth. The room fell silent and the fight immediately stopped, four petrified men shaking off their anger, knowing what would come of it should they continue.

      
Madame looked at
Shelby
. “You’re the cause of this. On the table!” she ordered tersely.

Once the champagne glasses were swept away,
Shelby
mounted a small cocktail table with the help of a vigilant Victor. Balance proved difficult since she was wearing high heels along with the slinky red dress. But when she was about to stumble back against Victor, Madame rifled a reproving grimace her way. “Deal with this, Ms. Ryan. Don’t make me have to take out my anger on your lovely body.”

      
“Yes, ma’am,” and
Shelby
stood up straight as an arrow, finding a focal point on which to focus her attention. A few seconds ticked by and she almost relaxed.

      
“So,” a more pleasant Madame Pavlenco gazed at her minions, “you want her, you’ll have to bid for her services. Let’s start with a thousand, you’re all good for twice that, so don’t complain.”

      
Until that point,
Shelby
had not been naked the entire four hours she’d been working the floor. The men that took her were too anxious to make her strip. Twice in her cunt and three blow-jobs; Madame was right, whoring was easy in this place, and at least so far she was enjoying a honeymoon with the brothel customers; one to enjoy while it lasted. No, she didn’t particularly want to be giving up her body for cash, but there were worse things.

      
For the auction, however,
Shelby
was in the Madame’s hands and the woman planned to make a show of it.

      
“I think a little strip-tease, what do you think?” Madame Pavlenco turned to the crowd.
      
Shouts, catcalls and whistles followed.
Shelby
had only to think of the girly bars at home…Mr. Darcy had taken her there once. Ironic now.

      
With a fresh burst of confidence and buoyed by a sudden change in background music to something that was decidedly more erotic,
Shelby
began to move as she’d been ordered, slowly at first, but not faltering in the slightest. She could see the lust in the men’s eyes, their momentary adoration of her sex. She knew that adoration would falter once she became just another girl in Madame’s whorehouse. But for now, that didn’t bother her. Her body fed off their attention, her lust on their lust. What had been difficult in her past, the blatant exposure of her body to strangers was easy for her now, her inhibitions tossed away in a place where having inhibitions mattered to no one, and for her, could be a definite liability.

      
Maybe Jessup was right, she would get used to a new life and forget about the one she lost. The music moved inside her with its steady beat, while the look in the old men’s eyes held her enthralled. She was gone. Yes, Jessup was right. Her past, her life were losing their grip, all of it drifting away. This was Shelby now, the sexy dancer, the peep show queen, the brothel whore, clamoring for their attention, for the horny adoration of a room full of appreciative men

      
The dance became more lurid, all about showing off decadent innocence, her natural self. She needed no prompting to move the exhibition further; she lifted the hem of her skirt, smiling coyly at their catcalls and slowly inching the dress up her dancing legs and swaying hips.

      
On the sidelines, the Madame collected money, while quickly making a ledger of who would be fucking her and when. By the time
Shelby
flung the dress off over her head and danced naked for her audience, Madame was smiling fiercely.

      
The beat of the music slowed, the dance coming to its end with the trampy, naked American girl grinning down at her customers.

      
“So, now you need to fuck them, Shelby,” Madame finally announced as the music diminished in volume. “Sergei.” She motioned to the first man, and Sergei, a hefty fellow with a pleasant smile, lifted
Shelby
from the table and carried her over his shoulder up the stairs and into Eugenia’s vacant room. What Eugenia wasn’t using was
Shelby
’s for the night. In fact, for the next seventy-two hours this would be her brothel, a one woman whorehouse with men that came and went in a steady procession. Whatever money crossed hands she didn’t see. She was more than just a whore, she was Madame Pavlenco’s slave.

      
There were cocks for her mouth and for her cunt and eventually her ass. Sometimes two at once – double, triple penetration made her especially delirious.

      
She moved from man to man with thoughtless efficiency. If one was a particularly good lover, she might find her body experiencing a rousing climax; though most were clumsy and ineffective in the lovemaking department; out for the quick thrill. She did no more than spread her legs. The ones that came in twos and threes could be brutal; but they were often the most interesting fucks. Three days of nearly nonstop fucking – it was a lot to handle but for the most part, the hours went by in dreamy blur.

When two young blond men came roaring in, their egos were bloated with ale, their cocks hard and jutting from their pants like spears.
Shelby
had seen this kind before.

      
She was naked and brushing out her hair, when after a half hour reprieve, Madame sent them up to her room. Just what she needed: two more eager young bucks. After long hours with little sleep and almost no food, she hardly had enough energy for more.
   
At least they were pleasing to look at.

      
“Pretty, huh?” The one young man whispered to his friend.

      
“Ja! Nice.” He was bigger than his friend, brutish looking but with the boyish smile of a virgin.

      
“You take her cunt, huh?”

      
“Ja!” He yanked her away from the dressing table where she’d been applying a fresh coat of make-up. He then laid down on the bed and pushed
Shelby
’s face into his hairy crotch. Resigned to another hour laboring for Madame Pavlenco, her lips covered the organ before her, enjoying the newness of a young man’s first time. When she had him hard, sticking straight up in the air, she pulled away, and rose up on his body, straddling his hips. As she mounted his erection, the long thing speared her to the end of her vagina.

      
“
Ooo
, you are very good,” she purred in the boy’s ear as she moved down against his torso. As her tongue danced along his earlobe she felt his body quicken. He began to groan with his excitement mounting fast. Then as if he’d been fucking all his life, he grabbed her hips and began to thrust upwards, picking up speed as he built up confidence, banging away in a ruthless rhythm until his friend settled in behind Shelby’s ass, and started to work her asshole with his finger.

      
The young brute shouted in his foreign tongue; the handsome blond shouted back. An argument ensued. The two men fought for the right to fuck her, all the while the virgin never stopped his assault of her pussy. The heated battle stopped when the blond behind her finally thrust his erection into her asshole and reamed her with the same frenetic fervor as his young friend. They came explosively within seconds of each other, leaving
Shelby
torn, her weary body in rebellion and an unexpected anger rising up from a place in her she hardly knew.

      
“Get out!”
She would have shouted from the top of her lungs but she was much too tired and the vehement order came out in a throaty whisper.

      
Scared, they fled. Over three days and she was dead to the world.

      
When the next customer found her passed out, he tried to shake her awake, but she wasn’t budging. Madame Pavlenco tried to arouse her too, but
Shelby
did nothing but groan.

      
“Leave her be,” a voice behind the Madame spoke, masculine and steady, carrying some authority. “What do you expect when you work your girls so many hours?”
      
“Oh, she’s just getting geared up,” Madame said.
  

      
“So, let her rest, the boys below can wait until she’s ready.”

In her dreams, Mr. Darcy opened an enormous door leading her into a vast room. The party had been going on all night. Though morning was about to dawn in the Eastern sky, the night inside the big hall was still intense, thick with the smell of smoke and sex.

      
He made her strip. All the other girls were stripped, so why not
Shelby
too? “Please,” she turned to her owner and pleaded for all she was worth, but he slapped her face in a reminder of who she was.