Then my hand crept up her back to her neck where it paused so that I could control the contact of our lips, their pressure, their timing, without having to move my own head.
Unconsciously, the girl had begun to move her hips, a slow undulation that spread the length of her body, and of mine.
I suddenly wanted to look at Claire. I pushed away the blonde head and laid the girl's face against my shoulder.
Claire's eyes went back and forth, from the pulsing hips to my hand, holding the neck in place, then to my eyes. Little Anne was now kissing me at the base of my neck.
I saw that her mistress was hurt by our embrace in which, suddenly, she had no part. I let her ordeal go on for a time...
I let it go on, all the while looking at Claire, until she reached the end of her endurance. She was standing near the sofa, a few feet away, not know ing whether to separate us, or to join us.
When I finally freed myself, pushing the girl backward, Claire made her get up so that she could sit beside me herself:
“Come on, you little bitch, what do you think you're doing? Jean is here to watch you being tortured. You can kiss him later, if he feels like it, after we've made you suffer.”
“Oh, that's right,” I said calmly, “what are we waiting for, anyhow?”
As was customary, the victim had to kneel before her tormentors on the tiled floor to hear the particulars of the torture she would undergo.
She would be tied to one of the columns in the execution chamber. She would be whipped on the front of her thighs and on her lower belly. Then she would be burned with red-hot needles in the most sensitive parts of her body. And finally, her breasts would be whipped until they bled.
In a voice that was straining to sound natural, Claire asked me if I had ever used a certain kind of needle to torture a woman:
“You'll see,” she said, “it's most amusing. It hardly leaves a trace, and it's not at all dangerous since the point has been sterilized by the flame. But above all, it hurts terribly â isn't that right, little one? â and you can keep it up in the same place, without deadening the effect, indefinitely...”
The Gothic chamber was exactly as it had been in the photographs: the iron bed, the paving stones in a black and white checkerboard pattern, the two stone pillars which supported a high vaulted ceiling above the narrow recessed window, covered now by red velvet curtains. The indirect lighting was diffused by brackets on the wall, and by three adjustable fixtures which threw their beams toward the ceiling. The whole thing, at once austere and intimate, reminded one vaguely of a chapel. This curious room certainly was not the most unexpected thing in the whole curious apartment.
There were also two leather armchairs in which we sat down, Claire and I.
Claire was thirsty. Obviously it was Anne who was sent to get the refreshments. She still wore the same things: the embroidered stockings (with out shoes), the white nylon garter belt and bra whose styling obligingly left naked all that one would wish to see.
While we were drinking, the girl, who had had to serve us on her knees, was made to stay in that position until we had finished.
Her posture was the same one I had already had occasion to enjoy: thighs open, body very straight, arms raised, lips apart.
Her large green eyes shone with a deep, almost supernatural brilliance that carried us back several centuries to the time of the ecstasies of the Christian martyrs.
We were aware, all three of us, that the tortures scheduled for the evening were by no means imaginary. The thought that they would, in a mo ment, wrench from this tender young girl the most voluptuous spasms of pain gave her flesh, which was desirable anyway, an incomparable allure. I made her come closer so that I could run my fingers over the curves and hollows which we were about to wound, with abandon, as long as it seemed entertaining.
Her cunt was still moist, probably from our embrace in the bathroom; unless her humiliating posture, the immodesty that was required of her, or perhaps the anticipation of the torture, as Claire led one to believe, was enough to arouse her.
I felt like exciting her more by touching certain parts of her, but then I thought that it would be fun, in such a cruel situation, to make her do it herself.
“Supposing we made her play with herself first?” I said to Claire.
Claire, naturally, agreed. But she first wanted to put the black band over the girl's eyes. Anne, at the command, stood up to go and get the band, and also the whip, which were put away in a small chest in a corner of the room. After presenting them to her mistress, she resumed her former posture.
Claire showed the things to me. The whip was not the same one we had used the other day: in stead of being braided it had a plain leather lash, more supple and cutting. Claire tried it out right away, on the girl's thighs. She winced, and turned her head to one side. A thin red line appeared on the smooth flesh.
“The little bitch chose a good one,” Claire said. “She went and bought it herself, this morning.” With the help of a black velvet elastic ribbon Claire then masked her eyes, a charming finishing touch to her costume.
Still on her knees, one of the lights aimed at her, we made her caress herself: the upper parts of her breasts first, and their little rouged tips left ex posed by her bra; then the interior of her cunt under the arch of white nylon. She was made to use both hands, to open herself wide, at the same time hiding as little as possible from us with her fingers.
While this was going on we quietly finished our orangeade.
As though we had planned it, Claire and I turned to each other at the same moment. I was thinking of the last photograph, the one for which Anne had not been the model, which portrayed a similar scene.
I realized that Claire was thinking the same thing . . , and knew that I was thinking it... Her face was in the shadows, but I could make out that same troubled expression, once again.
Anne couldn't see anything through her blind fold. I got up silently and leaned down over my neighbor's armchair. Her startled face was turned up to mine and I kissed it, scarcely brushing her lips, then covering her whole mouth, which began to soften...
“Leave me alone,” she suddenly cried out, standing up herself.
As an outlet for this emotion, which hadn't figured in her program, she turned on the kneeling girl. She seized the whip and began lashing her thighs, from in front, still not letting her interrupt her activities.
“Play with yourself, you whore!” Claire said, whipping her.
Under the blows the girl instead stopped. Claire hit her again:
“Go on, play with yourself!” The terrified girl began again at once. “Better than that!” Claire said, landing a sharp blow on her thighs.
Beyond endurance, Claire finally threw her to the floor and began furiously caressing her her self.
The girl was lying on her back, knees bent, arms flat on the floor on either side of her head. Claire was on one knee, leaning over her prey.
Almost immediately the girl began moaning. Soon she lost complete control, crying out continuously from deep inside her throat, her mouth wide open, her face thrown back.
“Look,” Claire murmured, “how beautiful she is when she's coming, the little slut...”
In effect, I saw the girl moving rhythmically, turning her head from one side to the other, clutch ing the floor with her fingers. Then, all in one motion, she stretched her legs out and rolled over on her side, bent double, motionless on the black and white floor.
Claire, standing over her, pushed her with the toe of her shoe, as though she were a corpse.
However, Claire still wasn't satisfied. She had to tear off the young woman's bra, her garter belt and her stockings, leaving only the black band across her eyes.
With strokes of the whip she made her get back on her knees in front of my chair. She gave the order to begin caressing herself again, adding one little refinement, humiliating, yet pleasurable:
“You're to play with your little asshole too, at the same time!”
Obediently, one of her hands went behind her back. This region must have been very sensitive, for she got excited at once.
But this time, instead of bringing her work to its conclusion, Claire grabbed hold of the girl and dragged her over to one of the columns where she stood her, back against the stone. In a twinkling she had been tied up, arms and legs spread wide, hands and feet pulled backward.
I turned the lights in her direction and went closer. Her wrists and ankles were attached to two pairs of rings, diametrically opposed, by means of those flat leather bracelets that are sold in Parisian knick-knack stores and affected by wives whose hus bands love them. The upper rings were just at the right height (about six feet) to stretch the body as much as possible without hurting it.
Claire had begun her caresses again, savagely, penetrating her victim with such passion that one could no longer tell whether her cries were cries of pain or of pleasure.
There was no longer any doubt when Claire took up the flagellation again, striking the wide opened thighs and the lower belly. The growing violence of her well-aimed blows, their accuracy and regularity, made the girl writhe in every direction in spite of the tightness of her bonds. Her body was so beautiful like this that my amazement grew as the sacrifice continued.
Exhausted, finally, Claire gave herself a rest and took a moment to place a gag over her prisoner's mouth so that her screams wouldn't rouse the whole neighborhood.
Then she moved up within easy reach a little alcohol lamp which had been mounted on an iron stand so that it could be used conveniently. Once the flame was lit she propped her various instruments in it, which had special supports for this purpose.
I admired the long needles, sharpened to a fine point at one end and at the other fitted with wooden handles so that one could hold them with out burning oneself. When the steel was red-hot, Claire undertook the skillful torture of first one breast, and then the other; then she operated on the inside of the thighs, at the very top where the whip hadn't reached.
She worked slowly, lovingly meting out the pun ishment: she began by a light touch on the surface of the skin, then, pressing harder and harder, ended up sinking the point about an eighth of an inch into the flesh.
The girl's desperate contortions interfered somewhat with her progress, but the groans of agony that could be heard even with the gag more than rewarded her efforts.
The victim's tears now flowed freely from under the blindfold down her cheeks. Her panting grew harsher. When Claire came back to the breasts, concentrating on the swelling near the armpit and the rouged area around the nipples, I thought the girl would break her arms and legs from pulling against the rings that held her spread eagled on the column.
Then I took the whip and pushed Claire away so that I could administer myself the final punish ment as promised, on the breasts. I contemplated the young woman, completely at my mercy, who had by now given up struggling or hoping for any reprieve.
And I whipped her with all my strength, reveling in it.
I only stopped when the delicate skin was broken and I could see a thin line of blood.
“Untie her,” I told Claire. “Take off the bracelets... the gag... the blindfold... put her on the bed.” Little Anne lay still. She was on her right side facing the wall, her knees slightly bent. Her shoulders and buttocks had been bruised by the stone column during the course of the torture. I lay down beside her. I wrapped myself around her from behind, my body following the lines of her body...
And I ravaged her, without any thought for her sufferings, penetrating the half-dead body through its smallest opening.
That same night I had a dream. I was going into the Gothic chamber again, only it was larger and higher, like a church I remembered from my child hood.
A nude girl is tied to each of the two columns, one with her front toward me, the other her back. I come closer. I realize that they are both dead, but still warm. Their bodies have been pierced by many triangular stab wounds in the most propitious areas.
A little blood marks each wound. It is just starting to coagulate, I discover, touching it with my finger.
I lick my finger tip. The blood has a pleasant, sweetish taste: it might almost be a fruit syrup. Then I notice another woman in front of a bril liant stained glass window in an archway at the back. She is dressed in voluminous, sumptuous ma terials, like the Madonna's of the Renaissance. She is seated on a throne, her arms held out in a queenly gesture of welcome. She has Claire's face. She is smiling gently at me but with a far-off, enigmatic smile.
As I walk toward her she seems to get farther and farther away.
I woke up, smiling to myself at this dream with its allegorical aspects but with no real meaning. I nevertheless had the feeling that I was expecting a visit from Claire, even though she hadn't breathed a word about it the night before.
When I heard the doorbell ring, a little later, I knew at once that it was she. I threw a bathrobe over my pajamas, which I'd put on again after washing, and went to the door.
Claire was pale, a little tired looking. She had the beauty of a trapped wild animal.
“Good morning,” I said to her. “How is your friend feeling?”
She didn't ask me, this time, which friend I was referring to.
Anne was feeling fine. She was still sleeping, worn out from the evening before. Claire had cared for her like a mother and in a few days nothing would show at all. Except, perhaps, a little red line on her breast where the skin had been broken. “That would be a shame...”
“Oh no,” she said, “it will be very pretty.” She spoke softly, a little anxiously, not daring to look me in the face. We were still standing in the entrance, and I wasn't at all sure yet why she had come.
“And you,” I asked, “how are you feeling?” She stared at me wide-eyed, with a look of abandon; then lowered her eyelids before answering me. “I have come,” she said quietly.