Krissy knelt on the small cushion in the corner of the room as she had been told to, patiently waiting. She had become resigned to her status here, though she still didn’t like any part of it.
She was naked, as always, freshly bathed and coiffed and powdered. They had put some faint musky perfume on her body and in her hair. It was a scent she never would have worn herself, but as with everything else here she had no say in the matter. They had also put jewelry on her: Sparkling earrings dangled from her ears. Similar ornaments dangled from her nipples, and the tiny clamps pinched almost enough to actually hurt. She had learned not to complain about such things. If you did, they simply adjusted the clamps so that they really did hurt.
There was a wide and heavy iron collar around her neck. There was soft padding all around the inside of it, so it didn’t chafe her skin, but it was still uncomfortable. Her wrists were held in matching shackles, each one connected to her collar by a heavy iron chain. They kept her hands just above her ass.
Three other women, naked and chained and bejeweled just as Krissy was occupied the other three corners of the room. To Krissy’s right knelt a young woman with ebony skin and short, curly black hair. Her body had been oiled. To the left was another young woman, dusky-skinned, with solid hips and thighs. Her long, straight black hair had been braided. In the opposite corner knelt a tiny Japanese girl, slender and shy and small-breasted, with pink, prominent nipples. Krissy had seen her earlier, but could not see her now because six men were sitting around a heavy wooden table in the middle of the room, enjoying a hearty meal and spirited conversation. Krissy had no idea what they were talking about. She couldn’t even guess at which languages they were speaking in, though she thought that there were at least three different ones being used. One of the men was the one she had previously thought of as simply ‘the robed man’. Now, she called him ‘Great Lord’. Any other man here she must address as ‘Master’. They let her speak in English. The other women spoke in their own languages.
There were many other women here in this terrible place. Krissy had seen them, heard them, occasionally been kept in a cage with some of them. There were black ones, brown ones, tan ones, white ones, all young, all lovely and all of them desperate and frightened. Some were eager to please their masters. Others might resist at first, but, as Krissy had learned for herself, they had innumerable ways to break a woman’s will here, and the privacy, time, skill, ruthlessness and patience to do so. She had been made to watch, along with several other captive women, as Joanna was broken. They clearly intended it as an object lesson, and as much as Krissy despised the girl, it had been very, very hard to watch what she was put through and not feel some sympathy for her. Every time she’d begun to do so, though, Krissy brought up the memory of how Joanna had sat there with the other dinner guests, enjoying every minute of Krissy’s torture and rape. That always put things in perspective. In the end, Joanna lay sobbing on the cold stone floor, shivering uncontrollably, her head and body shaved hairless, marked all over with angry red welts. They might have broken her a little too thoroughly, because Krissy hadn’t seen the girl since. Well, whatever had happened to Joanna was Joanna’s concern alone. Krissy had her own problems to deal with.
The men at the table all appeared to be middle-aged, rich and powerful. Three of them, who looked southern European, wore expensive suits. An obscenely fat black man was clad in bright-colored robes in vivid patterns. Her ‘Great Lord’ sat at the head of the table, wearing the Chinese robes he always did. The sixth man, sitting at the foot of the table, was swarthy, hook-nosed, and wearing Arab dress. From where he was sitting he could look at any of the four women, but his gaze kept straying back to Krissy, and the look in his eyes made her uneasy. There was no doubt in her mind that once the dinner was over she and the other three girls would be passed out to the guests as sexual party favors. Since there were five men and only four girls, she didn’t know how that was going to work out, but that wasn’t her problem to solve. All she had to do was obey and do what she was told. She hated it, but by now she feared punishment far more. For now, at least, all she was required to do was remain still and be decorative.