Free Return to the Chateau by Pauline Réage

stuffed them into her cleavage.
    The truth of the matter was that she was mistaken when she figured she would end up with the same body count as Monique at the end of the day. As soon as she went into the bar, another customer picked her and took her back up to one of the rooms, where he possessed her, making her total for the day not five but six.

X
    In the dark, chained to the hook above her bed-as she had been in her room the previous year, in that room now occupied by someone else, she had no idea who-in the dark and unable to sleep, O asked herself for the hundredth time why, whether or not she derived any pleasure from it, someone, no matter whom, from the fact that he penetrated her,’ or simply opened her with his hand, beat her or only made her strip naked, had the power to make her submit to his will.
    On the other side of the partition, which was only as long as the width of the bed and the night tables and no thicker than a screen, she heard Noelle stirring, and realized that she too was unable to fall asleep. She called to her. Did Noelle feel as subjugated, as submissive as she? Did she feel as mastered, as servile as O did the minute someone touched her? Noelle was indignant. Submissive? Servile? She did what had to be done, and that was the long and the short of it. And mastered? Why mastered? O was indeed a very complicated young lady. Noelle found it flattering to see men stiffening in her presence, because of her; she found it amusing to open her legs or her mouth to them.
    “Even to that Syrian, or whatever he was, you went with tonight?” said O.
    “What Syrian?” Noelle wanted to know.
    “That dark man with the frizzy hair, the big potbellied man you went upstairs with right after we got to the bar.” And as she said it she thought to herself, So that’s how it is; after awhile you can’t even remember. But she did remember.
    “Oh, him!” said Noelle. “You should have seen him naked. A big fat pig.”
    “That’s exactly what I mean,” O said.
    “But you’re wrong’ Noelle protested. “What difference does it make? He tongued me for at least half an hour, but what he really wanted was to take me from the rear. With me on all fours, of course. He pays very well, you know”
    O had also been paid very well. The money was right there, in the drawer of one of the night tables.
    “Noelle,” O said, “tell me honestly, when they whip you, do you really enjoy it?”
    “A little; but the truth is they only whip me a little.”
    O almost said: “You’re lucky,” then she realized that it had nothing whatever to do with luck. She was about to ask Noelle why it was they never whipped her more than “a little,” and what she thought of chains, and her opinion on the valets… But Noelle turned over in her bed and whimpered:
    “Oh, I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open another minute. For goodness’ sake, O, stop fretting and thinking so much, and go to sleep?’
    So O bit her tongue and said no more.

XI
    In the morning, at ten o’clock, a valet came to undo the chains. After the bath, the morning ablutions, and Anne-Marie’s medical inspection, the girls-unless they were on duty in the rooms of the main enclosure, in which case they had to immediately don their uniforms-were free to get dressed or not, until it was time to go down either to the restaurant or bar, if it was their turn to serve there, or to the refectory if it was not. But those who went to the refectory did not get dressed. Why should they, since they were supposed to be naked while there? There was a room on the floor where they could go for breakfast. The doors to the girls’ bedrooms remained open, and they were allowed to visit one another freely. Only O, Yvonne, and the third girl, Julienne, who were branded and wore irons, were summoned in the morning to be whipped. The whipping was administered to each of them in turn on the stairway landing of their floor. The balustrade was used as the whipping post,