Free The Image by Jean de Berg

rug, or kissing the favorite parts of her body whenever she wanted to.
    As she accomplished these various jobs with the gestures of a mother, or a lady in waiting, or a child playing with a doll, she kept up a running commentary for my benefit, even asking my advice about which perfume to choose, or which shade of lipstick.

    When all these things were finally finished she slipped on a pair of stockings with embroidered tops, and the white garter belt and bra that I had bought the day before. She made her masterpiece turn around for her, to give it one last final inspection, then she pushed it toward the couch:
    â€œGo and kiss your master, who loves you.”
    The girl came and placed herself next to me, almost lying down, and kissed me for some time, with all the patience and gentleness I already knew were hers. I pressed my arm against her waist to hold her closer to me.
    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:
    â€œCome 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.”
    â€œOh, 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:
    â€œYou’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 – isn’t that right, little one? – 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