Free Carrion: A Story of Passion by Eden Night Page B

until it passes.
    Arabella clicks her fingers and one of the serving girls efficiently tidies the carnage around me. Covering the stain with a fresh white linen napkin, taking my plate away and resetting my glass, refilling it. Another girl wipes my brow and neck with a warm cloth. All this is done whilst I swim in post orgasmic bliss. Through the haze, I see Alexander, and I dare him. But rather than take up the challenge I offer, he pushes his chair back and strides around the table, commanding me to stand.
    “Charlotte,” he tuts and sighs theatrically, “really?” He forces pushes me towards the table, so that its edge bites into my thigh, and grabs my arm with one hand whilst sweeping the table free of glasses and flowers, not caring if the wine spills or the flowers crush.
    “Lay on the table,” he commands. I glance down the table to see that the whole room ripples with an excited whisper before falling into silence.
    Arabella has pushed her chair back for a better view and has held her wine glass out for a refill, which some serving boy scurries to do. She says in a clipped voice, “I believe sir would like some disciplinary tools? Boy,” she says indicating that she is need of service. The slave scurries from the room.
    I am mortified. Humiliation spreads through me, jangling my nerves.
    “Charlotte,” he says coldly, “Do as you are told and lay on the table.”
    “Yes, master,” I mummer.
    I scramble up onto the table, pulling myself along until my cheek is pressed against the white table linen and my nostrils fill with the smell of starch and washing powder. I am looking at Arabella, imagining we are back at the academy, and we are merely in class. I feel Alexander’s hands sweep up my thighs pulling my dress up over my thighs and buttocks.
    He leans over me and I feel his stiff cock through his trousers resting against my thigh. “Turn your face towards the party.”
    I whimper, and shake my head. I don’t want to face their hungry, curious eyes. I think about using the safe word – it would only be the second time in all of our teachings. But I don’t – something stops me, because as much as I’m humiliated, and scared, and fearful, my body is screaming for the performance to begin.
    I turn my face and see that the candlelight has spread a million stars shimmering through the room. The faces of my eager audience are softened by the light so that they look like creatures from another, more beautiful world. I sense Alexander’s movements and brace myself hard against the table, my breasts full of dull pain as they press into the unforgiving wood.
    The leather paddle slams into my yielding flesh, eliciting a deep groan from my throat. Tears pool at the side of my eyes, and snake lazily to the cloth. The heat spreads rapidly, snaking its way into my loins and into my sex; sensitive from the orgasm that was still playing out its ripples. My sex tightens and contracts, the muscles spasm. Alexander’s knuckles brush my exposed mound, sending shivers bumping into the pain, so that the sensations jangle and dance. He smooths his hand over my buttock and raises the paddle once more. With its impact, my hips bounce from the table and slam back down. Despite my desire to retreat from the offending article, my hips betray me, and thrust my buttocks out, inviting more.
    “Put your hands on the back of your head,” Alexander commands. I do as I am bid. I feel Alexander’s hands raise my hips firmly off the table as he manoeuvres a small velvet cushion under them, exposing my sex. Out the corner of my eye, I see him take the thin, cream, riding crop, a particular favourite of Arabella’s, and hand it to her. She stands, smiling and takes it from Alexander ceremoniously, before he retreats to the other end of the table, where a space is immediately cleared for him, as if a true prince has surely arrived. I look down the tunnel of masks and crystal to see Alexander perched, like carrion crow, over the