400 Days of Oppression

III

He swatted my mop bucket away and it skidded across the floor, splashing suds and water onto the tile. I squeezed the wet rag in my hand as he smacked my bare ass. I knew what was next.

I moaned in ecstasy as much as pain, anticipating his length filling me. I felt his rough hands grab my hips, his strong fingers kneading the flesh, gripping hard as he forced his solid length inside of me. He entered easily. I was already wet from anticipation. Still, my breath caught in my throat as his flesh entered mine. His cock was so long it still caused me pain even after all these months. That first thrust felt as if the head of his cock jabbed my ribcage. I gasped in shock then moaned again as a shudder went from between my thighs all the way up my spine. He felt so good I wanted to scream. I could feel his hard chest against my back, his thighs against the back of mine, his breath against my cheek, as he thrust that magnificent organ of his deeper inside of me.

“I love you, master. I love you,” I said.

His only reply was a tug of my hair and his teeth sinking into my shoulder as he pounded deeper within me. I collapsed to the tile floor, unable to support myself on my hands and knees with both his weight and the weight of the chains pressing down on me. He continued to fuck me, harder now. He pulled my hips hard against him to meet his thrusts. Our rhythm was now something violent and powerful. He smacked my ass over and over as he fucked me. I felt his thumb lubed with saliva slide between my buttocks and into my ass and I knew what was coming next. He was so large that I had always had difficulty taking him this way. So, of course he had made anal sex a regular part of our love-play. Now he was even less gentle than normal. He went slow at first, easing it in inch by inch as he held himself up on his powerful arms and gradually descended until his entire length slid inside me. It was excruciating. I felt my stomach cramp as his erection pulsed and pounded within my distended rectum. Then he became more forceful, aggressively jack-hammering his thick cock in and out of my ass as if he were trying to drive me right through the floorboards. He reached around and wrapped one of his massive biceps around my throat and constricted until my windpipe slammed shut.

Between the pain in my anus and the sudden loss of oxygen, I began to panic. Spots danced before my eyes and I thrashed and bucked, panicking as everything began to go dark, trying to free myself. I scratched at his hands and arms and tried to pry his arm from around my throat, but it was like trying to bend iron. Then he reached his other arm beneath me as he dropped his entire weight onto my back, still thrusting relentlessly.

His fingers found my clitoris easily and he slipped his index finger first inside me to wet it with my juices before flicking it rapidly back and forth across my swollen clit. The pain, the loss of oxygen, and now the delirious sensations radiating from my sex brought me to the most explosive orgasm I could remember. Every muscle contracted as if shocked with a taser and then vibrated and convulsed as waves of ecstasy tore through my helpless body. My arms and legs thrashed and kicked. My back arched and a scream tore from my throat as Kenyatta finally relaxed his grip. My asshole contracted around my master’s cock and I came again while Kenyatta continued fucking my sore and swollen anus with his mesomorphic organ, still fingering my engorged clit. He bit the back of my neck and growled and I knew he was about to cum. He withdrew his cock from my asshole abruptly. It felt as if he had turned it inside out. I screamed in pain and my guts cramped again. My rectum was so badly chafed it felt like it was on fire. Kenyatta grabbed one of my arms and turned me over.

“Look at me!”

He had his cock in his hand, squeezing it tight, as he knelt above me, straddling my chest with that magnificent organ dangling inches from my lips. Finally, I was able to look up at his face. He was so gorgeous. I smiled as his seed rained down upon my face. I licked it from my lips, relishing the salty taste of his semen as it dribbled down my cheeks and onto my lips.

“You look beautiful like that,” Kenyatta said smiling. He used one finger to scoop some of his semen off my chin and spoon it into my mouth. I sucked it from his finger tip, twirling my tongue along the tip of his finger the way I did when I sucked his cock. A shudder went through him.

“Stick out your tongue.”

I did as I was told and Kenyatta squeezed out the last of his semen onto my outstretched tongue.

“This is my body. This is my blood,” he said with a seriousness and solemnity that would have been comical from anyone but him.

He had once told me that swallowing his cum to him was like taking communion with a God. It made him feel powerful to watch me lick his seed from my lips. It made me feel so submissive that I always wanted to make love immediately afterward or to be hugged and cuddled in his powerful arms or to curl up at the feet of my master like a lap dog, which is usually what I settled for. This time he just handed me back my bucket and walked upstairs to dress for work.

“Have that floor clean by the time I’m ready to leave.”

I was forbidden even to say, “Yes, Master” now. None of the abductees aboard the slave ships spoke English yet so neither was I allowed to. Instead I nodded my head and picked up my scrub brush. Feeling the absence of him as a hollow place in my heart and every orifice he’d entered.

Kenyatta came back down just as I finished the hallway. He looked amazing in his dark business suit and white shirt with gray pinstriped tie. He always dressed like he was running for president and it worked for him. He looked so handsome standing there like that that my own sense of wretchedness increased. I knew what I must have looked like in comparison.

“Get below.”

I crawled, dragging my chains. The iron collar around my neck cut deeper into my skin as the weight of the other chains attached to it dragged behind me. Blood from my neck dripped onto the tile floor I had just spent the last hour scrubbing insuring that there would be more work for me the next day. The humidity in the basement overwhelmed me after having been upstairs for even that brief period. It felt like I was walking through a wall of moist heat as I crossed the threshold. Kenyatta stood above me, watching, as I crawled. I knew that watching me crawl was one of the things that seemed to turn him on the most. He would have fucked me again, right there on the stairs if it wouldn’t have gotten his suit dirty and made him late for work. The stairs scraped my knees as I crawled down them. I began to moan and then to cry as I dragged my broken body down into the basement and across the hard concrete floor.

“Back in your box now.”

His voice was not angry or harsh but matter of fact as if he was merely giving direction to a child who needed to be reminded of such things, as if he was merely reminding me to brush my teeth or wash my hands before dinner. I crawled into the box and Kenyatta padlocked it and left without a word. He closed the basement door and both the heat and the darkness redoubled.

I was constantly thirsty, constantly hungry, miserable from sunrise to sunset except for those brief moments when Kenyatta brought me out to fuck me or whip me or both. His cock inside of me was the only joy in my life now. Perhaps that was the other lesson he was trying to teach me, that I needed him.

The lingering taste of Kenyatta’s semen recalled the vivid memory of the first time I’d taken his manhood between my lips. Kenyatta was the first man I’d given a blowjob to since my first blowjob. I had hated the act. When I was raped as a child, the taste and texture of my abuser’s semen, the stench of his unwashed testicles, had stuck with me for years. I would wake up screaming with that taste on my lips. The first time Kenyatta asked me to suck his cock, I had refused, repulsed by the very idea of it.

“I-I don’t do that.”

Kenyatta raised an eyebrow and stared at me curiously.

“A woman who doesn’t give head is only half a woman. Show me a woman who doesn’t suck her man’s cock and I’ll show you a man who is looking for any and every opportunity to cheat on her. I won’t tell you, you’d do it if you loved me. Not because it isn’t true, but because it’s too cliché. I will say that if you want to remain the only woman in my life, you will learn to please me.”

He leaned back in his chair with his eyebrow still cocked, a smug expression on his face, awaiting my reply.

“Even if a woman is the best lover you ever had? If she does everything else perfectly, just the way you like it, but just doesn’t suck your dick, that isn’t enough?”

Kenyatta smirked and shook his head, eyes still boring into my skull like he was trying to read my thoughts.

“A woman who doesn’t give head could never be the best lover I ever had and she wouldn’t be my lover for long.”

Kenyatta wasn’t a man given to threats. He said it as a simple matter of fact. If I didn’t give him head he would get it from someone else. The thought of losing him to some cum-guzzling slut almost brought tears to my eyes.

“I-I don’t know how.”

“I’ll show you.”

Kenyatta was a patient teacher. He calmly stood and unbuckled his pants, unzipped them and let them fall to his ankles. He wore silk boxers, black, with little red and gold paisleys on them. He let them slip down to his ankles as well. He guided me gently to my knees with just the slightest pressure from his manicured fingertips on my shoulders until my nose was level with the head of his turgid organ. He grabbed my jaw with his strong hand and slipped his thumb into my mouth.

“Suck it.”

I did as instructed, sucking on his thumb.

“Swirl your tongue around the tip.”

I obeyed.

“Now tickle the underside with your tongue.”

Again, I obeyed, looking up at him, desperate for his approval.

“Now, slide it down your throat.”

I took his thumb as deep in my mouth as it would go.

“In and out.”

I slid his thumb in and out of my mouth, my eyes alternating from looking up at him and staring at his erect penis, which was still bobbing in the air, inches from my face.

“I don’t feel your tongue.”

I swirled my tongue around the tip of his thumb again as I continued sliding it in and out of my mouth. I flicked my tongue along the underside of his thumb as he had instructed me to do earlier.

“Now take it out of your mouth and lick up and down both sides.”

I obeyed once more.

“Now, repeat. Do everything I told you to do, exactly the way I told you to do it, but now, I want you to do it to my cock.”

I felt a tremor of fear and a brief moment of revulsion, but then I obeyed. I eased his engorged flesh between my lips and began bobbing my head up and down, sliding his cock in and out of my mouth. I flicked it with my tongue then swirled my tongue around the head like I was licking a lollipop. I licked up and down the shaft, and finally eased it as far down my throat as I could without gagging.

This was so different from the memory of my assault. Kenyatta wasn’t ramming his cock down my throat, choking me with it. I felt in control. I could feel his organ pulsate, nearing orgasm, and each time I would ease it out of my throat and lick it up and down.

“Stroke it with your hand and lick the tip. Just like that, like you’re licking an ice cream cone. Suck the tip.”

I sucked and licked and stroked until I could feel him about to cum.

“I’m going to cum and I want you to drink every drop. You understand?”

I nodded my ascent as I continued bobbing my head up and down on his tumescent manhood. I tried to hide my panic at the idea of him filling my mouth with his semen, of being compelled to swallow it. I felt myself beginning to hyperventilate. I had to get myself back under control. I was beginning to feel nauseated and feared I would vomit when Kenyatta’s cum filled my throat. That would almost certainly end things between us, I feared.

I tried to distract myself with other thoughts. I thought about how wonderful Kenyatta was. I recalled how his lips felt on my nipples, how his tongue felt on my clitoris. It was only fair that I reciprocate. Kenyatta was nothing like the fat cousin who had raped me in my parent’s basement. I wondered if perhaps his cum would taste differently, if I might even enjoy it. I took his cock deeper, pushing it past my tonsils, choking myself, but not caring, wanting to please my man, and when I felt Kenyatta’s body tense, heard his low, growling, guttural moan, felt that thick, warm, salty, eruption splash across my tonsils, I did as Kenyatta asked. I swallowed it all. That’s when I knew how much I loved him. It wasn’t long after that Kenyatta brought up the subject of the box.

I had already committed myself to the experiment by then, even though my insides roiled at the thought of being locked inside a wooden coffin for who knew how long, so I couldn’t back down. I needed to see it through. But Kenyatta wanted me to know exactly what I was getting into and why. He pulled out a book he’d found at the library when he was a boy. I was surprised by the profoundness of his emotion as he opened the book.

“Roots had just come out on television and I was so affected by it that I wanted to know more about the slave trade and what had happened to our people two hundred years ago when they came to America. I asked my Mom about it and she took me to the library to look it up for myself.”

He paused. His strong regal face cracked and trembled, twisting into a scowl as whatever he was feeling inside broke through to the surface and tears welled up in his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling and inhaled deeply, fighting to control his emotion. I could tell this was a painful memory for him. The chords in his neck bulged as his body tensed, struggling for control. When he looked back down at me, his face was hard and stoic. He forced himself to look me in the eyes, but I knew it was taking a great effort for him to do so. I knew he wanted to hang his head or lower his brow into his hands, anything but look at me. But it just wasn’t his way to show weakness in front of me and giving in to his emotions would have seemed weak to him. I suspect he also knew that it would hurt me more to see the pain on his face as he struggled to suppress it.

“This was the book I picked up. It’s called 400 Years of Oppression. It contains, among other things, detailed descriptions of life aboard a slave ship pieced together from various accounts and historical documents, most of it told by former slaves who traveled through the Middle Passage. It contains slave narratives all the way up to the emancipation proclamation. It follows the life of African Americans from the time they were kidnapped from their homes in Africa, to the civil rights movement, right up to today’s struggles with drugs, crime, and poverty. I cried when I read it. I wept out loud and I couldn’t stop crying even when my mother held me in her arms. I had no idea how bad it was. I had no idea how many Africans they stole from their homes and brought here. In that book, they estimated that about fifteen million slaves were brought here from Africa and at least another five million never made the trip due to disease, malnourishment, suicide, murder, and slave revolts. Then all the hell they went through for more than four hundred years in this country as they struggled to find freedom and equality. I had no idea. You could not imagine what my people endured aboard those ships.”

Kenyatta opened the book and I prepared for the worst. But just as he had been unprepared when he’d picked up the book twenty-five years ago. I was completely overwhelmed by what I heard. I could never have imagined that human beings could have been capable of such cruelty to one another.

“Africans were treated like cattle during the crossing, wedged together below deck as tight as they could pack them in, chained together and stuffed in narrow, three feet high compartments too low for standing. Most of these compartments had no light or fresh air except for those immediately under the grated hatchways. The stifling heat was unbearable, and the humid air nearly unbreathable.

“In the latter 18^th century, most slave ships were “tight packers,” squeezing as many slaves as they could fit into their cargo holds, crowded together in spaces smaller than a grave, stacked on top of one another like spoons, breathing each other’s sweat and body odor. Disease and suffocation below deck were common. Men were often chained in pairs, manacled together in twos and threes, shackled wrist to wrist or ankle to ankle. They were forced to lie on their backs with their heads between the legs of others. This meant they often had to lie in each other’s sweat, feces, urine, and, in the case of dysentery, even blood, covered from head to toe in lice and other parasites, a number of them in different stages of suffocation; many of them foaming at the mouth and in their last agonies, dying of oxygen deprivation.

“The floor of the ship’s hold resembled a slaughterhouse covered with blood and mucus. The confined air was rendered noxious by the sweat, urine, feces, blood and vomit evacuated from their bodies and being repeatedly breathed.”

I didn’t want to hear anymore. I wanted to clap my hands to my ears and scream.

What he was describing was too horrible to have been possible. There was no way human beings could have done things like that to each other. But, I knew Kenyatta wasn’t embellishing. I knew everything he was saying was true and I doubted he’d be able to approximate any of the horrors he was describing or whether I’d be able to endure it if he could.

“Diseases such as smallpox and yellow fever spread like wildfire, and slaves that fell ill were often thrown overboard to prevent wholesale epidemics.

“Some captains would have their crew periodically clean the “tween decks” with hot vinegar. Most did not. Slavers used iron muzzles and whippings to control the slaves who greatly outnumbered them on the overcrowded ships. Women were raped and sexually abused by the officers and the crew, who were permitted to indulge their passions at will and were sometimes guilty of such cruelties as would turn the stomach of a seasoned prostitute. Often, after suffering violent sexual abuses, women would leap overboard and drown themselves.

“But the constant deficit of fresh air was by far the most torturous of all the horrors aboard these ships. To bring in fresh oxygen, most slave ships had five or six air-ports on each side about five inches in length and four in width. Some had what they called wind-sails. But whenever the sea was rough and the rain heavy, the crew would shut these and every other opening in the ship and the slaves’ living space soon became intolerably hot and, what little oxygen there was, almost unbreathable.

“Slaves often fainted from the oppressive heat and the deprivation of oxygen and were carried above deck where many of them died and were tossed overboard. A healthy slave was sometimes dragged up onto the deck shackled to a corpse; sometimes of the three attached to the same chain, one was dying and another dead. Suffocating slaves struggled to extricate themselves, destroying one another in their fury and desperation for oxygen and room. Men strangled those next to them, and women clawed each other to ribbons.”

By the time he was done reading I knew I had to do it. Still, I had no idea how he hoped to recreate such atrocities or how I was going to handle it, but if I loved him I knew I had to try. That’s when he told me about his idea for the box.

“The Box” was a pine coffin that Kenyatta purchased from the local mortuary. It was four feet wide, three feet deep, and six feet long. Kenyatta bought several lengths of chain and a few thick metal loops that he screwed into the wooden floor trusses in the basement ceiling. He then connected the chains to it and, after screwing several other eyelets into the coffin, suspended the entire thing three feet off the floor. He kept the chains long and loose so that the slightest vibration caused the entire thing to sway. Then he hooked up a motor to it that pulled the pulley’s up and down, rocking the box steadily like the motion of calm waves gently rocking a boat.

“This will make it feel like you’re at sea. I can’t exactly hire a bunch of naked Africans to pack you in here with, so this coffin will simulate that same claustrophobic feeling they must have had being packed in tight with hundreds of other slaves. I’m gonna put heaters all around the room and a humidifier to make it as hot down here as it was between decks with no windows or ventilation. It’s gonna be miserable as hell. But just remember that no matter how horrible and uncomfortable it gets in there, no matter how fucked up and cruel I might seem for putting you through this, remember that it’s nothing compared to what my ancestors endured. They had no safe word.”

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

“You’re gonna have to quit your job. Take a leave of absence or something. Just tell them it’s for personal reasons. They won’t ask questions. Then come right back here and we’ll start this shit. I love you, baby. I really do. But I’m warning you that once this begins I’m fully committed. I’ll become your oppressor and I won’t show you any pity. No mercy. Not for four hundred days. And this box is just the beginning. My ancestor’s journey through the Middle Passage was just the first part of a fucked up odyssey that lead right up to today. I’m talking about four hundred days experiencing all the hardships my people have endured for the last four hundred years. You sure you can do this?”

“I’m sure.”

“I’m not gonna take it easy on you. You have your safe word if you decide you can’t take it anymore, but if you do go through with it. If you last all four hundred days...”

He pulled out a small ring box and lifted the lid slowly, staring at my face, waiting to see my reaction. It was an engagement ring. A princess-cut diamond, at least two carats, with a platinum band and two smaller diamonds inset on either side. It was beautiful.

“You make it through this shit and I’ll know that you really understand what it’s like, what my people have gone through, what I go through every day. I’ll know you’re more than just some freaky redneck bitch with a low self-esteem who got tired of the white trash she’s been dealing with all of her life. That you didn’t just get bored and decide to try something a little kinky and go slumming with the jiggaboos. I’ll know you really do love me and understand me. Then we can be together as man and wife. Then every time some sista looks at you wrong and starts in with that bullshit of you not ever being able to really understand a black man or black people, you’ll know different because you can say that you’ve been through everything we have.”

Somehow it all made sense when he put it like that. He had that way of stating things so they sounded perfectly reasonable no matter how fucked they really were, rationalizing his bullshit so well he could persuade you into doing just about anything. The way he put it, made it sound like climbing into that box was the most noble thing I could do. Like it would be insensitive if I didn’t. I almost felt like if I wasn’t willing to subject myself to all of this then that would somehow make me a racist or at the very least a coward. Besides, we’d already taken our S&M play to extremes I never would have imagined before I met him. He had taught me to enjoy things that would have repulsed me just months ago. How much worse could this be? I felt like I could endure anything. And then there was the ring. I’d dreamed about marrying Kenyatta many, many times, even before we’d started dating, but it was always just a childish fantasy that I’d put out of my mind almost as fast as it entered. I’m not the kind of girl that men marry, especially not men like Kenyatta who can have any woman they want. Just mentioning the possibility that he and I could someday be together forever, just the fact that he would even consider it made it impossible for me to say no.

“I’ll do it.”

That was two weeks ago to the day.

Perspiration ran in a constant deluge from my brow down my face. I blinked tiny droplets of sweat out of my eyes. Salty rivulets made their way to the corners of my mouth and I licked them from my lips, trying to quench my thirst. It would be hours before I could drink again. Kenyatta worked eight hours every day and sometimes nine or ten. Then he would go to the gym for another two hours. That meant I was sometimes locked in my box for twelve hours at a time. Most days he came home on his lunch break to feed me or else he dropped by on his way to the gym. But some days he left me in there without food or water or a bathroom until he came home for the night.

The heat was the worst thing at first. I was constantly sweating. My skin stuck to the damp wood and between that and the chains, every movement abraded more skin. The heat and humidity made it so hard to breathe I inevitably began to panic and claw at my box, trying to free myself, which made it sway violently and began a new problem. Seasickness. I tried to lie still, but the way he had the box hung from the center rather than the ends, the slightest shift in position sent the box tilting and reeling. Between the heat and the claustrophobia, it was too much. I could feel the gorge rising in my stomach, the bile scalding the back of my throat. Many days, as I lay interred in my coffin breathing my own funk and swaying back and forth, I was overcome with nausea and regurgitated, leaving me no choice but to lie in my own vomit for hours until Kenyatta returned. The liquefied chunks of squash and horse beans would slowly curdle in the heat, filling the boiling air with its repugnant stench until I vomited again and again, the nausea magnified by the smell of my own waste. I didn’t want to go through that again. I tried to suck the scalding bile rising in my throat back down into my stomach and lie steady to quiet the swaying of the box. It worked for a while at least.

The thirst came almost immediately. From the moment the box is closed, the need for a cool drink becomes an insistent preoccupation. At first it is merely the need for some refreshment against the oppressive heat and the stench of my own sweat and funk and breath trapped in this confined space. Then, as more and more of my fluids escaped through my sweat glands, the need for liquids turned into a raging, maddening thirst. I began to count the seconds, minutes, hours until Kenyatta returned. He was all I could think about. My life revolved around him now. Without him food, water, air, sunlight, freedom did not exist. I distracted myself from my thirst, imagining the feel of his granite chest and arms as he pulled me tight against him. I imagined the feel of his cock inside me and his lips upon mine. I clenched and unclenched my Kegel muscles trying to bring myself to orgasm without using my hands and making the box sway as I fantasized about Kenyatta fucking me again. I came, a small quiet orgasm that still caused the box to tilt and sway as I imagined Kenyatta holding me in his arms face to face, lifting me off the floor while still inside of me, sliding me up and down on his cock with my full weight supported on his arms. Then I laid there quietly with the heat and the thirst rushing back in to remind me where I was.

Hours went by. I estimated that it had been about five hours, fourteen minutes, and twenty-five seconds since my master left. I was hungry and thirsty and hot and I needed to pee. That was yet another constant torment. It seems I always had to pee. I don’t know where my body found the moisture with all the fluids I was constantly perspiring. But every day I went through the discomfort of holding my urine for hours waiting for my master to return so that I could use the toilet and most days I failed and relieved myself in the box. The smell of urine, added to all the other bodily odors boiling in the cramped wooden box, increased the feeling of claustrophobia and my own misery until I felt like I was going to lose my mind. The air soon became so repugnant with odors that it was impossible to breathe yet I had no choice. I sat there fighting nausea and counting down the remaining hours until my master’s return.

Two hours later, I threw up. The smells and the seasickness were finally too much and I vomited up my breakfast and nearly choked on it. I rolled over in the casket as I continued to regurgitate and the swaying of the box caused it all to drip down until I was covered from head to toe in my own vomit. That’s when my master finally returned. I was ashamed when he opened the box and I saw that look of disgust on his beautiful face. I hid my face in my hands and sobbed uncontrollably. I thought about saying the safe word for the first time, but I knew I wouldn’t. It had only been two weeks and I would have felt like a failure. Besides, there was no way I could have brought myself to say that word.

Kenyatta hauled me out of the box and washed me off. I didn’t look at him the entire time, not wanting to see the disgust on his face again. I kept my head hung low and my eyes on the floor as he hosed me off. I started crying again as I watched him hose out my box, wrinkling his nose at the smell. He filled a bucket with water and I knelt down on all fours and lapped it up like a dog. Then he brought down a bowl of overcooked horse beans with a few bits of pork in it and some rice. I was full when he finally put me back into the box, and I was petrified that I would throw up again and be left to wallow in my own filth for another two hours.

“Please. Please don’t put me back in the box! Please. Just stay with me. Please!”

“You can’t speak English yet remember? You’ll have to be punished for that when I return.”

He shut the lid to the box, padlocked it and left. I started to cry again. It seemed like another eternity went by before he returned. My mind turned inward and began to devour itself. I thought about Kenyatta at the gym, working out, making his beautiful body even more perfect while I became even more repulsive. I replayed that look of revulsion on his face when he opened the box to find me there covered in my own vomit. I moaned out loud, wishing I had the means to kill myself. I began to wonder if he was really at the gym, whether he might be seeing another woman. Rage seethed within me as I thought about him fucking some slut, sharing that wonderful cock with someone else while I was here suffering for him. I tried to push the thought out of my head, but it wouldn’t go.

Why wouldn’t he fuck someone else? Men are men, and after he’s seen me like this he probably thinks I’m too disgusting to fuck. He can’t have any respect for me. I’m just his slave, his property. Maybe he doesn’t even love me? I’m a fucking fool! How did I let myself get talked into this?

Another hour went by and I started to think about my own safety. I wondered if he had remembered to lock the front door. I wondered if he had locked the basement door. I imagined I heard a window sliding open, footsteps creeping coyly across the floor above. I wondered what a burglar would do if he found me chained up like this. I began to panic. As I hyperventilated inside my stifling, oppressively hot coffin, I wondered what would happen if I had a heart attack or some other medical emergency while I was locked in the box and Kenyatta was off at the gym or fucking some whore or whatever he was doing. My panic turned to sheer terror. By the time I heard Kenyatta’s keys in the basement door, I was crying hysterically. I threw myself into his arms when he released me from my box.

Kenyatta didn’t push me away this time. He didn’t yell or strike me or scold me. He lifted me from the box, having no trouble managing my weight even with forty pounds of iron chain added to it. He carried me up the stairs and into his bedroom. He laid me on his bed and then reached into his pocket for the key to my chains. He kissed each wrist as he unshackled me and then did the same as he unchained my ankles and then finally the thick collar around my neck. I was surprised by how gentle he was. He kissed the scabbed and torn flesh around my neck and licked the blood that trickled there. Then he kissed my lips deeply and passionately stealing the breath from my lungs.

“I love you, Kenyatta.”

He smiled at me with his perfect white teeth and then stood up from the bed and walked into the bathroom. I heard him run a bath and my heart sang. I hadn’t had a bath in so long it was little more than a distant memory from a lifetime ago. He lit scented candles and filled the bath with lavender oil. Then he came back for me and lowered me slowly into the steaming water. The heat burned my welts and scars and I let out a tiny yelp. As my body began to adjust to the temperature, and the warmth seeped into my tired muscles, I laid my head back with a sigh. I watched Kenyatta undress in front of me and I felt like I was in a dream. This was all so far removed from the horrible day I’d spent in the box, nauseated and miserable. I looked around the room at the candles, the wonderful scented bubbles, and then back at Kenyatta as he shrugged himself out of his underwear and stood up. His pecs, shoulders, and biceps were swollen from exertion. Veins stood out everywhere, rushing blood to his overworked muscles. I always loved the way he looked after a hard workout, when his muscles were still all pumped up like that. I wanted him so badly. He looked magnificent.

I held out my arms and he took them and stepped into the bath with me. He sat behind me and soaped my back and shoulders, kissing and massaging as he cleaned the day’s filth from my pores. He washed my arms, caressing them lovingly, and then my breasts, gently rubbing and pinching my nipples until they were hard and I was ready to explode. Then he told me to stand and he washed my legs, my ass, and between my thighs, cleaning everything thoroughly but gently. When I was completely clean, he sat me down on the edge of the tub and spread my legs.

He began by kissing my knees. I shivered as his hot breath traveled along the tender flesh of my inner thighs. Then I moaned as he licked the bathwater from my skin working his way down my thighs to where they joined at the center of me. He rubbed his cheek against my pubic hair like a kitten and I purred. Then he slid his tongue inside of me and I gasped. He made love to me with his mouth, twirling and flicking his tongue across my clitoris then sucking and nipping at it until I felt like screaming, like dying, as if I had already died and been reborn in some paradise of sin. His tongue plunged inside me again and I arched my spine and thrust my hips forward, grabbing the back of his head to thrust him in deeper. I felt him inside of me, wet and slippery as he fucked me with his tongue. My legs began to shake. He withdrew and sucked my clit into his mouth, flicking his tongue over it and swirling it around as he had once commanded me to do to his cock. I did scream then as a cataclysmic eruption tore through me and my body trembled, jerked, bucked and shook with one orgasm after another. I held his head there, pushing his face into my sex with both hands as he continued licking and sucking until one orgasm melded into the next and soon climax after climax tumbled down over one another and my body was undulating and convulsing spasmodically as if I were having a seizure. It became too much, I tried to push him away, but he wrapped his arms around my thighs and began to lick more furiously. I came again and again, pain and discomfort mixing with a pleasure that was almost too much to bear. Kenyatta could turn anything into a kind of torture, even this. Every moment with him was extreme. I screamed again, and my body seized, every muscle tense and vibrating as one final orgasm shook me to my soul.

Kenyatta rose from between my thighs and kissed my lips. Then he stood me up again on legs still quivering from the most powerful orgasms I’d ever had in my life. He turned me around and I felt his wet kisses and steamy breath on my buttocks. His tongue traced the crack of my ass and my legs trembled again. Then his tongue was inside me. He fucked my ass with his long slippery tongue and it was the most incredible sensation I’d ever felt. I came immediately. Once again reaching around to grab his head and pull him in deeper. My legs gave out and I collapsed back into the tub, trembling everywhere.

Kenyatta lifted me from the bath and stood me on a towel in the bathroom. He dried me off with one of the big cashmere towels that hung on a bar above the tub, embroidered with his initials. Once again he kissed each spot as he wiped it dry, starting from my feet, kissing each toe and then to my ankles and calves, twirling his tongue over my calf muscles and flicking it in the hollow behind each knee. He kissed his way up my thighs and I surprised myself by wanting him again. He kissed my pubic hair and then dried it before kissing it again and sliding his tongue inside me quickly. He turned me around and dried my ass, kissing each cheek. Then he kissed his way up my spine wiping away both the bathwater and his own saliva as he made his way to the back of my neck and then down the front of me, rubbing his face between my breasts and sucking each nipple. He kissed his way back down my belly and then he stood and kissed my face. He licked the bathwater from my eyelids and then from my lips and cheeks. Then he dried off my face.

Kenyatta lifted me into his arms and carried me back to his bed and laid me down on my stomach. He filled his palms with a mixture of rosewater and almond oil and began massaging me. From the bath, the sex, and now the massage, my body was completely relaxed when he slipped inside me. We made love gently and passionately with him saying all the things with his body he wouldn’t have ever put into words. Then he began massaging me again. Once I was completely covered in scented oils from head to toe, he took out a powder puff and gently dusted me with some scented talc that made my skin look even whiter than it was. Then he spritzed me with perfume and stood back to admire his work.

“You are beautiful.”

I felt perfect at that moment. Perfectly safe, perfectly comfortable, perfectly appreciated, perfectly loved by my perfect man.

“Stay right there.”

Kenyatta stepped into his walk-in closet and came back with the full-length white chinchilla coat he’d bought me for my birthday along with the diamond studded cat collar, a leash and a pair of black leather hip boots. He bought me the outfit after our first visit to the Society of “O”—one of the oldest and largest BDSM groups in the country. He took me to one of their parties just a few weeks after we’d started dating to introduce me to the lifestyle he was already well acquainted with. That first trip all we did was watch as doms and their slaves played in the many different themed rooms of the dungeon where the event was held. We watched as men and women were whipped, branded, pierced, paddled, and cut, and we watched them fuck in every imaginable coupling from hetero to homosexual to bi-sexual threesomes and outright orgies. The only rule seemed to be that no bodily fluids could be exchanged and so latex and lubricant flowed freely.

I had never even heard of places like that then. It was all so wild and dangerous and fascinating and forbidden to me, so sexy. It surprised me to see how unimpressed Kenyatta seemed by it all. I could only imagine what his sexual history must have been like.

“How long have you known about this place?”

“I was about twenty years old the first time I came here. I was dating a woman who was much older than me, and she used to read a lot of S&M erotica, but she’d never tried it so we decided to try it together. I was down for anything back then and the kinkier the better. I wanted to do it all. We found this place together in the back of an S&M magazine. Back then, you couldn’t just pay a cover charge and walk in like you can now. Everybody had to have a membership and all the members were pre-screened with an interview and not everyone got accepted. They tried hard to keep the most dangerous perverts out along with weirdos who wanted different things than they offered. I remember waiting by the phone to hear if we’d made it and then getting our membership cards in the mail. We rushed right out to the dungeon that night. We fell into our roles of top and bottom right away.”

“Top and bottom?”

“Dominant and submissive, master and slave. One of the regulars showed me how to use a cat, and I hung Toni up on that rack right there and whipped her ass red.”

His eyes were wistful as he reminisced and a twinge of jealousy struck me out of nowhere. I hated to think about him enjoying any pleasure with someone else that I hadn’t given him. I wanted to experience everything with him.

“Why don’t you strap me up there?”

“Not yet. Some other day. It’s your first time. Let’s just look around.”

I was disappointed, but I knew even then not to say anything about it. It would have only led to a fight, which would have led to Kenyatta not speaking to me for days until he felt I’d been punished enough, so I allowed myself to be talked out of it. Besides, he was right. There was so much to see.

He said he didn’t want to rush me into anything. I suspected he had other motives. He wanted to give me time to fantasize about it, to obsess over it, and eventually, to beg him for it.

“This whole lifestyle is pretty intense. It might turn you off and I don’t want you to get turned off by me because of all of this. I’m not done having fun with you yet. Or you might get really into it. This scene can get really addictive. There was a time when I was here every night with a different sub. That was years ago though. Why don’t you take your time and think about if this is really something you want to get into.”

“Can’t we just try it a little just to see if I like it?”

“I don’t do anything halfway. You should know that by now. It’s all or nothin’ darlin’.”

We walked through more rooms where couples partied in more and more intricate ways. We watched a gay couple brand each other’s cocks. We paused for a moment to watch a lesbian threesome using huge dildos and some type of electric cattle prod on each other. We watched a scarification with a tall gorgeous black woman carving on an old white woman’s back and rubbing what Kenyatta explained to me were ashes into the cuts to make some Wiccan occult design of raised welts.

“Is that permanent?”

“Very.”

Each new room revealed something even more bizarre. We saw an old man wearing a saddle while a young dark haired woman in latex rode his back and striped his buttocks with a buggy whip. We entered a room that was humid with female musk and the scent of Astroglide, several women and even a few men were sitting around the room strapped into bizarre machines that looked like dentist chairs with dildos attached to some bicycle looking apparatus so that they fucked who ever sat on the seat as they peddled. Kenyatta laughed and shook his head. I was happy that he found the scene as ridiculous as I did.

We were still laughing as Kenyatta dragged me into a room where some sort of swap meet was going on. We picked through all kinds of S&M paraphernalia, whips and paddles and flails and cat-o’-nine-tails, dildos, vibrators, collars, and restraints of every variety and description. He bought me the studded collar that night along with the hip boots and some latex lingerie and we’d gone home and fucked like maniacs. The coat came much later. He presented it to me as a gift, but I could tell even then that it was part of his fantasy. Every time I wore it he made me wear the collar and the hip boots with it and either lingerie or some tight slinky dress or nothing at all if we were going to an S&M event. I figured we must be going to something like that now. I was excited, because for us it was a return to normalcy.

“Get dressed. We’re going out.”

“Really? Where?”

“My ancestors never knew where they were going, neither should you.”

My heart sank, and the fear I’d been feeling for the last two weeks, ever since our experiment began, came rushing back. I’d almost forgotten about our little game, but he obviously had not. I looked at the coat and the boots and collar and wondered how this could possibly fit in with the oppression of black people. I couldn’t imagine what he had planned for me this time and not knowing made it seem all the more terrifying. I tried to tell myself he wouldn’t have been so sweet to me and made love to me so lovingly and passionately if he were going to do something terrible to me. He wouldn’t have bathed me and perfumed me.

“I said get dressed. Now. We can’t be late.”

I took the boots from his hands, slid them on, and zipped them up. Then I took the diamond collar and fastened it around my throat. I stood and Kenyatta handed me my coat. The silk lining felt luxurious after feeling nothing but iron and wood for the last fourteen days. I ran my hands over the soft fur. It felt amazing. I felt beautiful and sexy and I could tell by the look in Kenyatta’s eyes he thought I did as well.

I remembered how he made love to me that first night after he’d bought me the coat. He wouldn’t let me take it off and he made me sleep at the foot of the bed curled up at his feet after he was done. The next morning he served me breakfast out of a pet dish with a saucer of milk beside it and made me crawl on my hands and knees and lap the milk from the bowl. It turned him on so much that he stood above me masturbating as I lapped up the milk and then ordered me to give him head. He came almost immediately and I lapped his cum from the head of his cock as it spurted out all over me. I licked every drop from his shaft and then licked my lips clean and purred. That’s when he started calling me Kitten.

Kenyatta hooked a choke collar around my neck and attached the leash to that. Then he made me stand still as he dressed. He wore a dark suit with a black turtleneck that made him look absolutely sinister. I loved that outfit. He wore it mostly when we were going to S&M events. He added a pair of dark sunglasses that enhanced the sinister look. The combined effect made him look like a mafia hit-man and helped him to stand out among the other leather-clad doms at the Society of “O.” When he was finished dressing, he led me out of the bedroom and down the stairs. I wanted to ask him again where we were going, but instead I hung my head and shuffled obediently behind him, following wherever I was led.

We climbed into his car, a black Chrysler 300 with limo tinted windows, and sped off in silence. It felt great to be outside after what seemed like endless days in the stifling heat and darkness of the basement. I watched the city rush by with a feeling of exhilaration. I almost didn’t care what lay ahead, the bath, the perfume, the sex, the massage and now the feel of the luxurious fur against my bare skin and the sight and sounds of the city as it rushed by my window, made me dizzy with joy. I felt incredible.

We pulled up outside the small art gallery that I knew had a rather extensive dungeon in the rooms above where the Society of “O” held its events, and I relaxed. This was more normalcy. Whatever Kenyatta had planned, it could be no worse than a little harmless sex-play. The Society of “O” was about as safe and sane as S&M could get, so I knew he couldn’t do anything too vicious, not without losing his membership and getting himself kicked out. And there was no pain or humiliation he could put me through in there that could be worse than what I’d already endured in the box. Or so I thought.

Kenyatta pulled the car around back and turned off the engine. Then he once again pulled out the book that had become his bible on how to treat me in our new roles, 400 Years of Oppression. A shiver went through me. Still, I remained confident that, whatever he was planning, I could endure. When he started to read and the realization of what he planned to do hit me, I began to cry.

“When the slave ships arrived in America, those slaves that survived the trip and had not committed suicide, been murdered by the crew or by other desperate slaves, or succumbed to suffocation or disease, were taken off the ship and placed in a pen. There they would be washed and their skin covered with dark grease or tar to give their complexion a healthier hue and hide cuts and scars that would lessen their value. Scars upon a slave’s back were considered evidence of a rebellious or unruly spirit, and would negatively impact his or her value at auction. The slaves were then branded with a hot iron to identify them as property before being removed from the pen one by one and made to stand on a makeshift stage so they could be seen by potential bidders. Before the bidding began, prospective buyers were allowed onto the platform to inspect the merchandise prior to purchase. The slaves had to endure being poked, prodded and forced to open their mouths and show their teeth and gums the way horses and cattle are inspected before being sold at market. The auctioneer would set a minimum bid for each slave, higher for fit, young slaves and lower for older, very young, or sickly slaves. Then the bidding would begin.

“They would be made to hold up their heads and prance briskly back and forth, while customers would feel their hands and arms and bodies, make them do turns, and sometimes even calisthenics and acrobatics to display their physical fitness.

“Heartbreaking scenes of husbands and wives being sold to separate masters, sons and daughters sold away from their parents, and families split up forever were commonplace. Not understanding what was transpiring, the African slaves would beg and plead, crying and screaming in panic as their families were torn apart. The utter misery of seeing those you loved taken away by hostile foreign hands while you sit powerless to save them, seeing your spouse, your children, your mothers and fathers, pulled from your gasp never to be seen again, is unimaginable. The shocked and terrified faces of children torn from their parent’s embrace and handed into the arms of their new masters were utterly heartbreaking as were the tears and desperate embraces of husbands and wives saying goodbye for the last time as they were sold to different masters.”

I was wailing uncontrollably by the time he was finished reading. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Kenyatta was planning to do, but even as his intentions became clear to me, I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t accept that he would do such a thing, that he would take it this far.

“No, Master! No! Please! Please don’t sell me! Please, don’t give me away. I’ll be good. I swear I’ll do whatever you want! I’ll never complain! I’ll do anything. Please don’t sell me. Please!”

I was in a panic. The thought of being handed into the arms of another master had never occurred to me. That Kenyatta would sell me like I was little more than property was something I would have never considered.

“Don’t speak again or I’ll have to punish you.”

“Please, Kenyatta…I mean…M-Master! You can beat me! You can whip me as hard as you like! Please, baby! Please I don’t want to leave you! Please don’t send me away!”

“All you have to do is say the safe word if you want it to stop. But this is what my ancestors went through, being sold away from their loved ones, sold to strangers they knew nothing about, some who were inhumanly cruel. Watching their wives and children torn from them and given to strange white people to do God knows what with them. Most of them didn’t even understand what was happening or why. That’s what they had to go through and that’s what you’re going to go through unless you want it to stop now? Unless you want to say the safe word and end this? Then we can go our separate ways right now. Your choice. Either way you lose me.”

I thought about it then, saying that word. I thought about giving up and seeing that disappointed and disgusted look in Kenyatta’s eyes as he walked away forever.

“I won’t say it. I’m still going through with it.”

Kenyatta nodded his approval, still looking at me with suspicion. He grabbed my leash and pulled me forward.

“Then no more crying. No more begging. You go in there and you do whatever I say without question. You get up there on that auction block and you smile your lily white ass off and you obey.”

He jerked my choke chain as he spoke, dragging me out of the car. I never had an opportunity to reply but none was necessary. He knew I’d obey.

Kenyatta walked me to the back door of the art gallery, jerking my choke chain every now and again to keep me moving. Beyond the door was a long flight of stairs that led to the huge loft above where the festivities took place. A big hairy leatherman stood at the top of the stairs looking like a Hell’s Angel except for the leather chaps he wore with no jeans underneath so that his genitals were freely exposed. He wore a spiked leather cock ring so that he maintained a painful-looking erection. It was already turning purple, and I wondered how long it had been that way. The look was completed by a leather vest with no shirt. Both his cock and his nipples were pierced. He had a thick beard speckled with gray and he wore a spiked dog collar around his neck. His chest, arms, and shoulders were enormous like a powerlifter and his hairy belly was proportionately just as large. He looked like he could have snapped my neck with one hand, but Kenyatta still towered over him when he stood next to him. Attached to the dog collar was a long chain and holding the end of the chain was a thin and strikingly beautiful middle-aged woman with a full head of gray hair that hung to her waist. She wore a red leather bustier and corset, a long black leather skirt, and red leather boots ending in spiked stiletto heels that were at least six-inches long. Her eye-makeup was dramatic, dark eye shadow and eyeliner, burgundy rouge to make her sharp cheekbones appear almost cadaverous and deep red lipstick. Despite all of that, she managed to look somewhat pleasant and even friendly as she asked for our membership cards.

Kenyatta reached into his jacket to retrieve his wallet and the woman laughed.

“I’m just kidding with you, King. Everybody knows you. It’s forty dollars tonight for the auction. It’s a charity event. Unless you’ve brought us something to auction off?”

She reached out and opened my coat so that my nude body was fully exposed to both her eyes and those of her big hairy sub. That’s how it was at this place sometimes. Once they knew you were a sub, every dom in the place acted like they owned you. I hated that, and I knew it bothered Kenyatta too. So I was surprised when he said nothing as the woman ran her hands over my breasts down my stomach and reached around and patted me on my ass.

“She’s lovely. Is she trained?”

Her eyes narrowed in on the collar pinching into the raw skin around my throat. Unlike the auctions that took place centuries ago when the slaves came over from Africa, my wounds would increase my selling price. A sub who’d already been trained by a respected dom was highly valued in the S&M community and Kenyatta, or King as they knew him in the scene, was very well-known and well-respected I had learned.

“Of course, she is.”

“Mmmmm, wonderful. So, is she for sale?”

“The minimum bid has to be at least five-hundred. She’s not like the used up tired old bottoms you guys usually drag up on stage. This one is newly trained.”

I wanted to cry again as I watched him write the nickname he’d given to me down on the auction list. “Kitten.” It took everything I had to hold the tears in.

“She’ll probably go for twice that. I might even bid on her myself. Just go in and march her up on stage. We’ll be starting in a minute. I’m closing the door at ten o’clock. I don’t want to miss the auction either. I am sponsoring the thing.”

We walked in and I stared at the familiar decor, which now looked foreign and hostile to me. The whipping post and crucifix in the center of the room, the rack on the wall by the windows, the dentist chair and the enormous canopy bed, twice the size of a California King, that sat in the far corner with what looked like over a dozen people crowded onto it. All eyes were pointed to the stage where the slaves were being prepared for auction. My heart rose up into my throat as Kenyatta marched me up there under the lights. He pushed me out among the other slaves and then ripped the fur coat from my shoulders leaving me completely nude and exposed under the stage lights. There was a gasp from the crowd and then applause. I tried to cover myself, but Kenyatta ordered me to stand at attention and I obeyed. He then told me to walk back and forth across the stage with the other slaves. Again, I did as I was told.

The stage lights turned red and the pulsing techno music thundering through the loft faded out, leaving only the hollow sound of shuffling feet and a few scattered applause. A huge leather dyke, the female equivalent of the big biker guarding the door, strode up on stage with a bullwhip in one hand and a microphone in the other. Her makeup was just as severe as the woman who ran the place, dark eye shadow smeared from her eyelids almost to her temples and a thick bead of eyeliner surrounded each emerald green eye. Her lips were large and pouty as if they’d been injected with collagen but one look at her belied such vanity. A thick nest of flaming red hair was knotted into a tight bun on top of her head and her mammoth breasts were squeezed into a tight corset and lifted up to her neckline, still managing to undulate and giggle with each step despite their bondage. The woman somehow managed to be beautiful, even sexy, despite her titanic girth. The entire crowd fell silent in anticipation as she cleared her throat and began to announce the show.

“Good evening subs and doms, sadists and masochists, I am Mistress Delia. Welcome to our sixteenth quarterly charity slave auction benefiting the AIDS Research Foundation. I hope you brought a lot of money because we’ve got some top quality flesh to auction off tonight! The rules are simple. Anyone wishing to bid must purchase bondage bills from Lady “O” at the front at the price of ten dollars for every hundred. This is a charity event so five dollars of every ten you spend will go to The AIDS Research Foundation. Our lovely slaves will be brought up one-by-one onto the stage and anyone wishing to may come up to the front of the stage for a closer inspection. Once the bidding begins, you will have twenty seconds to make a counter bid or the highest bid wins. Some of the slaves tonight will be yours for the evening and some for much, much longer depending on the contract they or their owners have signed. Remember that this is just a fantasy auction however, and these slaves do have the right to refuse to go with you even after you have purchased them. That does not however mean that you get your money back. We have a few one-year contracts for sale and even a lifetime contract or two. The minimum bid for any slave is one hundred dollars though some may be higher depending on the slave’s youth, beauty, and overall pedigree. So get those dollars ready! I’ll give you a few moments to purchase your bondage bills up at the front while we finalize a few contracts and then the bidding will begin with our first slave!”

I trembled as I heard the words “lifetime contract.” I held out hope that Kenyatta would only sell me away for one night and not to be someone’s permanent slave. I knew that I could still refuse to leave with my new master even after I was sold, but I wasn’t sure how Kenyatta would respond to my refusal. There were so many thoughts going through my head when Mistress Delia approached us and asked us what type of contract we were selling. I looked at Kenyatta, pleading with him silently. I wanted to cry and beg and scream, but I knew how much that would have embarrassed him. He would have never forgiven me for it. So, instead I sat silently as Kenyatta took the clip board from Mistress Delia’s large meaty hands with the painted nails so long that they curled at the ends, and began to fill it out while I strained to see which box he checked.

“You look stunning tonight, Delia. Do you still switch? I’d love to play with you again sometime.”

“That is so tempting. You don’t know how tempting, really, but I’m afraid me and my new sub are in a monogamous relationship. But maybe she’d be cool with it if you could take us both on?”

“Now, that would be fun. Remember though, I’m not just about whipping and spanking. I fuck whoever I top. Does your new playmate like dick?”

“Don’t let the hype fool you. Most lesbians like dick every now and again. It’s just what’s attached to it that turns us off. That’s why we opt for vibrating plastic instead. Besides, then we can pick the size that best suits us whereas with men you’re stuck with what you got and most men aren’t built like you, darlin’. I’ll definitely keep your offer in mind though. I’m sure we could work something out.”

They talked about fucking each other as if I wasn’t even standing there, and my jealousy was raging. I wanted to claw the bitch’s eyes out, but Kenyatta had trained me too well. I stood there obediently with my head down, watching as Kenyatta made small talk with the huge lesbian while I waited to see whether I was losing him forever or just for the evening.

“How big are those magnificent tits of yours anyway, Delia?” Kenyatta asked hefting them in both hands while still holding pen and paper.

“I’m an F-cup if you must know,” Delia replied, sticking her massive breasts out proudly.

“My God, woman, I didn’t even know they came that big.”

“I was a G-cup before I lost weight.”

“I could lose myself between those tits. Definitely call me.”

Kenyatta casually checked off lifetime membership in the middle of his playful flirtation and handed the form back to Delia as if he’d done nothing more significant than sold her a box of Girl Scout cookies. I wanted to scream, but again I remained silent as the man I loved prepared to give me away to another.

Mistress Delia, stomped back onto the stage in her size ten stiletto hip boots, carrying the contracts for the dozen or more slaves up for bid. I looked around me at the other slaves who were about to be auctioned. They ranged in age from retirees to kids just barely old enough to legally drink. Some of them were new to the scene, novice subs in search of their first master. Some of them were veterans who’d been topped by almost every dom in the scene at one time or another. Predictably, there were more gay males than females and more of the jaded old bottoms than fresh-faced newbies. They all appeared anxious and excited. A few of them even looked bored. I was perhaps the only depressed and terrified face in the crowd. I was the only one who didn’t want to be there.

“Isn’t this exciting?” a young Filipino kid asked in a voice that was annoyingly bubbly, almost giddy. I turned my back on him and lowered my head to hide the sudden burst of tears. I moved closer to Kenyatta and leaned on him as I wept, hiding my tears in his chest.

“Please, Master. Please don’t sell me. Please don’t give me away,” I whispered to him as I wept.

Kenyatta removed a handkerchief from his suit jacket and dabbed it in the tears, wiping them from my eyes then he kissed me gently on each cheek.

“No more of that. Don’t embarrass me tonight. Go out there and show them what a well-trained, disciplined slave you are.”

I could tell that he was nervous. He didn’t know what I’d do. He was afraid I’d embarrass him, get out there and fall apart, maybe start screaming and crying, fighting all the way to the stage. Or maybe he was afraid I’d run off the stage and refuse to go with whoever purchased me. That was my right, but it would be his shame. The other jealous doms who were intimidated by his comparative youth, good looks, and statuesque physique would laugh at him behind his back and gossip non-stop for years. I sucked up my tears and calmed myself. I could never embarrass him like that. I looked over at him and let him see the resolve in my face. He smiled at me and my heart felt as if it was pumping razor blades. My bottom lip trembled and my knees shook. Tears welled up in my eyes and it took everything within me to keep them from spilling out as I looked at his handsome face and that beautiful smile and the thought crossed my mind that I might never see him again or not at least until the 400 days was up. I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes to catch any tears before they could fall, then I turned toward the stage. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t make a scene. Kenyatta had trained me well and I wanted everyone to know what a great dom my master was. I was proud of him, and I wanted everyone else to be proud of him too. I wanted him to be proud of me.

Mistress Delia was back on the stage. The DJ cranked the music up a few decibels so that Delia had to raise her voice slightly to be heard. The first slave sauntered out with his head held high, strutting proud as a peacock. He was young and blonde with a slight tummy and no muscle tone. He looked like an office executive who had just left his cubicle in time to slip the leather gear out of his trunk and dash up onto the stage. I could imagine what he looked like in a shirt and tie and probably a pair of glasses that he cleaned compulsively. I knew the type. I worked with them every day and most of them needed a good spanking. The office boy bent over to show his asshole which was miraculously distended. He slipped a large butt plug in that was roughly the circumference of a soda can and the bids came fast and furious. He went for six hundred dollars.

Next a mountainous woman, almost as large as Mistress Delia, walked up onto the stage and began clipping clothes hangers all over her titanic breasts. The bidding was slow for her. She went to the first bidder for two hundred dollars.

A man that everyone in the scene new simply as “Old George” walked up on stage, and I was moved into place to follow him. Old George was well known in the scene. At fifty-seven he was one of the oldest members of the Society of “O” and by far the most jaded. It was rumored that it took vise grips on his nipples and vigorous cutting and caning to get him off. Kenyatta once confessed that he was afraid that he had experienced so much so early in life that he was dulling his senses to pleasure and pain and would wind up just like Old George when he got older. The idea terrified him. It terrified me too. The crowd was apparently just as intimidated by the depths of Old George’s masochism because he stood up there for almost a full minute without a single bid. Finally a young dom who didn’t know any better placed a mercy bid and Old George left the stage in the company of his new master for the price of fifty dollars. Then it was my turn.

Mistress Delia gestured for me to accompany her on the stage and my legs began to shake again. Every muscle locked and refused to move. The room began to rock and tilt as if I was back in my box and everything began to gray, starting to go black. The crack of a whip on my naked ass brought me back. I let out a yelp and hopped out onto the stage, turning to see Kenyatta returning the bullwhip to the amused leather dyke he’d borrowed it from.

“This beautiful sub was trained by our very own Master King. She is young and beautiful and experienced in all aspects of pain and pleasure. She enjoys spanking, caning, whipping, bondage, humiliation, and light blood play. Wow. She is quite a connoisseur for one so young. The bidding will start for this beautiful young bottom at five hundred dollars.”

The bids flew as I knew they would. I was fresh meat, and I was the first sub Kenyatta had ever placed up for bid in all the years he’d been a member. He left the stage as soon as the bidding started and walked out into the crowd. My heart pounded, afraid that he was going to leave the loft with me still on stage going to the highest bidder. Instead he took a seat in the back of the room on the enormous bed, squeezed in between the other subs and doms, some of whom were already fucking. I just stared at him. Our eyes locked across the distance, and Kenyatta smiled again as the bidding quickly went from five hundred to seven hundred to a thousand and finally to two thousand.

“Two thousand going once. Two thousand going twice…”

In a panic, I looked down at the grizzled old dom who’d bid two thousand dollars for the right to torture and humiliate me. He was nearly as old as Old George and probably just as jaded and debauched. His head was shaven and his scalp was wrinkled and scarred from too much time in the sun and too many barroom brawls in his youth. He wore a black t-shirt and black jeans, and his body was thin and wrinkled but still hard and athletic. His face was lean and angular. Hard lines cut deep into the skin around his eyes and mouth and sharp cheek bones jutted through even more prominently than Kenyatta’s, only on him, with his eyelids sunken deep beneath his brow, it made him look sinister and cadaverous rather than regal. His thin lips were surrounded by a goatee that was turning from gray to white. There was something cruel in his eyes that terrified me every bit as much as the thought of leaving Kenyatta. I looked back up at my master just as he raised his hand.

“Three thousand dollars.”

I almost fainted. I was so overjoyed that tears leaped into my eyes and I began to laugh out loud. I didn’t care that I was going back home to that little box in the basement. All I cared was that I was going home with my master. He hadn’t sold me.

“Well, here’s a first. Master King is bidding on his own slave. Three thousand going once. Three thousand going twice. Sold! To King for three thousand dollars. You may claim your slave, Sir,” Mistress Delia pronounced with a flourish.

Kenyatta walked back across the room and up onto the stage. Everyone cheered when I ran across the stage and dove into his arms. I wept uncontrollably as he wrapped my fur coat around me once again.

“Come on, Kitten. Let’s go home.” He hooked his leash back onto my collar and led me from the stage as more applause rose from the audience. This was probably the most romantic thing any of these libertines had witnessed in years. I kissed my Master’s full lips and stroked his powerful jaw, then ducked my head against his chest as he wrapped his powerful arm around my shoulders and whisked me from the room. We walked quickly to the exit, pausing only for Kenyatta to pay for the merchandise he had purchased.

“Well, that was quite a little show. Why would you pay for your own property? Don’t tell me you’re getting soft?” the middle-aged woman in the red bustier said with a sarcastic grin as Kenyatta withdrew three thousand dollars in Bondage Bucks from his pocket. Roughly the equivalent of three hundred dollars.

“It’s for charity. Just having a little fun in support of a good cause.”

He turned his back and we walked together down the steps and out into the parking lot with me holding tight to my master and thinking I never wanted to let him go.

We drove home in silence. I held my master the entire ride, my head nestled against his strong chest, one of his massive arms draped around my shoulders pulling me close, feeling safe and protected now that I hadn’t been sold away. I had come so close to losing him that now I knew I loved him more than anything else in life. I knew now more than ever that I would do anything to keep him. He had taught me two lessons that night.

We pulled into the garage and Kenyatta hopped out and dragged me out of the car by my leash. He led me into the kitchen and I started to turn toward the basement when he jerked my leash and led me away from the basement door and toward the back yard.

Out in the yard there was a wooden shed. I couldn’t remember seeing it there before, but it looked old so it must have been there all along and I had merely overlooked it. Kenyatta pulled off my fur coat and ordered me to remove the hip boots. Finally he removed the collar too and then walked back toward the house leaving me standing naked in the yard. I became self-conscious of the neighbors and looked quickly around, noting that the six foot block walls that surrounded the yard had recently been raised another three courses and were now just shy of ten feet tall. No one would be able to see into the yard now.

I turned to look at Kenyatta as he opened the patio door and stepped back into the house. He said nothing to me, did not even turn to look back at me. He closed the sliding glass door without so much as a word, leaving me standing there wondering what I was supposed to do.

I wanted to ask him if he wanted me to follow him into the house or wait for him in the yard. He had always given me instructions and now without his orders I was lost and confused. For a moment I feared that he was abandoning me. Then I reassured myself that if he was kicking me out he would have stripped me down in the front yard and kicked me to the curb. This was something else.

But what?

The patio light went out followed by the kitchen light and a few moments later the light went on in Kenyatta’s bedroom. I still did not know what I was supposed to do. I could only hope that he would come back to tell me what to do. I didn’t even care if he came back with the bullwhip as long as he did something, as long as he came back to me.

Was there a whipping post in the shed? Would Kenyatta come back down and take me into the shed for a good whipping with the bullwhip? But for what? I had done everything he asked me to do tonight. Was I supposed to follow him up to the bedroom?

I didn’t know what to do. I stood there a while longer until the light went out in Kenyatta’s bedroom. I still thought he might be coming back down the stairs with the whip so I remained standing right where he had left me until another five minutes went by and he hadn’t returned. Then my own fear of someone, one of the neighbors, peeking over the wall and seeing me standing there naked, overcame me and I walked over to the shed and stepped inside.

The shed had a dirt floor with a large pile of hay stacked in the corner, a wool army blanket draped across it. There was a fireplace with wood and a cast iron pot I assumed for cooking. A hole in the ground and a bucket of water in the back of the shed was to serve as my toilet. I looked around with my mouth hanging open. I couldn’t believe he had kicked me out of the house. I almost wanted to cry before I realized that this meant I was through with the box in the basement. The auction had symbolized my arrival in America and now I was at my master’s house. Now, officially his property, officially a slave.

I had no idea what my duties were to be. I immediately realized just how little I knew about the life of a slave. Almost all of my knowledge had come from watching the mini-series of Roots on PBS. I didn’t know if he was going to put me out in a field somewhere and make me pick cotton or tobacco or if he’d let me work in the big house, cooking and cleaning and doing whatever else he required of me. That night I couldn’t sleep. I was too nervous and anxious, wondering what Kenyatta had planned for me next. The moon traveled from one end of the sky to the other before I finally awoke to the sound of my door being kicked open.

“Get in the kitchen and get breakfast ready. And then help mistress with her hair and makeup.”

Kenyatta stood in the doorway to my little shack in his bathrobe with a toothbrush in his hand, glaring at me as if I’d failed him in some way.

Mistress? What mistress? What new ingredient had Kenyatta added to the mix? Had he brought a new woman into the house to assist in my torment and if so, was he fucking her too?

I blinked the morning sun from my eyes and stared back at him with my eyebrow raised, wondering what he was up to, then I remembered my role and lowered my head to stare at his foot, which was tapping the dirt floor impatiently as he waited for me to crawl out of bed.

Kenyatta threw some clothes at my feet as I rose from my bed, then crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for me to dress myself. Two simple dresses, one brown one gray, an apron, a pair of white stockings, and some plain brown flats. He had obviously picked them out of a thrift store somewhere because there were places where the dresses had been torn and mended. He had also purchased them very early in the experiment, before I’d lost all my weight. The clothes now hung loosely from my bony frame as I hurried to shrug my way into them while Kenyatta’s eyes crawled all over me. I could tell that he wanted me, but something was holding him back.

Who was this mistress?

I didn’t dare ask. I knew I’d be finding out soon.

Kenyatta smiled mischievously as he turned and walked back into the house.

I finished dressing and raced to follow him, now nearly as terrified and angry as I’d been at the auction the night before.

What woman had Kenyatta brought into the house?

I pulled open the screen door and shuffled nervously into the kitchen with my head down, but my eyes looking up and darting everywhere in search of this strange woman I was expected to serve. There was no one in the kitchen so I began pulling out the pots and pans to cook breakfast. I was taking the bacon and eggs from the refrigerator when someone smacked me hard on the ass. I jumped and one of the eggs tumbled from the carton and cracked open on the floor as I spun around.

There was a small slender black woman standing behind me dressed in a short silk robe that just barely covered her panties. Her arms were crossed over her tiny pear-shaped breasts and a sardonic grin scarred her otherwise beautiful face. Her nails were long and perfectly manicured, her toes were painted as well, her legs were slender and tone, and her skin was a flawless caramel, smooth and unblemished. With the exception of one side smashed flat from where she’d obviously slept on it, her hair still looked as if she’d just left a beauty parlor. Everything about her said “high maintenance” and I recognized her instantly even though I’d never actually met her before. She was Kenyatta’s ex-wife.

“That ass ain’t quite so big anymore is it? I’m sure Kenyatta must be terribly disappointed.”

She looked me up and down, scowling contemptuously.

“Clean that shit up. I want my eggs over medium and my bacon extra-crisp. Oh, and hurry up and make me some coffee. Two creams one sugar.”

I was still staring at her with my mouth hanging open in astonishment when she turned around and walked to the kitchen table. She sat down and crossed her legs, her robe fell open and she was almost naked beneath it. Her body was perfect, not an ounce of fat on it. Her breasts were small but round and perky with large dark nipples like Hershey’s kisses. She was wearing a thong and it was obvious that she’d recently had a Brazilian wax. Looking at her it was hard to understand what Kenyatta had ever seen in me. I was this woman’s exact opposite. She was hard and lean and brown; I was soft and fleshy and white, at least I was when Kenyatta had first met me, before he’d starved the pounds off of me. Every woman I knew would have killed for her body. She almost had a six-pack. But yet Kenyatta had left her for me, and now she was back and I was to be her slave as well as his.

She gestured impatiently for me to get to work, hands splayed out palms up in front of her and thrust in my direction. Then she rolled her eyes and shook her head. More so than ever I wanted to say to hell with this experiment. No man was worth this. I thought about taking off my apron and tossing it right in this bitch’s face then marching right upstairs and telling Kenyatta what a cruel twisted bastard I thought he was. But I knew he’d just pull a chapter out of that damn book and make me feel like I was the one being insensitive. Plus, it would mean that I’d never be his wife, though his ex-wife being in the house called that into question for me anyway. I’d have to wait for Kenyatta to explain it to me though I suspected he wouldn’t, preferring to leave me with my own fears and doubts.

Were they back together? Was he fucking her? And if they are back together then why would he continue the game? Was this just some twisted plan the two of them had all along to make me fall in love and then humiliate and embarrass me as some kind of punishment to all white people…or maybe just to punish white women who date black men? But he’d been dating me for months before the experiment began and he’d always treated me like a queen. If this was still just part of the experiment, how the hell had he gotten her to agree to it? Of all the women he could have had play this role, why her? Why not one of the dominatrices he knew from the scene?

I found myself immobilized by doubt. My head reeled from a hurricane of questions spiraling through my skull. My legs began to tremble and tears welled up in my eyes. I wanted to collapse on the floor and cry. I wanted to attack this bitch and claw her perfect face to ribbons. I wanted to walk right out the door and never look back. I wanted to marry Kenyatta. I wanted him to love me and protect me forever.

“Are you going to clean that up?” She was tapping her foot and glaring at me like she was talking to an idiot, which I must have looked like standing there in the middle of the kitchen with my mouth hanging open and a broken egg oozing around my feet.

I finally broke my stare, wiped away the tears threatening to spill, closed my gaping mouth, and turned to grab a sponge from the sink. From the corner of my eye, I could see her smiling triumphantly as I knelt before her on my hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. I almost wished I was back in the basement crammed in that little box. I had a feeling that dealing with this bitch would be much worse.