“I’m really glad you decided to go along with this, Katherine,” Andrew whispered with a feigned smile.
Murmurs in the great room on the other side of the double doors had grown significantly louder in the last few minutes which meant members were beginning to finish their meal and make their way out of the dinning room in numbers; and the last thing Andrew Madison needed was to be overheard by his father in front of other members. He and Katherine weren’t supposed to even be in the anteroom for another five minutes; he was defying his stepfather’s instructions only because Katherine had barged out of the dressing room forcing him to follow.
“Mrs. Livingston,” Katherine barked.
“Yes Ma’am. I’m sorry Mrs. Livingston.” He paused awkwardly not knowing whether to speak his mind or let it rest. Eventually he inhaled deeply and started, “I never imagined what I said in front of him would lead to any of this. It was an honest mistake. I really am sorry, Kath…er…Mrs. Livingston. And I want you to know I argued against being…you know…the one up there with you tonight. He insisted. I’d have gone to my mother to overrule him, but I doubt either of us would want her to know anything about this place or anything that goes on here tonight.”
Again Andrew paused as if hoping that, if he waited long enough, Katherine would exonerate him of all wrongdoing. When she stared straight ahead in silent defiance he decided to go on.
“Anything I say or do in there tonight is not of my own choosing. They aren’t my words, ok? It’s important to me that you know that. It’s all in that goddamned book he kept waving around the other night when the three of us were in his study. It’s like some kind of script that I follow to the letter with the exception of plugging in your personal description.” Katherine’s eyes were closed now, but her mouth remained closed. He went on, “This isn’t my idea of a good time. It’s barbaric. Anyway…I just wanted you to know that I think what you’re doing for your family is admirable.”
Admirable. With that word Katherine dropped her chin to her chest in defeat and fought to hold back tears of rage and humiliation. Nothing about what was going to go on in that room was going to be admirable. It was, as she saw it, her only option, but there was little solace in that now. The tenor of her voice had a distinct tremble to it as she whispered, “Thank you Andrew. I appreciate you saying that.”
The two stood in silence for a long while. The young man fidgeted with the pages of the book as though he was doing some last minute cramming before a final exam. Katherine, nearly thirty years his senior, kept her chin on her chest and her eyes closed, but she reached toward the rustling pages and placed her hand atop his. “We went over this plenty. You know what you need to do. Breathe. It’s not like I’m some cow you’ve been saddled with, you know. I still have it- at least a little.”
“A lot,” Andrew spat the words out before he could bite his tongue. He garbled some incomprehensible fragments that showed his embarrassment at being so forward.
Katherine smiled at the compliment and the boy’s embarrassed response to making it. “It’s fine, Andrew. Glad to know you’ll enjoy the view in there.”
Andrew blushed and shrugged a bit. She wasn’t wrong. Katherine Livingston was a beautiful woman for any age, but particularly at fifty. For the first time since they’d arrived together, Andrew admired just how striking she was in the outfit they’d chosen for her. His attention was torn away from her curves when three loud thumps echoed in the next room and the room fell silent. A lone voice rang out that they both could both clearly identify as belonging to the Senator. The mahogany doors between he and the two of them muffled Andrew’s stepfather’s words, but he was clearly giving some quick introduction or explanation as to what has to come next. A roar of applause burst out causing Katherine’s handled to begin trembling. Andrew reached over and held it and offered a silent, somber nod of encouragement. They broke hands just in time, for the next moment both doors swung wide and they were faced with the full force of the reality before them.
Neither Andrew nor Katherine had ever seen anything quite like it- except maybe in movies. It was like something out of Camelot. The entire room, from the floor, to the ceiling, and the walls between was chiseled from limestone. Ornate carvings lined the tops of the walls- also made from limestone. The only light in the room was provided by torches that hung from iron rings on the walls every few feet all the way around. On the far end of the room, where the Senator had been speaking, an elevated limestone platform rose three feet above the remainder of the floor. Each man in the room- and there were only men- wore a black cloak over his white shirt and black tie, and a black mask made from the same material as the cloak veiled his eyes and the bridge of his nose. Who the fuck are these people? Katherine whispered just loud enough for Andrew to hear.
One man stepped forward with a red pillow that held two long gold chains and matching golden collar. Andrew took the collar from the pillow and turned back to face Katherine. “Turn,” he ordered as he instructions required. She turned her back to Andrew as ordered so that he could lift the collar over her head her head and clasp it behind her neck. Again he ordered coldly, “Turn.” Katherine did as instructed. Next, with the first chain, he attached the final link to the o-shaped ring that. With that completed, he turned to face the Senator where he stood atop the platform and gave him a pronounced nod.
“Shields,” he bellowed, raising both hands, palms down above his head, “tonight the tradition continues. This year’s prospective candidates have sent their class president, Andrew here, to extend their offering to the membership. Sword & Shield has passed the offering tradition down through the generations and that takes on even more meaning for me tonight as this offering is brought to us by my own next generation- my son Andrew. Stepson, Andrew seethed. You are not my father. “Andrew!” the Senator barked with more than a twinge of annoyance in his tone. Shit. Andrew had been cursing the man to the point that he didn’t hear his cue. “Again,” the Senator glared at his stepson with a look that said, you will not embarrass me you little bastard, “…again I’ll say, ‘you may begin.'”
He nodded to the remainder of the members in his pledge class who waited in the wings. His signal brought them scurrying into the room with black folding crammed four wide in each hand. The young men laid out the chairs in semi-circular rows facing the platform. Once the members were seated the real challenge would begin. Andrew knew it, too. If the journey of a thousand steps begins with the first step, he couldn’t imagine the length of journey that would justify the difficulty he felt as he tried to lift his left foot off the ground to move forward. The pause was imperceptible to anyone in the room other than Katherine and the Senator but lasted an eternity in his mind. When the step finally came the tension of the chain caught Katherine off guard. She did her best not to stumble forward. Dignity would be in short supply tonight so she had no intention of surrendering more by falling down at the outset.
Row by row, member by member, Andrew led the middle-aged woman along to be leered at by some of the country’s top political, economic, and, yes, spiritual leaders. Katherine kept her eyes fixed on the walls above the men’s heads as best she could as she was paraded like livestock before these best and brightest. She felt their gaze seer into every inch of her frame, and though uncomfortable in this setting and state of dress, it wasn’t the worst part of the parade- she was accustomed to turning heads her entire life. The worst part was the little notebooks emblazoned with the seal of the secret order in which many of the members made notes as they craned their necks to get every possible angle. They weren’t just sizing her up with their eyes, she realized; that part was perversely almost flattering. The members were also sizing her up with their business acumen. They were placing a value on her. Katherine wanted to die.
Andrew led her through the final row and then yanked the chain firmly, as the book demanded, toward the platform. This time Katherine couldn’t maintain her balance in the five-inch paten leather high heels, which glowed in the torch light, the two of them had settled on the week before. She tumbled forward onto her hands and knees on unsympathetic rigidity of the limestone floor. The crowd of men roared with laughter. Andrew looked down with eyes as sympathetic as he could be seen to show and ordered her back to her feet. Katherine realized as she rose that her left breast had poured out of her of her designer lingerie and was on display. She fumbled with the C-cup but was stopped by Andrew’s firm, “No. Leave it.” What’s the point of modesty at this point, she reasoned, not that she had a choice in complying with his command. So she marched on, one breast in, one out, up on to the platform. For the first time in twenty-seven years more than one man at a time had seen her exposed. This time, it wasn’t at a music festival, but in a den full of wolves.
Andrew and Katherine had rehearsed this next part, so she knew exactly what to expect. They’d spent an entire afternoon in Manhattan traipsing from one designer lingerie boutique to the next before they found a set they agreed upon. Intricate black lace- not the mall style she’d grown up wearing- formed firmly around her bust and held tight to her abdomen for three inches further down. It was highlighted by a tasteful sapphire pattern, the same as on the high-waisted garter below that highlighted her bottomless blue eyes and drew a stark contrast to the creaminess of her skin. Matte nylon stockings that cost more than her first car completed the look. Andrew paid for it all of course, but the trust fund baby caught her off guard by purchasing a duplicate of each item. Later, inside the privacy of his mother’s inexplicable second apartment on the island, he explained the extravagance. The ritual required that he tear the lingerie from her body as crudely as he could manage. In order to make that look as brutal as possible, he explained, they would need a dry run. He had taken a pair of safety scissors to make nearly imperceptible cuts in the fabric of the bustier and garter to make tearing the garments more feasible. The tactic had succeeded and so, once Katherine was dressed an hour earlier, Andrew made the same preparations with the same pair of scissors.
Now, in the torchlight, he grabbed between the cups of the bustier and rent with all his might. The garment tore as planned and the young man tossed in into the now raucous crowd before repeating the act with the garter. A thin string of silk was no match for the collegiate athlete, so they’d made no preparation for her thong or stockings. He tore them from her trembling frame and tossed them just the same. Katherine feigned surprise at the brutality, though her involuntary reaction was far from rehearsed. She could not have possibly prepared for the reality of standing before a group of ravenous men cloaked only in stilettos and the small strip of hair that rose from between her thighs. Her heart beat like the drums of an ancient warship and her breath was ragged. It was as though she could feel each individual pair of eyes peering beneath her skin and directly into the signs of arousal she was so desperately trying to conceal.
The man with the pillow reappeared and offered Andrew the final, much longer chain, which he weaved into a harness across her bare flesh. Cold metal wasn’t something she’d ever conceived as an erotic sensation. Instantly she knew that conceit was incorrect. It was a combination rather than a single factor. There was the harsh temperature, which caused every small hair on her body to stand at attention. Then there was the sound of link after link of chain unwound from it’s coil only to constrict back against her pale flesh as it wound behind her neck, crossed across her chest just beneath her bare breasts, wrapped between her legs, pressing against her outer lips with a precise amount of pressure, crossing again at her navel and was finally tethered to the chains already in place at her sternum. It was a surreal feeling. These were not gold plated chains like they had practiced with- the weight made that clear. She was bound, like the slave of some pharaoh of old, in solid gold bindings, and displayed for all his court to gaze upon. It was utterly humiliating, and yet, the thinnest sheen of moisture was beginning to glisten against the chain between her legs.
When the room died down Andrew began to speak, “We the 2021 pledge class of Sword & Shield, bring to you this offering for your bidding. May it please the membership.” The members stomped one foot on the ground in unison as a sign of approval. He glanced toward his stepfather who nodded approvingly. He decided to lay it on thick by adding, “While it is outside protocol, I would be remiss to not state publicly how much pride I take in being chosen to represent my potential future brothers here tonight, and do so under the direction of my esteemed father.” The crowd ate it up. So did the Senator. Andrew cursed himself internally.
He continued, “We offer up what we have been told is a break from recent trends. This woman is clearly not a coed. She is not a girl from some sorority paid to be here or guilted into being here due to some schoolgirl crush. She is not a girl at all.” He paused for dramatic effect. Palpable tension in the room confirmed that his attempts at showmanship were working. When he felt the moment was right he resumed his rehearsed oration.
“What we have for you this evening is all woman, and she has volunteered, unsolicited, to be here this evening. Katarina is her name. Her husband’s neglect is your potential gain.” Andrew let the words linger in the smoky air. None of what he’d just said was true and he knew it. She’d have rather been anywhere else in the world tonight- most of all with her doting husband. But the narrative was irresistible. A married woman, tired of her drab family and life, sleeps with an undergrad, hears about the ritual of the secret society he’s trying to join, and enthusiastically volunteers to be the offering. It was too good to be true. It was too good to be true. Yet the outsized egos of his audience allowed such an absurd tale.
“Katarina is forty-three years old.” Andrew hadn’t told her that wrinkle in his sales pitch. Katherine had to hide the broad grin of pride she felt at his thinking she could pass for seven years her junior. “She is five foot six and one hundred sixty five pounds. These,” he called out as he yanked her backward toward him and mauled at her breasts, “are 34Cs. The sensitivity of her nipples is beyond any that I’ve encountered thus far in the hidden recess of boarding school and college dormitories.” The members chuckled knowingly at the remark. To accentuate his point, he pinched the right nipple and twisted the left. Katherine let out a guttural moan that even the dullest boarding school chap could decipher as arousal. “Do you see what I mean?” the boy asked to whistles and crude suggestions.
By this time, Katherine was on another planet. The lust behind the dozens of eyes upon her was enough to arouse the former wild child from the plains of Middle America. There was an exhibitionist at heart buried beneath the pearls and patterns of upper class motherhood, and this absurd setting seemed to be reviving that part of her. Her nipples, the same ones her children had fed at years before, protruded with wanton lust even before Andrew had mauled them. Now, they felt as though they might burst.
Andrew scrolled through a list of her finest physical attributes, paying particular attention to her full lips and expansive ass. He tugged at the tuft of hair he called her landing strip with a wide grin across his face and assured his audience the reward below was sweeter and tighter than any they would find in a woman half “Katarina’s” age.
Though they sat row after row clearly engaged, he followed the script to the letter. “You seem not to believe me,” he said incredulously, “I am not in a position to lie. Let me prove it. Katarina, you will bury two of your fingers in your cunt and choose a member to verify my claim.” Katherine did as she was obligated to do and then searched the crowd with a twinge of hunger in her eyes. She locked onto a man with broad shoulders and wild red hair and beckoned him with her two coated digits. The man obliged, tongued her fingers, and then let out a Rebel Yell that rattled the room. “We’ll take that as a yes, sir,” Andrew added with a wink. Then, as though seriously pondering his next words, Andrew paused before saying, “You know, given the esteem of my family- we are not family- I wouldn’t want to make such claims without first hand inspection by any potential bidders.” He let the words linger for just a moment before commanding toward the shadows, “Bring out the stakes.”
The crowd erupted as though the Crimson had just won the Ivy League. The Senator had mentioned in passing that no member had made contact with an offering in nearly a decade prior to the auction, and Andrew had filed the factoid away. The booklet made clear that the only way an offering could be touched was if they agreed to place their feet between, and grip their hands onto “the stakes.” The Vice President of the class inserted a wooden peg into each of the six indentions in the circular limestone platform’s surface. Andrew strode behind Katherine and produced and red silk blindfold from his pocket, which he fastened across her eyes. “Katarina” then lowered herself onto the stone floor. She fumbled blindly until she found two stakes, ankle width apart to her left. She slid her ankle between them and pulled to show that her foot could go no higher. Katherine did the same on the right before lying flat and reaching up to wrap each of her hands around the wooden pegs above her. Her body, wrapped in chains, now laid on the ground as though bound to a St. Andrews cross. “Well…” Andrew said through a convincing smile, “see for yourselves, gentleman.”
The boardroom at Goldman Sach’s is little more than a modern Viking raiding party in Armani suits as it was, but as multiple masked members of that board and dozens of their society brethren moved toward the woman on the dais, the moved like the warriors of old. In an instant what felt like five hundred hands were on Katherine’s body. She tensed at the sensation and clinched onto the pegs in her hand. Weak hands, strong hands, callous, soft, and every kind in between mauled at her flesh. Decorum and self-respect required she show no response to the onslaught, and she tried her damnedest to adhere to the self-governance she had laid out in advance. A finger and then another plunged into her sex. She bit her painted lip until the faint taste of blood filled her mouth, but she remained silent. Hands and lips and teeth worked on her nipples until she became convinced she would pass out from the sensation. Still she refused to surrender. A faceless figure stuffed two finger between her lips and commanded that she “show him what these big things can do.” She complied without a sound. Katherine was proud of her resilience. She had taken their objectification in stride and resisted the involuntary responses they illicited.
Then a man whispered in her ear and all was lost. “This is all going to be mine in a few hours. None of them could outbid me, even if they wanted to. You’ll break the all-time record if need be. You will be mine. You will be used. You will scream yourself hoarse. And there’s nothing you can do about it, Katherine.”
“Katarina” came violently as he finished his promise. The fingers inside her no longer seemed like invaders to resist. Hands and mouths and teeth on her breasts and neck and ample thighs were no longer a humiliation to block out. In an instant, they all became of cocktail of ecstasy she couldn’t down fast enough. She had fantasized about group encounters since she was a teenager and now, in this surreal place, there were hands everywhere. Katherine cried out again and again, “Yes. Get a good feel you bastards! Yes! Did I disappoint you? Fuuuuck. Should I have…yessssssss….should he have brought some coed instead?” Andrew watched in astonishment as she writhed and moaned under the command of the crowd.
Thump. Thump. Thump. The noise echoed in the chamber and seemed to stop this crowd of titans in their tracks. The Senator stood and bellowed, “Perhaps it’s time to continue the presentation.” The members filed back to their seats. Andrew was in awe. His stepfather was a United States Senator and held all the power that office bestowed, but he was hardly the highest-ranking official in the room. Masked blocked their faces, but the young man knew for certain that at least one Supreme Court Justice and two members of the cabinet were in attendance- he’d seen that much as he’d rummaged through the Senator’s home office desk calendar. Yet not so such as one man balked at this suggestion. He wasn’t the most powerful man amongst them, but he was unquestionably the most powerful man in the room.
Katherine’s breasts heaved wildly as she clung to the wooden pegs for support now instead of their previous purpose of willful restraint. A river of lust flowed between her thighs and she no longer gave any thought to the modesty of trying to hide it.
Sensing her arousal and the chance to break the all-time record, Andrew broke the script he and Katherine had arranged.
“What are you?” Andrew asked.
“A woman?” she answered, obviously confused.
“No,” he asked again, “what are you?”
She had no idea what he was getting at, so she answered in the most lude, over-the-top way she could imagine- a way that would drive the overgrown children around her wild. “I’m hungry,” she spat in a confession that was nowhere close to false. “I’m hungry for your cock. If that’s the only way to show these real men what I can do, then I’ll take what I can get.”
Andrew’s face burned with rage at the slight. He’d done his best to protect her from the Senator’s trap, and now she humiliated him in front of the society. He bypassed the chain harness and lifted her to eye level by the scruff of the neck, which caused Katherine to howl out with pain.
“How fucking dare you…” he growled into her ear so that only she could hear, his breath was hot with an obvious rage, “I did everything I co-,” he stopped for a moment as her teeth bit down on the lobe of his left ear.
“Keeping bitching you petulant child,” she hissed, “call me every name you can think off. Make it seem real. Nothing I’m saying is. You’re smart enough to know that if you stop and think for a second.”
Andrew had to bite his own lip to hold back the swell of pride and relief. Katherine was femininity personified and, for a moment, he’d thought she’d dismissed him out of hand. He gset his jaw and resumed his role. “On your knees, bitch,” he barked in a voice with conviction that made even the Senator take notice. Katherine’s eyes sparkled with excitement as she lowered her naked body down to the floor and waited for further instructions from the boy who had never looked or sounded more like a man.
“Show the members of society who actually matter what the peasant lips of a bitch who clearly doesn’t can do,” he ordered. Katherine had always hated that word, but not now. He’d called her a bitch in character, but, if she were honest, in that moment she’d have been whatever kind of bitch the younger man wanted. For the moment he was welcome to do anything he could imagine to her body and her mind and all she’d do was beg for more.
Katherine could oblige fast enough for either of them. Wild with lust, she freed and engulfed his cock with her painted, “peasant lips.” The were positioned perpendicular to the audience so that they could watch her work. Her tongue danced across the head with expert precision causing Andrew to close his eyes and tilt his head toward the ceiling. He groaned when she bobbed back down the shaft taking as much of his sizeable length into her throat as she could manage. The groan brought on her first mini-orgasm of the night. She couldn’t believe it; she’d actually cum without stimulation, just from giving head. A woman may be at her most powerfull when she is on her knees, particularly with the anatomy and skills Katherine possessed, she believed, but she’d never actually found release. Her throat constricted around him as she climaxed and they both moaned at the sensation.
Andrew wrapped the chain around his fist again. He used the tension it created to tilt her eyes up to meet his. The lust in her blues was intoxicating. Flickering light from the torches danced aross them creating the illusion that untold shades of sapphire were swirling. Katherine smiled with her eyes as she continued work. In that absurd moment, the two of them performing for a gathering of men whom they both despised, Andrew realized his was in love with her. The realization broke his concentration causing him wobble on the edge of his own climax. If the kept up her mastery another second he knew he would. Violently he jerked her to head away from his cock and pulled her to her feet.
A pledge knew the single and produced a leather covered sawhorse which he set in the middle of the platform. Andrew bent his offering at the waist until her breasts and face were fashed against the deep brown of the leather cusion. Two thick leather straps were thread through the harness to hold her firm upper body to the device. Cold metal pressed into her flesh at the pressure causing Katherine to strain at the straps to relieve the biting pressure. There was no give, though, so she gave up the effort. Andrew pulled the chain leash until she was forced to raise her cheek off the cushion and to look straight ahead into the audience. Katherine again resisted by trying to look away, but by wrapping the leash around the wooden peg on the floor in front of her, he had secured her head in place. She slammed her eyes closed to avoid see the faces of her tormenters. Though, she admitted to herself, the pool between her legs and the streams running down her thighs made torment a less than convincing claim.
While Andrew had worked to secure the harness to the device and position her head, the pledge who had brought out the sawhorse and used two clips leather cuffs with a gold clasps to secure her wrists to the links of the harness chain on the outside of each thigh, and two more to bind her each ankle to the back legs via small eye rings. Ever the actress, she strained wildly against her binding to no avail. She was completely immobilized. The crowd rorared with approval at her plight.
Andrew nodded to the boy who then exited the platform. He ran his fingers along the smoothness of her bare back as he made his way behind his offering. When he reached her magnificent ass he paused briefly to admire her beauty before retrieveing a red lather crop from a pocket on the side of the back left leg of the sawhorse. “You will count aloud,” he commanded. Katherine’s entire body went rigid. Count what? she panicked internally. Andrew couldn’t bring himself to tell her about this part of the ritual after a comment she’d made during their shopping excursion about how much she hated to be spanked. There was no point in having her worry about it in advance. He hated himself for it, but still maintained it had been the right decision.
He turned the attention toward the men seated below. “Shall we see if she take can handle a some pain?” He improvised that portion to build the effect, and to give some mild warning to Katherine that what she feared was in-fact on its way. Andrew caught the eye of the Senator who nodded with a soft smile. Apparently he approved of the break from the script. The other members clearly did as well as the whistled and clapped their approval.
Andrew ran his finger once over her slit before he levied the first stike of the crop. Katherine’s plump ass rippled at the blow. “One.” Again he traced his finger down her shining sex and again he brought down the crop. “Two.” He repeated the process eight more times. Each time she did as instructed. Before the next assault he ran his finger down; this time he broke the routine by sliding the finger inside of her. Katherine clutched his digit in place. A brief calculation of sight lines confirmed that no one else in the room could see what he was doing, so he chose to leave it in place for the next ten blows. Each stike caused her to constrict around him a little more. The screams began to change to moans. The numbers were called out with an increasing amount of gravel in her voice.
Just before twenty first blow he withdrew his finger, only to return it along with a second just as the blow landed. Katherine howled. Far later she would look back lustily at Andrew’s clever decision to make the spanking erotic and particularly at the brilliance of the denial and euphoria of that twenty first assault- but she wasn’t thinking anything when it happened. She was cumming violently. She cursed him and moaned and flailed wildly at her bindings. Andrew reigned down blow after blow in quick succession now.
“Twenty two.”
Ugh
“Twenty three.”
Fuuuck
“Twenty four.”
On it went for sixteen more blows. Orgasmic waves ebbed and flowed as she sqealed out each number in a pitch that grew higher with each until the ordeal was over.
Andrew dropped the paddle and buried himself to the hilt inside her. Katherine’s eyes shot wide at the instrusion. Something inside her snapped as he grabbed the chains on each thigh and began pounding into her with wreckless abandon. A wicked grin spread across her face through which she grunted at the pleasure that came with each animalistic thrust.
“Is this what you came for?” she called out.
Unff.
“You bastards want this?”
Unff.
“Like this?
Unff.
“You gonna tie me down and fuck me for twenty four hours?”
Unff.
“You better. You fucking better.”
Unff.
“Cause that’s the..”
Unff.
“Way…”
Unff.
“You can…”
Unff.
“Hope to handle meee.”
Her pitch rose to new heights as Andrew flooded her with pump after pump of his cum. The sensation summoned her final orgasm of the night. It felt as though, she thought, it might be her last orgasm- period. Katherine had never experienced anything close to the explosions happening throughout her body. Sex with her husband, and before him, had produced a fair share of toe curling climaxes, but nothing close to this. This time she felt as though her toes, and her tongue, and every other surface on her body were entering their own, individual Valhalla.
Katherine’s leash was untied from the stake before two pledges lifted the sawhorse and carried it, with her still aboard, back to the waiting area from earlier in the night. Andrew gathered himself and started after her on wobbly legs, but was quickly surrounded by the throng of members. Each shook his hand and praised his performance. It was the most surreal moment of the entire evening. He stood, his manhood still semi-erect, glistening in the dim light, and on display for all the world while these titans of industry backslapped him and praised his sexual performance.
His “father” was the final hand to shake, and the group, sensing the moment, seemed to part for him to walk toward his “son.” He feigned feilty and told the man he hoped he’d made him proud. The Senator nodded and led him from the room while other members of his class prepared for the auction to begin.
Katherine sat, untied now, in a small leather chair, her collar still on, with a robe covering her naked body when the Senator led Andrew into the room.
“My boy looks to have worn you out, Kat,” the man said with a self-satisfied smile. He poured two glasses of whiskey from the bar inside the globe in the near corner and handed one to Andrew. What the boy really needed was water, but he humored his father and took the glass. The Senator walked toward her as though the second glass was for her, but instead he took a sip before clutching Katherine’s chin. He twisted it slightly from side to side as he inspected her. Then, without asking or speaking at all, he moved his hand to the robe and casually flipped each side open to expose her naked body. She didn’t move to cover herself; there wasn’t much point in modesty after the performance, she figured. “Get yourself together and fix that goddamned makeup. You look like an old maid without it.” Katherine flinched inside at the dig, but showed no outward reaction. The Senator turned back toward her as he reached the doorframe and growled, “Twice the amount. You’ll go for twice the amount or you may as well not have come at all.” He turned and left without another word.