ass, especially a cute little can like she's got.'
'We don't use those names. They're not really us.' Antonia Noyes was enjoying her visitor's avid curiosity, it bestowed a pleasant omnipotence. She was envisioning Ilona Paisley in the nude and with a well striped bottom! The woman was not a great deal older than herself, as a diversion she might be worth while. She would amuse Griselda. 'You'd like to whip Griselda's bottom.' She suggested blandly. 'I can tell.'
Ilona Paisley was again viewing the buttocks in question. They came along with her fresh drink. The lines across the rounded curves were definite, they had been placed there by some slender instrument of punishment. She was shocked by her wave of concupiscence they evoked. Forthrightly, she admitted: 'Well, yes I would.
You two seem to have dragged something out of the closet. Don't tell me you'd let me?'
'Ask Griselda, it's her bottom.'
'If it would give you pleasure, Ilona. Why, of course you can.' Griselda's eyes were limpid pools. But she was a woman bestowing a privilege on another as an equal. 'I'm afraid you'd have to tie me though. I can't stand still while. . it happens.'
Ilona was annoyed with herself. These two had got under her skin. They were so impregnable, their beautifully svelte exteriors were more than a facade. She was accustomed to shocking others. . she was not even coming close, but they had managed to get her into a dither of desire.
'Why don't you let Griselda give you the Grand Tour?'
Were they playing with her? Perhaps! But what had she to lose! Ilona Paisley said, with some sincerity: 'I'd like that. You're really being very kind to a nosey Parker.'
She got to her feet.
The damn girl was magic, erotic as all get out. Nothing about her fitted a pattern.
Despite the handcuffs, it was like having the President's wife show you around a bawdy house. Ilona supposed it was the handcuffed wrists and the weaving bottom, walking ahead, that was arousing her responses. She was heatedly aware of them.
These two positively had to be lesbians to reach out and grab her as they did. And the agility! Griselda opened doors and pointed things out with the same dexterity she had employed in serving drinks. Maybe she actually had been handcuffed like this for weeks and weeks?
'There's really only the punishment room and where we sleep.' Griselda was faintly apologetic. 'And, of course, the dungeon.'
'I'd like to see the dungeon.'
'It's a bit cold now. I haven't been naughty for a couple of days.' Griselda smiled from some remote solitude all her own. 'I'm not a bit fond of the dungeon. You're suspecting I'm a masochist but I'm not. And the chains are so heavy.'
'Chains?'
'Yes, of course. A girl put in a dungeon is always chained. It's Purely punitive? I mean, it's part of her punishment.'
The Publisher looked around in journalistic joy. What a story! The damn place actually was a dungeon. Any medieval monster would have been proud of it. And there were the chains, the cuffs of their shackles open and waiting. . hanging from the stone of the wall. She turned to her guide: 'You mean, you get locked in this awful place, and you wear all that hardware on your wrists and ankles?'
'Of course.' There was a hint of impatience at so redundant a query. 'As I said, I don't enjoy it one bit. But it's a punishment, and a girl's not supposed to enjoy her punishments.'
'Take it seriously, don't you!'
'Is there any other way?' There was a hint of reproof.
'I suppose not.' Ilona was now having to cope with breasts and pubic hair of which their owner seemed unaware, but which were affecting her breathlessly. Their contours and their colours could not be ignored. Hiding arousal, she enquired: 'The other room?'
'Of course. It gets used more often. I don't always deserve the dungeon, y'know.
We go back upstairs.'
'You get a kick out of this stuff!' Ilona Paisley gazed around the large bright chamber with an interest only slightly tinged with disapproval. 'I mean. . having it. . happen to you?'
'How quaint? your expression? 'Happen to me'. The answer is yes.'
'You'd let yourself be fastened in those stocks, or hoisted up on that pulley? And isn't that what they used to call a 'horse', a girl sits on it with her thingummy squashed?'
'Yes, if 'Tonia orders me.'
The blasted girl was showing a faintly superior boredom. The Paisley Publishing House felt itself slighted by a nude product of Vassar whose wrists were handcuffed behind a strikingly beautiful back. Ilona's retort was terse: 'Suppose I ordered you?'
'No. I'm sorry. But you can always ask 'Tonia? about me, I mean. I'll do whatever she says.'
'You are a slave then? Or a masochist?'
'We find such terms offensive, if you don't mind?'
Dammit, she was being talked down to, a plebeian being put in her place. Ilona Paisley had a momentary vision of whipping the pert bare bottom that had such a high opinion of itself. At that moment it would be a most satisfying act. Gruffly, she demanded: 'How'd you feel about it if I did ask that girl friend of your's about using you some way?'
'Oh, by all means! I can't promise 'Tonia's answer? Oh, and I should warn you, if I have to experience pain I make the same sounds as any other girl.'
'Who said anything about pain?'
'Your face, Miss Paisley. For a moment it was avid.'
'Look here, Griselda Sanderson, d'you realize you're talking at me as though I'm a moron fresh from Skunk Hollow?'
'Oh. . ! Oh, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean?!' The words were undoubtedly sincere. 'Tonia and I have something most people don't understand, so now I don't even expect them to? and since it doesn't really matter. . ! I say, would you like me to show you our own room, our bedroom? It's probably a bit different??'
It was different! Ilona Paisley looked around and wished she shared such erotic luxury with her guide, the bed screamed of female love.
'As you see, it's a four poster, and the posts are heavy and joined across the top to make them very, very solid.' Griselda's voice had become more softly tolerant. 'I can be tied, chained, fastened to it in a hundred poses?'
'Poses?'
'We like that word. 'Tonia and I want anything that's done with me to be aesthetic.'
'Tied to her bedpost. . ! Why?'
'Ohhh, I think you know. Wouldn't you like to drowse in that bed with me. .
arranged to please?'
Ilona conceded a smile. 'The way you explain that? It grabs. Some other female, no. But with you, yes. I suppose you realize you've got a built-in eroticism that makes this whole thing credible?'
'Oh, yes, I know.' The admission was vaguely abstract. 'But here's something else you should see.'
The fluid coping with chained hands once more came into play. With simian dexterity Griselda used a bare foot to snare a chain and lift it to the coverlet. At the end was an open shackle. Contorting her nudity, she contrived to fit the metal circlet round her left ankle and snap it shut. Gracefully, she got to her feet and walked around the bed, the chain swirling on the rug with every step. Brightly, she enquired:
'D'you like it?'
Ilona Paisley liked it very much. It was absurd, but in this situation it possessed a rightness. 'What's it for?' She asked breathlessly.
'It lets me go to the bathroom and around, but it won't allow me to reach the door or the key on the far wall. When my ankle's locked this way 'Tonia knows where I'm at.'
'But to chain you! It implies a wish to escape. Do you want to?'
'Of course not. But everything we do must be totally valid. If I walked around free and wore clothes we'd simply be a couple of girls who slept together.'
