'So?'
Griselda smiled. 'You know better than to toss that 'So?' at me. You're just probing. I think you're managing to put a label on 'Tonia and I. Most people can't, and it doesn't matter.'
'I'm flattered. I'm going to ask your Antonia to order you to do something.'
'Very well. May I ask what?'
'To service me.'
Ilona Paisley's bomb did not explode. Griselda's reply was unconcerned. 'Yes, I understand. I will do whatever 'Tonia tells me.'
'Dammit', you're too improbable to exist, and too bloody beautiful. Where's that key, I'll unlock your foot.'
'Oh no, you mustn't! That would spoil it. Don't you see, you've started something.
Go and ask 'Tonia I'll stay here and wait. I have to, don't I. Afterwards. . then you can set me free.'
Antonia Noyes laughed unaffectedly. 'I've been wondering which you'd ask for. I guessed wrong, I thought you'd want to cane the darling's bottom? your face when you saw her marks. . !'
'I'd like to do that too.'
'D'you want to include that in your request?'
Ilona was breathing heavily. 'Right now I wish I'd kept my mouth shut. I feel a fool.'
'But why?' Antonia was concerned.
'Well. . barging in here the way I've done! You've both been so. . so. .'
Ilona laughed nervously, 'Superciliously tolerant. I have to wonder why?'
'The darling and I sense you as belonging. We get the right vibes. Don't act a role with us. You don't need to.'
'I'm trying to put a label on you two. But I'll stop, it doesn't matter. Look, Antonia, I called myself a sybarite: it's true enough up to a point. But my pleasure seeking never got close to what you do. The bed thing, sure! You tagged me there right quick. I'm damn good at the bed games, I shed my inhibitions with my clothes.
I think you'd like me naked, I stop being a publisher. Dammit', I'm only thirty-three.'
Antonia laughed. 'I'd be glad to see you naked. Oh, and I'll bet you left Griselda with a chain on her ankle?'
'It was her idea. That girl and everything she says or does is pure aphrodisiac.'
'And she's awaiting my decision in trepidation?'
'Hell, no. I think she sees me as passing trivia. There's something ageless about her. You sure the two of you haven't been around a couple of millenniums?'
'We're not witches. Griselda becomes very human when she's whipped. She screams beautifully.'
'May I whip her?'
'No.'
'May she service me?'
'No.'
'Dammit', I expected you'd say Yes. Griselda doesn't like the idea, eh?'
'It would amuse her. The negative is mine.'
'No poaching on the preserve, eh?'
'Well. . ' The calm smile lit the lovely features in friendliness. 'What would you say if you were me?'
'A resounding negative.' The publisher shrugged ruefully. 'You've got something, why cheapen it! But you say Griselda would be amused? How d'you know?'
'We know each other's thoughts. I can't explain. But the darling has an incredible tongue, and she's proud of it. So far as whipping her bottom goes, she thinks you'd blow it and retreat in confusion.'
Ilona shook her head sadly. 'The girl's psychic. Why d'you keep referring to her as
'The darling', she's a long way from being a child?'
'It's right for us, that's all. Ilona, don't you realize you keep calling her a 'girl'.
She's as old as I am. There's not all that many years between the three of us.'
'Would money buy her? Could I throw a rug round her and take her home?'
'No. But that one would really amuse her. Why don't you go and let her in on the offer. Oh, and while you're there you can let her loose.'
They had given her everything and nothing. Ilona Paisley made her way back to the chained girl, speculating possibilities, loathe to take no for an answer yet glimpsing the impregnability of Antonia Noyes and the girl called Griselda. They lived in a Pre-Raphaelite Arcady that would have delighted Burne-Jones and inspired John Millais. They were timeless and ageless and the most sensual experience of her career. One moment she saw them as distantly ethereal, in the next they exuded a rampant female sexuality which set her afire with longing.
Griselda was seated at the vanity, lost in thought. When she turned about she sent the chain swirling from her ankle in a provocative clash of links. Her reflective smile was as sincere as her condolence: 'I hope you're not terribly disappointed, Ilona?'
'You knew all the time.'
'I'm afraid so. The real disappointment is mine. I would have liked to feed between your thighs and had you whip me. I'm more precocious than I appear.'
'Let's do it anyway?'
'No.'
It was the same negative finality: Griselda was owned.
Ilona switched: 'You kicked that chain out for my attention.' She accused.
'Yes. You like it, I know you do.'
'Yesssss. . you're right.' Ilona acknowledged slowly. 'What the hell's with this chain. . and those handcuffs?'
'The door's open but I can't leave this room. I'm naked and I cannot clothe myself. I am owned. Only 'Tonia can change anything for me. I live in a perpetually excited awareness of obedience to her.'
'But your life, the real You?'
'This is Me. Anything else is a sham. You envy me.'
'Envy! Oh, c'mon, now!'
'Yes you do. You're not what you show the world at all. You should give yourself to 'Tonia but you won't, not now.'
'I could never be like you.'
'You are like me.'
'You're a slave, there's no other word. Or would you sooner be called a prisoner?'
'I'm just a girl whose hands have been cuffed behind her back for more than two months, and I love the girl who locked them there.' Griselda smiled companionably.
'Don't try and make me complex? Ilona, please get the key off the wall and hold it, the key to my shackle.'
Ilona Paisley plucked the bit of metal from its ring, with it came a curious excitation. She turned to the naked girl. 'Well?'
'Hold it. Sit down. Talk.'
The publisher relaxed in a chair. 'Can I ask questions?'
'The answer to all of them is in your hand.' Griselda bestowed a pixie smile.
'You hold the key to my freedom or captivity. While you control that key I belong to you. Feel anything?'
'Good gosh, yes!' Ilona was startled by the demanding flare of heat between her legs. 'I've been feeling something ever since I walked in here. I just made Antonia an offer to buy you.'
'That's wrong way round. Let 'Tonia buy you.'
'You're so gorgeously gorgeous?' Ilona shook her head as though dazed. 'It isn't as though you're opulently endowed or voluptuous or any of the cliches. But there you sit with those marvellous breasts and that positive jungle of pubic hair. .! And you don't seem to possess a tummy. You're the most provocative female I've ever seen.
You're the original Eve.'
'Tonia says things like that. But she's the same. Maybe sometime you'l see her naked.'
