Chapter Nine
Later that night, Jessie turned to him in bed.
“Why haven’t you had sex with any of the prisoners in
so long?” she asked.
“You start very interesting topics of conversation at
very strange times,” he said, shifting his hand so it was resting on her
bottom, curving his long fingers around it.
“Stop that,” she insisted, shifting a bit. His hand went with her. “And answer me. Please?”
He sighed, but he left his hand where it was.
“I like a quickie as much as the next man, but I
prefer the woman I’m with to be enjoying herself too,”
he said. “In that situation, you basically get her to strip and straddle
you. You touch a few places, stroke a
few others to make sure she’s ready, then you unzip, and she climbs onto you
and has an exercise workout for a few minutes until you come. And all the time she’s doing it, she’s either
got a look on her face that says ‘please be nice to me. I’m allowing you inside my body, I’m allowing
you do something incredibly intimate, you’ve got to be nice to me now, don’t
you?’, or else she’s looking utterly mortified by the experience. Nope.
Not my idea of fun.”
“Did you do it often in the first year?” she
asked. His finger trailed down the cleft
in her buttocks and she shifted, which brought her up against something
hard. Very hard.
“Often enough in the first six to nine months,” he
said, shifting his head so he could kiss her neck. “Boys in a toy shop, we were. All of those attractive, naked women, and we
were being paid to sample them. So yeah,
I sampled. Mmmm, you
taste good.”
”So… God stop that, I can’t think while you’re doing
that.”
”That’s the idea,” he said.
“Why didn’t Patrick stop doing it?” she asked. He sighed.
“You’d have to ask him,” he said. “But part of it was to cover for me, I
suspect.”
”What?” Jessie shifted a bit more, so she could at least see the outline of his
face.
“As I said before, the other dazzlers tend to follow
where we lead. I stopped having sex with
the prisoners for my own reasons. If
Patrick had stopped as well, the rest of the dazzlers might have, too.”
”So, out of the goodness of his heart, he just kept – ”
Jessie started, her cynicism worthy of Angela.
Daniel laughed softly.
“I’m not saying that he hasn’t enjoyed it,” he
admitted. “But I am saying that he has
always taken certain responsibilities more seriously than I have.”
”So why, if he knew you didn’t have sex with the
prisoners, did he give me to you? And
why did you agree to it?”
“You weren’t a prisoner,” he said, moving closer, his
hands gliding over her.
”That makes it worse!” Jessie protested, but her leg was sliding up over his
hip as she spoke, and he was moving closer still.
”Probably,” Daniel admitted. “But only
worse on my part. I shouldn’t have done
it, and we both know it.” He nuzzled
into her throat as he spoke. “Forgive
me?” Jessie made a noise between a
giggle and a sigh, and wriggled away from his warm, tickling lips.
”It was bad of Patrick, too,” she said.
Daniel shrugged.
“I guess,” he said.
“But he thought you’d enjoy yourself.
And he knew I was attracted to you.
On top of that, he knew that you were supposed to be my assignment,
remember? It appealed to his sense of
symmetry.” Jessie remembered standing in
front of Daniel in the Governor’s garden, while he told he was going to make
her his special project. His hand had been
on her butt then, too. She
shuddered.
“Patrick is far too used to making decisions on behalf
of other people,” she said.
“He is,” Daniel agreed. “But this one didn’t turn out half bad, did
it?” His hand moved again.
“Shift that hand,” she insisted.
”Which hand?” he asked, his voice muffled against her neck. “This one?” That one was moving steadily over her breast,
gently squeezing. “Or
this one?” He tickled under her bottom.
“That one,” she squirmed.
”Oh, that one,” Daniel teased.
“Okay.” He shifted it, and
laughed as she squealed.
“There’s just no pleasing some women,” he said, and he
pressed his lips to her and silenced any further protests.
………………….
Stage One of the strategy
aimed at ending their employment occurred two weeks later, appropriately
enough, in front of a national audience, on the Carlton Show. Since the release of the magazine with the
photograph everyone had seen already, along with the second of Donna’s snaps of
them embracing,
If the audience was at all concerned about the
suggestion that the two of them were involved in a relationship, it didn’t show
in their applause as the stars of ‘The Shame Game’ walked out on stage. They had barely taken their seats before
Carlton launched into it.
“Gentlemen, I’m not going to waste time,” he
said. “I’m going to ask the question
that is on everyone’s lips after that rather lurid magazine article.” Carlton leaned in, going for the personal,
the confidential, in front of several million viewers. “Truth now.
Are you lovers?” The audience
appeared to hold its breath.
Patrick put his hand on Daniel’s forearm, a gesture
that was deliberately ambiguous, but that Daniel interpreted with no
difficulty.
You know, the first time I saw Daniel, I didn’t even
like him,” Patrick said.
”Really?” Carlton knew his question had been avoided, but he played along. It was his show. He’d come back to it.
”Really,” Patrick assured him. “I knew
that someone that cute was going to take a lot of attention off me, and I was
not impressed, I have to say.” Daniel
grinned and shook his head, even as the audience made confused noises.
“He was used to having all of the attention,” he
said. “Understandable, I guess. He was cute, too.” Carlton was looking confused now, too.
“For the first six months, I really hated him,”
Patrick continued. “And then, I’m not
sure how it came about, but I held him for the first time, and he smiled at me
and touched my face, and I have to say…my little heart melted.” Carlton blinked.
“So – you ARE lovers?” he asked.
“I can’t verify any of this,” Daniel said. The audience was murmuring among itself by
now. “I don’t remember any of it.”
”You don’t remember the first time he held you?”
‘Why would he?” Patrick countered. “He was only six months old.” The audience laughed.
Carlton looked relieved but intrigued.
“So you’re saying that you’ve known each other since
you were babies?” he asked.
“I was a baby.
He was nearly four,” Daniel corrected.
“And yes. We’ve known each other
all of my life. Which is not surprising,
considering that we’re brothers.” The
collective indrawn breath from the audience almost caused a vacuum in the
studio.
“Brothers?” Carlton squeaked. “Half brothers?”
“No,” Patrick shook his head. “Same parents. I have our mother’s colouring and Daniel
takes after our father.”
“Who are your parents?” the host recovered. Patrick nodded to Daniel. His turn.
“Our mother’s name is Gabrielle Sauniere,” he
said. “And we both use that surname when
we bother to use one at all. She was an
artist’s model in France. As Patrick
said, he inherited her colouring - although I got her eyes.”
”Patrick’s colouring and Daniel’s eyes,” Carlton mused. “She must have been very beautiful. But you’re talking in the past tense. She’s deceased?” Patrick shook his head.
“No, she just prefers to keep a low profile these
days,” he said. “She’s not keen on what
we do for a living.”
“And your father?”
”Also very much alive,” Daniel answered.
“And not someone we’re going to talk about.”
“So, Carlton, to paraphrase and answer the question
you just had to ask,” Patrick said, changing the subject. “Do I love Daniel? Yes.
Like a brother.” Daniel sighed
loudly.
“Don’t you just hate it when they embarrass you by
saying things like that?” he asked the audience. “Now I’m supposed to say it too. But I haven’t forgotten that he used to take my
toys off me and hold me down and tickle me.”
”I smacked a bigger kid who said you were too pretty to be a boy when you were
five,” Patrick reminded him, while the audience laughed. Daniel thought about it, then smiled.
“So you did,” he said.
“I’d forgotten that. And she had
a mean right hook, too. Alright. You’re forgiven. But that doesn’t mean you can hug me
again. People get completely the wrong
idea when that happens.”
Angela and Jessie, waiting backstage, were still
laughing when they came through.
“Brothers?”
Angela greeted them with. They
hadn’t told her, because Patrick, mischievous as ever, wanted to surprise
her. Jessie had found it very difficult
to keep the secret over the past few weeks.
Patrick kissed Angela.
“Hard to believe, given how good-looking I am and how
ugly he is, isn’t it?” he said.
“Carlton’s face was a picture,” Jessie said.
“I’m still not sure he wasn’t disappointed that we’re
not lovers,” Daniel said.
”That’s because he was hoping to get into your pants himself,” Angela
said. He laughed.
“Not mine?” Patrick demanded.
“There’s no room in those pants for anyone but you,”
she said, eying his jeans appreciatively.
“If they were any tighter, you’d be singing falsetto.”
“I thought I’d play up the assets today,” he
grinned. “But you’re right, they’re so
damned tight I couldn’t even fit my cell phone in there. Have you got it?” She took it out of her handbag and handed it
over. As soon as he’d turned it on, it
beeped loudly, signifying a message.
“I think we’d better go outside for this,” Daniel
said, glancing over his brother’s shoulder to read the number. “Let’s get the makeup off first. Jake can wait.”
Jake had rung twice.
Patrick listened to the messages in the carpark.
“Ooh, are we are in trouble,” he said.
“Not happy?” Angela asked.
“Somewhat of an understatement,” he said. “We have deliberately, flagrantly and
irresponsibly ruined all of the work he did to keep us anonymous and
mysterious.” He dialled the
number. “You should be able to hear him
from there,” he said to them. He wasn’t
far wrong. They couldn’t hear words, but
they could certainly hear Jake’s voice coming through.
“Jake…yes, but…if you’d…” Patrick sighed and tried
again. “Jake, if you’d…Dad! Draw
breath!” As Angela blinked, Patrick made
the thumbs up signal.
“That will have got his attention,” Daniel
approved.
“Dad?” Angela said.
“Dad? Jake Miller is your
father?” She looked around at all of
them. Daniel nodded.
“Sure is,” he said.
“Nothing like nepotism and jobs for the boys, is there?”
“And the other dazzlers?” she asked. He laughed.
“No, they’re not all his sons,” he assured her. “We’re his only progeny as far as we know.”
“He’s talking about disowning us,” Patrick said,
catching the last part of that as he hung up.
“Although he’s going on about how he had wanted to hand everything over
to his grandchildren.”
“Has it occurred to him that in order for us to give
him grandchildren, we need to have lives?” Daniel asked. Patrick shook his head.
“He didn’t find that necessary,” he pointed out. “He just kept running all of his businesses,
remember? He’d just visit us whenever he
felt like playing Daddy.” He saw the
looks on the faces of both women and hastily added: “Don’t feel sorry for
us. We knew he cared about us. And no-one with a mother like Gabrielle could
ever feel unloved.”
“Is there anything else that I should know about you
two?” Angela demanded. Patrick and
Daniel looked at each other.
“Should I mention the eighteen children?” Patrick
asked.
“Better not,” Daniel shook his head. “And that harem should probably remain
confidential as well.”
”And the fact that I really am a God, of course,” Patrick went on. “Although she’s no doubt worked that out for
herself.” Jessie sighed.
“Shut up, both of you,” Angela said. “Tell me this. Why is it a big deal to Jake for people to
know that you’re brothers?”
”He had this ‘Masters of the Universe’ thing going for
us,” Daniel explained. “The competitive
element between us, the ‘men with no past’ image. He wanted people to be scared of us, wary of
us and attracted to us at the same time.”
”He’s always been very reluctant to let us do interviews,” Patrick added. “And we’ve always had specific instructions
on what we were to say and do. In fact,
we were briefed very extensively this morning, weren’t we?” Daniel grinned.
“And yet somehow, we neglected to say any of the
things he told us to,” he said, unrepentant.
“So is he going to let you leave now?” Jessie
asked. Patrick snorted.
“Not a chance,” Daniel said. “But we will feel the weight of his paternal
wrath for some time.” He smiled. “Particularly once Stage Two kicks in.” He looked at Patrick. “Are we ready for Stage Two?” Daniel
asked. Patrick drew a deep breath and
nodded.
“This one worries me,” he said. “We can’t control this one.” Daniel laughed.
“That’s an understatement,” he said.
……..………..
Daniel had taken to visiting Jessie every night, and
Patrick was almost as assiduous in his attentions to Angela. Against the odds, it was starting to look as
if they were both going to have lasting relationships. Angela, unlike Jessie, however, insisted that
Patrick contact her before ‘just showing up’ as she put it. Interested as she was, she still had no
intention of letting him rule her time and get in the way of her finishing her
book by her deadline. She turned him
away at the door once when he didn’t give her prior notice. He’d gone over to Jessie’s, half-way between
indignant and amused.
“She threw me out!” he said, amazed. Even after he’d been settled with a cup of
coffee, he was still complaining. “I’ll
bet you don’t send him away, Jessie,” he said, indicating Daniel with a wave of
his hand.
”I’m not writing a book to a deadline,” Jessie said. “And I’m a pushover,” she admitted. Daniel grinned and put his arm around her,
leaning back on the sofa.
“What you are is a bad influence,” Patrick said. “The Cat gave the designated victim a hug on
national television this morning.”
Jessie turned to look at Daniel.
“She was close to tears,” he said. “I hate that.
The medication they’re given is supposed to suppress tears, along with
lots of other things, but sometimes it doesn’t work properly.”
“So you’re not the only pushover,” Patrick
commented. Daniel cleared his throat.
“And who told Dr Frank off yesterday for ordering
punishment enemas and belittling prisoners with his baby talk?” he
demanded. Jessie, open-mouthed in
amazement, looked at Patrick.
“You did?” she asked.
He nodded, smiling wryly. “My hero!” she said. “I HATE that doctor.”
”I think he was close to tears himself by the time King Dazzler finished with
him,” Daniel grinned. “He’s not used to
being criticised and ordered around.”
”He should be disbarred,” Jessie insisted.
“For inappropriate touching and inappropriate behaviour and using silly
nicknames.”
“I’m fairly sure that last one isn’t grounds for
disbarment,” Patrick said. “I may be
wrong, though.”
“It should be,” she said heatedly. “He had one picked out for me. He was going to call me ‘CPB’.”
”And what did that stand for?” Daniel asked. Normally she’d have refused to answer in
front of Patrick, but she was on a roll.
“Cute, plump butt,” she spat, then tried to stand up
as Daniel laughed. He held her
easily. Patrick did a better job of
controlling himself, but not of guarding his tongue.
“I think you’d better be the one to tell her that it’s
an accurate nickname,” he grinned.
“Because if I remind her that I’ve seen it too, she’ll probably go
berserk.”
“You can leave any time now,” she said.
There were definitely times when the memory of some of
the things Patrick had seen and done to her made her quite uncomfortable. And every now and then he gave her a
mischievous look that told her he hadn’t forgotten either, even though they’d
made their deal about that. Bad
man. She changed the subject.
“Has Mim said anything else about how much alike you
look?” she asked. Daniel smiled.
“I still can’t believe she didn’t say anything about
it before,” he said.
Their dresser hadn’t been at all surprised by the
revelation that they were brothers.
She’d said: “Of course you are,” the morning after their appearance on
Carlton’s show. “It’s obvious to anyone
who looks.”
”Obvious in what way?” Patrick had asked.
”Look in the mirror, both of you,” she said.
They had, bending down to see themselves. “Your lips are exactly the same shape,” she
said. “And your eyes, for all that
they’re very different colours, are identical in shape as well. Your eyebrows are the same, the shape of your
faces is almost the same. You both even
have a cleft in your chins, even though it’s more pronounced in Daniel’s than
Patrick’s.”
“You never asked us about it,” Daniel said,
amazed. She shrugged.
“It wasn’t an issue,” she said. Patrick was looking at himself in the
mirror. He reached out and caught
Daniel’s chin in his hand and held him steady for a few seconds while he stared
at him as well, and then looked back again.
“She’s right,” he said. “There are a hell of a lot of similarities.”
”And that’s just in your faces,” Mim said.
“You’re both tall, and you have very similar builds. Daniel is a bit bigger in the shoulders and
Patrick is a bit narrower in the hips, but your musculature is very
alike.” She smiled sweetly. “And that’s without even taking your pants
off.” Patrick’s blue eyes filled with
laughter.
“You’ve looked closely enough to find similarities
there too?” he teased. She faced him
down.
“The first day you two came in here, I pointed out
that there were dressing sheds behind me,” she said. “And both of you ignored me and stripped down
to your birthday suits right here. And
every day since, for the last three years, both of you have shed your clothes
without a blush, in this confined space, right in front of me. So no, I haven’t exactly had the microscope
and tape measure out, Patrick, but short of closing my eyes or leaving the
room, it’s been impossible for me to not develop a fair familiarity with the
general composition, shape and size of your boy bits.” Both men were laughing by the time she
finished that long speech. She
grinned. “And yes, there are definite
similarities there, too.”
Both Angela and Jessie had found this hilarious, and
Jessie had laughed even more when Angela suggested, purely in the interests of
confirming or denying Mim’s assessment of course, that Patrick and Daniel both
drop their pants and let them make a detailed comparison. To her frequently expressed annoyance, this
had yet to happen.
“Yes, but has she pointed out any more similarities?”
Jessie asked again. She’d liked Mim on
the occasion she’d met her, and it amused her to think that the woman had
realised ‘her boys’ were brothers some time before, but not mentioned it. Daniel nodded.
“A couple of days ago, she lifted my hair up at the
front and said that I have the same hairline as Patrick, and that neither of us
is going to go bald.”
”That’s good to know,” Jessie smiled, running her fingers through his thick,
black hair. He pulled her closer,
lifting her up onto his lap.
“I don’t think you are, either,” he said, grabbing a
handful of her hair in return.
“Redheads have thinner hair,” Patrick announced. “Did you know that?” Jessie shook her head.
“And I don’t think colouring hair constantly is good
for it, so I’m trying to talk Angie into letting her hair grow back in its
natural colour. And to stop having it
chopped off.”
“I’ve only seen photographs of her with it long and
curly and red,” Jessie said. “She does
look lovely in them.”
”Breathtaking,” Patrick corrected. “The
first time I saw her, I thought she looked like a mediaeval princess.” He half smiled. “One who’d somehow managed to lose all of her
clothes, of course.”
“You remember the first time you saw her?” Jessie
asked. He nodded.
“She made a big impression on me,” he admitted. “Which is probably why I gave her such a
terrible time while she was there. I
tend to pick on the ones I’m most attracted to.”
”Know any good psychologists?” Daniel asked Jessie.
“I hung around her a lot more than I should have,”
Patrick said, ignoring him. “A lot more
than I did with any other prisoner, with the possible exception of Sienna, and
that one was on Dad’s orders.”
“Angela told me you supervised a lot of her activities,”
Jessie said. “And that you being there
drew a crowd. She wasn’t happy about
it.” He half-smiled again.
“I told myself I was keeping an eye on her, looking
out for her,” he said. “I really just
wanted to be near her. “But I did rescue
her one night,” he said. “Completely
against the rules.”
”Oh really?” Daniel said. “Tell me more,
King Dazzler.”
”Shut up,” Patrick said. “She was up for
some pink bit dancing after dinner and I…”
”What?” Jessie interrupted. “Tell me what pink bit dancing is? Or maybe I don’t want to know.”
”Probably not,” Daniel said. “But we’ll
tell you anyway. The crowds hang around
outside until around nine o’clock, so we relay action out to the big screens,
prisoners having showers, that sort of thing.
But after dinner, we get a few of the prettier women in, and we…God it
sounds so awful just like this.”
”It is awful,” Jessie said. He nodded.
“We spank their butts,” Patrick continued. “Not enough to hurt, just enough to turn them
pink. And then we put them in front of a
camera and they have to dance for about five minutes, displaying all of their
pink bits – not just their butts, obviously.
If they do it to the satisfaction of the dazzlers and the crowd, they
get five points. If they don’t, they
lose five points.”
“And Angela had to do that?” Jessie was mortified for
her friend. Angela had never mentioned
that experience. Patrick shook his head.
“She’d been selected for it, because she was
definitely the prettiest woman there, but I came down the hallway at the same
time as she was being led into the common room.
She was looking scared, and she had no idea what was about to
happen.” He scrunched up his perfect
nose. “It was the night after I’d visited her for the first time, and I wasn’t
feeling particularly good about my treatment of the mediaeval princess. So, I took her away from the dazzler who had
her, and I took her back to her cell.
AND I gave her five points anyway.”
“Definitely against the rules,” Daniel commented,
tut-tutting. “And since she’d received five
points for the dancing, she couldn’t be asked to do it again. Very out of character for Patrick.” Jessie narrowed her eyes as she remembered
something else.
“And that night, you visited her again, didn’t you?”
she asked. Patrick sighed.
“Yep,” he admitted.
“Couldn’t keep away.”
He dragged himself back to the present.
“You know, I would never have approached her after she
left the Institute,” he said.
“Never. But I thought about her
every now and then, even dreamed about her a couple of times. When I walked into that restaurant that night
and saw her, I couldn’t believe it. I
looked at her and thought ‘you look just like…’ and then I realised that it was
her. Can you imagine the odds of her
being your best friend, Jessie?” He
sounded so grateful for it that Jessie decided to put out of her head the image
of a nude woman dancing in front of cameras, red-faced and humiliated. At least for now.
Angela rang a couple of hours later, as they were
finishing dinner. Jessie answered.
”It’s alright. He’s here. No, you can’t speak to her yet. I’m speaking to her. Patrick, let GO OF THE PHONE! Yes, it’s alright, it’s still me. I glared at
him. He’s now a sad little puddle on the floor.” Patrick grinned, standing beside her while
she leaned against the wall and kept talking.
“No, I don’t think you should invite him over at
all. It’ll do him good to experience
rejection. Yes, he’s far too sure of
himself, I agree, and it’s not good for… PATRICK!” She didn’t have a hope of getting it back off
him once he’d taken it, and she gave up and sat down at the table with Daniel
again.
“He took it off me,” she pointed out.
“You were baiting him,” Daniel replied, munching on
the last bread roll.
“You should have defended me,” she insisted.
“You can look after yourself,” he said. “Besides, if he talks to her, it’s likely
that he’ll go over there. And the sooner
he goes over there, the sooner I can take all of your clothes off and start
drawing patterns on you with the leftover chocolate sauce.” Jessie decided that she saw the sense in
that. Daniel kept nonchalantly chewing
on the bread roll.
“Oh, now you want me to come over,” Patrick said, not
bothering to lower his voice. “Found
some handcuffs and a whip you want to try out, have you?” He laughed. “No, I was not trying to give you ideas. You have far too many of them on your
own. So what…you want some intelligent
conversation? … Well, just for that, I’m not going to say a word. …Now that’s just rude, Angela Myers. What would your readers say if they knew you
said things like that?” He was leaning
against the wall where Jessie had been, a smile playing over his lips. He laughed, softer and with more intent this
time. “Well yes, I could be persuaded,
but I have some stipulations. There WILL
be whipped cream involved. And chocolate
sauce.” He flicked a glance at Jessie
and Daniel to let them know he’d overheard that conversation, and he grinned
when Jessie blushed. “AND I am to be met
at the door by a naked woman. No, that
is not negotiable, Angie. If I do not
see a red bush as soon as that door opens, I am leaving, and that’s that, and
you will not get my body for the night.
No, that’s my terms. Yes? Okay.
I’ll see you soon. And when I say
I’ll see you, I mean that I’ll…” he looked at the receiver. “She hung up.”
”I’m not surprised,” Jessie said. “You sounded very seedy.”
“Seedy, is it?” Patrick said, eyebrows up. “I’ll have you know I’m a sex symbol,
woman! If you weren’t inexplicably
blinded by lust for that thing beside you, you’d be panting for me.” Jessie laughed. Patrick did too, leaning down to give her a
friendly kiss. “Thanks for taking me in
and feeding me,” he said. “See you
tomorrow morning,” he said to Daniel.
“Of course, if I don’t see a red bush when I open that door, I will be
back.”
”This door will be locked,” Daniel promised him.
“Just wonderful,” Patrick sighed, collecting his
jacket and heading out the door.
It was Angela who told Jessie about how he’d all but collapsed
laughing on the floor when he’d opened her door to find a large pot containing
a flowering red geranium bush on the mat inside.
…………..………..
Brad Clarence was a happy man. He hadn’t been a few weeks before, when he’d
turned up at the Shame Institute, wanting to witness first-hand the humiliation
of Jessica Porter, the woman who’d had the temerity to reject his romantic
advances, and had compounded her fault by catching him with a magazine she had
no business knowing about. No business
at all. He’d never forgotten the
embarrassment he’d felt when he’d realised that his little secret interest was
lying there on the floor for her to see – or the look on her face when she
recognised what she was looking at.
Those big grey eyes had looked slowly from the magazine up to his face,
and then she’d pressed her lips together as if she was trying to hold back a
smile. How dare she. When she’d been charged and then sentenced to
the Institute, he’d been speechless with gratitude for a Fate that would provide
him with the means of evening the score.
He’d gone to sleep with a smile on his face for weeks, just anticipating
it all, and the only time he’d opened his secret stash of magazines was to
mentally superimpose Jessica Porter’s face over those of the rather
bored-looking models.
He’d arrived early that first day and positioned
himself near the windows of the Holding Room.
It had been a dilemma for him to know exactly where to go. He’d wanted to watch her being herded like an
animal from the van to the Chute, but had decided that since he wouldn’t then
be able to push his way through to this prime position, he’d stay where he
was. He’d also really wanted to watch
her going through her paces in the Display Yard, but it wasn’t possible to get
a good position in both places, and what he wanted most was to witness her
humiliation as she was stripped naked for the first time. He wanted to see her face when they ripped
that t-shirt off her and she realised that she was bare, birthday suit nude in
front of all of those people and that there wasn’t a thing she could do about
it.
Oh, she’d wriggle and dance around, and with her arms
up above her head, it would make her body bounce beautifully. Probably, she’d twist herself to try to hide
the front of her body, and probably, the guards would let her, to display her
bare bottom to the audience too. Maybe
they’d even tickle her, make her wiggle her hips a bit, but in Clarence’s
fantasy, they’d then smack that soft butt, hard, and make her turn back to show
everyone her red face and her big breasts and all of that exposed, vulnerable
body. She’d squirm like a worm on a
hook. No, he amended that. She’d squeal like a little bare, pink piggy,
dancing panicked little steps to and fro, begging to be allowed to cover up,
offering anything to end the shame.
But Jessica hadn’t come up the Chute.
Three other women had, and he’d certainly enjoyed watching them run up
the tube, their short t-shirts up around their hips, and he’d waited with
mounting expectation and a growing erection for her to follow him. He’d experienced his first feelings of alarm
then, when he saw that she wasn’t with them.
He’d stayed to watch the three women struggle and protest as the guards
strung them up and ripped the t-shirts off, and he’d had to put a hand down to
adjust himself as they protested, nude and desperately embarrassed in front of
all of the onlookers. But he was there
for a specific reason, and he was not a man who gave up on his purpose. So, once the first woman had been led into
the next room, he fought his way back through the pressing crowd to the front,
and paid good money for some photographs from the people who came along just
for that purpose. They aimed cameras at
the women as they ran up from the van, covered only by the thin t-shirts, and
as they were strung up in the Chute.
Then they sold the prints, in sealed envelopes with the prisoner’s name
written on them.
The two photographs had been a disappointment.
All he could see in the first one was Jessica’s nipples, poking hard
through the t-shirt, and just a hint of her pubic hair. The second one was blurry, and although it
showed most of her backside, he couldn’t see any detail at all. He’d been furious and had demanded his money
back, but had been laughed at.
”Look on the net tomorrow, man,” the photographer had said. “You’ll see all of her then.” So he had looked, clicking onto the Shame
Institute’s site, where he was a Gold Member, and had again been
disappointed. No titillator of Jessica
Porter, just topless pictures of the three women he’d already seen in the
flesh. He was even angrier then. What was the justice system coming to? The woman had been sentenced to shaming, but
so far, no decent, law-abiding citizen had been able to get so much as a glimpse
of her tits!
What kept him going at the time was the knowledge that
he had something better to look forward to.
He had that letter from the Shame Institute in a very safe place at home
and was waiting on the call to say that he was to come in and play his
part. He almost drooled every time he
thought about it. Pretty Jessica Porter,
who considered herself too good to go out with him, was going to have to do
whatever he wanted, or she was going to suffer.
It was the law.
And he was just the man to enforce it. He could remember, right from his earliest
years, his mother telling the neighbours and relatives about how her Brad was
going to be someone important. Well, she’d
been right. He was a successful
accountant now, and the Chairman of the Board of a private school for children
with special needs. They were
uncomfortable children to be around - in fact he found all children
uncomfortable to be around, but it looked very fine on his resume. When he enacted his five year plan and moved
into politics, it would stand him in very good stead.
In the meantime, he was respected, respectable, and a
force to be reckoned with in a job he knew he did well. There were really only two jobs he currently
wanted more than his own, and unfortunately, every man in the country wanted
those jobs. And King Dazzler and The Cat
seemed to have a permanent hold on them.
Still, sometimes at night, he saw himself striding about that stage in
black leather. Those women would be
scared of him. He’d make sure they
couldn’t sit down for a week. Yes, he
was just the man to help out in the discipline of Jessica Porter, alright.
And then she’d been released. He’d actually rung the Institute to protest,
and they had told him that Ms Porter was not guilty and should never have been
in the Institute in the first place. He
didn’t believe a word of it. He’d been
so furious he’d yelled at his secretary over a mistake in one of the letters
she’d typed up for him. That he’d yelled
wasn’t unusual. That he’d yelled for nearly
fifteen minutes was. He’d had a sore
throat at the end of it. Yet another
thing to blame Jessica Porter for.
How could they believe she was innocent? Who cared what some silly old woman in the
car behind her said? Women like Jessica
Porter deserved to be stripped naked and displayed and shamed and made to do
what honest, respectable members of the community like himself wanted them
to. As far as Clarence was concerned,
the fact that she’d been declared innocent had been a personal affront against
decency and justice – and him.
But then he’d seen her face at the Board meeting, and
he’d known that fate hadn’t deserted him.
She wanted her job back. A quick
check through her finances, as declared on her employment contract, had
confirmed that she was not a wealthy woman, and the lawyer she’d paid to defend
her had no doubt cleaned out her savings.
He’d felt quite peaceful and content since then, knowing that one door
may have shut, but another one, a much bigger one with lots more opportunities
for him, was just about to open. And he
was ready to open it, right now.
To anyone other than Brad Clarence, his thinking was
warped. His timing was even worse. He chose to visit Jessie after dinner one
night, a couple of hours after Patrick had dropped Daniel off and left to go
out to the ‘Bacchinalia’ night at the ‘Go-Getters’ club. Rather than going naked as Angela had
originally planned, he’d been wearing Armani, and he looked like he’d stepped
off the cover of a men’s fashion magazine, or out of a bad girl’s dream.
”Give them hell,” Jessie said, once she’d made him get out of the car and turn
around to show her how he looked. “They
were horrible to her. I don’t know why
she’s going tonight.”
“To show them that she’s moved on,” he said. “I understand it. And yes,” he gave a smile that was every bit
as evil as anything Daniel ever delivered as The Cat. “I will give them hell.”
They’d stacked the dishwasher and Daniel had gone into
the bathroom when there was a knock on the door. Jessie opened it, resolving as always to have
a spy-hole built into it, and was shocked to see the Chairman of the School
Board standing there.
“Brad,” she said.
“What a surprise.”
“I’d like to come in,” he announced. He was wearing a grey shirt that stretched over
his belly and magnified his overall grey-ness, and dark trousers that were just
slightly too short for him. His face was
set in smug lines and his lips were pursed.
Jessie thought quickly. If Daniel
weren’t with her, there was no way she’d have let Clarence in. She still
remembered clearly having to struggle to get away from his groping hands and
wet lips. But Daniel was close by.
“Of course,” she said politely. “Please do.”
The bedroom door was open, but Daniel hadn’t come out. Jessie decided not to say anything, or to go
looking for him. He’d come out when he
was ready.
“To what do I owe this visit?” she asked.
“You don’t give guests coffee?” he asked. Jessie’s back went up as she thought of about
eight replies to that, none of them repeatable.
“Would you like a coffee?” she forced herself to be
polite.
“Well yes, thanks so much for asking,” he said
sarcastically. “I’d have thought you’d
have been going out of your way to be nice to me, Jessica, given that it’s up
to me whether you get your job back.”
”Actually, I believe it’s going to be up to the court to decide that,” she
said. “How do you take your coffee?”
”White, with four sugars,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid. No-one’s going
to reinstate you if they believe the children will suffer. No.
It’s up to me, Jessica. So be
nice.” He gave a little smile and wagged
his finger at her. He looked around,
while she did her best to stop herself from throwing something at him.
“So this is your house,” he sniffed, looking
around. “Must be getting a bit worried
about the mortgage payments by now.”
”I’m managing,” she said. A movement
caught her eye, and she glanced up to see Daniel standing inside the bedroom,
watching and listening through the slightly open door. Clarence looked back to her.
”Yes, but for how much longer?” he asked.
“And the legal fees would cripple you if you were idiotic enough to go
to court. Just as well I’m here to offer
you an alternative, isn’t it?” Jessie’s
blood ran cold. She looked at the spoon
in her hand and envisaged it sticking out from between his beady little
eyes. She swallowed hard.
“What alternative is that, Brad?” she asked. He snickered.
He actually snickered. Jessie
wasn’t sure she’d ever heard anyone snicker before, but she had no trouble in
recognising it now.
“I think you can work it out,” he said. “You’re a bright little girl, after all.”
”Spell it out for me,” she said, pouring his coffee. She didn’t pour one for herself. She thought the temptation to throw it over
him would be too overwhelming.
“A trade,” Clarence said. “Pure and simple. You get your job back, on probation for
twelve months of course. And I get you,
for the same amount of time.” Breathe
in, breathe out. Jessie focused on that
to control her temper. The horrible,
slimy little weasel.
“You get me?” she repeated. He nodded, smiling.
“Any way I want, any time I want, no holes
barred. Get it? Not no ‘holds barred’, but no ‘holes’ barred,
with an e. Understand?”
”Yes,” she said. He took the coffee and
walked over to the table. She glanced
over to her left and looked at Daniel.
He mouthed the words ‘keep him talking’, pointing to Clarence and then
to his own mouth to make his meaning clear.
Jessie shook her head slightly.
He nodded insistently.
“Sit down,” Clarence ordered. “I’m going to give you all of the details.”
”Has it occurred to you that I might say no?” Jessie asked. He chortled.
“Unlikely,” he said.
“You want your job, you need money, you have no choice. And we both know you were just playing hard
to get when I asked you out, so let’s not bother playing any games now, shall
we?” Jessie said nothing. She sat down.
“So,” Clarence said, pulling some folded sheets of
paper out of his pocket. He’d
meticulously gathered ideas from several of his magazines, and added several
new ideas of his own in putting those papers together. He’d also ordered
several items that he was looking forward to receiving in plain brown-paper
wrapping any day now. “I’ve spelled it
all out here, what I’ll expect from you, what I’m going to want you to wear, or
more specifically, NOT to wear,” he paused to smile meaningfully. “And the attitude I expect from you at all
times. Respect, Jessica. Total respect in public and complete
obedience at all times. None of this
high and mighty behaviour you’ve demonstrated in the past.”
“Obedience,” she repeated flatly. He nodded.
”When I tell you to jump, you’ll say how high,” he said, with a depressing lack
of originality. Then he added his own
twist. “And if I tell you to strip naked
and bend over with your legs apart, you’ll do it. Just like in the Shame Institute. Only you only have to please one person, your
master, Mr Bradley Clarence.”
”Lucky me,” she said. His smiled faded.
“And there’ll be none of that sarcasm,” he said. “You’ll be punished for that later,
Jessica. It’s not just those dazzlers
who know how to smack naughty bare tushies, you know.”
“Give me the highlights of what you have written
there,” Jessie said, looking at the many pages he was unfolding.
”What’s the magic word?” Clarence demanded.
She sighed inwardly.
“Please,” she said politely. He smiled unpleasantly.
“I’ll teach you manners yet,” he said. “You’ll be completely naked for all of your
lessons, Jessica, and I’m looking forward to starting. We’ll do that real soon. But first things first. Since you asked so nicely. You’ll be expected to have sex with me every
night. No ‘I’m too tired” or “I have a
headache” or “wrong time of the month’ will be accepted. Whenever we are on our own, you will be naked
and available. You will practice the
things I like and you will do them without complaint, and with every sign of
pleasure. I will be your Lord and Master,
and you will be my obedient, adoring sex slave.
You will cook meals for me, you will wash and iron my clothes and clean
my shoes. In fact, you will clean my
shoes while you are crouched nude on the floor beside me in the morning while I
eat my breakfast. If you’re a good girl,
I might let you eat breakfast too. If
you’re not, I’ll give your butt a good spanking before I let you get dressed
for the day. You will –“
”Enough,” Daniel said, walking out from the bedroom, his eyes shooting green
flame. Clarence got up quickly, with a
scrape of chair.
”You didn’t tell me you had company,” he accused Jessie.
“You didn’t ask,” she said, preparing to enjoy
this.
“You…you’re The Cat,” Clarence said, shocked. Even out of black leather, the man was
instantly recognisable.
”That’s the only thing you’ve been right on since you came in the door,” Daniel
said, walking steadily around the table and backing Clarence into a
corner. The closer he came, the smaller
Clarence looked. Daniel flicked a look
at Jessie.
”Go for a walk,” he suggested.
“No way,” she said.
“I want to see this.” Daniel
spared her a quick, amused look.
“Bloodthirsty wench,” he said. Clarence looked ill.
”If you lay hands on me, I will charge you with assault,” he said. Daniel plucked the pages out of his hands and
threw them to Jessie.
“Put them in a plastic bag, sweetheart,” he said. “Evidence.”
She nodded. Then she watched,
fascinated, as Daniel put one hand on the man’s neck, just under his jaw, and
lifted him off the ground, pinning him against the wall. Clarence was gasping, his hands clawing at
Daniel’s, his leg kicking.
“You’re not worth killing,” Daniel said, teeth
showing, eyes gleaming. “But it’s
tempting. You disgusting little
worm.”
“You can’t talk,” Clarence choked out. “You do worse than this every day.”
”Worse than blackmailing a woman into being a household and sex slave for
twelve months?” Daniel asked. “I don’t think so. I’m definitely no saint, but I draw the line
at that.” He shook the man, like a cat
shaking a rat.
“Daniel,” Jessie cautioned. “Don’t hurt him too much.” Clarence’s eyes wildly flicked to hers, then
back to Daniel.
“I didn’t know she had a boyfriend,” he gasped. And he certainly hadn’t known she had this
particular man as a boyfriend!
”And that makes all the difference?” Daniel suggested levelly. “If she’d been on her own, she would have
been fair game?” A little shake
again. His bicep was bulging, but he was
holding the man’s weight with no apparent effort. Jessie was very glad he has on her side.
“You idiot,” he continued, his voice laced with
razors. “She’d have made mincemeat of
you on her own. You didn’t even see the
look in her eyes while you were talking.
You were too busy looking at the front of her blouse, trying to see through
it. She’d have annihilated you – not
just in court, but right here.” Clarence
didn’t bother arguing. He was putting
all of his effort into breathing.
“Put him down,” Jessie said. He didn’t.
“Daniel, put him down. If he dies
there, he’ll make a horrible mess on the carpet.” Daniel laughed, his teeth still bared. He let the man slide down the wall.
“Jessie will be getting her job back,” he said to
Clarence, who was holding his own throat.
“It’s just a matter of time. And
you’ve helped matters considerably. Once
the court knows that you were prepared to reinstate her on your own sleazy
terms, once they know that you were the only person who made an application to
help shame her in the Institute, I think they’ll quickly see that you’re the
only person standing in the way of her returning to her job, don’t you?” Jessie had gasped at that sentence, even
louder than Clarence had.
“I understood matters of that nature were
confidential,” he said, his voice scratchy.
Daniel bent down, his face inches from the other man’s.
“You were wrong,” he said. “Now.
Do let me help you out.” Before
Clarence could do more than mouth a protest, Daniel had spun him round, grabbed
hold of his belt with one hand, and a handful of his collar with the other, and
lifted him again.
“Would you mind getting the door, please Jessie?” he
asked.
“Well, since you used the magic word,” she said
sweetly. She preceded them, Clarence
struggling like a landed fish. She stood
back, taking a surprising amount of pleasure in watching Daniel pitch the
Chairman of the Board down two steps and onto the grass. Then she hurried back to the table and back
again, hurling the still-full coffee cup down beside the man who was dragging
himself up on all fours.
“Don’t forget your coffee, Brad,” she said.
“Nice touch,” Daniel complimented.
“I was never going to be able to use that cup again,
anyway,” she said. Clarence, not hurt
physically, but badly shaken in terms of ego, staggered to his feet, turned to
say something, took one look at Daniel and decided not to. They watched as he made his way to his car, clothes
askew and limping, reversed out of the driveway and drove off.
“Do you think he’ll go to the police?” she asked.
”He might be stupid enough to try it,” Daniel said. “But I don’t think so.” He sounded regretful. “Damn, I wish you’d gone for a walk. I wanted to beat the shit out of him.”
”You could have,” she assured him. “It
wouldn’t have bothered me at all, as long as you did it outside. That carpet
was expensive.”
”Yes, but I thought he’d yell, and then the neighbours might get involved,” he
said, slinging an arm around her shoulders and turning her so he could shut the
door behind them. He pulled her into his
arms, cupped her face in his hands, and leaned down to kiss her. Nonsense over, he was serious now. “Are you
alright?” he asked. She nodded.
”I was so angry, Daniel,” she said.
“I could see that,” he said. “I think you were even angrier than I
was.” She nodded.
“If I had your muscles, he’d be dead by now,” she
said. He smiled and rested his forehead
on the top of her head.
“Was he really the only one who wrote in about me?”
she asked quietly.
”Yep,” he said.
“Was he accepted?”
Daniel sighed.
“Yep,” he said.
She shuddered, and Daniel held her tighter.
“It didn’t happen,” he reminded her. “But it brings it home to me what it must be
like for some of the prisoners, having to earn their fifty points with sleaze
like that.” He looked very serious and
troubled. Jessie reached up and put her
arms around his neck. She was pleased
that he was getting it now, but there was nothing he could do about it at this
point in time. So:
”We need some distraction,” she said, her tone leaving little room for doubt
what she was talking about.
“What do you have in mind?” Daniel asked, a smile
tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Well, I feel like being bossy,” she said, pushing at
him with her body until he moved backwards, towards the bedroom.
“There’s a change,” he said. “Anything in particular?”
“Let’s start by getting you naked,” she said. “I’ll work out the rest as we go along.”