Bound and Initiated (25 page)

“Come sit on my lap first,” Robert said, to her surprise, pulling her gently toward him as he spoke.

When Sarah had settled herself across his naked thighs, blushing a little at the touch of his hardening penis against bottom-cheeks that still stung from his mastix, Robert said, “You please me very greatly, nupta.” His voice was very soft, almost a whisper right into Sarah’s ear.

“Thank you, pater,” Sarah said, her blush increasing, but now for a very different reason. Now she felt like a girl naked with her first, experienced boyfriend—like college girl Sara Jane with billionaire Steven. And Robert was… well she could never call him her
boyfriend,
could she? But he definitely stood in that position, didn’t he? Something serious was happening.

She loved him.

How could that be? She loved the man who had just told her—not asked, or even ordered, but simply told—that she would kneel before him and take his hard penis in her mouth, as preparation for another session of anal sex.

“You feel it, too, don’t you?” Robert asked in the same soft voice. “It happens sometimes—a pater and his columba falling in love.”

Sarah’s blush deepened still more.

“Usually after the first degree, a pater is like an academic advisor to his nupta as she moves on. She always belongs to him, but they don’t spend much time together. If they form a deeper bond, though, they can remain close—even share quarters, instead of the girl sleeping in the dormitory.” He paused and stroked Sarah’s hair. Then he said, “Would you like that, Sarah?”

Conflict raged in her mind and heart.
Yes
fought with
no,
and the battleground seemed a minefield.
Yes,
because she loved him.
No,
because she loved him.
Yes,
because she would have access to the highest level of the Pretorian Guard, the better to betray them, and Robert himself.
No,
because how could she keep herself from betraying him, if she had that access?

“Yes, pater,” she said, trembling at the tiny effort of speaking the words. “I’d like that very much.”

Robert slept in the big bed with her, after he had made love in her bottom in the same side-lying position in which Sarah had once played with herself every morning.
Made love in her bottom
seemed like the only way to describe it, for he was as gentle there, in the bed, as he had been brutal over the bench, praising her tightness as he slowly and gently moved in and out of her well-lubricated but still very narrow passage, and not thrusting in at full length even as he grunted his climax. All the while, too, he stroked Sarah’s clit, so that she too came—her first orgasm with a man’s cock in her bottom, another one that seemed to shake the foundations of the earth.

Exhausted then, they fell asleep still entwined. When she woke, Sarah was amazed to find Robert still there, across the bed from her, and Claudia nowhere in evidence. She looked at him in the dim lamplight, where he lay, still sleeping, frowning at a dream, or perhaps at the weight of his responsibilities that did not depart even when he had traveled through the gates of sleep.
A true man
.
Bizarre novo-Mithraist propaganda, or…

Dark, tousled hair. Carved chin. Fit body. Sarah found she could not think of him as anything other than a true man, and she didn’t know, suspected she would never figure out, whether that was because of some quality in Robert or because he knew what Sarah James needed. He had known before she did.

It was a very strange feeling, to realize that if she hadn’t been sent on a covert op to bring down his secret organization, she might never have understood her need to submit to a man like Robert. To have a master like him, who would claim her entire body.

Sarah shivered at that thought, feeling the lingering soreness in her bottom. She clenched her cheeks, because she wanted to feel it more intensely, and wondered at the irrationality of that—the way she seemed to seek pain and discomfort, now; the way pain and discomfort brought her pleasure more intense than any she had known before she arrived in the offices of the Ostia Agency. What had Grace said? Her pater had asked if it was so bad, having her bottom fucked, and Grace had said,
No, pater,
and meant it.

Marveling at how new it felt to be able to move her hands freely, she reached her left one out and touched his stubbly chin with the backs of her knuckles, wondering if it was grounds for a spanking to touch your pater while he slept, but thinking that she wouldn’t mind. She felt the prickles of his whiskers and the sheer masculinity of him sent a thrill through her chest. Bashfully she pulled her hand back.

Then, as if on cue, Robert opened his eyes and smiled to see Sarah watching him. It was if the sun were rising, here underground, in his blue eyes. Sarah smiled back, the itchy burning from his cock in her bottom somehow mingling with the warmth in her heart.

He stretched out his arms across the little distance between them and gathered Sarah into him, against his chest with one of his big hands on her bottom and the other caressing her back. He held her like that for a very long moment, and then he kissed her lightly just behind her ear, so that she giggled.

He squeezed her backside gently. “How are you, my good girl?” he asked, drawing his face back a little to look into her eyes.

She winced theatrically—though a good portion of the wince represented the real state of her punished-feeling anus—“I’m fine, pater,” she said, turning her wince into a brave smile.

His smile broadened in return. “We’ll let you recover, back here, for a few days,” he said, “before I fuck this sweet bottom of yours again.” His fingers ran lightly over her bottom-cheeks, then dipped lewdly between her thighs to probe gently inside Sarah’s pussy. “I’ll have you here, tonight, in my own bed in the penthouse.”

“The penthouse?” Sarah couldn’t help whispering, as she felt again the way this true man could command her arousal.

Robert gave a twisted grin. He kissed her gently once, then again more insistently, his tongue pushing into her mouth and finding Sarah’s, dominating her that way until she thought her body might actually melt in his hands.

* * *

She went to her first Ostia party three days later, alongside Grace and two other nuptae, in one limo, and three bellatrices and an agna in another. Sarah had met all six of the other girls in the gym, in the study rooms, or in the refectory, but had gotten to know only Grace, really. All the nuptae were beautiful, and wore the same leather collars, belts, and cuffs Sarah and Grace did, under voluminous cloaks of black wool with silk linings. Grace whispered to Sarah, while the girls gathered in the Mithraeum’s elevator lobby at eight o’clock, that the cloaks would be taken away once they got to the party.

“They always keep the parties very warm, though, so don’t worry,” Grace said. Shameful visions filled Sarah’s mind, and she knew that all of them probably fell short of the reality of this party.
And that’s without the CIA factor,
she thought with dread.

The bellatrices and the agna in charge of the whole group of Ostia girls, a striking, red-haired Italian girl named Renata, wore lovely evening gowns.

“They have amazing lingerie on underneath the gowns,” Grace whispered in Sarah’s ear. “I think Renata’s wearing a corset.”

Sarah remembered the black lacy lingerie Claudia had taken away, in her office, just a week before. She had not seen the domina since she had become a nupta.

“Does Claudia come to parties?” she asked Grace.

“Oh, no,” Grace said. “At least, not regular ones like this. I think sometimes there are special parties for, like, presidents and things, and I think she goes to those sometimes.”

“Will I see her again? I mean, I saw her all the time, those first few days…”

“Trust me,” Grace said. “You don’t want to see her. If you do, it means you’re going to have a very sore backside.” She giggled. “She spends her time upstairs, doing recruiting and scheduling, keeping the agency going. She only comes downstairs to start a columba’s initiation or to… you know… punish us when we do something wrong.”

By this time the girls had ridden the elevator to the building lobby, and Renata had efficiently gotten them into the limos. It was the first time Sarah had been in the open air in a week, she realized with a start. Life in the Mithraeum was so involving, though, and her love for Robert so enchanting, that it didn’t seem odd at all to live underground and to sleep—after her nightly service to her pater’s lusts—in the penthouse of a skyscraper; rather, it seemed odd that she would have to deal with such realities as what she supposed still remained her actual job as an intelligence agent.

In the limo, as Grace fell silent and the other nuptae chattered about something one of them had seen in a
People
magazine that day—not about energy markets but about the British royal family—Sarah gazed out the window at the passing buildings and fell into a little reverie, thinking about Robert. The night before, when he had told her, over dinner, that she would be going to a party the following evening, he had asked her, to her surprise, if that was alright with her.

“I can reserve you for myself, if I want to,” he said, “at least for a few weeks. But I think you’re ready.”

She had looked into his eyes, across the table in the elegant dining room that overlooked a great deal of Manhattan, where daylight was giving way to neon. She saw conflict there. Above all, she saw his desire to make sure that the life into which he had initiated her worked for her, despite its being so much darker and more wanton than her
Forever Girl
books; billionaire Steven, after all, didn’t send college girl Sara Jane out to parties where she would be chained naked to a wall and left to be enjoyed by any and all of the guests.

And Robert didn’t even know that Sarah’s real mission was to destroy him; that going to the Ostia parties meant making contact with her CIA handler and beginning the process of that destruction.

“I think I’m ready, too,” Sarah said, smiling confidently.

“Good,” Robert said, taking a bite of couscous. Then, abruptly, he put down his fork. His conflict, which had passed for a brief moment, seemed to return even more forcefully, and he broke eye contact with Sarah to look down at his plate. Sarah felt her own brow crease with worry.

Finally he looked up again and extended his hand. “I’m Robert Bennet,” he said. “I’m actually an investment banker, most of the time.”

Mystified, Sarah shook his hand. Trying to keep her tone light even in the face of what seemed Robert’s utter sincerity, she said, “Pleased to meet you.” To know his last name didn’t really change anything, from an intelligence point of view: she had been absolutely positive that she could figure out who he was in an instant, given access to a CIA database.

He held her hand fast, and Sarah realized that she couldn’t remain in intelligence-analyst mode now, because now, in an instant, she understood. He wanted to be her pater and her master, and he wanted to be more than that. Above all, though, Sarah suddenly grasped, he wanted to make absolutely certain that the life of strange erotic service into which he had initiated her—a life in which he would send her to parties where the guests would do wicked things to her, and in which he would loan her to other men—suited her, as… well, as a romantic proposition.

The problem was, it did suit her. It suited her really, really well.
What the hell am I going to do?

And the problem only became worse when Robert said slowly, while he kept holding both her hand and her gaze, “You know, apropos of nothing, it’s not unheard of for a pater to marry an Ostia girl.”

The limo crossed a bridge, merged onto a highway. Sarah turned to Grace, who had become involved in the conversation about the royal family, but now was looking out the window. The other two nuptae, Alexandra and Heather, seated on the bench seat across from them in the limo’s passenger compartment, had fallen silent, too, also gazing out at the darkness that was now much darker, here on the outskirts of the vast city.

“Where are we going?” Sarah asked.

“Long Island, I think,” Grace replied. “The parties are almost always in big houses in the suburbs.”

“Are the limo drivers… you know, in the guard?”

Alexandra answered, to Sarah’s surprise. “They’re milites.”

“That’s the same degree, on the guard side, as bellatrix,” Heather said.

Silence fell for a moment. Sarah had the distinct impression that something had gotten in the way of her becoming close with her fellow nuptae, and that now it hung in the air among them. Black-haired Alexandra’s striking blue eyes locked with hers in the semi-darkness of the limo and Sarah felt her brow crease as she tried to think of something to say. If she didn’t bond with the other girls, wouldn’t it look odd? She should try to figure out what was going on, at least.

“Anyone want to tell me what to expect?” she asked weakly.

But Alexandra didn’t answer the question. Instead she said, “You’re probably wondering why we haven’t been very welcoming.”

“Well,” Sarah replied, taken aback. “I guess I thought that was just the way it is, with new girls.” It was a lie, but probably a convincing one. The ten other nuptae Sarah had met hadn’t been cold to her, really, but from the way they interacted with one another and with the six bellatrices she could tell that reserve wasn’t the norm. The girls even joked with the guardsmen who would come to the study rooms to have them right there over a table, or would come to the refectory at the end of supper to lead them to the pleasure chambers on the third floor, where, Grace had told her, men could take their time in losing the stress of the day in a leisurely fuck.

“It’s because of Pater Robert,” chestnut-haired Heather said, her mouth twisting to the side, perhaps to show her dissatisfaction with her own conduct. “We’re a little intimidated, I guess.” She glanced at Grace, then turned her eyes back to Sarah. “Grace says you’re really nice, and I can see it’s true, so I guess who cares if you’re brilliant and you’re going to be a domina.”