She turned in her sleep, imagining herself on the grassy hill overlooking the lake, with its fishing boats still and calm on the water. The ducks and geese swam about without a care. Her darting eyes missed nothing as she continued watching, a small smile forming on her lips. Her mind wandered. She lay back, eyes slowly drifting shut, feeling the heat of the noonday sun that kissed her face. She curled up in the grass, drifting off to sleep.
New dreams came slowly, a fog filled questing, taking her away from the calm lakeside to the misty passes. There stood the lonely rock that was the last marker before the twisting path descended steeply towards the inland duchy cut off from the sea by the mountains. The thirsty duchy, deprived of the rains that nourished the little coastal county was ever desirous, wanting to quench its rapacious thirst in adventurous sorties across the mountain passes.
The fog swirled around her as she gazed at the rock. She watched a black raven, staggering, wing broken in the shadow of the marker stone. The ground was covered in a fine white powdery snow, but the brilliance of its whiteness was dulled by the heavy damp mists and profaned by a thin red film that trickled from cold stone. The bird cawing pitifully was broken and not bloodied. She frowned as she slept and tears formed in her eyes, frustrated at this mystery that she could not solve. She could not understand why there was blood in the snow.
When she awoke, she sat up quietly, disturbed by the dream, yet relaxed to find it was just a dream. She glanced around, trying to steady her heartbeat in the darkness, waiting for the Count to approach. She tucked her skirts around herself to warm herself against the cold of the flagstones. It was a chill that matched her blood after that sharp dream. She tried to remember his words, reaching down slowly to play with a loose thread on her bodice, just as the Count had done when he first touched her heart.
True beauty might only come from within one's heart, but if the happiness is within then it will come out regardless, he had said. She could only agree. She knew that in his eyes and in her own mind she was that wonderful, unique person that she desired to be. Even so, the reality of the cold air made her shiver as he opened the door and approached her, looking up towards the barred windows, silent and apparently preoccupied.
"How are you, my dear?"
"I am fine MiLord and you ?"
"I am finer," he laughed. "I come equipped with rapier wit to pierce a submissive's armour."
"Is that so, MiLord?" she smiled equivocally.
"You know it is so, my constrained captive," he bowed. " We fought off the duke's men at the northern passes this very eve - We have preserved the county for our pleasure.
"Oh MiLord! That is good news indeed."
"I can release the pet from the dungeon where we tethered her for safe keeping now or perhaps she would wish to languish there a little longer?"
She looked down, but held her peace.
"You look so fetching in irons," he teased.
"I am still reading, MiLord."
"Most instructive for you, pet. It is good that we provided a servant to hold the parchment and candle up for you then."
She nodded and looked up to see him, walking to the darker recesses at the far end of the dungeon. She could just about make out his form sitting down, before catching the brightness of his gaze as he looked across to observe her concentration. He turned to gaze through the thick metal bars up into the courtyard and then walked back across to her. She lifted her eyes to meet his and he wondered whether she was losing herself in his thoughts again.
"Yes, MiLord," she giggled reading his mind cleverly, before looking down to approve his crossings through and additions to the parchment that she had sent him herself?
"Has the pet had a nice day with the rats and straw here?"
"Yes, M'lord," she whispered very softly.
"Should she be unshackled?"
"Please, my Sir."
"Or shall we take the opportunity to tickle your bare feet?"
"If you wish, M'lord. The pet is yours to torture."
"The submissive doth protest too little."
"If I say no, then what, M'lord?" she looked up at him querulously, laughing softly. "You tickle me anyway?"
"No, I whip you," he responded drily, unchaining her.
She swallowed. He reached down and pulled her to her feet and prepared to carry her from the darkness into the light.
"I might strap you with metaphors," he added, leading her up the stone steps, into the sunshine in the courtyard.
She licked her lips.
"Or perhaps, it is my will to switch you with palindromes."
She grinned.
"Oh MiLord, Count."
"Frightening, isn't it? The dark side of the English language?"
"Yes, it is, " she agreed, thinking that he would have her conjugating verbs back in the darkness of her cell next. Under his tutelage she had learnt that she could not be all things to all people nor could she do all things at once. She had to be herself.
"Do you learn to accept your own uniqueness yet, my dear?" he enquired, depositing her on the grassy knoll above the lake that she had so recently dreamt about.
"That, MiLord, is my biggest fear."
"You would not have me learn you, pet?"
"Your learning is wonderful, Master."
"As is your cavorting, pet," he said looking at her with approbation. "Though sometimes I fear you risk losing the key to the chateau with all that activity."
"Then perhaps I should remove it before I roll my skirts up again, Count?"
"Pass it to your given companion, the duck for safe keeping."
"I do not like the duck."
"Shhhh - you will hurt his feelings."
"I do not like his sauce."
"So ignoble and orange?"
She shrugged, not caring for the citric flavour of his conversation. She preferred other fruity intercourse. Then she remembered how he had sat her down and supported her as she learnt to set priorities and make decisions, living within her own limitations. She knew for certain that in giving him the respect that is due, she gave the same to herself. Should she accord the same to these idiotic creatures that he conjured to serve her though?
She sighed, remembering that for all his eccentricities, he offered her such gifts. If he made her wear her collar all the time, she would take the consequences.His was the unique presence who could bring out the vital mortality within her. With a deep sweeping curtsy to the duck, and just a hint of irony, she begged its pardon.
"Your key is safe, M'lord, and your duck cherished, just as you preserve the county from the duke and your pet from his invasive intentions."
"We curtail his depredations as we curtail your ironic orations, my dear," he said slipping a hand over her mouth and pulling her over his lap. He removed his hand from her face to flip up her robe, baring her backside and spanking her vigorously in the sunshine. Her yelps mingled with the lakeside clamour of the wildfowl and were carried away on the wind.
"Your squealing is decidedly a pleasure, pet."
"The pet would not have you desist, M'lord."
"Well, it keeps her in trim."
"It brings me pleasure, M'lord."
"A masochistic moment, my dear?"
She nodded happily. Under his firm control, she was finding out who she was and gradually becoming that person. With his sometimes strange and abstruse assistance she would decide what came first, she would discover her strengths, and use them.
"And if I should bring a halt to this moment, pet?"
"Please MiLord, continue. I will give the key to the duck next time I play, I promise.....if he promises in his turn, not to peek."
"He would serve you faithfully but is allergic to blindfolds."
"Yes, MiLord, but I did not suggest a blindfold. I only ask that he not watch my every move."
"Yes," he conceded. "The binoculars are a little off-putting."
"Count," she grinned. "You can be so utterly foolish."
"Perhaps, fooled only by your utter need to submit to build your inner fire?"
"Would that inner fire bring blood to the snows at raven rock?"
"A fresh conundrum, pet?"
"No, a disquieting dream MiLord. I seek explanation and clarification."
"You could seek that from the fishermen on the lake that so attracts you," he suggested. "They love your coy smiles as you entertain them and they have a certain wisdom that surfs safely by your Count though he be so utterly foolish."
"I love watching them over the water."
"The vigilant peasants watch back, though with less malice than the brigands of the forest, he warned as she looked away towards the woods in the distance.
"Wisdom may come with malice, Count," she nudged him. "As well you know, Sir Hypocrite."
"You will be less enamoured of their malice if they ambush your carriage, pet and make play with the cavorting contents."
"I would still venture there though, M'lord," she sighed. "No, not for their insalubrious touches. I need the answer to the disturbance in my dreams. That sentence echoes endlessly around my head, preying on my mind for all your friendly, reassuring banter."
"Perhaps I will give you leave," he said airily, but feeling a little ill at ease. He had not visited the woods lately.
"The woods are wonderful," she sighed.
"........but the forests are fearsome," he warned.
"Fearsome? No, M'lord they are not fearsome, if one is alert."
He had a fleeting image of the branches tearing at her clothes, the thorns pricking her skin, the bracken whipping her flesh and of his charge enjoying all these sensations. He could envision her laying down on a clearing floor, taking in the scent of the dark earth, while she was ravaged anonymously from behind. Would anyone hear her cries for mercy?
She knew that he would be listening out for her, silent to all sounds but the whimpers of the misdirected and sobbing submissive, clustering with other flowers at the foot of the fat oaks, regretful of the way she trailed away from the gardens she had begun to know and into the darkness.
She thought of the stone and the blood and the snow. She knew that she wanted to know what the darkness held. There was a dark pit in the depths of her stomach, a vortex whirling in the centre of her being. As she stumbled onwards metaphorically, she could sense dark creatures stirring, woken from their slumbers by the temptations of your flesh, roused by the scent of your coming and the watery trail you left from the lake.
"What are you thinking, my dear?" he enquired, touching her arming and breaking her sombre reverie.
"Troublesome thoughts."
"Not wholesome?"
"Like I said - bad."
"We know you are bad or you would not come to me for whipping, submissive creature," he drawled laconically.
"Is that why I am here, MiLord?"
"No, you are here to see another face of this world. Not all paths lead to a whipping for that would be tedious."
She nodded her head in agreement.
"I knew you would concur, pet. I would rather create an ambiance and the possibility of sensual intelligence in the true sense of the words."
"Yet, MiLord, I still want to learn of the dark side as well as the light. I will try not to get caught in as I swim through strange fantasies at night"
"That would be advisable. Do not get caught in the nets."
"I will be most careful, MiLord."
"I would rather see you caught in a beam of moonlight," he laughed softly," observing the water rippling down your back, as you dive in for sensual enjoyment."
She sighed and looked towards the chateau, grey in the distance. "MiLord?"
"Mmmmm?"
"Is there a tub in my room?"
"There is."
"Then perhaps I will use it this evening......and leave the fishermen be for the night."
"Very wise - too much excitement is not good on their old hearts, nor on that of the ancient retainer Griswold who hangs around keyholes outside the rooms of the Chateau ladies."
"Perhaps something to cover the keyhole?"
"Did you not see the bore holes in the door?"
"He is a fast worker, MiLord, as are you," she smiled pushing his hand off her lap and picturing a little death watch beetle of a man. "I shall give him a show, MiLord."
"I thought you would oblige - you will set him all of a tremble my dear."
She clapped her hands in pleasure, thinking of the old man wheezing excitedly up and down the corridor all night. "For my pleasure?"
"And our entertainment."
"I see you juggle the words inexaustibly, MiLord. Am I to entertain as well?"
"You too are a juggler, are you not?"
"I am."
"Then 'tis in your nature to perform, though it will not always be a room of banquets and entertainments."
"I shall perform for you, perform across the flagstones. I will juggle, dance and sprawl on the large table if that is your wish........perhaps a little too wild, a little too open. "
"We will see where it leads - you will be a challenge for me," he laughed softly.
"Does that scare the Count?" She scoffed.
"I have no fear that you will make M'lord proud as you test of my control and your submission."
"Aaah! Control - it's all about that - you wish to let me out and reel me back in? We shall have to see who controls who," she stated defiantly.
There will be rules and controls," he warned.
"Rules? Controls?"
"Aye," he confirmed.
"How can one entertain with rules and controls?" she asked puzzled.
"By breaking them?" and they laughed together.
"That should not be too hard," she acknowledged.
"Nor will the beatings that you subsequently receive," he taunted, his mood changing seemingly like a weather vane, but a vane that could be forecast by those who really understood.
"Ahhh, MiLord. Change again - the equilibrium of change yet all things remain in balance as ever......and who shall beat me...Milady or MiLord?"
"That depends on who you dishonour with your disreputable behaviour. We will watch. You will sway to the music and the whip will bite. Beware it may leaving specks of your blood on the stones carved from the rock in the snows of winter."
"But," she trembled, hearing the echo of her freedom in the distance. "will such chastisement leave blood in the snow at raven's rock, MiLord?"
Her question was suddenly broken off by her shriek of surprise as he tugged her head back, pulling at her hair. He looked into her eyes, bleakly and she shared for an instant the emptiness that came with aspirations to control. There was overpowering silence in her mind again, as she shook her head. The nothingness was so complete, so dark.........perhaps, so eternal.
The silence was broken only by her muffled squeals as she closed her eyes to desperately pluck an escape, feeling herself bound again to the sacrificial oak of his darker desires.
If I was afraid I would not be here, she told herself.
"So open your mind and fear not," he replied, the sound of his voice coming from within her head.
She pushed against his control, but for each push she felt her thoughts being tugged viciously, pulled to the ground, whimpering, falling, slapped down and sprawling in such ungainly fashion, looking up to a stony gaze.
He reached down to her bodice, tugging at the fabric so that the swell of her breasts were revealed. His fingers delved there for a moment and she shrieked again as the fingers of one hand pinched her nipple taut. He raised her skirts again with the other hand and let his palm slide up and down her thigh. She quivered under the insistent touch as his fingers slewed against her thigh, pressing, squeezing and then pinching the soft flesh. His hands reached up to cup her neatly shaven sex. He felt the warmth emanating from her, a warmth exacerbated by the tightness of the pucker into which his thumb stole, corkscrewing slowly into the hot interior of her nether chambers.
He withdrew the thumb and unbuttoned his breeches leaning over her and pushing her down in front of him as he took her out in the open on the top of that grassy knoll. Her face rubbed against the grass as he shunted his length backwards and forwards within her, his thrusting and withdrawing such that at times they uncoupled. She moaned, complaining at this deprivation until he reamed her once again his hands reaching round to squeeze her now uncovered breasts, pushing her lower on the slope of the knoll so that her hindquarters were even more gloriously upraised than before.
"Blood.........on the........rocks," he grunted as he thrust deep and true. "There will......only be .....blood ......on the rocks..... if you break .......the rules........too often."
"Yes, MiLord," she shuddered, wanting to come as he accelerated into her. She saw herself in the not too distant future, bent over much as she was now, with her bottom raised high and with a whip descending to beat her flanks, liberating her from her disobedient lethargy. She wriggled under him, adjusting his penetration of her and wanting him to literally scoop the wetness from her insides with his intruding member.
She could picture her buttocks speckled with her own blood as his beating finally broke the skin. In her imagination, as well as in reality, she raised her head, arching her back. Her eyes were glazed, her thoughts were muted as she envisaged the great hall, the defeated duke's banner -- one of the poles holding it up, broken almost in two. The blackness of the raven at the heart of the banner stared down as a rivulet of her blood, drawn from her by the Count's enthusiasm, trickled across the white flagstones. The influence of this image and the quiet voice behind her that chastised her gently with her own words was irresistible:
"As you said - all things in balance as ever - and my palms are drawn inevitably to your impertinent behind......in time."
It was an irrefutable notion, an influence strong enough to generate the waves of delight that washed over her gyrating body. Her conundrum resolved, her mind freed, her humanity showed through amplified by her pledge to him. The thought of that extraordinary submission before the defeated duke brought her to a stunning climax, reinforced as it was by the immediate physical influence of the Count's paw that crashed down resoundingly on the flesh of her exposed backside.......
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