Safe Word: An Erotic S/M Novel by Molly Weatherfield

how
much I wanted to come. I tried to even out my breathing.
    And now my mouth. She took a small blunt whip out
from where her old black garrison belt was holding it in place.
I leaned back even further, opened, relaxed my throat to let
her fuck it with the whip's thick handle, while I caressed it
lovingly with my tongue, my lips. And then I bent to kiss
her feet, and to kneel up, my eyes cast down. She nodded,
grunted noncommittally.

    "Hey," she said now, "Stefan seems to hate you even more
than he usually hates the new pet. What did you do?"
    No question of lying to her. She had my chin in her hand
now and was looking at me searchingly. Round black eyes,
like marbles.
    "Uh, I talked back to him, Mistress," I said.
    "Madam," she said idly, flicking the whip against my
breasts.
    "I talked back to him, Madam."
    "Yeah? About what?" Another little flick of the whip.
No point drawing this out.
    "Well, Madam, I knew he wanted to fuck me where Mr.
Constant had fucked me, to, you know, uh, get close to Mr.
Constant, and so, I told him, you know, all the places...."
This was not, I was realizing, the easiest thing in the world to
confess to her.
    She laughed. "Get out," she said. "You said that?"
    I nodded, my eyes on the ground in front of her Doc
Martens.
    "Well," she said, "I won't bother to punish you for it.
Stefan will, though, first chance he gets. He doesn't get to give
out a lot of whippings, but I do have to get a day off once in a
while, you know"
    She paused, looking me over some more. "Can't have a
slave with a fresh mouth around here. Still, you could have
fooled me. I thought you were just a nice eager set of open
holes. Well, but that's what you will be, for me, won't you?"
    I assured Madam of that. Madam! Jeez, all ninety-six
pounds of her. Still, she was right, silly nom de guerre notwithstanding. I wanted to please her. I hoped I'd never think
of a smart remark anytime when she was around.

    "You need some lunch," she said. "And then you can
rest. I'll try you out on the trail this afternoon. Come on."
    And she led me, waddling behind her in those ugly thigh
straps, to the stable where Tony had gone. He'd been washed
down, I could see, and his tail had been removed. And he was
on his knees, bent over a trough of-oh, shit, pony food. God,
it was absolutely the worst thing about being a pony slave,
those horrible little pellets of, well, who knew what they
were-vitamins and minerals and complex carbohydrates all
rolled out and chopped up to taste like sawdust. They were
mixed with chopped-up carrots and celery, just as they'd been
on the pony farm where I'd been trained, making them just
barely tolerable. I mean, like it would kill whoever mixed the
stuff together to maybe chop an onion into it once in a while.
And I was hungry, too. I wished, now, that I'd eaten more of
the dinner the waiter had spread out in front of us the night
before-the lovely, smooth leek soup, the pale veal with its
delicate lemony sauce....-
    Mercifully, though, I stopped myself before I could seriously think about the orange souffle in its pool of velvety
bitter chocolate. Soldier on, Carrie-no point crying over...
well, even spilled milk sounded pretty good compared to
what was in that trough. I knelt down in the straw next to
Tony, folding my hands at the small of my back as he was
doing, sighed deeply, and crunched down a few pellets.
    And I was so mopey that it took me a moment to realize
that he was whispering to me, "Hey, we only have to eat it for
lunch."
    I must have looked as though he'd just saved me from
a burning building, because he laughed softly at my look
of blissful relief, after taking a quick look to make sure that Annie was still out of earshot. "Well, except during competitions," he added quickly, turning back to his food at the
sound of her footsteps.

    I could live with that. And I could more than live, I realized, with how beautiful he was close up. His eyes were