Matthew and Elise lounged on a thick rug, pillows behind Matt’s head, Elise using her husband’s tummy to rest hers. Jason sat on a stool a few feet off massaging Sandra’s shoulders while she sat on the floor in front of him. Laney had one couch to herself, stretched out like a lazy cat, and Erik, who tended the fire and otherwise puttered about the room, finally stopped before the hearth and lit a stick of old incense, letting the smoke catch the current of air and cover the room with a soft grey fog.

       “Why don’t you read some more from Barth’s book?” Matthew asked him.

       “Shall I?” He didn’t consider the request for long finding the book conveniently placed on the mantle next to the clock. Settling into an easy chair, he opened the cover.

       Even Laney seemed ready to hear more of the startling narrative. Outside, they heard the wind rage. There was no rain now, but drafts in the old house set the candles flickering, sometimes too fast to seem reasonable. Inside their living room retreat, the charged air seemed about to explode—as though the six had spent too many hours ignoring what was becoming more obvious to them all. There was a spell working in their midst—though it wasn’t clear if this was self-imposed, or, as Matthew suggested earlier, had been cast by their enigmatic host.

       Now inside the cloud of incense, Jason’s eyes seemed to take on the same dark glow that had gripped Erik’s. And the excitable Matthew appeared focused and quite certain of something—strangely calm. The three women were subdued, though their calm only masked an enormous hunger churning in their bellies.

       “The Subjugation Of The Ego,” Erik began. “Chapter Two… To refer to a slave without name is essential. Names may well be useful after the submissive has learned their craft; but for the initiate, it is necessary to treat them in ways that remove the normal customs of humanity from their consciousness. Remaining nameless is a first step. A slave will learn watchfulness immediately, so that simple eye contact will communicate the master’s message, leaving words unnecessary. A good slave will respond to simple commands when referred to simply as ‘slave.’

       “In addition, the slave collar is essential in the dehumanizing process. The device should be snug, affixed about the neck tightly, though not enough to bind. It should remain in place at all times—being a substantial reminder to your slave of their subservient nature. Collars are also useful for leashing and other means of bondage.

       “Raw livestock should remain naked for everyday activity. They do not eat at tables, sit in chairs or on sofas, sleep in beds, and should be tethered when walked or ordered to crawl on all fours. It is only proper that they remain at the feet of their masters, or humbly waiting in corners during meals, where, if their master is so moved, they are fed by hand, or given scraps from his plate when his meal is finished. In the same way, if it pleases the master to keep their slave at their side, they will sit at his feet, and at night sleep with only the very necessary bedding on the floor. A slave’s comfort is never a matter of consideration in the early stages of training. And to allow any sort of simple luxury would be detrimental at this juncture. Every measure taken with initiate livestock should emphasize their degraded status.”

       Erik looked to the audience, and seeing their rapt attention was about to continue until his eyes fell on Jason.

       “I read ahead in the book,” he said rather quietly and quite unlike the boisterous man.

       “So you’ve read this chapter?”

       “The gist of it. Then I did a little exploring…in the cellar…” his voice trailed off, though his message got the attention of everyone in the room. All eyes focused on Jason’s muscled body and the aura of strength that seemed to wrap him with an air of authority. Even Sandra seemed more alert—though she couldn’t see the impact of her boyfriend’s physical presence, she could feel it through his hands. With eyes gleaming from his newfound source of command, Jason ran one hand down Sandra’s neck, continuing to her chest where he pressed his palm across one breast and squeezed. She quaked, shyly grinning as a tingle of delight flooded through her.

       Then with Jason smiling deviously, he reached to his side, and pulled out a fat leather collar, which he placed around his fiancée’s neck.

       “Ooh!” she jumped slightly, her hand going immediately to her throat to feel the smooth surface of the piece. She let out a gentle sigh.

       “Turn around, slave,” Jason ordered her.

       Elise was sitting up now, Matthew as well, tucked in behind his wife, the two glaring with desire at the demonstration before them.

       “Take of your clothes,” Jason ordered.

       The nervous Sandra stared into her boyfriend’s eyes with hers wet and gleaming. Then, as if in a trance, her hands went for the buttons on her tee shirt, slowing opening each one like a dutiful slave until the thin knit fell off her shoulders with one simple shrug. She giggled childishly and bowed her head; which put a scowl on Jason’s face. He reached for her chin and drew it high so she couldn’t hide.

       “Keep going.”

       Reaching back, Sandra unhooked her bra, letting two pink/white breasts spill like heavy pillows from the cups and finally settle into her torso with a ruffled shimmy. The pert ends of her aureoles looked as though they’d been brushed with pink, and in the very centers, two tiny nipples gently poked beyond the smooth surface. Jason took each nipple between a thumb and index finger, pinching them until he saw a wince of pain register on Sandra’s face.

       “Your shorts,” he said.

       Sandra shuddered, but obeyed, moving her hand to the waistband of her running shorts; and with her fingers going under the elastic, she tugged them over her hips. Her bare ass appeared, the skin translucent with the mellow glow of candlelight bouncing off the tenuous surface. While the others eyed her splendid ass, Jason’s first look of Sandra’s nakedness revealed for him the dampened curls of pubic hair between her thighs and the pink of her clit at the center of two fat labia.

       “Very good, slave,” he commented with a twisted grin of delight. “Now sit.” Sandra turned, facing out, and rested the cushion of one ass cheek on the hardwood floor as she settled in-between Jason’s parted thighs. She leaned back as though being naked were easy in these circumstances, though still a shudder of embarrassed energy gave away her obvious fear.

       So completely mesmerized by her friend’s sudden leap into submissiveness, Elise began to remove her clothes as though she’d been ordered to do so, too. She turned first, so that Matthew could see her disrobe, and like Sandra, kept her eyes fixed on her husband’s impassive face.

       Elise’s nakedness was far different that Sandra’s. Her small tight body had the appearance of a Jackal, firm and sharply defined not sensuously rounded as her friend’s pink voluptuous shape. Her nipples stood nobly erect beyond her modest breasts, and her flat tummy seemed to swell just slightly as though it were filling with erotic energy. Hardly seen, since she was sitting on the floor, was her close-clipped pubic hair shaped into a smart triangle, and the sexual equipment hidden below. Matthew, however, was close enough to detect her female scent fraught with arousal drifting toward his nostrils. He reached out and fingered her neck, imagining the collar that wasn’t there.

       Laney, the lone clothed woman in the room, sat up nervously on the couch and stared at her husband. He stared back not yet saying a word.

       “I thought we’d take our wager one step further,” Jason suggested as all eyes watched the Priestlys intimate exchange, “have fun with the customs of Marquis Island. That is if all the women here are willing to participate. It would make our wager that much more interesting, don’t you think?”

       “What about it, Laney?” Erik finally spoke, though Laney wasn’t answering.

       “I found the collar in an old trunk in the cellar,” Jason added. “We really should explore the place, you’d be amazed what’s there.”

       “What about it, Laney?” Erik asked again. He moved forward, taking a seat on the edge of the coffee table directly in front of her, watching how cold chills of fear made her entire body quake. “Take off your clothes.” His voice was strongly resonant, filled with tenacity that came from deep within his dark substance. He rarely employed such power in sex, but he did now. It aroused him, and Laney as well.

       She bit her lip, held it with her teeth for several seconds, then looked at her naked friends, seeing their gross sexuality leap out at her, begging her to join them. She let go of her lip and her desire poured from her mouth and breasts, her breathing deepened and her eyes seemed to soften. Her hesitation was a poignant reminder of the fear that encircled the room and the desire billowing from that fear. Still, her anxiety did not keep her from acting on Erik’s order. With nervous fingers grasping the hem of her tee shirt, she pulled it over her head. Unclasping the white cotton bra, her bronze skin seemed to moisten with perspiration as the anticipation in the room magnified.

       Ignoring the eyes that stared her way, she continued—as though she had no choice, her body moved beyond her mind. Her crotch tingled as she struggled to get free of her shorts. The eroticism was alarming. Once nude, Laney slumped to the floor and settled in with her knees bent and tucked to her chest, her arms going around them while her head rested at the top as though she were exhausted. It was not entirely a submissive pose, but it was the best she could accomplish at the moment. It did afford the rest of the room a direct shot at her shaved pussy, the pink/brown lips of her pudendum, a swollen purple clitoris, and a bit of silky black hair in a tuft at the top.

       “Very good, my obstinate chattel,” Erik remarked, then he turned his back on her as he stood.

       “Do you suppose we can bring the trunk upstairs?” Erik asked Jason.

       “Easily,” he replied, rising, leaving Sandra by the stool.

       While their slaves waited in silence for their return, the three men swiftly made their way to the subterranean depths of the old house and minutes later returned with a hefty camelback steamer trunk. Matthew moved the coffee table, and in the center of the room before the fireplace, Jason and Erik carefully let it drop to the floor with a gentle plunk. All six stared at the massive antique for some minutes—it gave off the aroma of damp dust while suggesting that, like Pandora’s Box, there were secrets inside that, once exhumed from the dark, could explode unchecked altering the natural order of their lives. Could it hold such awesome power? Did it contain that kind of force? Or did their fascination have its source in the same numbing sexual spell that had already moved this night beyond the pallid and into the extreme?

       Matthew was the first to act. Tired of waiting, he impulsively unlatched the rickety lock—one already breached by Jason earlier that day. Opening the trunk, the dank smell hit his nostrils like a blast of wind. Inside, the reality of the trunk’s contents was quite plainly visible. A treasure house of S&M paraphernalia, there were implements of punishment and bondage, an array of leather harnesses and bridles, boots, chains and most importantly for the moment, a half dozen slave collars.

       Matthew immediately lit on a metal one: slim, velvet lined and very snug around Elise’s slim neck. As he fixed it tightly and locked the latch behind there was a tiny but ominous click, signaling the gravity of its purpose. Taking the long tail of his wife’s lustrous chestnut hair in hand, he twirled it into a thick bun at the top of her head, and thread her long hair-pick through the locks to hold it in place. Her hair swept off her shoulders, the diminutive beauty formed a stunning statement of submissive elegance with the metal collar circling the flawless perfection of her pale neck.

       Erik made a different choice in collars for his slave, finding one made of black leather, much like Sandra’s, but studded with thick round silver bullets. In the front, a large metal ring dangled a good inch below the leather itself. Around Laney’s neck, the collar was bold, brushed lightly by the ends of the short straight pageboy. She was less elegant than Elise, less indulgently robust than Sandra, and like her plain-stated personality, more abrupt than either woman, harboring a trace of defiance in her attitude that one would expect from a woman so determinedly frank.

       Once his slave wife was collared, Erik rose again. “As long as we play our wager, you’ll wear these,” he said.

       “And how long will that be?” Laney asked, looking up meekly.

       “As long as we like,” Erik replied to her tersely. “Now, I think I’ll read a little more of the book. And this time,” he looked straight at his wife, “no interruptions.”

       Curiously, the swiftness of the change took no one by surprise. After three days on the island with their imaginations fueled by the peculiarities of the odd place, it almost seemed to be the natural order of life, the way things should be, an adjustment to the disharmony that had rankled them all since they arrived. As bizarre as it seemed for three women to be naked, collared and subservient at the feet of their men, no one questioned the act—not even Laney could protest with words. She struggled—even Elise struggled. Sandra seemed the most gone. Regardless, however, this was fate, and it would not change. Accepting their collars and their subordinate status seemed far more natural than resisting. In time, they realized that their disquiet would fall away, to be replaced by an effortless surrender none would have attempted anywhere but on Marquis Island.

       Moving away from his collared wife, Erik strolled to the fireplace, the book in his hand, and leaning an arm against the mantle, he began to read. There’d been a challenging swagger in his walk and a sharp turn in attitude as though he were allowing what was already inherently dominant in his make-up to emerge more distinctly. His was a cool almost calculating sort of dominance. Jason’s was emotionally hot and intense, while Matthew’s predilection was quick-witted and imaginative. Each man in his own fashion suppressed an explosive energy that waited like a hunting tiger about to strike. The thought of that energy erupting through their uneasy calm held their captive slaves, their prey, enthralled, on edge and wary.

       “To subjugate the ego of a human slave it is essential they have no self concern, self-consciousness or modesty. They must have no thought for propriety. Indeed, they should have no concerns at all. Their single task is to obey the rules set for them by their master, and in so doing dispense with any idea of self and the conventions of society they may have adhered to in their past.

       “In order to attain this selfless state, it is imperative that they undergo efficiently administered beatings on their buttocks, thighs and even their shoulders—all places where punishment can be dealt and not produce permanent damage. For such acts, humiliating poses of surrender are required with asses raised lewdly, genitals splayed wide, and the flesh worked harshly. This kind of treatment, regularly imposed, imbues the slave with a sense of their degraded and worthless state.

       Should they find themselves in a masochistic revelry because of such beatings, that fares well for the master—he knows then that he has less to punish with a slave who finds sexual, physical release in the act. Be sure, however, that the abuse is not laid on too lightly in order to achieve an erotic outcome. This can come later. Instead, the intent at this early stage is to instill a state of surrender and to suppress the ego until its effects are abolished altogether in the mind of the slave.

       “Should the process of abuse raise the erotic desire of the master—which it commonly does in such a highly charged environment, feel free to use your beaten slave in any sexual manner you choose. The indignity of such physical violation only enhances in the slave the servile state of abdication.”

       Erik paused to gaze at Jason and Matthew, as this message from the Master Christian Barth became clear in their minds—he might as well have been writing a script.

       “I thought we might draw lots to see whose slave is abused first,” Jason suggested. There was something particularly unnerving about these words coming from that source. Jason, normally the least somber of the three, seemed to be as much the ringleader for this scene. But make no mistake, the fervency in all three men drove the bargain to these inevitable ends, as much as the island, the house, Christian Barth’s crude missal, and the scorching fires ignited in the loins of these three astounded women.

       “Fair enough,” Erik said. Opening the deck of cards on the table, he turned them face side up and pulled three queens from the stack. “Jason’s slave will be the Heart, mine the Spade, and Matthew’s bitch the Club.”

       “Last time they’ll be thought of as queens,” Matthew chortled from his own dark space. He took the cards from Erik, shuffled them on the table, then laid them flat so no one knew which was which. “Draw our lucky slave, Jason,” he said.

       The smirking master strode forward, considered all three cards, then quickly whisked one away, holding up the Queen of Spades so everyone could see.

       Laney shivered silently in her collar as Erik stared her way. What protest might have appeared inside her throat was cut short by fear; and more importantly, the desperate desire that seemed to have replaced her sanity and arguments with an unexpected lust she could not squelch. Some vein of passion, like a vein of pure gold, seemed to have been tapped in her, and now mined, held forth an unending supply of rare desire from which to see this through.

       “And will you do the honors with the slave?” Erik asked his friend.

       Jason’s eyes burned with fire as he nodded his agreement and moved swiftly to the trunk of treasure, plucking from inside a short leather spanking strap. In his hand, the hefty two-inch leather almost brushed the floor. Laney’s gaze focused on the horror, though the look of the leather and the intensity of Jason’s firm fist gripping the thick handle lured her entire body. Her life had taken this twist without her conscious mind grasping—no thoughts seemed to get through now, no reason seemed to have any sway; there was no logic guiding her. Just lust. That pure vein of molten passion.

       “On the table, ass end up,” Jason ordered.

       Looking at him meekly, Laney crawled on hands and knees to the coffee table, slinking like a stalking animal, her ass swaying as though this were an invitation; though Jason hardly needed the seduction to lure him to her. He came on with the full power of a master’s lust guiding.

       “Put your head on the table and raise your ass,” he ordered. Laney complied. “Spread your knees.” She did that, too. “Wider,” he commanded grimly as though he were displeased. She obeyed, though the position was difficult to manage and disgustingly lewd—just as Barth would have demanded.

       Her ass was high, the two orbs tight, the tawny skin stretched, her thighs quivering and her exposed pussy wet with female cum. She flexed and clenched while pretending to relax, though there was not a muscle in her body that was not tense and teeming with anxiety as she awaited the first strike.

       Jason stood back to appraise his target while all eyes focused on the show. The two waiting slaves watched petrified, while the two men witnessing were moved by the same strong hunger for domination. Their fingers were as itchy as this new master’s, but their appetites were on hold. A degree of patience seemed to breed in them along with their lust.

       The first smack of the spanker fired hotly across the expanse of Laney’s ass.

       She shrieked aghast as a surge of sensation splashed against her skin.

       The second smack came down as damagingly; and the slave’s ass churned uncomfortably as another and another and another rain of sharp thwacks shot painful arrows through her. Though the heat of the spanking grew intense, her shrieks died off as though she unconsciously knew she should not protest with any venom. Her discomfort doubled and redoubled. But, her lust didn’t die, nor could she squash the crude sensuality barreling through her in great waves, choking all her senses.

       Soon, an even rhythm grew between the slave and master as the beating on Laney’s ass proceeded. Her body caught up with the pain and used it to her advantage. “Ah, ah, ah, yessssss,” she was seething quietly under her breath, even though the whole room heard her when her distress changed to pleasure. Even with Jason coming on more strongly, she bore the pain with grace. Her mind swam with pictures, as if Christian Barth’s slaves were sending her images from the past, of ecstasy and untold pleasure inside the depths of pain.

       In time, Jason broadened his target, aiming lower to the base of her ass and the tender back of her thighs. With such abuse, Laney crawled into the corner of her soul feeling beaten but not vanquished, feeling burned but not consumed.

       When Jason stopped, his erection was at her pussy’s door, thrusting meanly to get off. The act was swift and certain, and Laney’s response not unexpected. He tripped her climax before his shot off inside her. When he was finished, he pulled her back, her scorched ass resting on her heels, and made her lick the remains of his cum from the head of his dwindling erection. They’d never been intimate, but now his sexual use of her seemed as normal as any odd act in this odd place.

       “Now, get back on the floor,” he ordered. Turning to Erik, he added with a wry twist, “Your slave knows what she wants, she climaxed.”

       “Perhaps those who fear the most have the most desire to burn off,” Erik suggested. “Shall we attend to the other two?”

       “Creatively,” Matthew said, moving to the waiting Sandra and clamping her collar with a leash. He tugged her toward one of the alcoves fitted with both O-rings and an empty pedestal. Thrusting her belly down over the marble post, he then wrapped her hands with rope and affixed both wrists and ankles to a pair of bolts. Moving to Elise, he dragged her toward another alcove and bound her over a pedestal in the same fashion. Finally, pulling Laney along, she too was bowed over marble, tied in position. “I think these postures might mimic what old Barth might have done,” he said, observing his artful handiwork. “They’re locked secure this way, ready to be whipped or spanked or otherwise generally abused. What do you think?” He turned to his friends.

       “I think our minds are becoming as devious as our hosts’,” Erik suggested. He took a paddle from the trunk and strut from bared ass to bared ass whacking each one until it was hotly colored. Even Laney’s ass took more abuse. Matthew followed with a riding crop, repeating the same rough treatment, and Jason added a few smart smacks of his leather spanker to Sandra and Elise’s roughed up behinds. Before they where finished, Matthew exploded his cum over Sandra’s spanked behind, and Elise, untied and pulled from the pedestal, took Erik’s erection into her mouth, sucking until the orgasm thundered through him and his cum spilled down her mouth and chin.

       Resting from their tiring labor, the three men washed a few pretzels down with beer and finally untied their slaves, bringing them back to the fireplace on leashes.

       In that remarkable hour, the nature of their stay on Marquis Island was written. No one had disagreed, there was not one protest—not even the thought of one passed through their minds. The transformation was complete, but eerie, even dreamlike, as though they were all the puppets of an unseen master who, with sleight of hand and wily schemes, directed their unspeakable acts.

            Three slaves slept at the footboards of their master’s bed that night, contentedly, while in the minds of the men who relished the comfort of real mattresses, more wicked thoughts of domination appeared in their minds. They woke startled by what their dreams had to tell.