Chapter 1

I was drawn to Sebastian from the very first. As a student lawyer, that is, one who studies at the university part time and works in a law practice for the rest of the time, I was assigned to him to guide me through the intricacies of the law as it pertained to the practice.

He was everything a girl dreamed about: tall, athletic and with the grace that seems to come naturally to the English aristocracy. Not that he was titled or anything, although I think his grandfather or great-uncle or something was an earl or viscount. Nevertheless, he was certainly upper-crust, that much showed through in his carriage and bearing.

He wasn’t a snob. He was as pleasant to me, whose parents were very definitely middle class, as he was to all the other members of the staff and to clients of all classes, and he took me under his wing from the very beginning.

Actually, I think we rather more than just hit it off from the moment we met. I certainly felt those funny little vibes that tell us humans that this individual or that is going to be more than just a friend. He didn’t fall to his knees the moment we met, or even ask me out for dinner for quite a while, however. He was always very correct. Pleasant and helpful and considerate, but always correct.

Sebastian was a very good looking man. As I say, he was tall and lean and I knew his body must have been very athletic or perhaps even muscular from the way he carried himself. He was darkish in complexion, almost as if he had a permanent tan (which added to his attractiveness to me), his hair was a wavy dark brown and his eyes a deep blue, almost violet.

I think we set each other off very well for I am fair (although my skin tans very well) with long straight blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes. I too am athletic for I loved to play squash and I still competed in amateur athletics and these sports kept my body nicely trim, perhaps even athletic as well.

I enjoyed my work and my studies and I was doing quite well at them, but to add to my pleasure, Sebastian now began to ask me out. He was a very rich young man and didn’t really need to work in his father’s law practice but like many modern aristocrats, he felt the need to be doing something useful and had studied law at Cambridge and then joined the firm. He was now thirty-two and was a junior partner in the firm. As a result, he took me to the best places. Not to show off for he wasn’t like that, but to see me enjoy myself.

I certainly did that! He was a wonderful host, considerate of my wishes but well-versed in all that went with dining in a top-class restaurant. He therefore made these events wonderful evenings for me.

We also began to play squash together - and there I saw him stripped down to t-short and shorts - and now knew what I had suspected: that his body was superbly fit and very athletic. I began to have erotic thoughts about him although he was still very correct in the way he treated me, only permitting himself a quick peck on my cheek when we met and afterwards parted.

Later still, he took to coming to my athletics meetings and then my practice runs, now becoming just a little more intimate with me, kissing me more affectionately and touching me in more endearing ways. I knew I was falling for him and I was sure he was for me, as well.

I suppose we just sort of drifted into bed together. I didn’t go to live with him but on occasions, after a dinner or dance and when we both wanted it, I ended up in his bed in his very up-market apartment (or he ended up in my much lesser bed-sitter) and we made wonderful love together. I had no idea where our growing love would end up but at that time I was quite content to let it drift on as it was for the drift was upwards and I knew both of us loved the other very much.

I had worked in the firm for almost a year when he at last invited me to an athletic event that he was interested in. That’s how he described it to me: “Mercedes, I have enjoyed coming to your athletics meetings and I love our games of squash together but I wonder if you would like to come to another sort of athletics event, one I am rather interested in?”

An odd way to put it? Wasn’t it! But I smiled and told him I would love to come and see it - whatever it was.

I was surprised ... no, shocked though when I discovered what it was that so interested him. I had never heard of it, which was why he wouldn’t elaborate what it was we were going to see until I actually saw it for my own eyes.

We drove onto a large estate and even at the main entrance, every car was being thoroughly checked before it was admitted. The lane up to the house was long and windy and ran through copses of trees that hid the house and its surrounds from every road in the locality. The house was huge by my standards but it certainly wasn’t Blenheim Palace, or anything like it. We didn’t stop there though, continuing on past it along the private road to another copse of trees and there my eyes just about popped.

We got out to be greeted by Sebastian’s friends but I hardly took in the introductions for my eyes were fixed on the competitors - or rather their steeds, for what I saw were a dozen or so light gigs, rather like trotting frames except there was a proper, if very small, seat for the rider. Some of these gigs were already harnessed to their steeds.

But these were not horses or even ponies - at least not of the equine kind, anyway. They were people! Really! Human ponies were harnessed to half a dozen of the ultra-light gigs and were obviously getting ready to race while others were being prepared for the next race.

Sebastian smiled at my astonishment and I gripped his hand tightly, not sure whether I ought to protest at what I thought to be an inhuman treatment of fellow human beings - or to give way to the incredible excitement I was feeling down in my middle regions - and particularly at my love bud.

I felt his eyes on me and looked up at him. His face was still as serene as it always was but I felt he knew of my inner excitement for his hand gripped mine more tightly too. “Come over and see them at close hand, Mercedes,” he said softly, excusing us from his friends and leading me over to where the riders were now positioning their steeds for the first race.

I stared at them in awe. All were wearing leather harnesses that left their breasts (this race was for females) bare but properly covered their middles and yet showed off their quite magnificent bodies to a tee. All were highly athletic, with bodies that were almost muscular in appearance and as a track athlete myself, I knew they would be very fast even without seeing them perform. They were a mixture of races, three being obviously white, one, half and half and the other two much darker in complexion. These last two were really well-muscled girls and I suspected they would be the fastest. I was embarrassed that their breasts were all totally on show - as were their haunches and the whole of their thighs - but I also felt a weird thrill at seeing them so indecently attired (or is it unattired).

The riders all wore silks just as real jockeys did and as with them, these were diminutive boys (or looked to be, anyway).

The gigs were a little like trotting frames, as I said. They had high, very narrow wheels as on a racing bicycle with an axle between them and bolted to this was the tiny seat on which the rider perched. Dangling from either side of the single shaft that led forward from the axle, under the saddle, were two footrests, like stirrups in which they placed their feet.

The shaft, made of a strong but light aluminium alloy was about six feet long but up at the front it split in two, forming a large ‘U’ and the two ends of this were buckled to the waist belt of the girls’ harness.

They were under starters’ orders now and were lined on the very private track that ran inside the copse of trees - everyone is well aware these days that satellites can now see anything on Earth they want to. Down came the flag and off they went while Sebastian and me hung over the rails, me as excited as he obviously was as the six girls charged around the small track, pulling the feather-weight gigs and their tiny riders behind them.

Once the six of them were past the bend in the distance and were partially out of sight, I had a look at the spectators and the men who were tending the next set of competitors. These ones were male and were just as provocatively attired with only a codpiece hiding their genitals, as the tiny pouch had those of the girls now charging around the track.

The men and women here, all obviously of Sebastian’s class, were all very excited - and not only by the thrill of the race, either. Faces, on the women as much as the men, were flushed as they had watched the six girls racing off - and now as they turned to watch the male ponies being prepared for the next race, it was clear the muscular bodies of the six male ponies also excited them.

I realised straight away that this was very much a sexual scene as well as a sporting event and once more I felt my loins boil as I came to grips with what was actually happening here: There were a few hundred spectators, a dozen or so handlers and some two dozen human ponies! And every single one of them appeared turned on by the events.

With the male ponies, that turn-on was readily apparent in their codpieces as what they contained was in an obvious state of arousal. These young men were obviously in a state of high sexual tension and yet they were in an intensely shameful position, almost naked, their buttocks as well as the rest of their bodies almost completely exposed to the stares of the men and women who crowded round to admire their so athletic physiques.

And with the girls it must have been even worse for a woman’s breasts, at least in England, are never - and than means not ever - to be exposed in public. Nor are her bottom cheeks and thighs - at least not as much of them as was now on show here.

I wondered to Sebastian who the competitors, that is, the ponies, were. He grinned down at me. “They come from all walks of life, Mercedes. They found out about it, one way or another and applied to take part. They each have a nominal owner who is responsible for their training and brings them to each meeting. In some cases, this is their spouse or lover; sometimes just a friend or even an acquaintance which the sport has brought to them.”

“So no one of them is here under compulsion?” I asked softly. I have no idea (or didn’t then) why I asked this question but Sebastian looked at me oddly for a moment and then shook his head.

“No, Mercedes, not one of them here, is under compulsion of any kind ...”

I felt a quick wash of regret pass over me - again I had no idea why - at this response and I didn’t even catch the slight emphasis on the word ‘here’. It could have told me heaps but at that time I missed it. I didn’t even properly recognise the emotion of regret and if I had I would probably have been astonished for to that moment I had never had any feelings towards slavery or even bondage. My sex had been very ‘normal’, almost mundane, one might say and so I missed all the signs, simply nodding but then asking who the spectators were.

“Oh, they are all friends of mine - and of Father’s. He too is interested in this sport and would have been here today but for a family gathering at the Castle.” I smiled for I couldn’t imagine the kindly, white-haired man who was the head of our firm, being involved in this - and also because Sebastian almost never mentioned his family connections. He was the complete antithesis of the English snob although I knew he was very close to his family who were very much involved in the county and its welfare. Noblesse oblige at work still ...

The girls were coming into view again now, around the bend and I could see all were now sweating freely under the whips of their small riders. I stared at them in awe. Human female ponies almost naked and being whipped to harder efforts by their riders! It was bizarre - and yet every one of those girls looked be in near ecstasy as she strained her utmost to get ahead of her rivals.

As I had thought, the two black girls, more muscular than the others, were in the lead and their bodies looked quite superb as they ran at full tilt, their breasts flouncing up and down and from side to side beautifully as their naked feet pounded the tanbark track. The fine muscles of their bodies, so magnificently exposed by the light harness, rippled and corded wonderfully and I had a sudden thought that they would look so much better if they were totally nude!

I started as this thought entered my head. What an idea! I glanced up at Sebastian guiltily. Had he discerned my thoughts? He seemed to be able to do this with uncanny accuracy the more we were together and he often forestalled a question by answering it before I had time to enounce it. He had, but he didn’t let on, not then, his eyes still on the six almost naked girls who were now nearing the finishing line.

The two black girls had maintained their lead throughout the race and now people crowded around them, stroking their sweaty flesh and congratulating them on their win and second place. They also crowded around the other girls and told them how well they had done to keep up with the two blacks for apparently they were well known as champions.

I wasn’t surprised. I had picked them as such even before the race started for their long legs and powerful thighs bespoke great speed and their upper bodies of an endurance that had been very apparent through the race.

But now they cleared the track and went to be rubbed down - yes, seriously. For the duration of the day (I thought), they were ponies and were treated as such, even to being stripped down, stood in a metal tub and rubbed down by a groom while more of the spectators stood around and watched, the males among them with bulges very apparent where they shouldn’t be.

This was a very public spectacle, the six ponies all standing in six of the large but shallow baths (each one was about three feet across and a foot deep and was half full of warm water) that were set in a row about two yards apart.

The girls stood there, naked as the day they were born, each apparently glorying in her nudity but ashamed as well. I couldn’t understand this apparent dichotomy between such feelings: the glorying in her nakedness; and the shame of it. I was to discover that was exactly what they felt and that they actually delighted in the shame just as much as showing off their nudity to all and sundry, at least when being washed down.

Their ablutions took a long time for the crowd wanted to see it in all its prurient detail, their sexual organs as well as their bottoms and what was between them coming in for far longer attention than was necessary - but by now I was into the scene with a vengeance and delighted in it all just as much as Sebastian and his friends obviously were.

But it was over at last and then they were dressed - but only in skin-tight ultra-thin rubber suits that would keep them warm and yet show off their lithe physiques (and especially their sexual organs) perfectly.

Now we returned to the harnessing yard to watch the finishing touches being put to the males’ harnessing. As I said, their privates were only just covered by the tiny codpieces and their lithe, so very athletic bodies were on open show to us all. I felt guilty that I found them so attractive for I was with Sebastian and he was my boss, my friend and my sometime lover but he squeezed my hand and whispered to me that it was alright to enjoy their bodies - just as he had enjoyed those of the girls who had just raced and then been so indecently washed in the large tubs. “We work on the principle that to look and to touch is all right, as long as it doesn’t go further than that, Mercedes.”

I grinned up at him. “Just as well. Those girls were real stunners and I’m having difficulty just looking at these boys. They really are so handsome and so athletic. I wouldn’t be surprised if every one of them was a male model!”

Sebastian grinned back at me. “One of them is, actually. The others are variously a building worker, a labourer - and one is actually a personal trainer.”

I smiled. I knew which one was the personal trainer all right. Of this six, only one was black but what a body he had! He had to be the PT, for sure. Sebastian confirmed it but warned me he was already spoken for.

“See the woman standing next to him while the groom checks his harness?” I nodded as I looked at the quite horsy female in the white shirt and jodhpurs. “Well, he’s hers and I would hate to see you in a fight with Madeline!”

I didn’t pursue this question. First because I loved Sebastian and had no wish to court the boy, no matter how handsome and muscular he was; and second because I was shocked by his words and wanted to think over them before I said another word. He had implied the woman, Madeline, owned the boy and I found this altogether exciting. Was he her slave?

Of course slaves didn’t exist any more, at least not proper ones although I knew people sometimes played at the master/slave relationship, nevertheless, I was excited by the connotations implicit in his words and as I say, I wanted to think them over carefully before I commented any more.

The boys were now led out to the track, just as the girls had been before them and I wilted as I watched the fine muscles of their so totally exposed thighs and buttocks cording and rippling as they took each step and I knew once they were running with the gigs behind them, it would be even more erotic.

It was, too. I had been interested in the girls but not sexually - at least not in the sense their bodies interested me sexually but with these boys, it was a different matter altogether. They were as handsome as the girls had been beautiful and although I wasn’t about to give up Sebastian for a single one of them, just looking at them as they stood there in a line, waiting for the flag to drop was utterly stupendous.

There it was! Down it came, and off they went, each pair of buttocks and thighs now flexed magnificently as their owners leaned forward, taking the miniscule gigs with them while the boys sat on the saddles and lashed at the almost naked backs and rears writhing in front of them. I wondered (aloud) why they weren’t bridled but Sebastian didn’t answer me, just shushing my words with a finger across my lips and smiling briefly at me before returning his attention to the six young men pounding around the soft track, their bare feet making their near nakedness even more apparent.

Again the winner was the black and again I wasn’t surprised. The black races seem to have an inherent genetic ability at athletics - the Olympic Games are evidence of that and in any case, this boy clearly had the physique of a winner.

Now, after crowding around the six boys down on the track, we moved to watch them bathed, again after being stripped naked by their groom and then submitting to the so indecent caressing of their bodies with the wet rags. As with the girls (who had now joined the rest of us in their rubber leotards), these boys’ genitals were toyed with under the guise of cleansing them but everyone knew it was the erotic thrill of watching them masturbated that was the go here.

There were four races in all. Two with girl ponies and as many with young males. The first two were with the shorter competitors; the latter with the taller and even more athletic girls and boys. I found it all utterly intriguing - as Sebastian had known I would - although he didn’t know the half of it about me. Not yet. For that matter, I didn’t know the half of it about me either at that time. Gradually though, it would all develop as my mind took in and began to digest the concept.

Human beings ... ultra beautiful or handsome young women and men who willingly submitted to being stripped down to a very revealing harness (and later to total nakedness as they were bathed) and harnessed to a gig as if they were real equine ponies and then raced as such - right in front of hundreds of upper crust spectators who revelled in the scene - as, it seemed, did the ponies themselves. If a single one of those ponies was there against her or his will, I would go he, for their faces and their whole body language, despite the obvious shame, told of their sexual delight in performing for us.

It hadn’t hit me at that point. Then, I was just thrilled to be there as a spectator; to watch as these boys and girls were handled as animals, harnessed, felt down (like a real horse would be) by men and women who were obviously expert at judging human horseflesh. I also revelled in the races themselves although the lead-up to each race and its aftermath were even more exciting in my mind.

The event had started in the morning with two races before the barbecue lunch put on by the organisers and during which we mingled with everyone, including the rubber-clad ponies. I was surprised when I spoke to one of them, the handsome black boy who had won the second race for he only neighed back at me.

“They are taught to consider themselves as real ponies for the duration of the meeting, Mercedes,” Sebastian explained. “You won’t get a word out of any of them.”

“Oh,” I said, deflated for once. “But afterwards?”

“Afterwards, they will go back to their lives - some to their trainer with whom they live because he or she trains them all the time although they work at proper jobs as well. Others who are not live-in, will return to their normal lives until called on for a training session or another meeting.”

After the very nice barbecue, we gathered around the track again and watched the second female race, followed by the last race of the day, this one for the larger male ponies. The boys here were even more muscular although none were heavily muscled. Highly athletic, yes, but none bulged with unnecessary muscle. To my mind, they were epitome of the perfect male physique, just as the girls were of the superbly fit female.

The shocks of the day were not over yet however. Now the concept that these ponies really did derive a bizarre thrill from the humiliation of being treated as ponies, was underlined to me.

The six final contestants were stripped and ritually ‘rubbed down’ as they stood in the pans of tepid water, each of their cocks at full erection, partly from the constant rubbing of them with the wet rags but I suspected, even more from the ogling eyes of the fully dressed men and women who crowded around the pans to watch as they were publicly cleaned. Then, after this final indignity was over, all two dozen ponies were prepared to be transported home.

Yes, that is the correct terminology for even now they were still ponies and would be right up until they reached their destinations - and some of them, I later found out, would continue to be so indefinitely.

Each pony was now led by his ‘owner’ over to his or her car, at the back of which was attached one of those small caravans used to transport dogs. They are only about three feet high and the same width but about six feet long. They don’t have windows but there are usually grilles all around them to let in fresh air. That is exactly what these trailers looked like and I felt another rush of lust as I imagined what was about to happen.

I was right, but I hadn’t bargained on the full extent of the humiliation these ponies thrived on. Each of the ‘owners’ nodded to his or her charge and each then began to pull off the rubber garment that had kept them warm before and after their respective race until they were again as naked as when they had been bathed in the large flat pans.

Their owners then opened the doors at the rear of the trailers and I noticed each was provided with clean straw on the floor. I also noticed the insides were set up with sets of bars across the front and back of the trailer and one along its length and I looked up at Sebastian, silently asking the reason for them.

He smiled down at me. “The illusion of ponies is kept up even inside them, Mercedes. The bars ensure the ponies stay on all fours. The longitudinal plank keeps their middles up for you see as they straddle it, their left arm and leg are on that side and the right on the other.” I nodded and watched as the ponies bent down and crawled in, now noting that the cross bars at the front prevented them from sitting or even lying down. They had to place their arms in front of it while the one at the rear likewise prevented them from moving their thighs too much. No, I could see that they would be kept on all fours for the whole of the journey.

The doors were shut after them and then everyone said their goodbyes.

I was pensive as we made our way out of the huge estate, one of a long line of Jaguars, Daimlers, Land Rovers and the like, all dispersing once we got to the main road. I was also still on the most massive high of my life. Sebastian didn’t intrude. I think he knew how excited I was but also that I needed to collect my thoughts; arrange them to cope with this so exciting new concept he had hit me with.

He concentrated on driving the big Jaguar but I knew he was glancing at me from time to time, his face as serene as ever. I had no idea what my face showed. If it reflected my thoughts, it must have been constantly changing from glee, to seriousness, back to glee and then lust as I thought over the bodies of the ponies as they competed in a near naked state and then later were washed down totally nude. Naturally, my mind wandered more to the boys than the girls for although I can admire the body of a beautiful girl, I have never felt any sexual attraction to them. The boys were another thing entirely however and as I let my mind wander back over the twelve of them, I felt a recurrence of that embarrassing wetness down between my legs.

But it was also the very idea of human pony racing that so excited me. Of course it wouldn’t have been the same if they had been clothed. Should that have been the case, it would have been merely another form of athletics. Hell, all over the world, but particularly in Asian countries, rickshaws have been around for hundreds of years. But what I had just seen had connotations of humans being considered as ponies - as real, equine ponies. The fact that they were naked, or near naked - and had in fact been stripped down totally nude to be rubbed down just as real ponies were after a race, gave credence to that idea.

And it was that idea that so intrigued me.

Suddenly the thought that had been slowly developing in my mind without me really being aware of it hit me - like a hammer.

I wanted to be one of them!

I sat back hard in the plush chair beside Sebastian, staring straight ahead out of the windscreen but not seeing the road - or anything else, for that matter - except those naked human ponies! I saw them in my mind’s eye as clearly as if we were back at the estate, watching as they galloped around the little track, hauling the diminutive boys in their gigs round and round, their muscles rippling, their fine bodies sweating hard - but all glorying in their humiliation and shame.

I couldn’t believe my thoughts. I was an up and coming lawyer. I was doing very well in one of the most prestigious practices in London. I was going to be at the top of my profession in a few years. Surely I wasn’t going to risk that by getting involved in this bizarre cult?

I glanced at Sebastian again. He caught me looking at him and smiled. “A penny for them, Mercedes?”

I shook my head. “Not yet, Sebastian. I have a lot of thinking to do ...”

But then I caught myself. How rude of me. I reached out and touched his thigh (Oh what a thrill it was to touch any part of him) and smiled back at him. “Sorry, Sebastian. That was very rude of me. It’s just that I don’t yet understand my thoughts and my feelings about what I saw today.

“Don’t get me wrong. It was wonderful - as you could see from the way I behaved. But right now, all sorts of thoughts are tumbling pell-mell through my brain and I don’t understand them.”

“Don’t worry, Mercedes. I understand. Perhaps I should have warned you before we came?”

“No, not at all. It isn’t that. I was shocked at first, it’s true, but once I was over the first shock, I was absolutely intrigued at everything that went on. Their near-nakedness; the fact they weren’t allowed to talk during the time they were ponies; their obvious shame mixed with a just as obvious delight; the beauty of the girls and the handsome virility of the boys ... all of it. It was all just so wonderful.”

“And yet you are all mixed up?” he glanced at me mischievously and reached out to pat my thigh - at which I again thrilled as I always did when he touched me or I him.

“Yes, I am. No doubt I will sort it all out in my mind but at this moment, it’s all too much.”

“Let’s not worry about it. I have booked us into Claridge’s, I hope that will be all right?”

“Oh Sebastian, it will be wonderful - and afterwards, may I stay with you?”

He grinned broadly. “What do you think?”