Chapter Seventeen

The next day, when Delila expected Fier to lead her to her cubicle, he did not. Instead, he entered her room, presenting her with clothes to wear, a surprising change.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“From Degas.”

“Degas?”

Astonished, she pulled the dress from Fier’s hand. “Why would he be giving me this?” she asked.

“Your assignment changes today. You’ll be walking the floor, picking up customers on your own. The dress is meant to help you in the task. Put it on and don’t dawdle, you’re expected out there in ten minutes. And don’t worry; if you’re not there, I still have orders to cane you at will, although by the looks of your bottom, you couldn’t take much more.”

Leaving her alone with the dress, Delila stood up and pulled the garment to her, hugging it as if she had something precious next to her skin. It felt so soft. Gazing into the full-length mirror on the wall, she was stunned by the way the rose-colored fabric of the satin dress looked next to her dark tresses. The feminine and the dark collided for a sumptuous picture of sensuality.

Delila: On the floor, I was a different creature than in the cubicle where men came to me baited by the ring, tantalized by the woman they thought I was. In my subversive way, I used my status to gain my own satisfaction. Without the mark of my crimes displayed so conspicuously, I was like the other whores plying my trade. I liked the challenge, even if it required that I become bolder. I’d been convicted of seducing Rafferty—a fact that was hardly valid the way I’d so sheepishly uncovered my breasts for him. However here, this was seduction! This was a deliberate flaunting, swaying my ass as I walked, the way I’d seen Lexia do, sidling up to the often hesitant customers, rubbing my dress bedecked body against them as they took notice of my feminine attributes made available. Some I’d fucked before in the cubicle, though they were shyer in the open.

When I made pacts with the willing gentlemen, I took them to one of the rooms down a corridor where there were beds for the nightly excursions between my legs. My customers gave me pounding, throbbing climaxes and much to shriek about.

“Why these marks on your ass?” one man asked me, just after my return to Outer Island, when he felt the cuts that Armand had laid on my rear.

“You’re screwing a married woman,” I told him, showing him the ring that he’d neglected to notice before.

I thought he would throw me from the bed, at first, and then his face lit with the most sinister look, as if it made him hotter to have me. Then, he pounded my cunt severely, as if he needed to punish me too. I found the response amusing; I also found he wasn’t the only man to think that he had a right to punish me. There must have been rules in the cubicles for appropriate behavior with a whore; on the floor and in the rooms however, the fucking was more liberal, and to feel the heat of a man taking his wrath out against my bottom with his hand was not uncommon.

It was common too to have more than one lover at a time. I was free to participate in the free-for-alls, where a dozen men and women groped and screwed so it was hard to recognize who were whores and who were customers.

With my new freedom, I was able to enjoy the wider aspects of Outer Island, understanding how much of a pleasure palace of carnal acts this place was. Nothing was taboo inside the Island, and there was no one to ask questions, or call anyone an offender.

Oh, yes! The judgment prevailed. Such a skewed environment created all sorts of bizarre decrees: customers who fucked only one whore, as if that was a sign of fidelity; customers who insisted on being spanked after they’d copulated, to appease their guilt, no doubt; and others who spent most of their time inside these walls, defending the place to the listening ears of their paid lovers.

I noticed too in my excursions about the brothel, that our customers were not all from the obscene masses of New Victoria’s citizens. Though I heard no real names spoken, I recognized faces that I’d seen in newspapers: bankers, businessmen, doctors, and yes, even State officials at the highest echelons of the bureaucracy. I almost expected to see the Judge that condemned me walk through the doors some night.

When I commented to Lexia about this, she flashed me an arrogant grin. “What they all know and don’t admit is how deeply the fascination for our dark home truly is. They’ll never get rid of us, they don’t even want to. I believe they’re all crazy out there, living lives as charlatans and false moralists. That’s why I live here; at least you can count on Outer Island to be honest.”

Lexia was right about honesty and freedom. So was Degas. I didn’t have to hold back a thing. Any desire I hungered for had the potential to be made real in the main chamber and side rooms and leather galleries of Outer Island. Any fantasy that the whores and customers dreamed became the stuff for reality. And so, like a dream, I felt as if I were floating from one sensation to another, one body thirst to the next without stopping for an instant. As long as I kept my thoughts focused on the present moment, not acknowledging the past or thinking of the future, my mind was at ease.

One night in the center of the main chamber, I made love to Mira, forced to by the men that had claimed us. They had us collared—something that wasn’t required of me now; but on this night Mira and I were both collared and led around on leashes like puppies. Mira was used to the treatment, and made me laugh when I was inclined to feel self-conscious. When the men pushed us together and demanded an exhibition, I to solace in her lack of restraint. She took the lead, massaging my breasts with both hands through the satin dress as her lips greeted mine for a dozen gentle kisses, and then a full-mouthed one where our tongues met inside. I found the feelings between my legs as precious as the ones men gave me. Likely they were even more potent because women’s bodies were still new to me. The informal sensuality between whores was as soothing as it was climax producing. As an exhibition, the female/female eroticism generated a dreadful heat I hadn’t expected, and soon I lost all sense of place and self-awareness, of the eyes that surrounded us—those proverbial ghouls that feasted on anything Outer Island contrived that was strange and bizarre.

That first night Mira and I made love before the hundred eyes, we began mid-floor and proceeded to drop to the rough wood at our feet, as if nothing mattered but the two of us and our special affections inside the tiny enclave we fashioned around us. I pretended that there was no one but Mira and me, even though I think that the audience made me more aroused by its presence. From the fullness of her milky breasts to the softness of her belly to the gentle recesses between her thighs, I marveled at her body and how it replied to my touch in infinite ways. We might have continued for hours playing, but were interrupted after the first climax. Other sex acts were required of us that took Mira and I to opposite corners of the main chamber, although I knew we’d be together again.