After the first night they settled into a sort of routine. The two girls slept on pallets in the basement unless Adam required them at night. Meals were haphazard during the day – often Adam had meetings or appointments that took him from the house; when he was away he would sometimes leave them a series of tasks – at night Adam tended to cook his own food and allow the girls to eat his leftovers off the floor. Sometimes he entertained visitors and then the women’s roles would shift from live-in help to full-out slaves, depending on the circumstances. There were no more baths for Clara; the basement had a cement shower enclosure whose plumbing provided only a trickle of cold water.

Adam’s use of them was settling into a routine also. Monique was punished far more brutally and more often than Clara. She was a mass of marks and bruises. Clara, on the other hand, was punished fairly seldom. She had not, however, been allowed to come since that first night. Adam seemed fascinated that she could be teased and kept on edge apparently endlessly, as long as she was not allowed to touch herself. Sometimes he experimented with various ways to stimulate her, moving her from aroused to almost orgasmic and back, at his whim. Clara became used to feeling constantly wet, and ready, and hungry. When Adam ceased to be amused by teasing her to the very edge, he would often order her to “give” her orgasm – the one she wasn’t allowed to have – to Monique. “It’s a shame to let it go to waste,” he would comment, as if he had a box of orgasms in the pantry, nearing their expiration date. Clara would sigh inwardly, Monique would look sleek, and Clara, her cunt throbbing, her clit twitching, would present her mouth, or her hands, or a toy to Monique’s insouciant pussy, providing her with an experience that was to her mundane. To Clara, even the idea of that experience was becoming inconceivably precious.

Recently, however, the rules had changed. Now Adam did not simply stimulate Clara himself in long sessions of torment. Now she was to be kept on edge as much as possible throughout the day. There was a small egg that she wore inside her. It turned on randomly, at very long intervals, maybe every few hours and just for a moment at a time. It was the knowledge, the anticipation that kept her on edge more than anything, in a constant state of excitement. And then Monique and Adam delighted in tormenting her. At any moment she might be required to open herself – to lie on the table, to back against the wall, to sit on the desk – and display herself for their enjoyment. She would be ordered to hold herself open as they touched lightly or firmly, as they licked or stroked, as they penetrated with fingers or objects. They would make her strain for the lightest touch, or they would handle her roughly until her orgasm was ready to burst from her. Monique had been willingly recruited to the task of keeping Clara on edge, and showed an eagerness in her performance that was admirable in a slave fulfilling her master’s commands.

Clara’s sleep was disturbed. Adam wanted them well and healthy, so he didn’t keep them short on sleep for very long. The egg wasn’t inside her at night; she wasn’t chained or uncomfortable. She hadn’t even been warned not to touch herself after Monique fell heavily to sleep on the pallet next to hers. It never occurred to her to do so. Even during her most erotic dreams her hands never strayed to her pussy; she never awoke, as she had in the past, to find herself half-way to orgasm with her finger on her clit. Adam wanted her to feel this way, hot, heavy, moving in a daze of sexual excitement, and so this was what she wanted herself. When the little egg would give the tell-tale click before starting, when Adam or Monique would call her over, she would feel a rush of adrenaline that was only partly anticipation of the sexual torment. She would feel, at those moments, that she was being put to her highest and best use – made to experience what Adam had chosen for her.

Monique, on the other hand, was simply brutalized. It had been a mistake, perhaps, to take the initial beatings so well. Adam sensed that Monique was a creature of her body and of bodily sensations. Her tits could take any number of weights on the rings he had inserted through her now-healed piercings; her heavy buttocks and thighs could take tremendous flogging; she endured the whip, the cane with a passive excitement that he found exciting himself. He felt pushed to see what she could and could not endure, stopping himself at times from doing her a true injury. Unlike Clara, Monique was often kept in bondage overnight. She had learned to endure, even to revel in it. There was a rubber hood, a ring gag, sometimes chains or cuffs. On occasion, she had even been kept in bondage for a day and a night, and she could sense that more was coming. In addition, Clara now occasionally administered a punishment under Adam’s tutelage. She had overcome her initial squeamishness and had come to wield an implement with an eagerness, if not a skill, that Adam found endearing.

One evening Adam had summoned the two of them to the living room. Clara was irritable. She was short on sleep due to the continual arousal that would waken her during the night; Monique had been especially zealous in her torments the past few days; and Adam, for some reason, had been practically ignoring Clara and spending most of his free time romping with Monique. She hadn’t even been punished for days. Clara felt that she’d been trembling on the verge of tears all day.

Adam had engaged in his usual game of having Monique tease Clara. He had ordered her, yet again, to bring Clara to the edge of orgasm and keep her there for as long as possible. This time, however, Clara had begun to cry and hadn’t stopped through the entire ordeal. By the time Adam finally called a halt, she lay silent and almost impassive, slow tears sliding down her cheeks. At that point, Adam had introduced the two women to something new.

Now Clara presented an intriguing sight. She stood on Adam’s beautiful Persian rug, arms bound behind her back, Monique lying before her with a vibrator in her pussy. Clara was crouched, knees bent, back as straight as possible, over the supine girl. Her face expressed a mixture of anguish and determination. A thin chain led from tight clips on Clara’s nipples, to a rope strung through a series of pulleys, and then to the power supply for Monique’s vibrator. If Clara chose to stand upright, the chain on her nipples slack, the vibrator would run, sending Monique well on her way to yet another orgasm. When Clara would crouch, however, as painful as that quickly became for her calves and her nipples, the vibrator would stop. In this manner, Adam provided Clara with her first chance to cause Monique the same discomfort that Monique so often caused her.

Adam watched with interest. Clara was clearly uncomfortable with being allowed to wreak vengeance on Monique. She would watch, apparently unconcerned, as the other girl neared her release. As Monique got closer, though, Clara’s face would begin to harden. She would bite her lips and eye Monique from under partially-lowered lids. Finally, at the last moment she would seem to gather her courage and suddenly bend her knees, gasping as her clamped nipples were pulled painfully upward. She would maintain her pose for a few moments, but shortly her calves would contract and she would begin to tremble. It was this moment that most interested Adam, for Clara clearly refused to allow herself any relief until it was certain that Monique’s orgasm had evaded her; until it was certain that if she allowed the vibrator to start again, the other girl would be in no danger of coming.

After some time Clara’s legs were fatigued and her nipples sore. It took more and more effort for her to hold the crouching position for shorter and shorter periods of time. She experimented with giving Monique less time with the vibrator, and herself less time to recover, in exchange for shorter periods of crouching to keep the vibrator off. But Monique was so easily aroused, so quickly satisfied, that these short breaks did nothing to postpone her orgasm. Clara was forced to return to longer periods of discomfort if she wanted to prolong her vengeance.

She became flushed; beads of perspiration collected on her brow and above her lip. Her hair fell limply to the small of her back. A drop of blood appeared on her lip where she had bitten it too hard. Still she refused to end the game. Her lips would move silently as her muscles cramped and her raw nipples burned. Adam moved behind her to hear. “Come on, you can do it,” she was cheering herself on. “Bitch. Little cunt, see how you like it. Oh!” – this exclamation was aloud – “Oh! It hurts. Just a little longer, just a moment…” Adam slipped his hand into her exposed pussy and began to palpate it. He began to caress her whenever she was crouched down, stopping when she arose. She smiled slightly and leaned back into him. As this continued she became more and more aroused, his hands giving her another incentive to prolong Monique’s torment and her own.

Adam began to cheer her on also. “Wait, don’t stand up yet. You can go a little longer.” When she felt unable to continue – “Are you moving away from my hand?” he would tease. “And here I thought you liked me.” Inevitably, she began to move closer and closer to orgasm herself. Adam, Clara leaning into him, his hands on her pussy when she was in position, his arms around her waist when she was not, observed the tableau – Monique, squirming, aroused, as Clara would stand at ease; panting and passive when Clara was in position; the vibrator arousing Monique and Adam’s hands arousing Clara – and Clara, her pain and stubbornness the fulcrum of the event, as the women’s sexual energy passed through the ropes and the pulleys and flowed from one to the other.