Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
I nodded, feeling my brow furl as I wondered what the question, and my answer, implied for the pendant and for me.
“Give it to me,” Giovanna said. “I promise to take care of it and to return it to you when you may wear it again.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t know why I trusted her, and yet I did. I reached behind my neck and undid the clasp. The little ivory disk with its rune did feel warm as I handed it to the gorgeous woman into whose power it seemed I’d come.
She examined it, a little smile playing across her lips.
“A Viking rune,” she murmured. “How appropriate.”
A chill went down my spine. I had known, deep down, that my meeting with this woman and the insane, humiliating, terrifying, painful things that had followed must have something to do with my crazy visit to the Norse cavern. This confirmation, without any indication of what on earth, or on Yggdrasil, it meant, sent my mind reeling.
Something about the sheer incongruousness of the moment, or perhaps about my utter incomprehension, made me babble.
“It’s the Elder Futhark,” I told her. “It was my grandmother’s, though she never told anyone how she got it. It’s… the rune, I mean… it’s wunjo, kind of a W, or sometimes a V…”
“Shh,” Giovanna said. “As I said, it’s appropriate that you have come wearing it, and it is appropriate that I have made you remove it.”
“Why…” I started, but the look in my new mistress’s eyes told me of the danger before I could reach a second word.
Questions are useless.
I watched her drop my grandmother’s pendant into her pocket. Then she turned to the panel in the wall from which she had taken the mastix. I hadn’t understood what it was when she’d first opened it to retrieve the horrid whip, but now I watched her work a recessed latch and remove what looked like a series of black leather belts of varying lengths.
“Arms out a bit,” she said, “and your feet at shoulder width.”
My eyes went wide enough that I could feel them bulging a little as I began to understand. I would get a collar, yes… but I counted at least a half dozen strips of leather in Giovanna’s hands, each with a buckle. My chest heaved as I tried to keep myself from bolting toward the door and earning myself more punishment.
I bit my lip to keep from asking a question, because my certainty had only grown that saying anything but How may I please you, Mistress posed just as great a threat to my poor bottom as trying to escape. Tears of humiliation and overwhelm started to run from my eyes even as down below I felt myself clench, mortifyingly, at the very sight of the restraints my terrifying new mistress held. I held my body as she’d instructed, and I had to suppress a whimper as Giovanna began to buckle the cuffs around my wrists.
“These are columba’s leathers,” Giovanna said, as she buckled the first cuff around my right wrist. It was about an inch and a half wide and very stout, with a black metal D ring fitted into it. I swallowed hard as I thought of the iron rings on the rowing bench of the longship in the cavern. The beautiful, frightening woman’s touch felt impersonal and expert. “You’ll wear these until your initial training is complete.”
I didn’t ask what columba meant. I knew Latin well enough. Columba. Dove. I had to work very hard not to think about what the word implied—what it said about the category into which I had been placed, the category of the small, mild, domesticated thing that belonged inside someone’s hands.
She put cuffs on my wrists and ankles, then around my thighs just above my knees. Then a belt with D rings at either side went around my waist. Despite my attempts to think of Latin quotations I had learned in college that featured the word columba, my mind instead wanted to imagine how the rings on the cuffs and the belt could be used to keep me positioned in various absolutely humiliating postures—positions in which I could be…
None of the verbs that came to mind reassured me. Worse, each of them brought a fresh wave of heat both to my cheeks and down there, between my legs, where Giovanna had already promised, in her matter-of-fact way, to bare me.
Positions in which I could be used… enjoyed… punished…
Fucked.
At last she stood before me, holding what I knew must be my collar.
“This is a special moment for you, columba,” she said, “though you still understand so little. Remember the feeling, and cherish it as you learn about your new life and your new duties.”
I couldn’t keep back the sob that rose in my chest as she reached the black leather collar, so much less elegant than her own, but functionally the same symbol of submission, toward me. I smelled the spice of her perfume, and to my distress I smelled my own mineral scent, too—the same shameful fragrance I knew I had left in the Viking bride chamber.