Chapter One

 

Katherine Pennington had always thought that she was lucky. She had been born into a wealthy family and had enjoyed a sheltered childhood under the solicitous upbringing of gentle parents. She had made many friends and few enemies in her lifetime. She and all the people dear to her always seemed to be immune from misfortune. Other people's parents were killed in automobile accidents, developed cancer or suffered terrible financial reverses; but in her first thirty-eight years nothing bad had ever happened to Katherine or the family she loved so dearly.

That had all changed without warning over the past three weeks. It was almost as if fate had been saving up a lifetime of disasters to drop on her all at once.

First, the family yacht, the Atlantic Wanderer, had been lost at sea with both her step-daughters aboard. As time went by, and no sign of the ship or its passengers was found, Katherine gradually came to accept that the girls, whom she loved as dearly as if they were her own flesh, were gone forever. Charles refused to abandon hope, and he urged her to come to Greece with him, to re-energize the search. Katherine, however, had already accepted the fact of the deaths of her beloved step-daughters, and did not want to allow him raise false hope, then be stricken again with fresh grief. She knew she would not be able to bear that.

Then came a second disaster on top of the first, when she learned that Charles' plane had crashed in the mountains of the Peloponnesus in southern Greece, killing everyone aboard. Katherine began to believe that God was punishing her for some terrible sin. She seriously considered committing suicide, so that she could join her cherished husband and children in death and end the agony of living on without them.

Then she saw the email. It was sent to her personal, private address, which was available, as far as she knew, only to her family and close friends. It was marked "urgent" and the subject line was "Pennington girls found alive!" The message was brief. It said simply, "Mrs. Pennington, if you play the attached video, you will see proof that Alex and Caroline are alive and well".

She hesitated before opening the attachment, suspecting that the e-mail this was some sort of cruel prank to raise and then dash her hopes. Finally, she did play the video, and she clapped her hands and wept with joy to see evidence that her two darlings really were alive.

But her joy did not last for more than a few seconds. The video went on to show Alex and Caroline naked, bound and on their knees being whipped. It depicted the two girls performing oral sex on a man and a woman and each other. The film recorded the sisters begging to be sodomized by their "Master", having orgasms while they were being beaten and abused, and thanking the "Master" afterwards. There were so many horrible, degrading scenes, that Katherine was forced to stop the video several times to wipe away tears for her suffering girls. At the end, the voice on the video warned her to tell no-one, and to wait for instructions.

Three days later came another email from the same untraceable source. It instructed her to take one million Euros in cash from her personal account in Switzerland (the abductor, whoever he was, seemed to know a great deal about Katherine's personal finances), which she was to deliver in person as a down payment on the ransom. She was again warned to tell no one about her plans, and told that if the kidnapper even suspected that Katherine was being followed or traced, she would never see either of her step-daughters alive again.

Katherine was in an agony of doubt about whether to call the police or inform her own security people, but in the end she could see no choice but to comply with the demands: she could not bring herself to risk the lives of Caroline and Alex. When she opened her safe deposit box in Zurich to get the money, she was startled to find a note inside giving her directions to a room in moderately shabby hotel near the train station in Nice. On the bed in the room was another note ordering her to take a train to Paris, then go to a changing room in Printemps department store, where a complete change of clothes, including shoes and underwear awaited her. This was apparently to dispose of any bugs or tracers hidden in her clothing. There was also another note in the changing room, which informed her that she was being scanned for any signals from transmitters which might have been hidden in her body and threatening that if any were found, the game would end on the spot, and she would never see her step-daughters again.

From Paris, she was sent back to Nice on the TGV high speed train, and then by ferry to the fishing port of Bastia on Corsica. She walked to the Hotel de Ville in the center of the old town, and took the first taxi in the queue, which she directed to the address she had been given. The driver promptly drove out of the town and into the hills and olive groves of northeastern Corsica.

Katherine was weary from the long journey and many changes in transportation, and dozed off during the long ride. She did not notice at first when the cab veered off the rural road on which it had been traveling, and began bumping along a dirt driveway to an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. The cab screeched to a halt inside an old barn, where two masked men came out of nowhere, entered the cab from both sides at once, and reached for Katherine. She screamed and tried to fight them off. The men overpowered her with ease, stifling her cries with a cloth gag, and tying her elbows and hands together painfully behind her back.

"Are you sure the bitch wasn't followed?" one of the masked men asked the cab driver.

"Non, monsieur, no one follows," the driver assured him, in heavily accented English.

"Good," said the other man. "Here's your reward." He produced a black automatic with a long silencer and fired twice into the back of the driver's head. Katherine's scream of terror as the driver's brains and blood spattered the interior of the windshield was muffled to a soft whimper by the gag.

She was dragged from the cab, and a blindfold tied over her eyes. "Come along, Mrs. Pennington," one of the men said. "Your girls are waiting for you."

The men pulled her pulled her from the cab, and she stumbled over rough, rocky ground, until a hand pushed the back of her head roughly head down to load her aboard a helicopter. The men did not speak to her or each other during the long flight, and she was understandably silent, owing to the gag. By the time they landed, night had fallen.

Katherine was hustled out of the helicopter and into a building. Someone ripped her clothes off, leaving her dressed only in bra and panties.

"There you are, Katherine," she heard a voice say jovially. "It's such a great pleasure to see you, after so many long years." She did not recognize the voice, although it seemed somehow familiar. "Come along with me, and I'll take you to your loved ones myself."

She was seized by the elbow, and led along what felt like a tiled or paved floor to her bare feet, still blindfolded. Her captor stopped, and then uncovered her eyes. Smiling down at her was a tall, middle-aged man. Her eyes opened wide with amazement when she recognized him.

"That's right, Katie," the man said, his triumphant smile growing broader. "It's your old fiancé, Rob Stern. Now, why don't we go in and say hello to your poor, suffering step-daughters?"

He pushed the door open, and she saw Alex and Caroline in the flesh for the first time since they had sailed away to Europe on the Pennington yacht. They were strapped face-down, naked, on their midsections over little tables. They were positioned next to each other, their breasts hanging over the front of the tables, with painful-looking metal alligator clips pinching their nipples. Their buttocks were lifted in the air, and their legs tied far apart, exposing shaven pubic triangles and wrinkled pink assholes. Their hindquarters were striped with patterns of angry red lines, the evidence of a very recent beating. Metal collars encircled their throats, and their wrists and ankles bore matching metal circlets. Big red balls were crammed in their mouths, and drool dripped from their lips to the floor. They were blindfolded. Standing behind the two girls, a thin cane in her hand, was their former chaperone, Karen Andrews.

Stern brought Katherine into the room and said, "I have someone here that you will be pleased to see."

Katherine looked at her girls and sobbed despairingly, brokenly. Stern lifted the coverings from the girls' eyes, saying "Look who I brought to visit you."

Alex and Caroline looked up at their mother with unbelieving eyes, and began to make tortured whimpering sounds and thrash futilely in their bonds.

Karen Andrews looked at the newcomer steadily. "It's so nice to see you again, Mrs. Pennington. I'm sure the girls have missed you."

 

Chapter Two

 

Alex and Caroline wept bitter, impotent tears when they saw their step-mother was a captive in the hands of their conqueror, Stern. They strained at their bonds and made sounds like hungry kittens, music to Stern's ears. All the while, the body of the beautiful Katherine shook as she was wracked by heartrending sobs.

After he had enjoyed the tableau for a while, Stern said, "Quiet now, girls," and signaled to Andrews.

"Silence, bitches! Your Master is talking to you." she commanded, slashing the sisters on their exposed bottomholes and pussy lips several times with the thin, whippy cane, until they ceased groaning and stilled their squirming bodies.

Katherine cried out, and tried to go to them, but Stern kept a firm grip on her arm, and slapped her hard in the face. The force of this blow made lights explode in her head, and she dropped to her knees.

Stern said gently, "No, my dear, this is not the time to chat with your charming girls. I only wanted everyone to see that the family is safely reunited after a painful period of separation. I promise that you will have a longer opportunity to get together and catch up with them soon." He pulled her roughly to her feet. "Now come along, Katherine. I want to have a little private talk with you. You won't begrudge me that after all these years, will you?" He asked.

As he led the weeping Mrs. Pennington away, Stern said, "Carry on Andrews." The last sounds Katherine heard before Stern closed the door behind them were the hissing of a cane, the stinging smack! as it connected with tender girl-flesh, and a muffled cry of pain, from which of her poor girls she did not know.

Stern walked her to a small electric car, and gestured for her to get into the back seat. He slid in beside her, tapped the driver on the shoulder, and the car moved silently off. When it stopped, he took her out by one arm, led her through a door and down a stone staircase into a high-ceilinged, dimly-lit cavern. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, Katherine saw that the room was filled with metal and wooden frames from which dangled cuffs, whips and canes mounted on displays and other devices which she did not recognize, but which she had no doubt were intended to inflict pain. She trembled so badly that she would have fallen down if Stern had not supported her.

"Whoa, careful Katherine," he said. "We wouldn't want you to hurt yourself. Now, I'm going to untie your arms for a moment. Don't try anything foolish. Even if you did get away from me, there's no place for you to run." He released the bonds that held her elbows together, and then the ropes around her wrists.

She tensed and for a moment considered attempting to flee, now that her hands were free. After the very briefest reflection, she gave up the idea and relaxed.

Any attempt to escape would be hopeless, she realized. She could tell by the firmness of his grip as he was leading her around that he was much stronger than she, and could easily overpower her. And even if she did get loose somehow, where was she supposed to go, dressed in nothing more than underwear, without a weapon, in the heart of his stronghold?

"Put your hands up over your head," he ordered, and Katherine complied. He pulled down a loop of chain that ran through a series of overhead pulleys, and locked her wrists in cuffs attached to the end of the chain. Then he pulled the other end of the chain, ratcheting it upwards and drawing her arms her along, until she was stretched out full length, and up on the balls of her bare feet.

"That's much better," Stern said with obvious satisfaction. He walked away for a moment and returned with a three-foot long metal bar with nylon loops at either end. "Now we'll just slip this on for size, my dear," he said, kneeling to position the bar between her legs.

"Nnn, nnnn!" Katherine protested through then stifling gag. She did not like the look of the bar, and she moved her feet away from him as far as she could.

Stern stood up, dropping the bar to clang on the ground. "You're not being a very polite guest, Katherine," he said, scowling and shaking his head. His hand shot out to smack her hard on her right cheek and returned to do the same on the left. Pain exploded in her head as he continued to slap her steadily, making wet, meaty sounds.

She wailed in pain as he cuffed her back and forth a half-dozen times. By the time he was finished, the only thing keeping her from falling on her face was the chain locked to her wrists. There was a roaring in her ears, and little colored spots dancing before her eyes. A trickle of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth, and she could feel the pressure of her face swelling from the blows.

Stern pulled her head back by the hair, forcing her to face him. His mouth was an inch away from hers as he asked in a soft voice, "Are you ready for the spreader bar now, Katherine?" She nodded, and it felt as if her brain was bouncing around, loose in her skull.

He crouched on the stone floor again and this time had no difficulty fastening her trim ankles in the loops of rope at the ends of the bar. After that, she could no longer bring her legs together.

Stern's hand slid up the inside of her thigh, ending at her pubic mound, which he cupped through the thin cloth of her panties. Katherine made a little whimpering sound and turned her head away. His hand continued to press up into the valley between her buttocks, feeling her little hole with the edge of his index finger. She sobbed softly and twisted futilely in her bonds.

"That's better," Stern said with satisfaction. "Now, let's get a little more comfortable before we have our heart-to-heart chat."