Mastering Melanie Read online

  The minister cleared his throat, glaring pointedly at the lawman. Melanie was shocked they’d carried on this way in front of a man of God, but he didn’t seem unduly offended, merely impatient.

  “We need the school teacher,” said Sheriff Harkin to Gretchen. “The Reverend Fortesque and his wife are to take her for dinner.”

  Gretchen frowned.

  “Don’t make this difficult,” said Harkin, his voice ominous. “We all know you’re the Judge’s pet, but these orders come straight from the man himself.”

  The Reverend Fortesque was peering about, his eyes a pale, mealy brown. Wrinkles clung at his drawn face and his lips looked as though he had just swallowed a lemon.

  “Yes, show me this new teacher,” the reverend said to Gretchen, his voice like the scratching together of metal plates. “Let me see with whom I am dealing.”

  “It’s all right,” Melanie said, not wanting the woman to get in any more trouble on her account. “I’ll come out.”

  The reverend emitted a low growling sound swathed in pity at the sight of the dolled up Melanie. “Satan’s spawn,” he croaked, pointing claw-like fingers, his knuckles wrapped tightly round a red leather Bible. “The devil’s own.”

  With his wide brimmed black hat and long coat, the clothes hanging on his bony frame, he looked like a comic version of the marshal. A puny half man with narrow, trouble making eyes.

  “She’s all yours,” Harkin indicated, tucking his fingers in his gun belt, just under his gut.

  “You will come with me at once, young lady,” Fortesque declared, appearing to work himself into a near froth. “We have a carriage. Mrs. Reverend Fortesque is waiting in it. She is a good, godly woman. She would not set foot in this house of evil!”

  He waved his arms for good effect. He certainly hadn’t seem all that upset before, Melanie noted, when the sexy Lyla was carrying on under his very nose.

  “Just have her back by morning, Reverend,” Harkin smiled wryly.

  “Satan’s spawn,” he muttered again reaching out to take Melanie by the ear. “The devil’s own.”

  He conveyed her in this fashion down the stairs and out the front door. The last thing Melanie heard as they went into the street was Lyla, laughing hysterically.

  “I want my dress back, reverend,” she called out from the window. “In one piece!”

  Mrs. Fortesque – who if anything was even more loathsome looking than her husband – was waiting for them atop the buckboard wagon, reigns in hand. Melanie cringed when she saw the woman was also clutching a riding crop.

  “Harlot!” The woman screeched, waving the whip fiercely as she beheld the gaily-costumed Melanie. “Jezebel!”

  “Spawn of Satan,” echoed the reverend, intoning what seemed to be a mantra for him. “The devil’s own.”

  Melanie was put into the back of the wagon. The reverend forced her head down sufficiently for his wife to turn about and tie a thick rope about her neck the opposite end of which was secured to the seat. The tether was short enough that Melanie was unable to stand. Her choices were to stay on all fours or to lie down in the hay strewn wagon bed. She opted for the latter, bracing her hands against the buckboard. Bits of the hay pricked at her legs and in the hollow between her breasts.

  The reverend hopped up front with his shrew of a wife, and with a loud, cackling giddyup, they were off. The horses’ hooves clumped noisily on the packed dirt. Melanie begged aloud for them to slow down, for she was losing her grip and feared being choked as her body slid down the wagon bed.

  The Fortesques response – and a most unhelpful one it was – came in the form of a loudly delivered, virtually tuneless version of “Onward Christian Soldiers”. Melanie, meanwhile, cowered in the wagon bed, the road being far too dark for her liking. She had heard a man calling out to them as they left the saloon, warning them to be careful of Indians. Another voice, belonging to the sheriff had countered that it was the Indians who should be afraid, not the Fortesques.

  As the last verse of the hymn died down, they took a sharp left turn, down an even smaller, bumpier road. If indeed it could be called a road at all. The couple had a farmhouse, as it turned out, at the very edge of civilized territory. The driveway itself was a good quarter mile long and by the time they reached the lonely, eerily lit homestead, Melanie was quite sure she would never be heard from again.

  The reverend untied the rope from the wagon end, leaving it attached to her neck. “Come, Satan’s spawn,” he commanded, yanking it hard enough to compel her egress.

  “You’re hurting me,” Melanie complained.

  Mrs. Fortesque slapped her crisply across her right cheek. “Be silent, you wanton whore. Show some respect to a man of the cloth.”

  The reverend smiled grimly in satisfaction. “Take that, demon seed,” he declared, dragging her by the rope to the barn. His wife opened the huge door and Melanie was thrown inside and cast down to the ground. Once again, the hay prickled at her extremities.

  “Stand up,” demanded Mrs. Fortesque, as though Melanie had collapsed out of spite.

  Melanie did her best to rise to her feet, given the soreness and weakness of her limbs.

  “Prepare to receive the Word of God,” the reverend declared, opening his red leather Bible with a flourish.

  “Kneel, blasphemer!” his wife shrieked now, the earlier command to stand now being superseded. “Kneel to receive the Word!”

  Melanie dropped to her knees, confused, overwrought, sweat covered. Her hair hanging limply about her shoulders, Gretchen’s careful work all but ruined, she awaited the Fortesques’ next move.

  “Bare your bosom, Jezebel!” the woman hissed, stooping to grab at the bodice of Melanie’s green dress. Because she wore no underclothes, it was a simple matter to tug the material down to her waist. The reverend began to read now, as his wife, employing the tip of her riding crop, induced the girl to listen. Twice she lifted Melanie’s chin to keep her eyes focused and once she snapped the leather end of the crop across Melanie’s rose pink nipples.

  When Melanie tried to defend herself with her hands, she was treated to a vicious tongue-lashing. Bare breasted, tears in her eyes, her hands now useless at her side, Melanie had but little choice to endure their combined madness. Verse after verse it went on, the minister’s jarring words interspersed with slaps, pinches and pokes from his wild-eyed wife.

  “Do you confess?” demanded Fortesque at last, looking over the edge of his Bible, his long, bony nose barely holding up the edge of the spectacles he had donned for the occasion.

  “I–I don’t know what to confess, sir!”

  His wife unleashed the whip upon Melanie’s stomach, searing the flesh directly across her belly button. “How dare you talk back to the reverend!”

  “Mercy!” cried Melanie, doubling over. “Please have mercy!”

  Mrs. Fortesque pulled her up by the hair. “Insolent witch! In the days of Salem, you would have been burned for your arrogance.”

  “Touch your nipples,” demanded the reverend. “Show us what a slut you are; show us the devil within thy bosom.”

  She shook her head. “Sir, please, I cannot.”

  Mrs. Fortesque seared the top of her ample breasts with a heavy blow. “Do not feign modesty, now whore! Do what you are told, or by God, we will make you weep!”

  “I’ll do it,” Melanie whimpered when the worst of the pain was passed. “Just don’t hurt me anymore.” Melanie gasped at the feel of her fingers upon her seared flesh. The last thing she wished was to be aroused here and now, and yet it was out of her control. And this in itself seemed to be an aphrodisiac.

  “Despoil yourself,” the reverend hissed, his tongue thick with lust. “Make your nipples swell. Make your breasts heavy with animal passions.”

  Melanie proffered her twin globes, the very shame of the act making her even more needful. The nipples did indeed engorge themselves and with every touch and squeeze she felt an ever more powerful urge to submit, to lay herself down as a
sexual object.

  “See her, beloved,” said the minister to his wife. “See how she thinks in her mind of her lovers, the men she has rutted with. Dozens of them; hundreds, more likely. For bits of silver, copper coins, she sells herself. Perhaps even for a crust of bread or for nothing at all she goes to them, panting, legs spread, her filthy sex inflamed and inviting, dragging good and decent man down to perdition! She-slut! Whore of Babylon!”

  “Disgusting,” the wife declared, snapping the whip across Melanie’s back. “Abomination. Desecration.”

  Melanie winced from the sensation but she did not leave off what her hands were doing. She was powerless to resist them, to deny the necessity of her own degradation before these hideous and cruel people. Virgin though she was, in this place, she was a fallen woman, nothing more.

  “The sinner shall be naked,” declared the reverend, speaking to no one in particular as he pointed a finger heavenward. “Naked in the eyes of God.”

  “Take off your clothes, filthy whore,” Mrs. Fortesque demanded, walking about to land a blow low on her belly, at the line of her half removed dress.

  Her body red and surging with pain, Melanie pushed down at the bunched material of her dress, trying to slide it over her hips. It was too tight. The only way was to lift her legs and pull the hem directly overhead, though the vulnerability of this position terrified her. To expose her belly like that and her breasts, even for a moment while her hands were trapped overhead was more than she could bear.

  The whip took its toll, a direct hit to her swollen mammaries as she raised her arms, the silk clutched in her small fists.

  “Hurry it up,” the woman snarled, seizing the material and yanking it ferociously.

  Melanie gasped. Except for her shoes, she was naked now. Naked and on her knees.

  “On your belly,” cried Mrs. Fortesque, brandishing the whip to induce the girl’s quick obedience.

  Melanie collapsed to the floor, breasts and belly and thighs pressed to the dirty hay.

  “Crawl, now. Crawl like the snake. The snake of Eden!”

  This command came from the reverend who, having found a new scriptural reference, began to quote from the book of Genesis. Melanie had no idea where to crawl, but assumed it was the general principle that mattered. They wanted her slithering, nude and degraded, like an animal. Like a worm.

  “Prideful slut!” the woman bellowed lashing her severely across the cheeks of her ass as she slithered. “How dare you move so willfully and wantonly! Do you dare tempt a man of God with your stinking, maggot filled flesh, you vain little trollop!”

  Melanie froze. She had no idea that her current abasement could be construed as vanity. “Forgive me,” she croaked, trying to be on the safe side. “I shall try to do better.”

  Mrs. Fortesque lashed her back, landing a devastating, unexpected hit. “Silence, tart. Who told you to speak?”

  “Satan’s spawn. Oh, yes...the devil’s own.” The reverend practically chanted the words. He seemed to be working himself up to some kind of lather. “On your back, whore,” he shouted now, as if possessed by some other voice. “Show yourself to your master, the devil. Beg him for your possession. Beg for a demon, thick and hot with seed, winged and terrible to lay with you, to part your legs and fill you. Go on, seek out your defilement, not of human hands!”

  “Please,” she whimpered, not wanting to bare her breasts and sex to the mad woman’s whip any more than she had to. “Won’t you leave me be?”

  Mrs. Fortesque jammed the pointed toe of her boot into the girl’s rib, inducing her cooperation. “On your back, bride of the devil!”

  Melanie turned herself, miserably, her hair disheveled, her skin mottled. The whip wounds were now in contact with ground and hay and she began to cry out as though being whipped all over again.

  “Legs apart,” demanded the minister’s wife. “Position yourself for penetration, demon whore.”

  Melanie opened her legs, the cool night air whisking over the fine fleece, the strands of hay tickling her clitoris like a lover. “Pity,” she continued to whisper, eyes shut tightly against the reality of what was being done to her. “Have pity.”

  Mrs. Fortesque began to sing a new hymn: “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”. The minister, meanwhile, was giving further instructions for her to raise her hips, to writhe on the ground and ultimately to touch herself to raise a scent, to moisten her for the imaginary demonic possession.

  “Juice yourself, woman of evil, prepare to be defiled. The devil’s own staff, his hoary cock be in you!” chanted the reverend.

  “You heard him,” his wife interrupted her singing to press a booted heel on Melanie’s soft stomach. “Put your fingers in your cunt. Do the devil’s bidding!”

  Melanie shuddered at the imposed masturbation, her own fingers moving as if they belonged to another. Images filled her mind, of every demon’s picture she had ever seen, leather winged, fiery red with horns and pitchfork. Mythical creatures, beasts and goblins of the night, descending upon her soft and creamy woman’s flesh, demanding her surrender, her sweetly juiced submission.

  How dirty she felt, how wicked, and yet so aroused at the same time. What if a winged horned creature could be summoned to possess and claim her whipped, soiled body on the floor of a barn, like a she-beast herself, an animal, fit to be caged and had? Would she resist even at the risk of death or would she yield to the forbidden passion?

  From deep in her throat, she began to moan; an unholy and most sexy sound.

  “Behold,” said the reverend, again to no one in particular. “See how this bitch of Beelzebub needs no compulsion? See how unnecessary is the whip? She seeks it on her own. The cock of the demon, the seed of the architect of doom.”

  “No more,” groaned Melanie, using the last vestiges of human consciousness, appealing for a last shred of dignity. “I can’t–go–any–further.”

  “Oh, yes,” he laughed wildly. “On you will go! To the end; to the brink of damnation and beyond.”

  Melanie cried out. If she did not stop now she would come, here on the floor of this barn, her mind filled with filthy images, her body in the midst of sickening practices, her soul far beyond redemption.

  “Do not stop,” warned Mrs. Fortesque. “Or I shall whip you till you bleed. Then I shall tie you by the neck, nude, to the back of the wagon and you shall run till you drop from exhaustion. Keep going, or I shall make you suffer beyond your worst nightmares!”

  Melanie orgasmed on her own hand, the thick, blood saturated sex lips throbbing against the invasive fingers. It was an unwanted feeling, and this served to arouse both her and the minister as well. Fortesque was shuddering in his pants, eyes rolled to the sky, mouth uttering nonsense syllables. Melanie was utterly helpless meanwhile, under the contemptuous eyes of the woman. In this state she could and would be made to do anything. She was their slave. The woman’s and the man’s slave both. A creature without dignity or honor.

  “Again,” hissed Mrs. Fortesque when the tremors began to subside. “Defile yourself again.”

  Melanie looked up through clouded eyes. The woman was hunched over her, both hands clutching a smoothly polished walking stick, the rounded tip shellacked to a high sheen. Melanie’s eyes widened, she groaned in expectation. The meaning was clear. She was to raise her hips and impale herself on the stick as though it were a man’s shaft.

  So this was to be the end of her virginity, she thought ironically. No honeymoon, no candlelight or eternal promises. Just a disgusting, brutish act on the floor of a stinking barn, her maidenhood claimed by a brute object. Melanie lifted her buttocks, propping herself on her wrists. She was able to take the thing several inches deep before collapsing back in exhaustion.

  Mrs. Fortesque lowered the stick after her, just long enough to tantalize her into following it back up. Melanie whimpered as she worked to keep the thing inside her as long as she could. The woman teased her cruelly. As soon as she would find a comfortable position, the stick would withdraw a
nd she would have to squirm all over. If she tired of chasing the stick, on the other hand, the woman would besiege her cunt with it, driving her to the brink of oblivion.

  “Up,” the woman ordered. “On your hands and knees hell slut.”

  Melanie went to all fours.

  “Spread your ass cheeks,” she hissed. “Like you do for the Judge.”

  Melanie feared the woman would strike her with the cane, but she had quite a different idea in mind. Melanie screamed as the stick slid into the tight narrow hole, the one that in her mind had no association or connotation with sex. Her canal swelled against it. There was a full feeling, complex and fraught with pain and pleasure both.

  “Whore of Babylon,” the minister was saying, his voice in a hellish cadence. “Blatant ass plugged whore of Babylon.”

  “Put your hands back in your filthy hole!” the wife hissed in her ear. “You shall take pleasure from this act of sodomy!”

  Melanie moaned half in protest, half in grateful thanks as she was once more brought to the edge of ecstasy. In seconds she spurted once more, issuing forth her female surrender, her own glorying in public abasement.

  This fresh orgasm was wilder than the last, and it made her teeth chatter and her knees buckle.

  “Oh, God,” she cried, falling down to her belly, the cane slipping from between her buttock cheeks. “Oh sweet God.”

  “Again,” the woman cackled, slapping Melanie’s ass with the flat of her hand. “Defile yourself yet again.”

  The minister had begun to hum “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” even as Melanie went at herself a third time, her hands creeping beneath her pressed belly to the bittersweet opening. At the same time, his wife was laughing, enjoying some private joke.

  “Say it,” the woman commanded. “Speak the words.”

  Melanie bit her lip savagely. She knew what was wanted and she had no power to refuse.

  “Whip me,” she heard herself beg against the cold, mocking emptiness of the night air. “Sodomize me, fuck me, anything.”

  It was a terrible, dark admission, for she knew that it made her this couple’s slut, just as she’d already become a slut to the others. Could they sense what was happening to her even now – the Judge, Zechariah, Gretchen, the men in the saloon, the sinister sheriff and his deputy? And the marshal, where was he tonight and what was he feeling? Gretchen had told her the man traveled hundreds of miles in a week, covering large parts of the territory. Was he somewhere under open sky right now, lying cold beneath the stars? He and his sad woman-free life? And did he think of her, even a little bit as he reclined on his bedroll or tended his small fire?