Lily Lloyd's Blog, page 3

Pirates of the Caribbean — A Marketplace Tale, Part 4

Pirates of the Caribbean is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. Laura recently released “No Safewords,” a fan anthology of tales by different writers set in the Marketplace world.

This tale also takes a page from the real-world phenomenon of modern high seas piracy.  Most people think that pirates are a thing of the past, but in fact, across the globe at least one boat a day is attacked by pirates looking to steal cargo, ransom the crew or owners, or steal the boat itself.

In Part 3, Bette arrives in Puerto Rico and meets Rita La Banquena, local power broker, and learns more about the pirates…and maybe about her own history. 

I progress up the grand staircase, and from there to my suite on the third floor.  As tired as I am, I can’t seem to wind down; the thrumming current of tension in my gut won’t let me rest. This happens a lot when I travel, particularly when I’m on the job.  Even though I should rest, because once things get rolling I might not get the chance – it’s hard for me to do it.

I stand out on the balcony,  rubbing my neck with the back of my hand,  trying to imagine what’s in store with this job.  My first slave, Diana, was with me for a decade and had gone out to dozens of jobs with me.  She was like the corner crew to my prizefighter; getting me ready for the event, keeping me in it, even pulling me out a few times when necessary.  I never took Diana further than the drop point – the location where I’d begin a job,  but  she’d be there, usually in a hotel, available to me by phone, ready to get me supplies, information,  tickets home.  She could pack in an eyeblink for the both of us and not forget a thing, something I sucked in nine keys at.

I don’t think this was ever an official, spoken-out-loud part of her job,  but thinking about it now, one of her unspoken tasks was getting me to relax.  I mean, that’s not something you can put on a checklist: “Relax me, dammit!”  But the beautiful thing about Diana was how well she anticipated needs I didn’t know I had, or didn’t know how to satisfy.   When I met Diana, if you had asked me to make a list of things I found relaxing, I’d just sit there staring at the blank page, thinking, “What the fuck does that even mean?  If I’m relaxed I’m relaxed, if I’m not, then I’m not.”  Until I met Diana, I thought of my moods and emotions like weather: they were there, but there wasn’t much I could do about them except wait them out, right?

Diana taught me that I could aspire to the kind of control over my inner world that I’d relentlessly sought over my outer world.  No lie, I am a control freak.  But my inner world was an uncontrolled Wagnerian opera half the time.   I looked like I had my shit together when I met Diana, and through sheer force of will I acted like I had my shit together, but the truth was, I was a hot mess.

Diana was my slave, my lover, my servant-of-all-trades.  But she also made me a better person.  While it was happening I never saw it, but in retrospect, I realize that although I owned Diana, I was Diana’s project, her Great Work; she spent a decade shaping me, molding me, expanding my reach and my comfort zone, and seamlessly substituting her own efforts in places where she knew, unerringly, that no amount of practice was ever going to make me improve.

Like remembering where my keys were, or figuring out my damn calendar.  Those she never tried to train me to do, I chuckled.

Yup, Diana surely trained me as much if not more than I trained her.

I looked out at the moon and thought, “All the dangerous shit we did, and she gets killed going to the grocery store.”

Diana died four years ago in a car accident. I spent a solid year fucking up like a pro: my rage and grief propelled me to self-destructive highs and lows.  I thought I could make things better by buying a new slave to take Diana’s place; I called my friend Chris Parker and got an invite to an auction.

I didn’t buy anyone at the auction — apparently, I wasn’t quite done fucking up yet.  Instead of making any bids, I got knee-walking drunk and ended up in a guest room in a house where Chris was working as a trainer.  While my hangover was still in full effect, I bought a one-way ticket to Montreal, where I stayed for six months before Chris called me about a job in Costa Rica.

That’s how I’d met Kelly, my current slave.  Unlike Diana, I didn’t bring Kelly on jobs: for the first year she was with me, I was her ‘foster owner,’ someone who volunteered to take in human property whose owner had died, gone to jail, or gone off the deep end.  Foster owners must avoid placing their charges at risk; and even if that wasn’t the case, in the first year Kelly was far too fragile, physically and perhaps mentally, to do this kind of work.

Now that she was pregnant, of course, putting her at risk was totally out of the question.  Impending parenthood was making me question a lot of things, as you might imagine, and I realized that Kelly might never serve me in the capacity that Diana once did: I’m not sure I’d ever get to the point where I felt comfortable putting the mother of my children at risk.  My work was dangerous, and if something happened to me, I wanted them to have at least one parent around.  As someone who went through a lot of my growing-up without responsible adults around, I didn’t want that for my own children.

Still, standing on the balcony looking at the moon over the bay, feeling the alert, ready-to-fight feeling thrumming in my gut made me wish I’d actually read one of those books about mindfulness meditation Diana was always strategically placing on my nightstand.  Diana gave me a lot more control over my inner world than I’d ever had before, but the fact was I was always better at relaxing with her than I was without her.

I hear a soft knock on the door to my suite.  I walk to the door in the thin, tropical-weight robe the hotel had supplied me.  Upon opening it, I see the same trim young woman I’d seen earlier on the dock, but carrying a large, flat case that I recognize as a massage table.

“Come in,” I said, as I sigh inwardly.  You know, at home, I’ve created a life where I’m not routinely confronted with what an oddball I am.  I mean, statistically speaking, I’m unusual.  There are way more straight people than there are dykes, for example.  And I’m also one of the three people in the world who just don’t like getting a massage.

Diana used to laugh at me: impatient with meditation,  unwilling to get a massage — I fought inner peace like it was cancer and parking tickets rolled into one.  But I don’t like strangers touching me, and for me, activities that give me a lot of time to think just turn into a turbo-worry session.  I’m more likely to find relaxation at the batting cages, where I can smack the fuck out of things and just stop thinking for awhile.

I watch the young woman set up the table, and I briefly consider just taking one for the team.  The fact is, I really like Rita and I don’t want to rebuff her hospitality twice.  The young woman bends over to retrieve some things out of a canvas bag she’d set on the floor, and I immediately think, “Shit. Nice ass.”  The truth is, I’m kind of a pig; I just get away with it more because I’m a woman.  Most women won’t notice another woman cruising them, and I can shamelessly ogle the passing parade of femininity without getting busted for it.

I clear my throat.  “I’d like to suggest an alternative,” I say.

Go to Part 5!

Lily Lloyd is the author of Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your Kinky Relationship, a book about making kinky relationships work.

Pirates of the Caribbean — A Marketplace Tale, Part 3

Pirates of the Caribbean is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. Laura recently released “No Safewords,” a fan anthology of tales by different writers set in the Marketplace world.

This tale also takes a page from the real-world phenomenon of modern high seas piracy.  Most people think that pirates are a thing of the past, but in fact, across the globe at least one boat a day is attacked by pirates looking to steal cargo, ransom the crew or owners, or steal the boat itself.

In Part 2, Bette flies to Puerto Rico, where she keeps in touch with her wife (and property) Kelly, and arrives at Batalla, the base of operations for a gang of pirates believed to be holding three human slaves hostage. 

 

I’ve already been checked in to La Posada Batalla, Batalla’s one and only hotel.  The driver sweeps by the front desk, grabs the key, and trots up the grand staircase with my bag as if it weighed nothing at all.

Marketplace, I think.  No normal human being gives this kind of service.  A non-Marketplace driver would have dropped me out front and demanded a tip and let me schlep my own bags up the stairs.

The hotel has three floors, and I have what is probably the best room in the place, a third floor corner suite facing Bahia Fosforescente.  The driver puts the bag down.

“Are you allowed to speak?” I say to him, in Spanish.

“Si, senora.”

“You have provided impeccable service,” I say. “I thank you in particular for driving me without giving me the least sensation of pressure to make small-talk.”

“It’s my pleasure, senora.”

“I have one more question,” I say.

“Yes, senora?” the driver asks.

“This place — the hotel — is it Marketplace?”

“Si, senora.  The owner of the hotel — she is an Owner.”“Thank you…”

“Luis,” the driver says.

“Thank you, Luis.  Would you mind leaving me your number in case I need to get in touch with you?”

“Of course, senora,” Luis says, withdrawing a business card from the pocket of his blazer.  It says, simply, “Luis,” and a telephone number.

“Thank you very much, Luis.  Please pass along my compliments to your Owner.”

“Thank you, senora.”  Luis bowed, and in a way that impressed me, left the room without turning his back to me — no small feat in a room you’ve never been in: try it sometime.

I open the drapes to the hotel room, and notice that behind them are doors to a balcony.  The sun is setting, and the view is magnificent: palm trees, waves, and the mangrove archipelago sheltering Bahia Fosforescente, The Phosphorescent Bay.

There’s only one other like it in the world, off the coast of Japan.  Phosphorescent Bay is called that because of the unique single-celled creatures that populate its warm, sheltered waters.  At night, these tiny creatures light up when the water is agitated; pinpoints of ethereal green light — the fireflies of the sea.

I looked that up online, but from my viewpoint, the bay looks like an ordinary (but surpassingly lovely) ocean inlet.  Maybe later I’ll get a tour, but for now, I need to get to work.  I unpack my suitcase, and pull out my laptop.  I pop a thumb drive into the  USB port, and bring up all the documents that Stanton’s team have shared with me.

Then, I think, What kind of idiot am I, doing this inside?

I take my tiny Macbook Air out to the pier behind the hotel, where a vendor is selling virgin Pina Coladas that he assembles in front of you by sacrificing a pineapple to the fruit gods and mixing it with ice shavings he chips off a giant block of ice.

Fuck if it is not the best thing with a pineapple I’ve had since those Sno-Cone clones with pinapple chunks I got in Costa Rica on the trip where I met Kelly for the first time.  The creamy coconut is the best.  Nothing is saccharine or artificial; this is the real thing.  I set it down on the picnic table on the dock and get to reading.

El Camariocano.  The big guy, Head Pirate in Charge.  Although piracy in the Caribbean is generally driven by the drug trade coming from South America, the pirates themselves are universally Cuban, and that’s because of El Camariocano.  Nobody seems to know his real name, but everybody knows where he came from: Boca de Camarioca, one of the three ports that Castro opened for the notorious Mariel Boatlift.

In 1983, Castro allowed a one-time only chance to emigrate from Cuba.  The emigres weren’t solid citizens from the countryside — at least not all of them.  At the time of the boatlift, Castro flung open the doors of the notorious Mariel Prison, allowing prisoners to take their chances on the high seas in boats constructed of anything they could find in the hopes that they’d make it to America.

Not all of the Cubans went to America, though.  A few, like El Camariocano, got swept off course on their jerry-rigged rafts.  Most died, but some landed on the southern coast of Puerto Rico.

Landing with nothing but rags on his back and a knife in his teeth, El Camariocano built a large and sophisticated network of high-seas pirates, 100% Cuban, and 100% loyal — because if you werent, El Camaricano cut off your nose and ears before bringing you out to sea and dropping you — alive — outside the reef where the hungry sharks swam.

El Camariocano’s main source of revenue was using hijacked boats to complete drug runs for narcotrafficantes from Colombia.  For pocket change, he’d sell the boat when he was done, and for laughs he’d try to ransom the families of the crew.

Batalla was El Camariocano’s base of operations.

“Permiso,” I heard a voice say.  I was so deep in my reading that the sudden presence of someone so close to me triggered my comically exaggerated startle response.  I jerked like a fish on a hook, upending my virgin pina colada all over the dock.

“Oh, lo siento, I’m so sorry!  I didn’t mean to startle you.”

I looked up and saw an impeccably well turned-out young woman, maybe 25, in a tropical-weight skirted business suit and low heels.

“I apologize for disturbing you,” she says.  “My employer thought you would like to know that dinner has been arranged for you if you are hungry.”

Hungry.  Right.  That.  When’s the last time I ate?  I can’t remember.  When I’m working, things like eating can fade into the background.  Hey, it’s how I keep my girlish figure!

But at the mention of dinner, I’m suddenly ravenous. I start picking up the plastic cup I’d spilled.

“Please, allow us to take care of that for you.  I’m sure you must be very hungry,” she says.

“I’d love dinner, thank you very much,” I say.

“Please follow me,” the young woman says.

I’m led into a private dining room with arched doorways and a heavy, dark, and immense dining table.    It’s set for only two, and someone is already seated.

I don’t know why, but when I’m hungry, food tastes better, and when it’s been awhile since I had sex, everybody looks hotter.  In truth, though, I know that Rita Banquena needed no extra savor from my sexual hunger: she was hot as hell, a Salma Hayek type, only an unknown number of years older.  There’s a picture of her next to the definition of “Cougar” in Wikipedia, look it up sometime.

Hot. As. Hell.

“Bienvenidos a Batalla,” she said.

“Thank you for having me,” I replied.

“It’s always a pleasure to have a guest who understands our special circumstances. My name is Margarita Banquena de Ponce, but you can call me Rita.”

“Wonderful to meet you,” I say.

“You look like one of us.  Are you?” she asks.

“I…well, I really have no idea what I am,” I say.

“Ah.  You’re one of las perdidas, then — one of the lost members of our family. I hope that you come to think of us as family,” Rita says.

For a split second, I don’t have anything to say. I don’t really have a family, which is probably why I’ve always been so fixated on creating one of my own.  “Thank you,” I blurt out, almost stuttering.

Rita doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but I can see that she’s curious about the fleeting expression that just crossed my face.  She’s too polite, or too canny, to inquire so early, though.

“Well.  You must be tired and hungry.  Let’s get you fed, and then, if you wish, we can talk, or you can retire to your room to rest.”

Rita snaps her fingers and two servers appear, filling the table with an assortment of Puerto Rican soul food: fried plaintains with a savory tomato sauce, snapper with peppers, chicken adobo, and plenty of rice.

I know it’s rude, but I really can’t help myself.  I dig into everything.  The calories can’t get in my mouth fast enough, I’m so hungry.  It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my whole entire life.  Rita doesn’t seem irritated or taken aback by my complete inability to be an even halfway decent guest or conversational partner: she just watches me with a gentle, evaluative look on her face.

“You enjoy that the way only a Taino can,” she says.  “You’re one of us, no doubt about it.”  One of the servers comes to clear away my plate and replace it with a fresh one, and I notice, all of a sudden, how much he looks like me: we could be family.  I could have a brother, somewhere, that looked just like him.

“Do you know about the Tainos?” Rita asked.

“I’m sorry to say I’ve never heard of them,” I reply.

“Well, as you might imagine, Puerto Rico wasn’t empty when the Spaniards showed up.  There were already native people here, a people called Los Tainos.  Batalla and the surrounding countryside was the center of their population. They didn’t call this island Puerto Rico, of course: they called it Boricua, and they called themselves Borinquenos.  You’ll find many people here who descend from Tainos, and call themselves Borinquenos.  I would not be surprised to find that they think you are a long lost daughter.  All Tainos have that gorgeous hair that you have.”

I suddenly feel like I’m about twelve years old.  It took me a long time to grow into my hair.  I look like a Latino, but my hair is glossy, ultrablack, and sticks up off my head the way some Asian folks’ do. Back when I was a teenager and trying to be more conventionally feminine for the sole purpose of not getting the living fuck beaten out of me on the regular, my hair was a real trial: it’s not like I could get it to do much until I grew up and realized I had the best buzz-cut hair in the ‘verse; once it was short enough it stood up and fanned out like I’d just stepped out of GQ. I’d never met anybody with hair like mine, at least not another Latino like me.

“Maybe I’ll get the chance to learn more about it,” I say.

“I hope so,” Rita says. “But work before pleasure, am I right?

“Right,” I say.

“You should understand one thing.  There is no sharp divider between right and wrong here.  I know that the people you are pursuing do terrible things.  They murder people.  But you need to understand that people who outsiders might call pirates are actually members of the community in Batalla.  They are neighbors and cousins and friends. Here, piracy is just another job, like fishing or carpentry.  The ocean is their office.”

I nod.  “I think I prefer it that way. Fights between good guys and bad guys often involve more bloodshed than I’d like.”

“I can see you understand,” Rita says. “I want Mr. Stanton’s property to come out of this alive, and in reality, the pirates want the same thing.  Pirates only kill when they think they have no other choice.”

“We just have to give them another option, then,” I say.

“Exactly.” Rita replies. “Tomorrow evening there is someone I’d like you to meet — someone who I believe can help us settle this without bloodshed. In the meantime, you can enjoy our hospitality.” Rita reaches behind her onto a sideboard and rings a delicate brass bell that I hadn’t noticed before.

At that point, six naked men file into the room. Rita sweeps her hand across the line of them. “Take any one you’d like.  Or more than one,” she says.

“Uh,” I say.  I tell you, nothing like this had happened to me since I was being pressured to go to prom with a guy in high school.  I mean, unless I was making an effort — which I could and did in my work at times — to look like I was straight, but on any street corner in New York, I was as readable as if I had a flashing sign around my neck with the word “Dyke.”

I turned to Rita and say, “May I speak to you privately for a moment?”

“Of course,” Rita says.

“I’m, uh, very flattered that you would offer this level of hospitality.  Believe me when I say I understand that it’s a gesture of respect and trust, but…”

“Ah,” says Rita.  “You prefer women. I was told that you had a female slave, but that doesn’t always mean that an owner is gay, of course.  I thought there was a chance you might enjoy some variety.”  Rita pats my hand.  “Please don’t worry.  You give absolutely no offense.  It is I who should apologize — it wasn’t my intention to embarrass you.”

“Oh,” I say. “It’s okay.  I was just, well, a little surprised,” I laugh.

“I should tell you sometime about a similar surprise I got at a fellow Owner’s house in Vienna sometime,” Rita says.  But you’ve had a long trip; you must want some rest at this point.”

I am, in fact, stifling a yawn.  “I’m so sorry.  It’s the time, not the company,” I say, and I mean it.

I get up from the table, and allow Rita to pass in front of me to the doorway.  “Buenas noches,” Rita says to me.

“Good night,” I reply.  As Rita progresses down the hallway to what I assume are her private quarters, I notice that the line of six naked men hasn’t disappeared, just moved.  Rita laughs as she walks by them, trailing her hand so that it causes each one of their cocks to sway as she walks by them, like a kid with a stick walking by a picket fence.  “Sigue me, chicos,” she says with a musical laugh.  *Follow me, boys.”

I smile, thinking, “None for me, more for Rita, I guess.”

Go to Part 4!

Lily Lloyd is the author of Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your Kinky Relationship, a book about making kinky relationships work.

Pirates of the Carribean — A Marketplace Tale, Part 3

Pirates of the Carribean is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. Laura recently released “No Safewords,” a fan anthology of tales by different writers set in the Marketplace world.

This tale also takes a page from the real-world phenomenon of modern high seas piracy.  Most people think that pirates are a thing of the past, but in fact, across the globe at least one boat a day is attacked by pirates looking to steal cargo, ransom the crew or owners, or steal the boat itself.

In Part 2, Bette flies to Puerto Rico, where she keeps in touch with her wife (and property) Kelly, and arrives at Batalla, the base of operations for a gang of pirates believed to be holding three human slaves hostage. 

 

I’ve already been checked in to La Posada Batalla, Batalla’s one and only hotel.  The driver sweeps by the front desk, grabs the key, and trots up the grand staircase with my bag as if it weighed nothing at all.

Marketplace, I think.  No normal human being gives this kind of service.  A non-Marketplace driver would have dropped me out front and demanded a tip and let me schlep my own bags up the stairs.

The hotel has three floors, and I have what is probably the best room in the place, a third floor corner suite facing Bahia Fosforescente.  The driver puts the bag down.

“Are you allowed to speak?” I say to him, in Spanish.

“Si, senora.”

“You have provided impeccable service,” I say. “I thank you in particular for driving me without giving me the least sensation of pressure to make small-talk.”

“It’s my pleasure, senora.”

“I have one more question,” I say.

“Yes, senora?” the driver asks.

“This place — the hotel — is it Marketplace?”

“Si, senora.  The owner of the hotel — she is an Owner.”“Thank you…”

“Luis,” the driver says.

“Thank you, Luis.  Would you mind leaving me your number in case I need to get in touch with you?”

“Of course, senora,” Luis says, withdrawing a business card from the pocket of his blazer.  It says, simply, “Luis,” and a telephone number.

“Thank you very much, Luis.  Please pass along my compliments to your Owner.”

“Thank you, senora.”  Luis bowed, and in a way that impressed me, left the room without turning his back to me — no small feat in a room you’ve never been in: try it sometime.

I open the drapes to the hotel room, and notice that behind them are doors to a balcony.  The sun is setting, and the view is magnificent: palm trees, waves, and the mangrove archipelago sheltering Bahia Fosforescente, The Phosphorescent Bay.

There’s only one other like it in the world, off the coast of Japan.  Phosphorescent Bay is called that because of the unique single-celled creatures that populate its warm, sheltered waters.  At night, these tiny creatures light up when the water is agitated; pinpoints of ethereal green light — the fireflies of the sea.

I looked that up online, but from my viewpoint, the bay looks like an ordinary (but surpassingly lovely) ocean inlet.  Maybe later I’ll get a tour, but for now, I need to get to work.  I unpack my suitcase, and pull out my laptop.  I pop a thumb drive into the  USB port, and bring up all the documents that Stanton’s team have shared with me.

Then, I think, What kind of idiot am I, doing this inside?

I take my tiny Macbook Air out to the pier behind the hotel, where a vendor is selling virgin Pina Coladas that he assembles in front of you by sacrificing a pineapple to the fruit gods and mixing it with ice shavings he chips off a giant block of ice.

Fuck if it is not the best thing with a pineapple I’ve had since those Sno-Cone clones with pinapple chunks I got in Costa Rica on the trip where I met Kelly for the first time.  The creamy coconut is the best.  Nothing is saccharine or artificial; this is the real thing.  I set it down on the picnic table on the dock and get to reading.

El Camariocano.  The big guy, Head Pirate in Charge.  Although piracy in the Caribbean is generally driven by the drug trade coming from South America, the pirates themselves are universally Cuban, and that’s because of El Camariocano.  Nobody seems to know his real name, but everybody knows where he came from: Boca de Camarioca, one of the three ports that Castro opened for the notorious Mariel Boatlift.

In 1983, Castro allowed a one-time only chance to emigrate from Cuba.  The emigres weren’t solid citizens from the countryside — at least not all of them.  At the time of the boatlift, Castro flung open the doors of the notorious Mariel Prison, allowing prisoners to take their chances on the high seas in boats constructed of anything they could find in the hopes that they’d make it to America.

Not all of the Cubans went to America, though.  A few, like El Camariocano, got swept off course on their jerry-rigged rafts.  Most died, but some landed on the southern coast of Puerto Rico.

Landing with nothing but rags on his back and a knife in his teeth, El Camariocano built a large and sophisticated network of high-seas pirates, 100% Cuban, and 100% loyal — because if you werent, El Camaricano cut off your nose and ears before bringing you out to sea and dropping you — alive — outside the reef where the hungry sharks swam.

El Camariocano’s main source of revenue was using hijacked boats to complete drug runs for narcotrafficantes from Colombia.  For pocket change, he’d sell the boat when he was done, and for laughs he’d try to ransom the families of the crew.

Batalla was El Camariocano’s base of operations.

“Permiso,” I heard a voice say.  I was so deep in my reading that the sudden presence of someone so close to me triggered my comically exaggerated startle response.  I jerked like a fish on a hook, upending my virgin pina colada all over the dock.

“Oh, lo siento, I’m so sorry!  I didn’t mean to startle you.”

I looked up and saw an impeccably well turned-out young woman, maybe 25, in a tropical-weight skirted business suit and low heels.

“I apologize for disturbing you,” she says.  “My employer thought you would like to know that dinner has been arranged for you if you are hungry.”

Hungry.  Right.  That.  When’s the last time I ate?  I can’t remember.  When I’m working, things like eating can fade into the background.  Hey, it’s how I keep my girlish figure!

But at the mention of dinner, I’m suddenly ravenous. I start picking up the plastic cup I’d spilled.

“Please, allow us to take care of that for you.  I’m sure you must be very hungry,” she says.

“I’d love dinner, thank you very much,” I say.

“Please follow me,” the young woman says.

I’m led into a private dining room with arched doorways and a heavy, dark, and immense dining table.    It’s set for only two, and someone is already seated.

I don’t know why, but when I’m hungry, food tastes better, and when it’s been awhile since I had sex, everybody looks hotter.  In truth, though, I know that Rita Banquena needed no extra savor from my sexual hunger: she was hot as hell, a Salma Hayek type, only an unknown number of years older.  There’s a picture of her next to the definition of “Cougar” in Wikipedia, look it up sometime.

Hot. As. Hell.

“Bienvenidos a Batalla,” she said.

“Thank you for having me,” I replied.

“It’s always a pleasure to have a guest who understands our special circumstances. My name is Margarita Banquena de Ponce, but you can call me Rita.”

“Wonderful to meet you,” I say.

“You look like one of us.  Are you?” she asks.

“I…well, I really have no idea what I am,” I say.

“Ah.  You’re one of las perdidas, then — one of the lost members of our family. I hope that you come to think of us as family,” Rita says.

For a split second, I don’t have anything to say. I don’t really have a family, which is probably why I’ve always been so fixated on creating one of my own.  “Thank you,” I blurt out, almost stuttering.

Rita doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but I can see that she’s curious about the fleeting expression that just crossed my face.  She’s too polite, or too canny, to inquire so early, though.

“Well.  You must be tired and hungry.  Let’s get you fed, and then, if you wish, we can talk, or you can retire to your room to rest.”

Rita snaps her fingers and two servers appear, filling the table with an assortment of Puerto Rican soul food: fried plaintains with a savory tomato sauce, snapper with peppers, chicken adobo, and plenty of rice.

I know it’s rude, but I really can’t help myself.  I dig into everything.  The calories can’t get in my mouth fast enough, I’m so hungry.  It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my whole entire life.  Rita doesn’t seem irritated or taken aback by my complete inability to be an even halfway decent guest or conversational partner: she just watches me with a gentle, evaluative look on her face.

“You enjoy that the way only a Taino can,” she says.  “You’re one of us, no doubt about it.”  One of the servers comes to clear away my plate and replace it with a fresh one, and I notice, all of a sudden, how much he looks like me: we could be family.  I could have a brother, somewhere, that looked just like him.

“Do you know about the Tainos?” Rita asked.

“I’m sorry to say I’ve never heard of them,” I reply.

“Well, as you might imagine, Puerto Rico wasn’t empty when the Spaniards showed up.  There were already native people here, a people called Los Tainos.  Batalla and the surrounding countryside was the center of their population. They didn’t call this island Puerto Rico, of course: they called it Boricua, and they called themselves Borinquenos.  You’ll find many people here who descend from Tainos, and call themselves Borinquenos.  I would not be surprised to find that they think you are a long lost daughter.  All Tainos have that gorgeous hair that you have.”

I suddenly feel like I’m about twelve years old.  It took me a long time to grow into my hair.  I look like a Latino, but my hair is glossy, ultrablack, and sticks up off my head the way some Asian folks’ do. Back when I was a teenager and trying to be more conventionally feminine for the sole purpose of not getting the living fuck beaten out of me on the regular, my hair was a real trial: it’s not like I could get it to do much until I grew up and realized I had the best buzz-cut hair in the ‘verse; once it was short enough it stood up and fanned out like I’d just stepped out of GQ. I’d never met anybody with hair like mine, at least not another Latino like me.

“Maybe I’ll get the chance to learn more about it,” I say.

“I hope so,” Rita says. “But work before pleasure, am I right?

“Right,” I say.

“You should understand one thing.  There is no sharp divider between right and wrong here.  I know that the people you are pursuing do terrible things.  They murder people.  But you need to understand that people who outsiders might call pirates are actually members of the community in Batalla.  They are neighbors and cousins and friends. Here, piracy is just another job, like fishing or carpentry.  The ocean is their office.”

I nod.  “I think I prefer it that way. Fights between good guys and bad guys often involve more bloodshed than I’d like.”

“I can see you understand,” Rita says. “I want Mr. Stanton’s property to come out of this alive, and in reality, the pirates want the same thing.  Pirates only kill when they think they have no other choice.”

“We just have to give them another option, then,” I say.

“Exactly.” Rita replies. “Tomorrow evening there is someone I’d like you to meet — someone who I believe can help us settle this without bloodshed. In the meantime, you can enjoy our hospitality.” Rita reaches behind her onto a sideboard and rings a delicate brass bell that I hadn’t noticed before.

At that point, six naked men file into the room. Rita sweeps her hand across the line of them. “Take any one you’d like.  Or more than one,” she says.

“Uh,” I say.  I tell you, nothing like this had happened to me since I was being pressured to go to prom with a guy in high school.  I mean, unless I was making an effort — which I could and did in my work at times — to look like I was straight, but on any street corner in New York, I was as readable as if I had a flashing sign around my neck with the word “Dyke.”

I turned to Rita and say, “May I speak to you privately for a moment?”

“Of course,” Rita says.

“I’m, uh, very flattered that you would offer this level of hospitality.  Believe me when I say I understand that it’s a gesture of respect and trust, but…”

“Ah,” says Rita.  “You prefer women. I was told that you had a female slave, but that doesn’t always mean that an owner is gay, of course.  I thought there was a chance you might enjoy some variety.”  Rita pats my hand.  “Please don’t worry.  You give absolutely no offense.  It is I who should apologize — it wasn’t my intention to embarrass you.”

“Oh,” I say. “It’s okay.  I was just, well, a little surprised,” I laugh.

“I should tell you sometime about a similar surprise I got at a fellow Owner’s house in Vienna sometime,” Rita says.  But you’ve had a long trip; you must want some rest at this point.”

I am, in fact, stifling a yawn.  “I’m so sorry.  It’s the time, not the company,” I say, and I mean it.

I get up from the table, and allow Rita to pass in front of me to the doorway.  “Buenas noches,” Rita says to me.

“Good night,” I reply.  As Rita progresses down the hallway to what I assume are her private quarters, I notice that the line of six naked men hasn’t disappeared, just moved.  Rita laughs as she walks by them, trailing her hand so that it causes each one of their cocks to sway as she walks by them, like a kid with a stick walking by a picket fence.  “Sigue me, chicos,” she says with a musical laugh.  *Follow me, boys.”

I smile, thinking, “None for me, more for Rita, I guess.”

Lily Lloyd is the author of Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your Kinky Relationship, a book about making kinky relationships work.

Pirates of the Caribbean: A Marketplace Tale, Part 2

Pirates of the Caribbean is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. Laura recently released “No Safewords,” a fan anthology of tales by different writers set in the Marketplace world.

This tale also takes a page from the real-world phenomenon of modern high seas piracy.  Most people think that pirates are a thing of the past, but in fact, across the globe at least one boat a day is attacked by pirates looking to steal cargo, ransom the crew or owners, or steal the boat itself.

In Part 1, Bette, a former Army medic and foreign service officer turned freelance “fixer,” gets referred a new case by trainer Chris Parker: rescue three slaves who come under attack while sailing their owner’s boat from Nassau to Buenos Aires. 

 

I fly to San Juan in the morning.  The breeze that’s swishing through the palm fronds feels as soft as a baby blanket. I call Kelly on the phone.

“Hey,” I say.  “I haven’t got my daily picture yet.”

“You will, Boss,” says Kelly.  “I had a busy day with the contractors, and then with Dr. Wallace.”

The contractors were building a nursery into our home in Montreal, and Dr. Wallace was a Marketplace-friendly doctor who also happened to be board-certified in obstetrics.  It was helpful to have a doctor who we could be completely “out” to about the true nature of our relationship.

You’ve never heard of the Marketplace, and that’s because of the work of thousands of people: thousands of people united in keeping a vast market for consensual human slaves a deep, dark secret from the rest of the world.

Sure, in this post-Fifty Shades world, you’ve heard of BDSM.

You’re also convinced that BDSM is one of two things: kinky fun with handcuffs in the bedroom, or a fantasy.

There is a third option, and that option is The Marketplace.  It’s where people go when the kinky fun isn’t enough anymore — when their drive to serve — or to own — is big enough that they have to make the fantasy real.

I know, I know: “Hey lady, Lincoln done freed the slaves.”  You’re right.  And ‘slaves’ in the Marketplace have little to do with the historical institution of slavery: slaves enter the Marketplace of their own free will, typically on time-limited contracts that they negotiate with the help of a trainer. Nor are slaves chattel in the old-fashioned sense: although Kelly is my property as well as my wife, our child will be entirely free to shape his or her own destiny. Except if they want to get facial tattoos, because you know I will put a stop to that shit.

“I see.  What does the good Dr. Wallace say?”

“Everything’s just dandy,” Kelly says.  I can tell from the background noise that she’s pacing in front of the windows; the telltale squeaks from the old wooden floor of our loft give her away.

“I would like to know why the mother of our child is not sitting down with her feet up,” I ask.

“Bette, I’m pregnant, not an invalid,” Kelly replies.

“Excuse me?” I say.  “Perhaps the hormones are affecting your memory, because you seem to have forgotten who’s in charge here.”

Kelly sighs dramatically.  “Oh, all right,” she says.   “I’m on the couch.  Happy?”

“Are your feet up?” I ask.

Kelly clucks.  “Yes, boss.  I am barefoot, pregnant, and on the couch.”

“Perfect,” I say.  “Read a book for a half an hour — and not any baby books!  Some light reading.  Then I want a complete report of your day via email.  Including a picture.”

You’d think that being an owner of human property would insulate me from embarrassment over my own kinks, but there are some regions of my perversity that I’m still embarrassed by.

Okay, I’ll tell you a secret: I’m turned on by pregnancy.

Everything about it: the getting pregnant, the lush, advancing curve of a woman’s gravid belly…all of it.

Shit. Now I’m blushing.  Fortunately, with my skin tone, no one can tell.

The good news is that being the top has its privileges: not only did I choose when and how Kelly became pregnant, I get to cater to my own fetishes by demanding a picture of her pregnant belly every single day, tracking its advance as our child gets ready to make its entrance into the world.

“Why can’t I read baby books?” Kelly asks.

“Because when you read baby books, you start Googling, and when you Google pregnancy facts, the Internet, in its boundless cruelty, shows you extreme and improbable things that scare you half to death, and then I have to wake up Dr. Wallace at three in the morning to reassure you that our child will not be born with a tail or three heads.”

“Oh,” Kelly says.  “Right.”

“Read a nice mystery novel,” I say. “Or one of those lesbian romances Radclyffe writes, you like those.”

“Too many hot sex scenes,” Kelly replies.

“Oh, I see.  Well, if you’re a very good girl, I might give you permission to have a playdate with Mr. Hitachi,” I say.  Mr. Hitachi is an industrial strength vibrator that plugs into the wall and has two speeds: OH and OH MY GOD.

“Well, then I’ll have to be very good indeed, because the hormones are kicking my sex drive into overdrive,” Kelly says.

“Fuck, don’t tell me that,” I say. “You mean I’m missing out on sinking my hands, mouth and cock into and around every inch of my luscious, pregnant wife?”

“Yup,” Kelly says.

“You know, I’ve always thought you’ve had a little sadist in you,” I say.

“Ya think?” Kelly says.

“Oh, sure.  Sass me from three thousand miles away,” I say.

“You know how to settle it when you get back,” Kelly says.

“I sure do,” I say.  “Now get to goofing off, slave.”

“Yes, boss,” Kelly says.

“I love you,” I say.

“I love you too, Boss,” Kelly replies.

**************

When you fly to Puerto Rico, you generally fly into San Juan, but to get to the job, I have to get across the island to Batalla (pronounced Bah TIE yah).  Stanton has arranged a private car and driver for me.  I have no idea if the driver is Marketplace or not, so I just act as if he’s an ordinary limo driver for hire — which means I fall asleep in the back.

Puerto Rico is small — about the size of Connecticut.  It’s a US Territory, which means that you can use US dollars here.  Most Puerto Ricans speak excellent English, but I speak Spanish, and because of my coloring, most Puerto Ricans think I’m one of them.

That’s a big asset — blending in is a big deal in my profession.

But what is my profession?  Well — let’s just say I fix things.  I’m a former Army medic who went into the foreign service, and I still have diplomatic credentials that get me waved through Customs in almost every nation on earth.

Now, I’m a freelance “fixer.”  When things go wrong and you can’t call the cops, you call me.  You pay top dollar, but when I make things right, you’re happy to pay it.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve done a lot of freelance work for The Marketplace.  The owners of consensual slaves can’t really be up front with police about their human property, and sometimes Owners lose their shit, and the Marketplace retains a commitment to human property — to ensuring their safety and well-being even if an owner can’t or won’t.

That’s where I come in.

“Mees?  Mees?  We’re here,” the driver says.

We’ve arrived in Battalla.  It’s a town on the southern coast of Puerto Rico.  Its name means “battle,” because it was raided so often by pirates in the 1800s that residents took it upon themselves to move the entire town ten miles back from the ocean to protect themselves from the constant raids.

Now, Battalla is a residence for retirees and tourists who know their stuff and want to get off the beaten path, and locals who mostly work fishing, surfing, and catering to tourists.

There’s just one thing: even though Batalla has moved back to the beach…the pirates are still here.

[Go to Part 3!]

Lily Lloyd is the author of Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your Kinky Relationship, a book about making kinky relationships work.

Pirates of the Carribean: A Marketplace Tale, Part 2

Pirates of the Carribean is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. Laura recently released “No Safewords,” a fan anthology of tales by different writers set in the Marketplace world.

This tale also takes a page from the real-world phenomenon of modern high seas piracy.  Most people think that pirates are a thing of the past, but in fact, across the globe at least one boat a day is attacked by pirates looking to steal cargo, ransom the crew or owners, or steal the boat itself.

In Part 1, Bette, a former Army medic and foreign service officer turned freelance “fixer,” gets referred a new case by trainer Chris Parker: rescue three slaves whose boat is attacked while sailing their owner’s boat from Nassau to Buenos Aires. 

 

I fly to San Juan in the morning.  The breeze that’s swishing through the palm fronds feels as soft as a baby blanket. I call Kelly on the phone.

“Hey,” I say.  “I haven’t got my daily picture yet.”

“You will, Boss,” says Kelly.  “I had a busy day with the contractors, and then with Dr. Wallace.”

The contractors were building a nursery into our home in Montreal, and Dr. Wallace was a Marketplace-friendly doctor who also happened to be board-certified in obstetrics.  It was helpful to have a doctor who we could be completely “out” to about the true nature of our relationship.

You’ve never heard of the Marketplace, and that’s because of the work of thousands of people: thousands of people united in keeping a vast market for consensual human slaves a deep, dark secret from the rest of the world.

Sure, in this post-Fifty Shades world, you’ve heard of BDSM.

You’re also convinced that BDSM is one of two things: kinky fun with handcuffs in the bedroom, or a fantasy.

There is a third option, and that option is The Marketplace.  It’s where people go when the kinky fun isn’t enough anymore — when their drive to serve — or to own — is big enough that they have to make the fantasy real.

I know, I know: Lincoln done freed the slaves.  And ‘slaves’ in the Marketplace have little to do with the historical institution of slavery: slaves enter the Marketplace of their own free will, typically on time-limited contracts that they negotiate with the help of a trainer. Nor are slaves chattel in the old-fashioned sense: although Kelly is my property as well as my wife, our child will be entirely free to shape his or her own destiny. Except if they want to get facial tattoos, because you know I will put a stop to that shit.

“I see.  What does the good Dr. Wallace say?”

“Everything’s just dandy,” Kelly says.  I can tell from the background noise that she’s pacing in front of the windows; the telltale squeaks from the old wooden floor of our loft give her away.

“I would like to know why the mother of our child is not sitting down with her feet up,” I ask.

“Bette, I’m pregnant, not an invalid,” Kelly replies.

“Excuse me?” I say.  “Perhaps the hormones are affecting your memory, because you seem to have forgotten who’s in charge here.”

Kelly sighs dramatically.  “Oh, all right,” she says.   “I’m on the couch.  Happy?”

“Are your feet up?” I ask.

Kelly clucks.  “Yes, boss.  I am barefoot, pregnant, and on the couch.”

“Perfect,” I say.  “Read a book for a half an hour — and not any baby books!  Some light reading.  Then I want a complete report of your day via email.  Including a picture.”

You’d think that being an owner of human property would insulate me from embarrassment over my own kinks, but there are some regions of my perversity that I’m still embarrassed by.

Okay, I’ll tell you a secret: I’m turned on by pregnancy.

Everything about it: the getting pregnant, the lush, advancing curve of a woman’s gravid belly…all of it.

Shit. Now I’m blushing.  Fortunately, with my skin tone, no one can tell.

The good news is that being the top has its privileges: not only did I choose when and how Kelly became pregnant, I get to cater to my own fetishes by demanding a picture of her pregnant belly every single day, tracking its advance as our child gets ready to make its entrance into the world.

“Why can’t I read baby books?” Kelly asks.

“Because when you read baby books, you start Googling, and when you Google pregnancy facts, the Internet, in its boundless cruelty, shows you extreme and improbable things that scare you half to death, and then I have to wake up Dr. Wallace at three in the morning to reassure you that our child will not be born with a tail or three heads.”

“Oh,” Kelly says.  “Right.”

“Read a nice mystery novel,” I say. “Or one of those lesbian romances Radclyffe writes, you like those.”

“Too many hot sex scenes,” Kelly replies.

“Oh, I see.  Well, if you’re a very good girl, I might give you permission to have a playdate with Mr. Hitachi,” I say.  Mr. Hitachi is an industrial strength vibrator that plugs into the wall and has two speeds: OH and OH MY GOD.

“Well, then I’ll have to be very good indeed, because the hormones are kicking my sex drive into overdrive,” Kelly says.

“Fuck, don’t tell me that,” I say. “You mean I’m missing out on sinking my hands, mouth and cock into and around every inch of my luscious, pregnant wife?”

“Yup,” Kelly says.

“You know, I’ve always thought you’ve had a little sadist in you,” I say.

“Ya think?” Kelly says.

“Oh, sure.  Sass me from three thousand miles away,” I say.

“You know how to settle it when you get back,” Kelly says.

“I sure do,” I say.  “Now get to goofing off, slave.”

“Yes, boss,” Kelly says.

“I love you,” I say.

“I love you too, Boss,” Kelly replies.

**************

When you fly to Puerto Rico, you generally fly into San Juan, but to get to the job, I have to get across the island to Batalla (pronounced Bah TIE yah).  Stanton has arranged a private car and driver for me.  I have no idea if the driver is Marketplace or not, so I just act as if he’s an ordinary limo driver for hire — which means I fall asleep in the back.

Puerto Rico is small — about the size of Connecticut.  It’s a US Territory, which means that you can use US dollars here.  Most Puerto Ricans speak excellent English, but I speak Spanish, and because of my coloring, most Puerto Ricans think I’m one of them.

That’s a big asset — blending in is a big deal in my profession.

But what is my profession?  Well — let’s just say I fix things.  I’m a former Army medic who went into the foreign service, and I still have diplomatic credentials that get me waved through Customs in almost every nation on earth.

Now, I’m a freelance “fixer.”  When things go wrong and you can’t call the cops, you call me.  You pay top dollar, but when I make things right, you’re happy to pay it.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve done a lot of freelance work for The Marketplace.  The owners of consensual slaves can’t really be up front with police about their human property, and sometimes Owners lose their shit, and the Marketplace retains a commitment to human property — to ensuring their safety and well-being even if an owner can’t or won’t.

That’s where I come in.

“Mees?  Mees?  We’re here,” the driver says.

We’ve arrived in Battalla.  It’s a town on the southern coast of Puerto Rico.  Its name means “battle,” because it was raided so often by pirates in the 1800s that residents took it upon themselves to move the entire town ten miles back from the ocean to protect themselves from the constant raids.

Now, Battalla is a residence for retirees and tourists who know their stuff and want to get off the beaten path, and locals who mostly work fishing, surfing, and catering to tourists.

There’s just one thing: even though Batalla has moved back to the beach…the pirates are still here.

[Go to Part 3!]

Lily Lloyd is the author of Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your Kinky Relationship, a book about making kinky relationships work.

Pirates of the Carribean — A Marketplace Tale, Part 1

Pirates of the Carribean is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. Laura recently released “No Safewords,” a fan anthology of tales by different writers set in the Marketplace world.

This tale also takes a page from the real-world phenomenon of modern high seas piracy.  Most people think that pirates are a thing of the past, but in fact, across the globe at least one boat a day is attacked by pirates looking to steal cargo, ransom the crew or owners, or steal the boat itself.

This story is a followup to “Foster Care,” where we meet the two main characters, Bette and Kelly, for the first time.  In this story, they’ve been together for close to two years. Bette is a “fixer,” a former Army medic who now freelances for The Marketplace, rescuing human property when things go wrong. 

Pirates of the Carribean — A Marketplace Tale

by Lily Lloyd

“Now you’re just fucking with me,” I say. “Pirates? What year is this? 1850?”

“You’d be surprised how big a deal it is, Bette,” Chris says. “Apparently high-seas piracy isn’t a thing of the past. You know, on a global basis there’s one or two attacks a day.”

“Please tell me they’re wearing knee high boots and swinging a cutlass, because that right there would make it worth the price of admission,” I say.

“Sadly, no — more like submachine guns.”

“Oh well. Swashbuckling was too much to ask for, I guess.”

Modern-day high-seas piracy falls into three categories: Eritrean pirates holding captives off the horn of Africa, looking for money to finance their ongoing war against Somalia; natives of Banda Achay, a rebel Indonesian province, hijacking boats in the straits between Indonesia and China, and narcotrafficantes looking to up their take by knocking off yachts in the Carribean, transporting drugs with them, and then pocketing the proceeds of the sale of the boat — after dropping the boat’s owner and crew into the Bermuda Triangle. Dead men, after all, tell no tales.

The Indonesians are really the class of the crop: recently, they’d hijacked a cargo container ship as big as a multistory parking garage, ran it up a river in China, repainted the whole thing, and then powered right into Port of Long Beach to sell the cargo right on the sunny shores of California.

Most pirates are never caught. There are still no real cops on the high seas: every corner in your hometown has a traffic camera now, but once you get out into international waters, the oceans are the last truly wild and lawless place on Planet Earth.

Chris Parker, my friend and Marketplace liaison,  is too nice to tease me about my choice of drink. Despite my badass credentials, I still like sticky-sweet, licorice-flavored Sambuca, and I like it even better if the traditional three coffee beans have been dropped into the snifter by the time it arrives in front of me.

“What are the coffee beans for, anyway?” Parker asked.

“Health, happiness, and prosperity,” I say. “That’s why there’s always three.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Chris says, clinking his beer bottle against my drink. “Speaking of which, how’s Kelly?”

I get a big stupid grin on my face and leaned closer to him. “Pregnant!” I say.

“Oh my God! Really?!”

“Really! But you can’t tell anyone, okay? We’re waiting until she’s 12 weeks to make any announcements, just in case.”

“This is so great!” Chris says. “Congratulations, Bette!”

“Well, you can take some credit for this,” I say. Chris had pulled me into a rescue mission to retrieve some some human property — folks who signed up to serve an Owner of their own free will under contract — from Costa Rica after their owner had gone off the deep end, apparently shooting his neighbor in the face with an AR-15 in a dispute over a noisy dog. I found Kelly in a Costa Rican hospital looking like she’d been dragged over a quarter mile of bad road behind a logging truck. My background as an Army medic, and my diplomatic credentials, made me the perfect person to escort Kelly back to safety in the US.

I brought her back home and served as her ‘foster owner’ for a year before exercising my option to buy out her contract. Kelly is my property — and also my wife, and now the mother of our child.

“I know this is a little…well, kind of a rude question, and you don’t have to answer me, but…how did you do it?” Chris asks.

“Oh, man,” I say. “There’s gonna hafta be a lot more alcohol for that tale.” Kelly and I are lesbians, so procreating via the conventional route isn’t an option for us. “Before we get too deep in our cups, though, why don’t you tell me about this job you’re trying to rope me into?”

A waitress comes by and escorts us from the bar to our table.

“How did you find this place?” I ask. “It’s so great!” The dining room at Lupo’s, in New York City’s Little Italy, is ringed with booths, each in their own alcove, and each with curtains that can be drawn shut, creating a private little bower for the diners within.

“Can you imagine what a bunch of perverts would get up to in here?” Chris asks.

“Remote control vibrators for all!” I say, laughing. “So tell me what’s going on.”

Chris pulls out a manila folder and opens it on the table as I pull shut the curtains.

“Ben Stanton,” Chris says. “Third generation marketplace owner. His family came over on the Mayflower and has had a love affair with boats ever since. Stanton’s pride and joy is a 42-foot sailboat, and three of his property are sailors; another one’s a shipboard cook. He’d tasked them with sailing the boat from Nassau to Rio de Janeiro for a regatta, but they never got there.”

“Has there been a ransom demand?”

“Yup. But the M.O. for these pirates is to take the money and then kill the hostages. Stanton’s hoping for a better outcome.”

“Any reason why he hasn’t called the cops?” I ask.

“He’s called plenty of cops. None of them claim jurisdiction.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly,” Chris says. “So what do you think? Can you help?”

“Well, I’m stumped about one thing: how do I get to the captives? I don’t have a boat and I can’t sail anyway.”

“We’ve got that covered,” Chris says.

[Go to Part 2, where Bette flies to a little tropical paradise which just happens to be Pirate HQ.  I've already completed this story, so you don't have to worry about long waits between segments ;-> -- Lily]

RESISTANCE PLAY!

I’m thinking about it.

Are you thinking about it?

Have you done it?

Inquiring perverts want to know.

//////

Background:  I was talking with Holly about my ideas for a new book — a nonfiction relationship guide, like my book Discipline — and she remarked that I was probably being too hard on the newbies around resistance play.

Holly is a very smart, perceptive woman, so I take her perspective very seriously, and I’ve been thinking about it, even though I can be an arrogant motherfucker .

The more I think about it, the more complicated and tangled my thoughts (which I thought I was pretty solid about become) Viz ye:

I’m turned on by willing submission.  I don’t like the idea of forcing someone to be with me, or (yuck!) forcing someone to have sex with me.  To me, the fact that someone REALLY REALLY wants to be with me, including being with me naked, is a major emotional motivator for what I do.  Take that away, and you’re really taking away a lot. 

When I read stuff on Fetlife, especially by newbie s-types, about how they need to find someone to “force” them to submit, it just sounds like they’re looking for some Ubermenschen D-type who is so confident and smooth that submitting to them will be effortless.  That makes me think: you don’t want it enough yet.  They remind me of the people who won’t date anyone because no one is perfect enough: they’re afraid to be in a relationship.   It might be easy to submit to perfect people, but imperfect people are all we’ve got.  Wanna be a badass? Try submitting to an imperfect person with all their flaws and  foibles.  That’s scary, that’s hard, that’s frustrating.  It’s also REAL.  

THAT SAID…resistance play?  Pressuring a submissive to do something that they are reluctant to do but undeniably turns them on?  Knowing that they’re doing something for me that makes them uncomfortable because they want to please me?  HAWWWWWWWWWWWT.

So,

I’m turned on by willing submission.  ”Forcing” someone to do things for or with me makes them feel like they don’t want me.
I’m turned on by resistance play.  Making an s-type do something sexual that embarrasses them but turns them on REALLY turns me on.  Having them do something they would rather not do but that they’re doing for me makes me feel like they want me.

Sing it with me, perverts: one of these things is not like the other!  In fact, they’re opposites.

Somebody said something about a fine mind being able to hold two opposing ideas simultaneously, right?

So help me out here, my pervert brain trust.  How do I resolve this conflict?

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale [Links to All Seven!]

Foster Care is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. Laura recently released “No Safewords,” a fan anthology of tales by different writers set in the Marketplace world.  This tale set in the Marketplace universe also takes a page from the true story of John McAfee, the Silicon Valley billionaire who retired to Belize and went into hiding when he was wanted for murder.

In Foster Care, we meet Bette, a “fixer” who’s roped into rescuing Kelly, the human property of an owner who’s gone off the deep end. There’s intrigue, kinky sex, kidnapping, strap-ons, and AIG-style financial corruption, and more kinky sex. What’s not to love?!

First, here’s the entire story on one page, if scroll is how you roll:  Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale (Complete)

After I published it here, I attempted to repost it over on Fetlife and found I had finally written something that was too long to post as a single entry.  I got the idea to break the story into parts and illustrate them with photos.  That worked out really well, so I’ve recreated that here.   I think it’s a little easier to read this story — which is long — in shorter chunks.  This is also good for those of you who are reading on smartphones or tablets.

Here’s the whole series:

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 1 

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 2

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 3

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 4

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 5

Foster care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 6

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 7 

Lily Lloyd is the author of Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your Kinky Relationship, a book about making kinky relationships work. 

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 7

{Foster Care is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. In Part 6, we get to the root of the intrigue that threatens Kelly’s life, and here in the conclusion, Part 7, we learn Bette and Kelly’s fate. }

About a week later, I get a call from Chris.

“There are some legal papers you probably want to see — contracts and stuff, for Kelly and for other slaves. I figured they’d be useful for review before the disciplinary hearing,” Chris says. “They’re at a lawyer’s office up there near you. Do you want me to have them messengered over?”

“What’s the address?”

Chris gives me an address on Rue St. Sulpice.

“Nah, that’s only a few blocks from here. I’ll pick them up myself, I could use the fresh air.”

“Be careful,” Chris says.

“They’re not after me,” I say. “But I’ll be careful anyway.”

I hang up the phone and look across the loft into the kitchen where Kelly was making my breakfast. She was in a robe and not an apron — come to think of it, she hadn’t been naked outside the bedroom since the bodyguards had moved in — but that didn’t seem to matter to my libido. As I watch her walk across the kitchen, I feel that familiar stirring.

I sip my coffee and let my mind drift. I imagine bending her over the counter and taking her from behind with my strap-on, fucking her roughly with my hand fisted in her hair, pressing her cheek against the counter as she moans…

“Excuse me?” Kelly says, holding a cloth napkin in her hand. I lean back in the chair, allowing her to spread it across my lap.

“This looks great, Kelly, thank you.”

Kelly sits down at the table across from me as I eat; Kelly eats only after I finish, unless I feed her from my own plate.

“I’ll be out doing an errand later today — just picking up some papers. Just so you know, before I return I’ll be texting you and I expect you to greet me by the door.”

“But…” Kelly points in the direction of the guest room, “What about…”

“They’re Marketplace, Kelly. Do you think they haven’t seen a naked slave before?”

Kelly gulps audibly. I stretch my hand across the table and squeeze hers. “We can’t stop living our lives because of this. We have to go on. We can’t let Negel win.”

Kelly nods, her eyes brimming.

“More coffee, please.” I don’t need more coffee, really, but I want to give Kelly a moment to calm down. There is something I want to ask her, a difficult question.

When she returns to the table and sits down, I say: “Kelly, the other slaves at MacFarlane’s ran away. Why didn’t you run?”

Kelly looked uncomfortable and slid back in her chair. “I couldn’t,” she says. “I was too hurt to run. I didn’t really even understand what was happening when the police came in – I didn’t know about what John had done.”

“I don’t understand. It wasn’t because you were trying to escape? He beat you before the shooting?”

“Yes.”

“Did he beat anyone else?”

“No. That’s why they got away — they were able to get away between the time Jack left and the police showed up.”

“Why did he beat you and not the others?”

Kelly looks down at her lap. “I…he beat me because I had sex.”

“But…the reports about MacFarlane’s house was that he had half a dozen or more pleasure slaves and he encouraged them to have sex with each other.”

“That’s true — but I wasn’t a pleasure slave. I was his personal secretary. He caught me having sex with one of the others.”

“He didn’t want you having sex with a man?”

“I wasn’t having sex with a man. I was having sex with one of the pleasure slaves. A woman.”

She gives a hiccupping gasp. “He didn’t…he didn’t want anyone to touch what was his, he said. He beat me to make an example of me. And then. The others. The men, he had them…I’m property, so I’m not sure I can say they raped me…”

I get up and come around the table. I hand her my napkin to wipe her eyes and put my hand on her shoulder.

“Do you understand that none of that is ever going to happen as long as you’re with me?”

Kelly nods, unable to speak for a moment.

“As long as I’m with you,” she says.

*******************

It’s a crisp, clear, cold day in Montreal, and they are running out of places to put the snow. It’s piled in the Place des Armes and in the square in front of the Cathedral. I round one of the giant piles to get to the door of Rouen & Marsan. I pick up the papers and ask if there’s someplace I can sit to review them. A secretary leads me to a conference room, and I open up the blue-backed packets of paper.

As I read them, I feel a sinking sensation. I’d been throwing around words like “belong” and “ownership” when I shouldn’t have. Kelly was not my property — even though I was acting like she was and she was very much playing along. I did not own her, and I could still lose her. If I did, my playacting at ownership would be, in retrospect, enormously cruel.

I ask a few questions of one of the lawyers about the contract, but not too many. My mouth is dry and my heart is heavy.

I go outside and stand on the sidewalk in the sunshine. I have my phone in my hand, ready to text Kelly to have her greet me at the door, just as if she is mine to keep.

I know I shouldn’t do it, but I do it anyway. Even if I only get to experience Kelly this way once — even if she is taken from me — I want to know.

I want to know what it feels like to own her.

HOME IN :15, I text.

*************

I greet Pierre at the entrance to the building and take the stairs up to the apartment. I put the key in the lock and take a deep breath to compose myself.

I open the door and shed my coat and scarf as if she isn’t there at all.

I step forward, putting one of my boots, cold and wet with melting snow, right between her thighs, but not quite touching them. I lean over her to hang my coat, her face only inches from the zipper on my pants.

I stand there, pick up the mail off the side table, flip through it, rifle through a magazine.

She’s being so good. Even when one of those infernal blow-in subscription postcards falls out of the magazine and drifted to the floor, she doesn’t make a move, keeps her eyes lowered, chin up, shoulders back.

Just as a challenge I brush the fly of my slacks against her lips, but she holds her composure. I’m turned on as all hell, but my composure isn’t at issue.

I step back, tossing the mail on the table, and take the leash off the hook and walk into the apartment.

The days are short in December in Montreal, and though it’s only 5:30, it’s already full dark. A few lamps are lit but the interior of the loft is still dim.

I sit in my leather armchair and hang the leather loop of the leash’s handle on the hook. Kelly folds herself smoothly onto the small meditation cushion beside my chair, still being silent until spoken to.

“Kneel up, please,” I say. Kelly kneels with her body straight, and looks right at me. “How are you, Kelly?” I ask. Slowly. Drawing it out.

“Wonderful, boss. Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure, my dear. Now, go fetch me a drink, I want to watch the Habs pregame.” I unsnap the lead from her collar to let her go to the sideboard. “I’m going to go upstairs to change. When you’re done fixing my drink, come back to the cushion and snap the leash back on to your collar and kneel.”

“Yes, boss.”

******************

I didn’t really need to change.

There was something else I had in mind. Taking my keyring from my pocket, I find the small key to the wardrobe in the corner of my bedroom. I open it, and within were all the things I hadn’t even looked at since Diana’s death.

Cuffs. Neatly coiled rope. Floggers and paddles and canes.

And in the back, on a peg, my harness, and beside it, a few silicone cocks of varying sizes.

I choose my favorite, a black one, kind of sleek with a nice curve and a big head.

I step into the harness and adjust it without looking; even after all this time, the buttery black leather straps were utterly familiar.

I look at myself in the mirror and gave my cock a quick stroke to be sure it’s seated securely in the harness. Then I pull up my underwear and pants, tucking the cock in sideways before I zip up. Looking in the mirror now, I have a large, noticeable, and notably cock shaped-bulge in my pants. “Check it out, Daddy’s got a hard-on,” I say, chuckling to myself.

I go back down into the dim living room, where Kelly is sitting on a cushion beside my chair. Whoever trained Pierre and Jacques trained them to be very discreet — unless they were working out front, I barely know they’re here. When they aren’t working, they keep to themselves on the second floor, where they have a bedroom with an attached bath.

I sit in my chair and sip my drink. “This is very good,” I say.

I relax and watch the game, taking pleasure in “mansitting” — you know, when some dude’s on the subway and sits thoughtlessly with his knees so far apart that he’s effectively taking up the seats on either side of him? Of course, in my own home, I’m not impeding anyone’s access to a place to sit. But I enjoy the masculine-feeling sensation of allowing myself to take up space, not crossing my legs or folding into myself to be smaller as so many women do.

I’m not trans — unlike my trans friends who always felt like there was something not right, I’ve always felt at home in my body. But that doesn’t stop me from being really turned on by wearing my cock, by seeing that big bulge between my legs.

I rattle the cubes in my empty glass. “Just seltzer and lime this time, sweetheart,” I say.

As she returns, I spread my knees and put my hand on my bulge, slowly stroking and squeezing it. As Kelly puts my glass on the wide wooden arm of the chair, she notices it — the big, hard cock-shaped outline in my pants. She breathes in sharply. Still bent at the waist, she lifts her eyes to meet mine.

“Down,” I say, pointing at the floor between my knees. She kneels obediently between my boots.

“Suck my cock,” I say.

Kelly leans forward, her naked skin brushing the denim of my jeans. She unbuckles my belt, unsnaps, unzips.

I can barely breathe as she slips her hand into my pants, brushing my pubic curls with her fingertips as she grasps my cock and pulls it out. I slide down in the chair, pushing my hips forward to the edge, and let my head fall back on the soft leather of the chair.

Just because I don’t have sensation in my cock doesn’t mean I don’t have plenty of sensation between my ears. God, I love sinking my cock into her mouth.

I look down at her and I can’t stifle a moan at seeing her wrap her lips around my shaft.

I’ve had some submissives that mailed it in when it came to sucking dyke cock — they figure, “She can’t feel it, so why do I have to do a good job?” But Kelly seems as turned on by this as I am, sliding her mouth down over my dick and back up, licking and sucking on the head in a way that drives me insane.

“Get up here,” I growl. Kelly climbs into my lap, straddling my thighs. I reach down and hold the base of my cock as she positions herself.

Oh god. She slides down on me and I have a sudden, urgent need to be wearing less clothing, to have more of my skin touching hers. I reach between us and rip open my snap-front shirt and unhook my bra — I don’t wear anything but front-hooks.

“Ah,” I gasp as I come skin to skin with her, pressing her to me. There’s no such thing as close enough now. I reach around and grab her luscious ass, rocking her cunt back and forth on my cock. She clings to me, her arms around my neck and her hands in my hair. I slide my hands up her back and lean her back into my arms, taking one erect nipple into my mouth, sucking, kissing, one and then the other, reveling in her until she cries out. The game flickers behind her, forgotten except where it traces her beautiful outline. I bite her shoulder, her neck, anything I can reach. I want her covered in marks showing that she’s mine in the morning.

Fuck, I can’t take this anymore. I lean her backward, managing to stay with her and not drop her on the floor. I scramble out of my jeans and boots and sink balls deep into her cunt.

I waited so long to kiss Kelly, and now I can’t get enough of her mouth. I could kiss her for a year. I fuck her, pounding her. “Please,” she groans into my mouth, “please, please, please.”

“Too hard?” I gasp.

“Oh, God, no,” Kelly says, her back arched, head thrown back. “Please don’t stop. Please, fuck me, give me your cock.”

I lift one of her legs over my shoulder and fuck her hard. With one hand I reach up to a side table drawer. In it is a bottle of lube and a small bullet vibe.

I reach down and press it against her clit as I turn it on.

“OHHHHHH,” she cries.

“Are you going to come all over my cock like the little slut you are?” I say.

Kelly doesn’t answer; she’s arched, mouth open, coming helplessly and so powerfully she tries to turn her body away from it, to flee from it; I pin her to the carpet beneath me as she holds her breath, taking only tiny gasps until a keening wail escapes from her.

She collapses on the floor like a rag doll. I roll her on top of me and hold her tightly in my arms, her head on my chest. I feel her heave a sob and hide her face against my shoulder.

“Ohhh,” I say. “Oh, baby. It’s okay. Let it out. Let it all out.” I rock her back and forth on my chest until she’s cried out. I reach to one side for the shirt I’d ripped off and thrown to floor earlier and use it to mop her face and my chest.

“You okay?” I ask.

Kelly nods against my chest. “Yes,” she says. “Very okay.”

**************

ONE YEAR LATER

In the end, the whole drama with Negel wound down without a big climax. The disciplinary hearing that I dreaded because it brought up a chance that Kelly would be remanded to Negel never happened. Negel settled, giving up nearly everything as part of a deal that guaranteed him one thing: continued access to the Marketplace.

I would have been happy to see Negel banished from The Marketplace permanently. But without a training house or the authority to represent buyers, Negel’s influence — and his ability to harm — is far smaller than it was a year ago.

I did keep Kelly; in fact, I did more than keep her. A year to the day her foster term began, I did more than take ownership of her.

Reader, I married her.

We still live in Montreal, and Kelly is expecting our first child in September.

Lily Lloyd is the author of Discipline: Adding Rules & Discipline To Your BDSM Relationship. You can find more of her writing at The Black Leather Belt.

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 6

{Foster Care is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. In Part 5 Kelly is kidnapped by people connected to her former owner — but no one knows exactly why. Here in Part 6, Bette and Chris Parker get to the root of the intrigue. }

It feels ten times harder to carry Kelly up the stairs than it did to run her out of the warehouse. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, I’m shaky and exhausted.

I lay Kelly on my own bed, collapsing on a stool beside it. I put my head in my hands and wipe the sweat out of my eyes.

When I look up, Kelly’s eyes are open, half-lidded. They widen when she sees my face.

“What happened to you!” Kelly tries to sit up and lists sideways, nearly rolling off the bed.

I stand up and put my hand on her chest, pushing her back down.

“Listen, you lie down. No getting up,” I say.

I feel like getting up wasn’t such a hot idea for me, either, so I do a controlled fall that lands my butt back on the stool I’d been sitting on.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ll be all right.”

“Let me call the doctor,” she says, struggling to sit up again.

“No,” I say, using That Voice. “You need to learn that I’m still in charge, even when things are bad, do you understand? If I’m out cold you can swing into action, but if I can still walk and talk, I’m in charge. You got it?”

Kelly nods. “Yes,” she says, then adding, “Boss.”

“But you do need a doctor,” she says meekly.

“You’re right, I do, but we can’t call Doctor Wallace. Do you know what happened to you?”

“No. I remember leaving the house, then…nothing.”

“You were drugged and kidnapped by Felipe, the doctor’s assistant, and an accomplice of his. Someone I don’t recognize. You still had your phone on you, and I installed tracking software on it before I gave it to you. I followed you and got into a fight with Felipe.”

“You fought…Felipe?”

“Don’t look so surprised. You should see how Felipe looks,” I say.

“We’re safe here, as long as we stay inside,” I say. “Nobody can get into the apartment unless we let them in. I’m going to call Chris for help, though. It’s time to call in reinforcements.”

I’m bluffing about our security in the apartment, but I really don’t know by how much. I wasn’t looking for a safe house when I rented this place. As I dial Chris, I wonder if I should rent a hotel room and move us there until things cool down.

Chris answers the phone. “You’re not gonna believe this shit. Are you sitting down?”

“No, but I can take it,” Chris says.

“You know Doctor Wallace, the Marketplace-friendly doctor up here?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Well, I just hit her assistant, this human refrigerator named Felipe, with a pipe wrench.”

“What?!”

“I had good reason — he snatched Kelly off the street in front of my apartment. He drugged her, probably using stuff he stole from the doctor, and drove her to a warehouse near the airport.”

“Holy fucking shit.”

“Yeah. I know. Listen, I need help. Who can you get over here? We need a doctor, and obviously we can’t call Wallace. And I need muscle.”

“What condition is Kelly in? Do you need transportation to the hospital?” Chris asks.

“No, I’ve checked her out and she’s fine — other than feeling a little nauseous from the drug they gave her she’s all right. But I need stitches. Felipe tossed me headfirst into a 55-gallon drum, and I’ve got a big cut on my head, and maybe one other cut that needs stitches. I can’t do them myself because I can’t see the cut on the back of my head.”

“You know you just said something out loud about giving yourself stitches, right?”

“Once a field medic, always a field medic. Hell, I used to practice on myself,” I say.

“Jesus, Bette, don’t say that. You know how I feel about that shit.”

“No needle play for you, huh, big guy? Even with all those tattoos?”

“I kept my eyes closed the whole time.”

I laugh, which hurts. “Can you call me back in a few minutes and let me know what you’ve got?”

“Sure. Hang in there, I’m on it.”

***********

I return to the bedroom. I can tell I’m a mess by the worried look on Kelly’s face.

“Listen, Chris is rounding up a doctor and some folks to do security for us. I’m going to clean up a little. You are not to get out of this bed until a doctor checks you out, understand? If you need to go to the bathroom, ask me and I’ll help you.”

The water from the shower stings the cut on my scalp, and the drumming water makes my head throb in time. I felt like I might barf, but there’s nothing I hate more than throwing up — I’ll do practically anything to avoid it. I definitely have a concussion, but that’s nothing I haven’t experienced before.

I get out of the shower and gingerly toweled myself off, inventorying my bruises and scrapes. As I slip on a clean robe and wrap a towel around my neck I look at myself in the mirror. Not too bad.

I take a deep breath. Just how much was Kelly insured for — and how far were people willing to go for the money?

**********

Fifteen minutes later my phone rings. “You’ve got a doc and two for security on the way. I’m sending you pictures so you can verify that they’re the right people, okay?”

“Thanks, Chris. This is great. I really need the help and I appreciate it.”

“Anytime.”

“Listen, I have one question: isn’t all this a little over the top? I mean, kidnapping? How much is Kelly insured for, anyway?”

“Good question. Hang on and I can find out.”

I hear the clicking of a keyboard.

“Holy shit,” Chris says.

“What?”

“She’s insured for three point two million dollars. And Negel sold MacFarlane the policy.

**************

The news of Negel selling insurance policies on the property of owners he’d represented spread through the network like wildfire. Not only would Negel get commissions on every dollar of premiums that owners paid, if owners got in trouble, Negel would actually benefit: the insurance company would pay him to “hold” property for owners in trouble.

It got even worse than that. A forensic accountant who was the personal property of a hedge fund manager looked over Negel’s dealings and found that Negel was “securitizing” the insurance bonds and selling them to other owners. Owners who invested in what came to be known as slave bonds would get paid when and if the insurance policies paid off – which meant that owners who bought slave bonds were essentially investing in, and betting on, the failure of other owners, and the forfeit of their human property.

It was the Marketplace’s very own Enron, AIG, and Goldman Sachs 360-degree surround-sound corruption clusterfuck rolled into one.

But the hearing of the disciplinary board wouldn’t be for 21 days. Never let it be said that people called before the board of the Marketplace don’t have recourse to due process.

I figured Negel — or anybody else after the money — wouldn’t try anything as stupid as making a move on Kelly again, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Two bodyguards, lent out by their Marketplace owners, were with us night and day, taking shifts; one sleeping in the guest room while the other was awake, alert, and out front looking menacing as hell.

Kelly bounced back sooner than I did, at least physically. The next day, she seemed fine, but I felt worse than I had the day before, like a cross between the world’s worst hangover and going three rounds in a cage match.

Kelly brought me broth in bed, the paper, saltine crackers and tea. I slept on and off throughout the day, glad to know that we were well-protected.

Lily Lloyd is the author of  Discipline: Adding Rules & Discipline To Your BDSM Relationship . You can find more of her writing at  The Black Leather Belt .