“Is that so?” The little elf-man looked less annoyed. He scanned the script rapidly and nodded to himself. “Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm,” he muttered and then looked up at Cassie. “Looks like you’ll need the flogging frame for this scene. It’s in room four, in the back. Do you know the whole scene?”
“I think so,” Cassie said cautiously. “First I tie Stone, here, to the frame and flog him and then he breaks free and ties me up instead.”
“And then I punish my Mistress thoroughly with my tongue,” Stone added helpfully.
Cassie felt her cheeks getting hot but she kept her head high.
“Yes, exactly.”
“All right, good, good,” the little elf-man said, nodding. “There is no dialog which means his Slimefullness thinks the two of you are good enough actors to add-lib.”
“We are,” Cassie said, hoping she was telling the truth.
“You’d better hope so,” the elf-man said severely. “If you don’t please his Slimefullness, it’s off to the chopping block with the two of you!”
“What?” Cassie exclaimed. “But—”
But the elf-man had already turned away from them. He put two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. At once a little round silver ball came flying over. Cassie recognized it as one of the camera-drone type balls she’d seen recording other porn scenes.
“All right,” the elf-man said, speaking to the drone. “Scan them.”
The silver ball emitted a pulse of green light which bathed Cassie and Stone both for a split second. Then it beeped at the elf-man as if to say, “all finished!”
“Good.” The elf-man nodded. “All right, I’ll be your director for this scene,” he told Cassie and Stone. “I’ll be watching from here as the camera records the two of you acting out the script his Slimefullness wrote for you. If you do a good job, I won’t say a word—don’t like to break the actors’ concentration. But if the two of you aren’t selling it, then I’ll have something to say—you’d better believe it!”
“Will we be able to hear you from way in the back?” Cassie asked.
“Of course—my voice goes through the amplifier in the camera drone there.” He pointed at the silver ball, still hovering in place. “But as I said, you’ll only hear me if you’re doing something wrong. Now, before we begin, do either of you require a love aid of any kind?”
Cassie frowned. “A love aid?”
“An aphrodisiac!” the elf-man snapped. “We have all kinds if you need them—so do you?”
“No, of course not,” Cassie said quickly, remembering how The Beast had said many of the drugs made at Gozeriam’s lab were dangerous. She certainly didn’t want to take a whiff of that one blossom that made you incredibly horny for a little while and then suicidally depressed for a whole year afterwards!
“What about you, lad?” the elf-man asked Stone. “You have any trouble getting it up? Need something to make you hard?”
“My Mistress’s beautiful body is the only aphrodisiac I require,” Stone rumbled, looking at Cassie. “I am already most eager to enact this scene with her.”
“Very good, then.” The elf-man director nodded. “Then you’re ready to go. Two things—do your best and don’t touch the camera drone—they’re incredibly easy to break. Understand?”
Cassie and Stone nodded.
“Good. Well, go on then, the two of you—this scene isn’t going to act itself. And you, too,” he added, looking at the silver ball. “You lead the way so they know where they’re going.”
The silver ball beeped an affirmative and whizzed away. Cassie and Stone followed it quickly, with Cassie wondering if they could put on a good enough performance to avoid the dreaded “chopping block.”
She certainly hoped so!
Thirty-Nine
The silver ball of the camera drone led them through the front part of The Cave to a door at the back. It was made of black wood and had a silver number 4 stenciled on it. The drone hovered just in front of it, humming quietly.
“I, um, guess we’d better open the door for it,” Cassie remarked. She heard the slight tremble in her own voice, cleared her throat, and tried again. “Let the camera ball in, Stone,” she said more firmly.
“Yes, Mistress.” Stone nodded and pushed open the door, allowing the small silver ball to fly past them, into the room.
Looking in herself, Cassie saw a large rectangular frame that looked very much like a door frame with no door. It was about ten feet tall, made of thick black wood, and standing right in the middle of the room. There were several sets of leather manacles attached to it. One set, higher on the frame, was larger and clearly meant for someone tall and large like Stone. The second set, attached much lower on the frame, was obviously for a smaller person—perhaps a woman, Cassie thought, feeling a flutter of butterflies in her stomach.
To one side of the frame was a wooden rack filled with all kinds of whipping implements. There were whips, canes, riding crops, and a cruel-looking gnarled staff with long, sharp thorns sticking out of it.
Luckily, there were also leather floggers which, Cassie knew from her classes with Madam Electra, could be used to redden the skin without actually hurting whoever you were using them on.
She turned to Stone.
“Look, before we go in, I just want you to know I’ll be using the flogger on you—not any of that other scary-looking stuff,” she told her partner in a low voice. “You can hit someone pretty hard with a flogger without really hurting them. It might sting a little but it shouldn’t leave any permanent marks or bruises.”
He nodded serenely.
“I trust you, Cassandra. Do whatever you think is best.”
“Thank you, Stone.” Cassie was touched by his perfect trust in her. “What about those leather manacles?” she asked, nodding at the larger set at the top of the flogging frame. “Think you can break free from them or should I just pretend to fasten them and leave them loose?”
Stone studied the thick leather straps for a moment, then shrugged.
“They should present no problem. You can fasten them correctly when you put me in the frame.” He frowned. “Though I do not know how you will reach my arms when they are over my head.”
“I don’t either. Wait—look.” Cassie pointed to the corner of the room. Clearly, one of the workers had anticipated the problem of someone short punishing someone tall, because there was another miniature staircase, like the one she used to get into the gold beanbag bed. Only this one was painted black, maybe to match the flogging frame.
“The problem appears to be solved,” Stone remarked.
Cassie nodded.
“All right. We’re going to go in there and I’ll be the angry Mistress, berating you for having done something wrong. Maybe you, uh, washed my clothes on the wrong setting and ruined them or something.”
“A good thought but perhaps not very ‘sexy’,” Stone rumbled. “Given how the scene ultimately goes, maybe you should be angry with me for not pleasuring you correctly. You should say that you will withhold your sexual favors and not allow me to taste you as punishment.”