Learning the Crawl

After the bottom, they dressed her upper body.

There were no real clothes for the chest — only chains. A main chain around her neck. From it, two sets of three chains descended over each breast and met at the nipple on a small golden plate. Each plate was just large enough to cover nipple and areola, nothing else. The plates linked to each other by a loose middle chain that swayed in her cleavage.

Three more chains dropped from the bottom of each plate to a thin band under her breasts, lifting and framing more than they hid. Her tits looked captured and displayed at once — full white flesh bulging around gold, pink tips hidden only by those tiny plates, the rest available to every stare.

The slave who fastened the under-breast band had to lift each heavy tit to settle the gold, and his oiled hands left faint marks on her white skin that looked like brands. The middle chain in her cleavage swayed when she breathed.

Elder Li stepped close and adjusted one plate with his own fingers, ostensibly because it sat crooked, actually because he wanted to feel the spring of her breast under the gold.

The veil came down over her face like a pale wall, and the eye mask followed, and the world narrowed to what she could see through the slits: the bronze mirror, Elder Li's hungry mouth, the slaves' caged straining cocks, the open floor.

Hair ornaments that made her look expensive even while owned. Hand and ankle accessories that chimed lightly when she shifted weight. Finally the neck collar, locked with a quiet metallic click, and a chain nearly two meters long attached to it. Not because slaves were always chained — only because special occasions demanded a visible proof of superiority.

The slaves stepped aside and stood with heads down, cages straining so hard the steel looked cruel.

When the last ankle chime was fastened, silence held the room for a breath. Yan Mei could not see her own face behind veil and mask, but she could see her body in the tall polished bronze against the far wall: a goddess reduced to gold plates and sky-blue scraps, collar bright at her throat, chain spilling like a promise toward whoever would hold it.

The reflection did not look like the clan leader's wife who scolded children in gardens. It looked like the secret the garden breeze had tried to tell the guards.

Yan Mei stared at the bronze woman until the bronze woman stared back. Collar, plates, sky-blue scraps, diamond wink, chain. She lifted one hand and watched the ankle chimes answer. She turned a fraction and watched the rear cloth fail to cover her.

She thought of Chi'er somewhere in the mansion, of Ling'er far away on a mountain, of Tian'er's smile under the table when his fingers found her wet. Then she stopped thinking of her children, because thinking of her children while dressed like this was a kind of pain she could not afford tonight. She thought of the chain instead. She thought of crawling.

Elder Li had watched the entire dressing like a man at a private theater. Now he walked a slow circle around her and looked closer. Even in revealing slave clothes, even with face concealed behind veil and mask, she looked magnificent — a top-class beauty fitted perfectly to be the Yan family leader's slave.

The disguise would hide her name. It would not hide her quality. Men would know they were looking at something rare. His cock rose hard under his robes. He took the chain hanging from her collar into his hand.

The metal was warm from her skin. He closed his fist around it and felt the faint tremor of her pulse through the links, Heavenly-realm heartbeats steady and fast.

For a moment he simply stood there holding her, holding the proof of what Yan Tian's hunger and his own opportunism had made, and the weight of it was better than wine. Then he said the words about the slave walk, and watched her kneel, and the night's real work began.

"Let's practice a slave walk before we go out," he said. "You don't have experience."

Yan Mei was already feeling shameless in the outfit. The idea of a "slave walk" with Elder Li had not been in her acceptance of Yan Tian's wish. She understood what it meant anyway: down on all fours, crawling like a dog while a man held her leash.

She worried about the butt plug. She worried more about failing in front of guests later. Elder Li had already seen her in more degrading positions than this — sucking, spreading, moaning under guest rules. Pride was a currency she had been spending for weeks. She knelt.

The polished floor was cool under her palms and knees. The plug shifted inside her as she went down, a thick vulgar reminder, and the sky-blue front cloth pulled tight into her slit with a wet sound she was sure everyone heard. Elder Li's breath roughened.

The slaves' cages clicked faintly as strained steel shifted. Yan Mei settled into the dog posture with her back arched and her ass up, the way the role required.

The posture of a dog opened her.

From behind, her plump buttocks spread with the bend and looked even larger. The sky-blue rear cloth stretched upward and exposed nearly everything. In the center of her crack the shining black diamond of the anal plug's top sat like a jewel in a vulgar crown.

Just beneath, her pussy lips pouted in a puffy shape; the small cloth nestled deep between them, already darkened with love juice that dripped visibly down toward her thighs. Elder Li's breath went rough.

A drop of that juice gathered at the lowest point of the cloth, stretched, and fell to the polished floor with a tiny audibility that might as well have been a gong. Elder Li watched it fall. The slaves watched it fall.

Yan Mei felt it fall and felt her face burn behind the veil and felt her pussy clench and produce another drop as if her body were determined to narrate her state to the entire room. "Beautiful," Elder Li said, very quietly, to himself. Then, louder:

"Start walking, my lady. Let me see your walk."

My lady. Said to a woman on her hands and knees in slave chains. The title was a deliberate humiliation — a reminder of true status while she performed false status, a verbal spank. Yan Mei clenched her teeth, clenched her ass, and began to crawl.

The first three steps were the hardest. Pride fought the floor. Dignity fought the leash. Then the plug shifted and the cloth rubbed and Elder Li said good in the tone he used for actual slaves who had learned a lesson, and something in Yan Mei's chest loosened and dropped into her belly and became heat.

She crawled. Her heavy tits swung under the golden plates. Her ass flexed and rolled. The diamond winked, juice dripped, and the room watched. She was Lady Yan Mei. She was also, for the length of this crawl, a cunt on a chain, and both truths moved her hips.

Elder Li shortened the leash so that she had to keep her head up while she crawled, veil fluttering, eyes forward through the mask slits. The posture forced her back to arch and her ass to lift higher. The diamond showed. The wet cloth showed. Her hanging tits showed under their tiny plates with every sway.

He walked her past the bronze mirror on purpose so she could see what he saw, and the bronze woman crawling there was so obscenely beautiful that Yan Mei's pussy clenched hard enough to seat the plug deeper without qi. "Look," he said. "That is what Jinling will buy with its eyes tonight. Do not sell them hesitation."

Her provocative walk was perfect in the way trained beauty made even shame graceful. Hips swayed. Her tits hung and swayed under their golden plates. The chain chimed. But as she moved, her buttocks flexed and rolled, and the anal plug began to slip.

The oil that had eased it in now eased it out. After only a few steps the plug popped free of her anus with a wet sound and dangled from the chain between her legs, leaving her asshole briefly open and empty and the pussy-cloth slack.

The ankle bells answered every crawl-step with a bright ridiculous music. The collar's weight sat at her throat like a hand. Her black hair, pinned with ornaments that made her look expensive even while owned, swung forward over her shoulders and brushed the floor.

Elder Li walked her in a slow circle first, then a longer one, then across the open floor and back, and each circuit taught her body something her mind was still arguing with: that she could crawl, that she looked good crawling, that the plug and the qi and the wet cloth were a single machine and she was the engine.

The emptiness was almost worse than the fullness. Cool air kissed her open hole. The dangling plug swung between her thighs and tapped her pussy with a wet little slap.

Yan Mei froze mid-crawl with her head down and her ass still up and felt, for one horrible lucid second, exactly how she looked: Heavenly Realm, clan leader's wife, mother of two, on her hands and knees with her asshole gaping and her underwear hanging off a chain. Elder Li's yank on the leash came almost as a mercy. Pain in the neck was easier to feel than shame in the ass.

Elder Li yanked the collar chain. Yan Mei's head jerked up. The sudden tension pulled her neck back and made her tits swing forward under their tiny golden plates; for a heartbeat both slaves and Elder Li stared at the jiggle before anyone remembered to breathe.

"You can't even hold it in for a few moments," he shouted, voice cracking into the tone he used on actual slaves. "How are you going to deceive them all? They will see through your disguise. One popped plug in a banquet hall and every merchant in Jinling will know the Yan patriarch brought a fake who can't even keep her underwear in her ass."

He had already started treating her like property. The room's air changed. He approached behind her, lifted the dangling plug, spread her anus with two fingers, and reseated the toy through tight resistance. She gasped. He did not soften the push. His other hand moved over her buttocks — squeezing, stroking, claiming the view — while he spoke.

His fingers were thick and knowing. They stretched her open, found the slickness the oil and her own body had left, and pressed the plug home with a firm twist that made her cry out behind the veil. The diamond seated. The chain tautened. The cloth yanked up into her pussy again.

Elder Li's palm stroked the full white curve of her asscheek as if calming a horse, then slapped it once, lightly, experimentally, and watched the flesh ripple. "Qi," he reminded her. "Or we do this every ten steps at the association, and I will not be there to reseat you. Yan Tian will. In front of everyone. Think about that while you crawl."

"Try using your qi to hold it in and keep it inside. Do you understand?"

Yan Mei nodded against the veil. The idea of wrapping qi around an object inside her asshole made her want to laugh and moan at once. Cultivation manuals spoke of qi for flight, for blades, for healing. They did not speak of qi for keeping a slave-plug seated so merchants would not see a clan wife's open hole. Demonic territories wrote the missing chapters in rooms like this.

She drew a thin thread of qi from her dantian and wrapped it around the plug the way she had once wrapped qi around a flying sword in her youth, before marriage, before children, before any of this. The plug steadied. The sensitivity spiked.

A moan escaped her before she could catch it, small and helpless, and Elder Li laughed under his breath as if she had told a good joke. "Again," he said. "And this time, do not moan like a virgin. Moan like a slave who likes her work. Or do not moan at all. Silence is also currency."

Elder Li stood, hesitated on the edge of going further — fingers deeper, cock out, something that would turn training into fucking — and then stopped himself. His hand had already been on her ass. His fingers had already been in her. The leap from that to burying himself while Yan Tian waited down the corridor was tempting and possibly fatal.

There was no one here to keep her subdued if she suddenly remembered she was Heavenly Realm and angry. Yan Tian's hunger permitted much. He wiped his fingers on a cloth that came away shining, pocketed the evidence like a vulgar souvenir, and stepped back with the leash.

Yan Mei stayed in the crawl and breathed. His fingers had been inside her. His cock was hard enough to tent his robes into a spear. Yan Tian was down the corridor. The math of what Elder Li could do and what he should do hung in the oil-scented air like a third person.

He chose should. She felt the choice as a pressure against her entrance that never arrived. Property waited, and she waited.

"Again."

The second crawl was better. Qi wrapped the plug like a fist wrapped a hilt. The diamond stayed. The cloth stayed. Sparks ran from her anus up her spine into her nipples until the golden plates felt like they were vibrating. She crawled the length of the room and turned and crawled back, and Elder Li walked beside her holding the leash with the casual ownership of a man walking a prized beast through a market.

"Hips," he said. "More sway. You walk like a wife. Walk like a cunt that knows it is owned." The vulgarity landed in her belly like wine. She swayed more. Love juice stringed to the floor in a shining line.

She crawled again, this time wrapping a thin thread of qi around the plug, contracting inner muscles with cultivated control. The technique worked. It also made her anus hypersensitive; every shift of the toy sent sparks up her spine into her nipples and clit. Love juice stringed from her covered pussy to the floor.

After a few more attempts — two more slips, two more of Elder Li's fingers spreading her and pushing the plug home while he relished every clench — she finally held it. She crawled, turned, crawled back. The diamond stayed seated. The tiny cloth stayed pulled tight into her wet slit. Her arms trembled. Her pride lay somewhere near the door with her old clothes.

Each reseating was a small fucking. Each time his fingers spread her and the plug pressed in, her body tried to turn it into more — tried to push back, tried to take, tried to ask. She did not ask. She clenched qi around the toy and crawled until the diamond stayed and the cloth stayed and her arms shook and her pride was a small wet pile by the door with her old three-chain silk.

Elder Li walked her one more circuit for spite or for thoroughness or for the simple pleasure of watching her ass flex around a jewel, and then he stopped her and said she was ready, and ready was a word that meant ruined and wet.

Between attempts he made her pause in the crawl and present — ass higher, back arched, face toward the floor — while he inspected the plug's seat and the shine of juice on her inner thighs. He spoke vulgar corrections the way a drill instructor spoke about footwork.

"Too tight in the shoulders. You look like a lady pretending. A slave does not pretend dignity; a slave offers. Ease your back. Arch. Show them what the chain bought." Each correction forced her deeper into the role.

Each correction also forced her closer to an orgasm she refused to grant herself in front of him. Her arms shook. Sweat made the golden breast-plates slide a fraction on her nipples until the slaves, at a flick of Elder Li's fingers, adjusted them with impersonal touches that were not impersonal at all.

She was so close. The plug's every shift was a thrust. The cloth's every rub was a finger. Elder Li's voice saying my lady while she crawled was a hand on her throat.

She clenched her teeth and her qi and her pride and crawled through the rising wave without cresting, and the denial itself became another kind of arousal, bright and mean and endless. On the fourth circuit she almost broke. On the fifth she held. When he said enough she could have wept with relief and with the opposite of relief.

On the fifth successful circuit of the open floor, she crawled the full length without a slip. The diamond stayed, the cloth stayed, qi held, and humiliation held harder.

Elder Li stopped her at the center and made her present again — ass high, back eased, face down — while he crouched behind her and inspected the plug with his eyes and then, briefly, with two fingers that pressed around the stretched ring to check the seal. She shuddered. He wiped his fingers on her inner thigh, leaving a shining streak, and stood.

"Passable," he said. "For a first night. By the third theme celebration you will crawl as if you were born on your knees." The assumption that there would be a third settled in her chest beside the coal of Yan Tian's wish and burned there, warm and terrible and wanted.