The Bet That Brought the Undefeated Champions to Heel

Nadia intended to demand fulfillment of the pact point by point, with no discounts and no mercy. That was what they had signed it for.

A couple of months later, Coach Hugo had to sit down with his four fighters and explain it to them. They listened in disbelief and, at first, flatly refused. But Hugo was their leader, their benchmark, and he had given his word in front of the other coach. “You have to know how to lose,” he told them, and that phrase weighed more than all the protests put together.

Without doubting Dante’s victory for a single second, Hugo had agreed before the match that, if his protégé won, the girls from the rival club would go to the university championship as the men’s team cheerleaders. But if Vera was the winner, then the four athletes from Aldama club would attend Belmonte faculty’s end-of-course party as cheerleaders.

And on that bright, sunny Saturday, the four boys—glum, silent, shuffling their feet—arrived with their coach at the estate where Belmonte’s facilities were located. At the entrance, tutor Eleonora and Coach Nadia were waiting for them.

Hugo said goodbye to them with barely two words and headed, head bowed, toward a detached house on the right. Nadia accompanied him, and there was something in her smile that did not bode well for him.

The boys stayed with Eleonora, who greeted them with a satisfied smile. She was a woman nearing fifty, with a white blouse stretched over a generous chest and a long skirt clinging to wide hips. She told them to follow her and led them toward one of the buildings.

They crossed a silent corridor and she pointed to a door.

—That’s the locker room. Inside, you’ll find your cheerleader uniforms.

The four went in. Eleonora stayed outside, hands folded over her belly. A little later, the door opened a crack and one of them, Iván, stuck his head out.

—But here there’s only…

—There’s exactly what you have to put on —she cut him off briskly—. And hurry up, we don’t have all day.

Ten minutes later, the four came out of the locker room. Eleonora looked them up and down, amused and intrigued. Those broad backs, those athletic, well-honed bodies, stood out even more against the tiny red thong—finished off with a kind of ridiculous pom-pom on the back—that was the only clothing they had on. The woman lingered on the sight and smiled again.

—Come on, they’re waiting for you —she said.

***

They crossed the doorway she indicated and emerged onto a stage inside a medium-sized hall. In front of them, the girls from Belmonte burst into screams and whistles as soon as they saw them appear.

—Woo! Woooo! Yesss!

Standing on the stage, microphone in hand, Vera officiated as master of ceremonies. Dante saw her and shuddered. He stared at those thick, powerful legs beneath the short skirt, the very same ones that had punished him until they broke him, physically and mentally. His mind kept sending him back, again and again, to the moments of the fight: his helplessness before that force that shook him without mercy.

More than that, it had been her who had taken him out of fighting. After that day he had never stepped into a ring again; he could not even put on a pair of gloves without his hands trembling.

This is a stage, not a fight. I’m safe here. He repeated the thought to calm himself. He would do everything Vera ordered, follow her instructions to the letter, and spare himself any trouble. It was just a matter of enduring it and leaving.

—Dear classmates —Vera announced to the audience—, these four cheerleaders are going to dance a few songs for us. Grab those pom-poms —and she pointed to a pile stacked beside the stage.

The music started, but none of the four moved. Vera urged them on, her voice hardening.

—Come on, boys. Get into rhythm.

Dante did not hesitate: he began shaking the pom-poms at once. The other three followed suit. They tried to keep time with not much success, and what they were doing was closer to ridiculous than to dancing. They endured two whole tracks like that. Before the third, a girl with small glasses stood up, walked over to Vera, and whispered something in her ear.

Vera took the microphone.

—All right, we’re going to add a new twist to make it more fun.

The girl with the glasses went up onto the stage carrying a box. From it she took out a pair of handcuffs and began fastening them on each one. The boys resisted at first; this was starting to seem excessive. But it was enough for Vera to take a couple of steps toward them for Dante, without thinking, to obediently cross his hands behind his back and let her snap them shut. Seeing him give in, the other three finally surrendered as well. Now they would have to dance with their hands bound, which was much more humiliating.

But that was not all. The girl with the glasses and the ponytail took out a pair of small scissors and held them up high. The whole hall roared.

—Yesss! Yesss!

Without thinking too much about it, she went over to the first of the handcuffed boys—Leo—grabbed his thong, and with one snip cut it off. The boy went instantly pale. The garment fell to the floor and all eyes fixed on him. The girls screamed, laughed, and shrieked.

The two teachers supervising the party stood up at once. This had gone too far. They moved toward the stage.

—Mara! Get down from there this instant!

There was a tense silence, and the teachers prepared to climb up and bring the show to an end. But before they could reach it, Eleonora intercepted them. She said a few words in their ears and led them aside, toward a corner, talking in a low, measured voice.

***

While that conversation continued, Mara did not waste time. Her good-student face and little glasses hid a volcano. She grabbed the other three, one after another, hard by the thong, and with a single cut slit the side of each garment. The four fighters were left completely naked, handcuffed, their faces a poem of disbelief and shame. Laughter filled the entire room.

Soon two, then four, then seven girls stood up and started climbing onto the stage. The boys, tied and exposed, did not know what to expect. A redhead with long hair shouted:

—Girls, fun for everyone!

Dante looked toward the corner where Eleonora was still talking with the two teachers. They seemed to be wavering; the tutor persisted, calm. After a moment the two women turned and headed for the exit.

The champion shouted, desperate:

—No, please, don’t go! Don’t leave us alone with them!

But the teachers did not slow down or turn their heads. They opened the door and left the hall.

The girls who had already reached the stage were groping the four athletes amid laughter. Carla, a fighter with blue eyes and sweet manners, raised her voice:

—Girls, this needs to be organized properly!

They put the four on their knees and gathered in a circle, each one proposing a way to have their fun. Finally, they seemed to reach an agreement.

Carla was the first to step forward. She advanced with her hands behind her back until she stood in front of Dante. He lifted his face to hers, a face still marked by the blows Vera had left on him. Carla stroked his head with one hand, with a softness that was chilling.

—Poor thing… there’s one part of you Vera left untouched. She saved it for me.

She showed her other hand: she was holding a strap-on dildo. Dante looked at her in terror.

—No, no… I’ll do whatever you want, but not that…

—Of course you’ll do whatever I want —she laughed, while another girl brought her a tub of lubricant.

***

Carla was about to sodomize the champion amid the laughter and mocking comments of the others, when someone stopped her.

—Wait, not yet… shouldn’t you leave that honor to Olivia? —Naima said.

Every pair of eyes searched for Olivia, a girl with a blonde ponytail and green eyes who was watching the scene from a certain distance. She belonged to the group of the shyest ones, the ones who attended all of this without coming close, scandalized, eyes wide as plates.

Dante’s and Olivia’s families were well-off and had known each other for years. The two of them had grown up together, between dinners, summers, and celebrations at one family’s country house or the other’s. Olivia had always been fascinated by him; she had fallen in love in silence, and her heart would race every time Dante spoke to her or paid her a little attention.

Two girls dragged her, laughing, onto the stage. Olivia was absolutely flushed, unable to lift her gaze beyond an instant. She kept sneaking looks at the man of her dreams, now naked, on all fours, with an expression of terror and submission she had never imagined seeing on him.

—Go hard, Olivia! —several girls shouted.

—No… no… leave me alone —she stammered, and made as if to leave.

But Carla sensed the doubt behind that gesture, the lack of conviction in her retreat. They kept insisting. Olivia still could not decide, though she was not leaving either. Dante looked at her from below, utterly humiliated.

Carla took the initiative. Together with Vera, they adjusted the harness over her shorts and placed her behind the champion. She was still resisting, but she was already in position.

Dante could not believe it. That girl who grew flustered just because he spoke to her, who cast furtive looks at him during family meals, who admired every one of his gestures… was about to take him from behind.

They were pushing her to go for it, but soon that was no longer necessary. Olivia looked at that back of impossible muscles and made up her mind. She started carefully, like someone holding a fragile flower and fearing she might break it… but in no time something changed in her. Her expression grew more uninhibited, her eyes lit up, and she launched into an unstoppable rhythm, amid surprise and the others’ cries of encouragement.

—Break him, Olivia!

Amid so many voices, Dante’s pleas and groans could barely be heard, his body jerking with every thrust. Soon Olivia matched the motion with slaps, so hard they left his skin burning.

***

The champion’s teammates were no luckier. Leo had been laid on his back, immobilized against the floor, with a tied cord running up to a ring in the ceiling. Each girl drew a card with an hour on a clock face and had to give as many “taps” with the cord as the number of hours marked on her card. A very pale girl drew twelve. She pulled with such cruelty on each tap that Leo’s howls must have been heard throughout the whole region.

But the worst came afterward. Panic flooded his face when he saw a girl approaching who could not quite suppress a nervous laugh: it was his sister, Daniela. She was in a younger class, but the older girls had let her in when they heard that her brother was serving as a cheerleader, and for nothing in the world was she going to miss it.

She came over with another girl, never losing that nervous, delighted laugh. That brother had bossed her around all her life, had abused his physical superiority to force his whims on her every time. Yes, she had a few scores to settle with him. And she very much intended to collect.

—No, Daniela, not you! —he shouted, red with shame.

But he was no longer the one in charge; it was exactly the opposite.

His sister drew a card: seven. Looking him in the eyes, she took the cord. It was so brutal that after the third pull Leo was only shouting:

—Mercy, Daniela… mercy, please!

She did not stop at the seventh tap: she gave him three more. And both of them knew, in that instant, that the relationship between them had changed forever.

***

Iván and Nico, meanwhile, were being ridden by two girls in a race from one end of the hall to the other. Since there were bets and rivalry, everyone wanted to win, and the lashes across the two athletes’ thighs echoed off the walls.

In the third race, Iván was unlucky: he was ridden by Brenda, a chubby girl with red cheeks. Halfway through, the fighter could take no more and collapsed. Brenda did not take defeat well. She tried to get him back on all fours with lash strikes, unsuccessfully. Then, her cheeks puffed with rage, she dug her nails into the inner side of his thigh and squeezed.

—Aaaargh! —he howled.

But Brenda would not let go. She bit her lower lip while twisting with her delicate hand, harder and harder. She had never dominated a man like this before, and she was not about to give up that sensation so quickly. She might forget that afternoon years later. Iván, however, would never forget it.

Nico had been left without a rival… and in a curious situation.

—Look, girls, he’s enjoying it! —one of them pointed out, amused.

Laughter multiplied.

—Well, if he likes it, let’s give him more.

They put him on his knees on a small platform. The girls paraded past one by one, and each one pressed a foot down on him with calculated softness for a few seconds, crushing him beneath the sole. “Prize for the one who makes him finish,” someone announced. When Naima’s foot pressed down for the last time, Nico gave in to everyone’s cheers. When he left there, he could swear he had the imprint of every shoe from Belmonte stamped into him.

***

Eleonora had remained in the room throughout the whole spectacle, watching with her arms crossed. When the time came, she raised her voice.

—Girls, we’ll have to wrap up the party.

—Oooh! —they all protested at once.

—And aren’t we going to give these studs anything to eat before they leave? What an impression they’ll take away of us! —Vera said, pretending to be scandalized.

They brought four leashes and put them on the boys. They were already completely subdued, domesticated, ready to accept any order. Vera and three others walked them around the hall on all fours, while the rest threw nuts and pieces of sponge cake at them amid jeers; they were supposed to catch them in midair or pick them up off the floor. If any of them disdained the “delicacy,” a swat from his handler made him reconsider his discourtesy.

***

When they all left, the four athletes were left alone, lying on the stage. None of them could manage to say anything; only an occasional groan escaped. Dante began to sob and, by contagion, Iván was crying in spasms.

A long skirt and high heels approached slowly. It was Eleonora.

—Boys, I hope you’ve learned your lesson —she said calmly—. I think your arrogance, your conceit, and your big mouths have brought you exactly here.

Dante raised his head toward her. Then, slowly, he crawled across the floor. When he reached her height, he covered her feet and shoes with kisses.

—That’s a good answer —observed the tutor, serenely.

Hearing that, the other three crawled toward her as well, eager to make their submission clear, and began kissing her feet. Nico even licked them, as if wanting to underline his surrender even more.

Eleonora let that last for a few moments. She had four strong, muscular, naked, defeated young men kissing her feet and soaking them with tears. It was an intoxicating feeling of power.

She gave them permission to stand, though the most they could manage was to walk hunched over with effort, and accompanied them to the locker room. This time she went in with them; there was no point waiting outside anymore. She sat down while they dressed and looked them over, without hiding it. The girls had had their fun to the fullest.

She also thought of Hugo. Nadia had taken him to a room in another house on the complex: it was part of the agreement. With how much she wanted him, she preferred not to imagine what she would have done to him once she had him naked and at her mercy.

And then an idea crossed her mind.

***

Soon word spread through the area that something had happened at that party. Stories circulated, legends, rumors that no one knew whether were entirely true. And sometimes, repeated enough times, a legend ends up becoming a tradition.

From that academic year onward—and Eleonora had quite a bit to do with it—an event was institutionalized that came to be called, half in jest and half in earnest, the Belmonte Tribute. Every year, the students were entitled to choose four athletes from Aldama club for their end-of-course party.

As for what happened afterward, rumors always swirled. But no one, ever, knew for certain.