The Apprentice

by Carrie Williams

  ‘I hear you’ve been a naughty girl,’ comes the husky voice I’ve heard only once thus far. It’s followed by a clicking sound from the corner of the room. I look over and see that Anne’s box of tricks has materialised from somewhere. It’s on her knee now, and she’s waving a hand around inside it. When it retreats, she’s holding a slender leather crop with a handle that looks as if it’s made from crystals. Like the paddle I used on James, it looks expensive. Anne doesn’t stint when it comes to sex toys.

  ‘Thanks.’ The girl reaches over and takes it from Anne, and the pair exchange a look. I wonder again at the lack of conversation between them since the girl arrived. Did they talk about this beforehand, plot it all out, or are they playing it by ear?

  I stop wondering as the tip of the crop rests on one of my buttocks, sending a buzz through me. My whole body tenses in readiness for the whipping that is due to me.

  ‘Yes, I have been a naughty girl.’ My voice sounds strange to me. Never in a million years would I have admitted that to Mrs Scholes – not even when the scolding was founded. Even when I had committed a misdemeanour, I made it a point of honour not to react to her rantings, but instead to stare out of the window, over the beeches in the school grounds to the fields beyond, where freedom lay. Now I realise that that may have been why she kept calling me back – my refusal to submit.

  Yes, I guess I had a problem with authority, and it’s time to accept my punishment, to admit that I’ve been a bad girl. I hitch my bum higher, thrusting my cheeks upwards and backwards towards the girl.

  ‘Hurt me,’ I whisper, and my voice seems even more alien than before.

  ‘What did you say?’ demands the girl, although I’m sure she heard. ‘Speak louder.’ Her own voice is cold, as harsh as a frosty winter’s day.

  ‘Hurt me.’ I close my eyes as I obey her, tasting the bittersweet flavour of submission. For someone with attitude problems the scale of mine, this is hard-going.

  ‘Again,’ she says. As she prods me with her words, she drives the tip of the quirt into the flesh of my arse cheeks. ‘Louder.’

  ‘Hurt me,’ I almost shout. I can’t bear this any longer, this painful and yet delicious wait. Can’t bear the excitement that is building up inside me, in my belly and my pussy and throat and my brain, exploding like fireworks behind my eyes. Who’d have guessed I’d be asking for it, begging for it, like this? If Nate could see me now …

  But she doesn’t hurt me, the girl. She teases me some more, first whipping the pillow in front of my head, then tracing the quirt, oh so slowly, so very slowly, over the nape of my neck and around to the sides of my throat, then down, down, over my shoulders and my lower back, so that I’m wondering if I’m going to lose consciousness and miss out on what’s in store, what’s coming with some kind of elemental force, like a cyclone.

  She leans forwards over me, and for a moment I feel the sheer material of her slinky dress against my back and the crush of her breasts. She reaches round me with one arm, grazes my clit with her fingertips but then removes them at once, uses her arm to lever me over so that I’m prone on the bed, looking up at her in surprise. But she seems to studiously avoid eye contact with me, concentrating first on untying the restraint around my wrists and then on the whip and its subtle manoeuvres. She’s a professional, that’s clear, and I wonder again where Anne found her. Did she just Google ‘London dominatrices’, or was she already in contact with this girl? Has she, even, used her before?

  My musings cede to the smack of the tip of the whip against one of the girl’s palms. ‘Pay attention,’ she barks, and I swallow, horrified and exhilarated at once. This is beyond what I have imagined pleasure could be, beyond all fantasy and speculation.

  I watch, wide-eyed, as she lowers the tip of the instrument to my skin – first my throat, then sweeping down over and around my breasts, encircling my nipples until I’m crying out, twisting and rocking on the bed, the sheets pulled up in my clenched fists.

  She carries on, down over my belly towards my bush and the moist opening that lies within my thatch. For a moment, again, she pauses at my clit, strokes it with the nub of the quirt. It leaps into life, like a little pink flame seeking pleasure, ardent. But it is denied satisfaction as she carries on down to the silken flesh of my inner thighs. I feel myself leaking nectar, drizzling the whip as it moves between my open legs. I want her to put it inside me.

  ‘Turn over,’ she commands, and I do her bidding, willingly. I close my eyes again in readiness for the whipping to commence.

  For a few seconds there is silence and stillness, and it’s at this moment that I remember Anne. I glance over towards her, but she isn’t looking in our direction. She’s looking down at her hands demurely folded in her lap, and I have the fleeting absurd conviction that she has fallen asleep, right there in her chair, with all this going on. But of course she hasn’t – I see the slow, measured batting of her eyelashes and realise that she’s gathering her thoughts before the storm that is about to be unleashed.

  She looks up, and I hear the whoosh of the crop through the air before I feel it on my buttocks. Anne, I realise, was giving the orders there. By raising her eyes, she was giving the signal. There’s a chain of command here and she’s at the top of it. Of course I knew that all along, since she’s the instigator and probably also the paymaster. But I suppose I didn’t realise to what level she’d be directing the course of events.

  My flesh stings madly as the crop strikes, and I jerk forwards, teeth clenched, eyes closed tight. ‘Aaaaaah,’ I manage, although I know that I am only on the first rung of the ladder of pain. How far are we going to go? Does it depend on me, on my assent, or is this in the girl’s hands now – or rather, in Anne’s?

  Suddenly I’m scared. I’m in too deep, I think, and this could get out of control. I clutch the sheets even tighter in my fists. A splash of crimson liquid onto the bed beneath me alerts me to the fact that I’ve bitten my lower lip so hard I’ve drawn blood. I watch as it spreads, forming a tear-shaped stain. As if that’s my cue, I allow my tears to come. They cool my blazing cheeks and also bring some relief to the tension I’m feeling.

  ‘Again.’ I wonder who it is inside me that is talking now. There’s another fearsome swoosh and then a biting, searing sensation that burns and burns. I scream, but there’s a sort of jubilation in it, a welcoming.

  ‘More. Harder.’

  The girl does what I say, and I feel a mental rush at having wrested control. Sure, I’m here because of Anne, for Anne in some ways. But I did ask for this, and now that it’s happening I’m asking for more, and getting it. I’m not a mere puppet.

  The crop comes down and down. The pain gets more and more intense, yet at the same time I seem to be developing some kind of immunity to it. It’s as if, in a way, I’m soaring up and out from my body, leaving it behind as I float somewhere high up. Just as when you orgasm, there’s the paradoxical feeling of being taken out of yourself right at the moment of the greatest physicality.

  I’m close to coming, of course, but I won’t unless I can reach my clit with my fingers, which is impossible at the moment, given that I’m leaning face down on my elbows. In any case, I’d like the girl to do it. I’d like her to roll me over again and tease me with the end of the crop, brush my clit with it until it stands to attention like the tiny phallus that it is, then bring her mouth to me so that she can taste my sweet juices as I open and close like a flower in fast-motion, over and over.

  I reach behind me, grab the crop and halt its motion. I’m looking over my shoulder as I do so, and I see the girl look questioningly at Anne. The latter nods, then she looks at me.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she says, and I can’t help but let out a whimper of dissatisfaction.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she repeats, even more sternly. ‘You may retire to your room.’

  What if I don’t want to? I want to scream at her. What if I don’t fucking want to? And what if she doesn’t want me to? But I don’t say that, of cours
e. To do so would be a mistake, an error of strategy. For this is a game surely. For the moment I am Anne’s pawn, but I’m beginning to suspect that it won’t always remain that way. Anne may not realise it, may not have thought this through properly, but the more self-awareness I gain, the more powerful I am going to become. It may not show right away, but it’s inevitable.

  I climb off the bed, gather my clothes in my arms and head for the door without looking at either of them. Already to do that seems like a small victory. Anne, I suspect, wanted me to plead with her to let us carry on. But I won’t. That’s one thing she won’t get out of me – or not unless I think I have something to gain by doing so.

  I close the door quietly behind me. There’s no drama here, no sulking or tantrums. I will bide my time, study Anne’s moves until I can begin to anticipate them and in doing so gain some measure of dominion.

  Walking up the stairs to my attic room, I wonder what is happening in the guest room now that I am gone. Are they talking, discussing what happened, how I reacted? Is Anne handing over some money to the girl, thanking her? Or are they chatting like the friends that they are? I’m unable to know, but it’s a measure of how far I’ve come that I have to suppress a chuckle as I run through the options.

  * * *

  Lying on my bed, I finger the tender oyster flesh of my buttocks. It’s sore, to be sure, but the skin hasn’t been broken. I wonder how hard you have to be whipped to bleed and then to scar, and I flinch inwardly. I reached my own pain barrier downstairs in the guest room tonight. I can’t imagine being taken any further than that, or why one would want to. Those are depths I will not sound.

  I reach for my diary, start scribbling in an attempt to untangle the knot of my thoughts, decipher my very mixed feelings about what I have just been through – what I put myself through of my own volition. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined submitting myself to the ministrations of a dominatrix, but I did, and now I have to understand that.

  The words and phrases come disjointed, staccato, but through them there begins to emerge some kind of picture involving my feelings towards older women in positions of authority – my mother, Mrs Scholes, Anne. As a little kid, I remember, I was almost instinctively naughty, unerringly doing the wrong thing. My mother was a cold woman, emotionally distant and disengaged. I haven’t thought about all this in years, because she died when I was in my mid-teens, by which stage I’d been in boarding school for several years anyway, and so could scarcely miss her. But now I wonder if she might have suffered from post-natal depression. Certainly, there was little bonding between us. Again, looking at events with hindsight, I wonder if my persistently bad behaviour might have been a cry for attention, a way of trying to get her to take notice of me?

  And that carried on into school. Rather than apologising to Mrs Scholes, I kept her interest up in me by ignoring her reprimands, staring out of the window. It was flattering, in a way I couldn’t articulate at the time, even to myself, to be called in to see her so often. As well as giving me a cool status among my classmates, it made me feel important, noticed.

  I put down my pen, get up and go to my window, staring out into the darkness beyond. Is this what I am reliving with Anne, these ancient wounds? Is that why I found the girl and her crop so compelling?

  I lie down again, letting the tears come. It’s like an unbottling, an uncorking of stale air and bad memories. Immense sadness overwhelms me, and yet at the same time I feel relief to have recognised all this at last. For only in recognising it can I hope to overcome it.

  I curl up on the bed. After a few minutes I let one hand trail down to my buttocks. I skim the sore flesh with my fingertips. I won’t, I think, be whipped again. I don’t regret it. I even enjoyed it – a lot. But it’s done, and it’s not part of me any more. I’m moving forwards. I’ve been punished enough.

  As if in response to my thoughts, there’s a gentle rap on the door, like a caressing of the wood, so soft that I’m not even sure that it happened at all.

  ‘Come in,’ I hazard.

  The door opens slowly. A girl stands there, in jeans and a sweatshirt. Cropped blond hair, green slanting eyes. She smiles shyly. It’s Roberta, I think. Roberta and the girl on the internet, the one who looked like her. She’s come – they have come – to give me solace.

  She steps up to the bed without a word, and her smile is like that of an angel. I tell myself I must have dozed off, but, when her hand rests on my buttock, I know it can’t be a dream. I quiver inside, like a violin being properly tuned for the first time. Her touch is sure, good, real. I moan, fling my hands back over my head. I open my legs.

  ‘Feel me,’ I whisper. ‘How wet I am.’

  The girl goes down on me and I almost pass out with pleasure. Her tongue jabs at my clit, over and over, and then she begins to nibble it with her small, regular teeth. I hold the sides of her face, her satinesque cheeks, and raising my own head and shoulders look down at her. This is a gift, I think. A gift from Anne. A reward after the punishment I underwent.

  But how could Anne know about Roberta? It was only downstairs that I began thinking about her, after I left Anne’s room. And I said nothing to my mentor about my schoolgirl crush when I went back up to her room with the parcel. I showed her only the dangerous-looking girl, Keira.

  Then I remember what sparked off the whole reminiscence about Roberta – the picture of the girl on the internet, the one who reminded me of Roberta. For Anne to know about them, she must have been spying on me somehow. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have made it all the way downstairs without my hearing her, which must mean that her computer upstairs must somehow be linked to the downstairs laptop, giving her access to what I was looking at.

  But I don’t care. It doesn’t seem important now, here, with this girl between my legs, casting all my worries aside, making them dissolve like smoke in the rain. Bringing my hands away from her lovely elfin face, I try to prise myself still further apart, wanting her inside me. She looks up, smiles at me with what seems like utter sincerity, and then watches herself push two, three, fingers inside me.

  My hands clamp the sides of her head again, and I begin to thrust my crotch up and down, meeting the movement of her hand as it pushes in and then withdraws a little. With the thumb of her free hand she’s massaging the eager little bead of my clit. I’m going crazy, but I want to touch her too. I’ve had enough of being on the receiving end tonight.

  Sitting half up, without upsetting the girl’s motions, I reach for her sweatshirt and start to tug it up over her neck. Beneath it she’s naked, bra-less. Her tits are magnificent: medium-sized, fleshy, downy as peaches. She’s lightly tanned, with rashes of freckles on her forearms and below her clavicle. I could eat her, I really could. I hope she’ll let me.

  She rolls back, undoes her flies and starts to shimmy her jeans off, little by little, revealing long brown legs covered with little blond hairs that shimmer in the low light. She’s beautiful, but in an ordinary, unthreatening way. Unlike with the dominatrix, I feel that I am in the presence of an equal, and that that means I can have some fun. What happened with the other girl may have been enjoyable in a dark way, but fun it was not. Or not my idea of fun.

  As if she’s reading my mind, the girl reaches one hand around my head and pulls me into her, pushes her tongue inside my mouth and wraps it around mine. It’s my first snog with a girl and I feel shy but enraptured as we probe each other’s mouth, growing braver by the minute. Her breath is minty and fresh. She’s like a great big gust of country air after the grime of the city. I close my eyes and we’re rolling around in a summer meadow together, crushing wildflowers as we frolic like lambs.

  After a while I dare to reach between her legs. Here, again, she’s unshaven but not unkempt, her bush a tiny little powderpuff of burnt-sugar hair. She leans right back and I bury my face in it, inhale its candyfloss sweetness as I look up towards her breasts. In front of them I see her nipples, pink and hard, like new rosebuds. As I place
my tongue against the nub of her clit, I lift my hands to her globes and savour their glorious perkiness.

  She’s moved up the bed during all of this, and her shoulders and head are now tipped over the end of it, so that I can’t see her face any more. But I can hear her moaning, and I know I’m doing the right thing. Then suddenly it strikes me that there’s been no sign of Anne, and that that’s odd. I look towards the door. It’s still half-open from when the girl came in, but there’s no sign of my mentor. I’m glad, but at the same time I’m surprised, mystified and worried. What does it mean, that she’s sent me this girl but doesn’t want to watch? Has the game come to an end? Is this my prize?

  With effort I tell myself to forget it, to just let myself get lost in the moment. I think too much, although as a would-be writer I can’t see that that’s a bad thing. How can I render all this in prose if I don’t analyse it, dissect it?

  As if sensing my ardour diminish as I distance myself from what’s going on, the girl sits up and places herself in front of me. For a moment we sit face to face, regarding each other. Although we are dissimilar in appearance, for a moment I have the disconcerting sensation that I am in front of a looking glass, seeing a mirror image of myself. This is a girl like me, an ordinary girl. What is there to draw me to her? How can you want what you are?

  Her eyes are understanding, tolerant, non-confrontational. They are kind eyes, but they can’t take me anywhere I haven’t been, I realise. Not like the dominatrix. So what’s the point?

  She brings her hand back down to my pussy, slides her fingers through my slick lips to my hole. They slide inside me easily, and I let myself fall back. With one arm outstretched, I reach for my bedside drawer, pull it open and feel for my Rock Chick. I bring it to my mouth, put one end of it in and coat it with my saliva. Then I bring it down to the girl’s pussy where she’s sitting astride me. She looks at me with wide questioning eyes.