The fem/dom, Enigma, who’s acting hostess for the night, takes the leash from me and jerks hard to get her to the top of the three-step podium.
“Let’s have a look at your punished ass and this wet cunt.”
Enigma’s the queen of the night in black vinyl—not my particular choice, but she looks ravishing dressed this way. Then of course, she would look ravishing in anything. Her shocking red hair frames a face of noble arrogance. She steps out boldly in thigh-high boots that gleam in the fluttering candlelight. Her vinyl corset holds two proud breasts, while her nipples, pierced with gold bars, jiggle at the top. The rings that dangle from her ears drip with crystals like water splashing down a canyon. There’s a bit of a circus tramp about her extremes, but no one can quite match the dramatic vitality of her green eyes, or the way she wields her command in this place of power and abdication.
“First night?” she asks as she tugs Delia’s collar. The slave cringes. She’s on all fours catlike, her back is slightly arched, the most heavily punished of her flesh prominently on view.
“It is,” I answer for her.
“My, Heinrich, she took a lot of abuse. You are a nasty devil.” She speaks so sweetly, but there’s hardly much sweetness in the way she runs her burgundy nails along that punished skin. My slave holds on silently, but with great effort as the pain and exposure continue to humiliate her. She’s aware of those that watch with curious eyes burning into her wounds as if to make them more raw. Enigma’s nails run along the crack of her ass and my slave shudders more. “You missed this tender place.”
“Would you be that cruel on a first night?”
“Maybe,” she answers. Delia shrieks aloud with a nail biting the door of her anus. “I bet you wonder how that will feel?” she leans over with burgundy lips to Delia’s ear and whispers loudly. “Does this bother you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she croons without an ounce of sincerity. “You are a delightful one.” She takes a handful of Delia’s hair and jerks down so her shoulders hit the wood and her face is pressed to the hard board of the podium. Her ass juts out like a lewd offering.
“You didn’t do much damage to her back, or work her thighs as hard as I would have.”
“I’m not you, Enigma. And Delia’s not yours.”
“Delia, humm, delightful name.” This dom’s too proud to ask for a scene with my slave. Though even if she did, I wouldn’t permit it. Delia won’t be returning to Tethers soon—this mini initiation has its purpose, but I’d rather we have private sessions after this one. I imagine that she’ll agree with me once this embarrassing performance is over.
Still, my plans for Delia don’t prevent Enigma from greasing her middle fingers with lubricant and probing Delia’s virgin target. You’d think the slave was being ripped apart the way she jerks and groans unhappily under her breath.
“I’m being hard on you, I know, my dear one. But if you want to play in this world of ours you have to withstand a good deal of abuse. The sooner you learn to enjoy, the better.”
Abruptly withdrawing her fingers, there’s another gasp from the brunette, and Enigma is distracted by other matters.
Jerking the leash, Delia slavishly crawls from the perch to the floor, and then up the stairs to the main room. While her clothes wait for her there, I don’t allow her to dress. Instead, throwing Delia’s coat over her shoulders, she’s forced to walk from the club clutching her wrap awkwardly in front of her.
“Think about what’s happened tonight, Delia. The world I want you for is not a pretty place. It’s filled with treacherous people who will want you for nothing more than their own pleasure. But it’s a beautiful place if you allow it to get inside you. I hope this is what you were seeking.”
Her silence doesn’t bother me as much as the look in her eyes. Though, when she speaks her message defines the night for me as I hoped it would.
“I’m petrified, Mr. Keller. But I’ve never felt more myself.” That sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not unlike what I’ve experienced from Anna and dozens of other submissives I’ve known.
“Tonight, Delia, before you sleep, inspect your wounds carefully and masturbate to the feelings that arise. Let your mind take you where it will and don’t block what appears. You’ll tell me the details on Monday.”
Opposite the door to her apartment, she climbs from the car still clutching her coat around her. She struggles to keep the rest of her clothes inside. Still shuddering, still frightened, the sight is riveting. I can’t look away. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful as this. Not since Anna. Forgetting that bitch in favor of this beauty, I know I’m ready to begin again. I haven’t lost the dark edges of my character, or the ability to bring out the darkness in those I command.
Chapter Five
This day is filled with such tedious activity, the sort that doesn’t particularly challenge my brain. I can’t keep from focusing on Bernard. At times like this, I think about him constantly. My mind drifts from the bookstores inventory sheets to the remembrance of our last meeting a week ago. When I masturbate at night, or make love to Ian, all I can think of is when he might consent to give me what I need. I swear I can’t live without this. But it’s not going to happen the way things stand now.
I know the rules, and those rules condemn me to a lifeless void. I haven’t breathed a word about these things to Ian, but it’s been on the tip of my tongue a dozen times—just to see if I could make that kind of confession. I think he knows in some respects after some of what I told him about Heinrich. But that was so filled with bitterness and hate, I’m sure he thinks that there was nothing redeeming in my marriage, least of all my skewed sex life. What little he does for me in slaps to my ass, or a demanding attitude, pale next to the real need.
I may have to resort to something drastic. The more the fire in me builds the more the obsession takes over. I can see myself closing the shop at noon and hiking down to the leather boutique, it’s just down the street. Cavenor would know where there are hot parties these days and where Heinrich and Bernard won’t be. Why does just thinking about this feel sleazy? I’m not breaking any vows to anyone. Oh, maybe Ian, but he doesn’t count. That’s what Bernard doesn’t understand. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
My body screams for something and by lunchtime I can’t help myself. I take off, letting my assistant, Catherine, mind the store, while I slip out the back entrance, down the alley to the backdoor of Cavenor’s Leathers. This is sly, isn’t it? No one will see me enter, no one see me exit. Even if being here isn’t criminal behavior, I still act like it is. The smell of the merchandise assaults me in seconds. I hear chains rattling in the front room and moving down the stucco hall of the crumbling building, I peek beyond the doorway. Ah, the noise is just Cavenor handling bondage apparatus. Funny, after all this time I still shiver at the sight of it as though it were my first sighting.
“That you, Anna?” he says seeing me from the corner of his eye.
“Hi,” I walk boldly inside and plant a kiss on his cheek. He has a beard the look of a day’s growth—the kind purposely left that way. His butch hair is the same. There’s a three-inch ring in one ear lobe so he looks like a pirate most of the time. Leather pants, leather vest, what more could anyone ask of the proprietor of a fetish leather store. His face is usually blank—though he sometimes smirks—and his eyes never seem to change from their flat impassive look. But seeing me, he actually smiles for just a second before his expression returns to this austere one I’m used to.
“Haven’t seen you in months. Hear you cut loose from the bastard,”—he never liked Heinrich, though it was his party where we met when I was just a blank-late submissive with a thousand fantasies. I think Cavenor had plans for taking me and I got swept away by the charm of the handsome Heinrich Keller. “You look rosy as ever. Who’s reddening your ass and putting you in chains these days?”
“No one, that’s why I’m here.”
> “Oh, you want me now?”
“Actually, I was wondering if you knew of anything interesting and uncomplicated I could do—anything that steers clear of my husband and Bernard, preferably on the other side of town. Too many people know too many people around here.”
“Why the secret?”
“I don’t want to make explanations.”
“You’re divorced, honey.”
“You wouldn’t understand. But can you think of anything that might intrigue me? A private party perhaps?”
“I could rent you out.”
I turn up my nose. “That’s not exactly what I had in mind.”
“You can have me?”
“That either. You know the two of us wouldn’t work out.”
“I don’t know that at all.”
“Anything else?”
“Maybe. Might be a little risky.”
“In what way?”
“Party. New fellow. Nicky Salter. Wear something outrageous. He’s into costumes, showy; I’m not sure much real action. But you might like the company, and maybe arrange a scene if you’re lucky. Your old friends aren’t likely to even hear about this one, let alone show up. Heinrich’s been back at Tethers, hear he has a new woman.”
“Really?” I search my feelings for some flutter of jealousy but feel nothing.
Cavenor scratches an address on a slip of paper and hands it to me then returns to his chains. “Tell the fellow at the door I recommended you.”
“You going to be there too?”
“Late, after midnight. You’ll want to be there by ten.”
“Thanks.”
I give him a hug once he’s untangled himself from his chains and bondage gear. Taking a final breath of his murky air, I split out the back door and return to my bookshop. This way I can spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about something other than my “old” friends.
The party is a bust. At least for what I want.
Getting there, I skip out of Ian’s apartment, telling him I have some late inventory work I need to do at the store. That’s okay with him, he’ll be working on the Internet all night, some stock stuff that’s got him rattled. I know he’ll be buried in that world long into the night. My fetish leathers are in the bag I carry—just a short leather skirt and bustier. A little silver jewelry and I can walk into any bondage scene and feel completely at home. Certainly this should do for a party of newbies who are testing the S&M waters—or even those that only play at this sort of thing. I change at the shop and take a taxi to the address Cavenor gave me, arriving at a party that is exactly as predicted—maybe even worse. No, these are not serious S&M players, let alone people like me who need this lifestyle. Oh, there are some interesting sorts, lots of naked body parts—asses, cunts and breasts; pierced nipples, labia, frenum, septums, ears, eyebrows and lips; tattoos everywhere; paddles, whips, and canes dangling from waist belts. Still there’s not a real crack of a whip all night long. After nearly three hours, I realize that nothing more than teasing will take place the rest of the night. This is no more than a costume party. Drives me up a wall.
Nearing the end of my patience, I approach one interesting looking fellow who has all the moves of an accomplished dom from a distance, though he turns to jelly with me. I tease a little as I might have done the night I met Heinrich, but any seduction turns into nothing more than straight sex when he says, “let’s cut this scene, this stuff’s a little weird.”
“Then why are you dressed that way?”
“I like leather,” he says, “but this crowd is too extreme for me.”
“Extreme?”
“You don’t think people really like all this bondage stuff?”
“Yeah, I think they might.”
“Like who?”
“Like me,” I say as I walk away. Bet he’s a closet sub, and that thought makes me shiver to the core.
I can’t stand this kind of anticipation all for nothing, so I decide to leave. As I’m on my way out, I spy Cavenor. He shrugs at me and mouths, “I’m sorry,” as he sees me about to leave—despondently so. By the time I’m in the street, he’s at my shoulder.
“How about coffee?”
“Great idea, but I should probably change first.” I’m looking down at my tiny bustier and short skirt. “Or maybe we could just brew some at the bookstore.”
“Sure.”
Over coffee we talk about everything that doesn’t really matter to me, like scene gossip that I might have missed, and nothing about my fractured sex life. Then he suggests again that we go to the shop where he’ll take care of me. I graciously decline.
It’s nearly four o’clock before I arrive home. Ian is still working and he’s surprised that I’m so late once he sees the time.
“I fell asleep,” I tell him as I put my arms around him and give him a sleepy kiss on the cheek. “And I’m ready for more. You look tired, how about lets go to bed?”
“Good idea,” he smiles.
We slip off to bed; both too tired to make love, though the agitation in my belly has grown by leaps and bounds. I probably should have taken Cavenor’s offer and let him have me for a night. But he’s too much like a big brother, and I get squeamish, not at all turned on by the idea of him topping me. We just talked like good friends. There’s really little I can’t tell him, because he knows so much about me. I suppose it’s good to have people in your life you can say that about. Just friends.
***
I’m shelving books at three in the afternoon. The autumn sun pours through the windows heating the store till I’m really to turn on the air. But no. It’s fall. I want the windows open and the fresh October breeze. I hear the door bang, but thinking that Catherine’s in front, I don’t bother to stop what I’m doing and see who’s there. Seconds later, I’m feeling someone breathing down my neck. I jump, startled, and turn to see Bernard. He’s visibly angry.
“What the hell are you doing!” he blares at me in the loudest whisper he can manage.
“I should ask you the same question!” I whisper back as loudly as I can.
“You have a backroom here?”
“Yes,” I say, leading him through the storeroom door and closing it behind us. The air is close inside with no open windows. A shaft of sunlight blares through one hazy pane of glass, dust particles dancing in the insubstantial beam.
“You’re mad, how come?” I ask as I face Bernard’s imperious gaze.
“I was hoping this might be a time for you to reform yourself. To take stock of who you are and your insatiable and impatient need for self-serving sexual drama.”
“I have an insatiable need for sexual drama?” I leave out the self-serving purposefully. “You really think that about me?”
“Yes, I do.”
I never thought that about myself.
“Out in leathers with strangers on a Friday night?”
“Yeah, I was, and what’s wrong with that?” I still haven’t figured out where this conversation is leading. “How did you know, anyway?”
“You think you can go anywhere in this city’s underground and word doesn’t get back to me. You’re not exactly an unknown in the leather community.”
“It was a harmless party, Bernard,” I find myself needing to plead with him because this comes across as an accusation, “nothing happened, I swear. I left early, had coffee with Cavenor, that was it. And why the hell am I defending myself to you? You turned me down flat.” I’d never speak to this man so boldly if I thought I had anything to gain from being with him. But I’ve given up hope.
“You want me to punish you, Anna? You be at the house at 7:00 tonight. I suppose the problem I have with you is that I care. You will not go doing stupid things just to get under some dom’s rule.”
“I didn’t do anything stupid!” I spit out.
He doesn’t reply, but walks out the door leaving me completely dazed.
***
My insides are like jelly, my legs like putty. Long before I make the trip to B
ernard’s front door, the atoms in my body have conspired against me and I can hardly move. My crotch feels as though something’s clawing to get out. The labia are raw, the clit swollen, the hole a fountain of juice. The anticipation of my next hours makes my brain so dizzy, I can’t think. I keep tripping up on stuff around the store and Catherine’s getting pissed—and that’s a lot to say for the calmest person on the planet.
“What the he’ll eating you,” she suddenly barks at me in frustration.
“Hey, you’re working here, I pay your bills. Put up with me,” I snap miserably. It’s my final word.
She glares at me, pink little cheeks all hot. I glare back and walk away. Unable to cope with my present misery, I leave the shop by four. Maybe Catherine will quit before I return, but I don’t really care. I figure a warm bath should soothe some of my stress. But I don’t dare masturbate even as aroused as I am. I want to take all this bristling energy into the scene.
Arriving at Bernard’s door, Makaila answers my knock. Sometimes, I find her a strange companion for a dom like Bernard. She seems too submissive—too yielding. Does that even make sense? I don’t think so, she’s supposed to be submissive. But I figure Bernard would want a wife who’s more of a challenge for him. Someone like me. Still, Makaila seems perfectly content, and I’m certainly far from that.
I kiss her cheek warmly.
“He wants you in his chamber right away,” she tells me.
“I thought as much.” I suspect this will be pretty business-like. He’ll abuse my ass for an hour and probably get off inside it before he’s through. I’d really like something more inventive, but after the way he looked this afternoon, I figure the scene he has planned is an uncomplicated punishment. At this point, I don’t really care; I’m getting what I want. How I managed to provoke such a response in Bernard pleases me. I suppose I don’t realize my own power with him. Some men are so easily led, and I rather like that. But I’m sure he’ll make up for that minor weakness with some very nasty cracks to my ass which will make me wonder if I’m in my right mind doing this. All to a good end, of course. Clean me out of all the restless bogeymen who have been rattling in me for weeks.
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