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by Clarice Clique

  Dean bit down on his lip. It was him who was having to wait for her, but he knew instinctively that she would shut the chat down if he argued with her. He answered her truthfully trying not to betray his own frustration and desperate hopes. I’m not talking to any other women. Please excuse me, I have dyslexia. I know I write slowly as I try not to make any mistakes.

  He imagined her tone of voice as she told him off for not typing fast enough. He thought of her having dark scarlet lips, white teeth, long legs. She’d be wearing black stockings and high stiletto heels. He wanked his hand faster.

  Wickedgirl: Are you touching yourself right now?

  ‘Yes, mistress.’ Dean said the words aloud before he typed them.

  Wickedgirl: Did I give you permission?

  ‘No, mistress.’

  Wickedgirl: Squeeze your balls.

  Dean obeyed. I’ve done it.

  Wickedgirl: Have you stopped? Did I tell you to stop?

  No, mistress. I have started squeezing again.

  Wickedgirl: Harder.

  Dean dug his fingers into his groin with as much pressure as he dared.

  Wickedgirl: Stop now.

  Dean exhaled. Thank you, mistress. His fingers shook as he typed.

  Wickedgirl: Mistress is always with a capital M. Write it out a thousand times.

  Yes, Mistress. I’m sorry, Mistress.

  Wickedgirl: Tell me everything about you and I’ll decide whether you’re worthy.

  The chat window closed.

  Dean stared at the computer, then he glanced down at his balls. Somehow they felt sorer now than when he was squeezing them under her command.

  He went to the bathroom and wanked until he came; he visualised the words she’d typed as if they were physical things pulsing through his body and at the very centre of his orgasm.

  He flushed his spunk away and cleaned himself at the sink; his body still felt so sensitive, as if it was on the precipice of a climax rather than content and satisfied.

  He went back to his desk, found a pad of fine writing paper and began writing the word “Mistress” over and over again, ten times per line, a hundred lines.

  When he finished he folded it up carefully and put it in the middle of his most expensive, indulgent possession, a first edition of Lord of the Rings printed on India paper. Then he ignored the tiredness of his limbs and wrote a long message to Wickedgirl, often deleting and rewriting.

  At 5 a.m. he went to bed feeling more content than he had for a long time. He put his hands together on his chest and said a silent prayer that she would reply to him. Then he fell into a deep, happy sleep, filled with dreams of a harsh mistress who stood in the shadows so he couldn’t make out her features, but he could hear her laughter and how she mocked him as he wanked his cock for her amusement.

  ‘Have you tried internet dating?’ My mother’s voice was distorted by the speaker phone and sounded too loud and tinny.

  My mother never required me to speak much in these monthly dutiful phone calls that she made to me; we both endured them out of some sense of family commitment buried so deep in our respective consciousnesses that neither of us could find it and yank it out. So, rather than replying, I finished the last stroke of green on my final finger and inspected my work. If I’d created nail art, it was of the postmodern, abstract, I’ve-just-been-dumped-by-my-boyfriend sort.

  ‘I read in my magazine it’s what all the young women are doing nowadays. It’s the perfect way to meet a man directly suited to your needs, and if we’re being honest, you’ve been single for a long time and need a little help. In fact, I was only speaking to your sisters about this the other day. None of us could remember a boyfriend you’ve had since college. Would you like me to send you the article? I’ll do it; I’ll send it to you first thing tomorrow. Don’t be ashamed or worried about it. There’s nothing seedy about internet dating sites any more, it’s not about men looking for sex; if you take precautions you’ll be perfectly safe. You’ll read all about it in the article. But it’s late now, dear, and I need to get some sleep. I’m sure you do too. Night, love.’

  ‘Night, Mum.’ I clicked the phone off and, for once, thought about what my mother had said.

  Her regular lecture about finding a partner was particularly well timed at the moment to carry extra sting, but still, what had her phrase been? “A man directly suited to your needs”.

  I got a bottle of cheap white wine, stuck it in the freezer for five minutes while I foraged in the fridge for food. I’d broken most of my glasses so pulled a Wonder Woman mug from the cupboard; I found my laptop under a pile of paper, takeaway menus, and an old copy of Penthouse – how did junk accumulate so quickly, and when exactly had my home started to resemble the state of my mind? – and settled down on my bed.

  The first site that came up from my search – “casual no strings attached adult dating” – was the one I clicked on, although the succinctly named “shagbook” further down the page caught my eye and almost tempted me. But I didn’t want to think about it too much. I didn’t want to spend time on pointless decisions, this was meant to be easy or it lost all appeal, so I remained with the site at the top of the search page.

  I chose the name “Wickedgirl”, thinking of something my lover once called me, his perfectly wicked girl. Was it too personal? It didn’t matter, it was available. I wasn’t going to sit there for five minutes making up some virtual life moniker.

  The profile bored me immediately. Why would I want to interact with someone who cared about eye colour and body weight? The list of likes was inanely disappointing:

  oral giving, oral receiving, anal receiving, same sex fun, couples/swinging, threesomes, groups, toys, dressing up, exhibitionism, voyeurism, dogging, SM, bondage, master/slave, parties, watersports

  It made sex seem so simple, so uncomplicated, so different from my lover’s hand around my throat and my nails digging into the flesh of his back.

  But this was what I wanted. Something with no pain, no heart; something new and easy that I could go back to my lover with and say I had more experience and he could trust my choice.

  I put 100 per cent on all the likes, pausing only to consider whether you had to be part of a twosome to have a preference for “couples/swinging”, before reminding myself I did not care enough to spend any thought on this process.

  Chats started opening within seconds of me submitting my profile.

  They ranged from “hi, how are you?” to “tell me exactly how you’re wicked”, and “do you want to cam with me and watch me come?”

  I tried to reply to them all, but more kept popping up. Having eight conversations going at once without having a single one that interested me was more demanding than I wanted. I started to flick through their profiles and they all merged into one anonymous, average man.

  Maybe that was what I wanted; I didn’t want a connection or a bond. A man directly suited to your needs. Someone I would use for sex and they’d use me for sex, the very basic male/female transaction.

  A vague attraction would be nice, though. I mentally sorted them into “definite nos” and “maybe nos”. Then I noticed a button to click which told you who had looked at your profile. If I was going to choose one of these, I might as well choose one who had shown enough interest to look at my profile, such as it was, rather than just spamming every female online to see who responded.

  One name stood out, and it wasn’t one who was chatting to me; slavetothee.

  slavetothee.

  I remembered being hogtied on the floor of my lover’s lounge. He read Shakespeare’s sonnets to me as he traced the curves of my breasts with the edge of a crop.

  slavetothee.

  Why wasn’t this man talking to me?

  Why was I passively waiting for the right sex partner to find me?

  I closed all the other chat windows and started a new chat with slavetothee. You looked at my profile.

  I did.

  I emptied my mug of wine and refilled it. So
why didn’t you talk to me? I like your name.

  After an age in which half a dozen different men had tried to start conversations with me, finally he replied, I wasn’t sure you’d be interested in me.

  I’m not sure that I’m interested in you. There was a definite freedom in this internet dating thing. Without seeing the other person’s face, there was no burden to be polite, and if someone hassled you, you could just press the block button.

  Another age passed. I started to browse what other men were saying to me in their chats. There was no reason to waste my night on this one just because his name had reminded me of my lover.

  Madam, may I please ask you a question?

  I thought about just saying no, but I was curious about what he wanted to know about me. If it’s an appealing one.

  On one of the other chats the name BuckingBronco made me smile, I looked to see what he was saying.

  BuckingBronco: You sound like a girl who’d be able to hold on for a long hard ride ;)

  Perhaps the extra bit of wine made his come-on more appealing than all the others I’d read tonight, but something twinged between my legs at the thought of telling my lover I’d been riding a man all night. I imagined sweaty, slippery bodies in a darkened room. I imagined my lover’s hand spanking my cheating pussy.

  Wickedgirl: Are you the kind of beast that a girl wants to ride long and hard?

  BuckingBronco: I have a big, thick cock that is desperate for a hot bitch to be sliding on him.

  “Bitch” was my key word, especially when it was linked to “big, thick cock”.

  Wickedgirl: I’ll ride you harder than you’ve been ridden before if you pull on my nipples as I grind down on you.

  I could copy and paste this text and email it all to my lover; online was much better than hooking up with a random guy in a bar. I bit down on my lip, thinking how my lover would react when he read it.

  I noticed slavetothee had replied. Already I’d almost forgotten about him.

  slavetothee: I noticed on your profile that you show an interest in master/slave play. May I enquire whether you are submissive or dominant?

  I read the question through a few times. It made my chest hurt. It was why his name had caught my attention in the first place. It was what was at the centre of my heart; the man who made me want to obey his every word, glance, gesture.

  I typed an answer with heavy fingers. submissive.

  I stared at the screen, awaiting this stranger’s reply. For distraction from all this emotion I was trying not to acknowledge, I flicked back and continued talking to BuckingBronco, but the conversation seemed vapid rather than enticing. I looked straight back when slavetothee finally replied.

  Forgive me for wasting your time. I am looking for a new mistress.

  And that was that, a meaningless encounter with a stranger. Not even an encounter, just typing a few words to be forever lost in the vast ether world of the internet.

  I stared at the computer screen. Chat messages from BuckingBronco kept flashing up. I ignored them and gazed at slavetothee’s words.

  I thought about resting my head on my lover’s chest and listening to the steady beat of his heart. That’s what normal women who were in love did, wasn’t it? Listen to the thump-thump of their boyfriend’s heartbeat and feel secure and comforted? It made me scared. I dragged my nails down his stomach, defying him to be more than flesh and blood. I gripped his cock and begged him to be greater than a man. I swallowed his sex in mine and roared at him to be eternal and never to leave me alone in this forsaken world.

  I rubbed my hand over my forehead, conscious that it was a gesture of my mother’s, a powerless attempt to erase all the unwanted memories. I bit on my nails, an old teenage habit, not caring that I was chewing through an evening spent carefully painting them.

  Then I typed another message to slavetothee.

  I can try domming if that’s what you like.

  This was new, this was fresh, this was different. Would this please my lover?

  His reply appeared on the screen after a long pause. I would like that very much.

  I closed the chat off with BuckingBronco and recalled the first time with my master. Except I didn’t know what counted as our first time. His hand brushing accidentally against mine and sending pulses of sexual energy through my whole being. Our eyes meeting across the clichéd crowded room and immediately knowing we belonged outside in the midnight shadows, my skirt around my waist, my knickers ripped, the roughness of a brick wall scraping against the flesh of my buttocks as he thrust inside me. Or was it the kiss, which came after the sex and the biting and the scratching and the spanking, the kiss that shocked me with its tenderness and made tears sting my eyes?

  Another message flashed up from slavetothee. My mind was in the wrong place; I forced myself to refocus on what I was doing, sitting on my own in a dark room, the glow of the computer screen providing the only light as I swapped fantasies with strangers.

  I read the new message through twice.

  May I suggest that you would get better responses if you give more details on this site? I’d like to know what colour eyes you have.

  Was this how slaves spoke to their mistresses, with smarmy knowing comments as if they were the superiors? I imagined a grown man dressed as a schoolboy reporting to the teacher all the things the other pupils did wrong and implicitly implying that she didn’t know how to control her class.

  But if that was my metaphor, then that made me the teacher, and it was true I had no idea what to do with a submissive.

  And why did he want to know the colour of my eyes? Was he somewhere at his computer screen wanking away muttering “yeah bitch, show me those eyes, fuck, you’ve got brown eyes, brown eyes make me so hard, I’m going to come, I can’t hold back, urggghhh”, white, sticky spunk shooting all over his keyboard.

  I smiled, and it gave me the confidence to reply to the slave.

  Don’t ask questions. That’s your first rule. I’ll tell you anything that you need to know. I’ll ask the questions, like why does it take you so long to reply? It’s not acceptable to keep me waiting. I bore easily. How many other women are you talking to right now?

  After another long wait he replied. I’m not talking to any other women. Please excuse me I have dyslexia. I know I write slowly as I try not to make any mistakes.

  ‘Fuck,’ I said to my empty room. My first attempt at this and I wasn’t the sexy teacher, I was the school bully picking on someone for their impediment.

  This poor slavetothee could have been talking to a real dom, but I had approached him and distracted him from his true reason for being on this site in the middle of the night; to meet someone who shared your desires and gave the illusion that you weren’t alone in this world.

  I’d started this, I determined to finish it. I told him off for wanking, ordered him to squeeze his balls, and gave him some stupid punishment. Then I switched the laptop off, pushed it to the other side of the bed, and fell into a deep, wine-fuelled, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Five - Work

  I was working overtime, the way you do when you don’t have a lover to tie you to the bed and feed you honey off the tip of his cock. It was the weekend; in my memory the empty office was glowing yellow from the rays of the spring sun shining through the blinds with all the furious heat it possesses after a long dull winter.

  As I remember it, it was a successful morning; I’d completed my report, scored a new personal best at minesweeper, and resisted phoning my lover to plead with him to fuck me stupid.

  Then I heard a sound behind me. I wasn’t alone. I’d got to know the evening cleaners pretty well since the separation from my lover, but none of them came in on Saturdays. I turned around and saw Joe standing there. He stood to an awkward attention and his eyes roamed to every part of the office apart from me.

  ‘Stand easy, soldier.’ I winked at him.

  His shoulders relaxed a fraction and he managed to look at me with a shy smile.


  ‘Why are you acting all strange? Hard night partying? Have you been training to be the first man to run up Ben Nevis with your hands wrapped in barbed wire carrying the world’s heaviest person on your back, or whatever other madness it is you get up to when no one’s looking?’

  He forced a laugh. I gave him a half smile, and was about to swing my chair back to face my computer screen when words bubbled out of his mouth.

  ‘What are you doing here? I’ve noticed that you don’t come to the pub so much any more, but you’re working ridiculous hours. There are rumours that you’re seeing Marcus.’

  ‘People are gossiping that I’m spreading my legs for the boss? Saying I’m the type of slut who sleeps with married men? And you’re listening?’ I giggled at the idea. my best days were when Marcus was away on one of his frequent (but not frequent enough) overseas trips and I could spend happy hours chatting to the girls, take my time over lunch, even pretend I was a smoker and pop out with my friends when they took a break. Once I’d even brought vodka into the office in water bottles and we’d got merrily drunk over our sandwiches and done some of our finest work ever in the afternoon.

  Joe continued speaking. ‘I mean, if you want to put in overtime, why are you here? You could work from the comfort of home like everyone else does?’

  ‘Who wants to work at home?’ I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Home is for vegging in front of trashy television and ordering takeaways.’

  ‘You’ve never been that ambitious or diligent at work before, why now?’

  I gave him a look of mock hurt, but when I spoke my voice came out raw and honest. ‘Because my lover doesn’t want to see me and I’m fed up with how lonely my flat feels. And I don’t want to go out right now because I’ll get drunk, start crying, and end up inviting all the girls back for an extremely ill-advised lesbian orgy at my place.’ I tried to smile, but my heart was heavy in my chest.

  Joe blushed. ‘Look, I can see this isn’t a good time, but I’m not sure when will be a good time. I wish you were still coming out, though, because this would be so much easier with a bit of alcohol, but you’ve trusted me with the truth so I’ll trust you too. I’ve always felt there is a connection between us, I’ve been – been in love with you since the moment I saw you. You’ve probably guessed.’ He lowered his eye.