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by Clarice Clique

  ‘Rock cakes? All our time together and I never knew you liked baking.’

  ‘I’ve made you cakes before!’ My voice came out all high-pitched and defensive.

  ‘Because I’ve ordered you to.’

  ‘I always want to serve you and make you happy, that makes me happy.’ I sighed, deep and heavy, as if I was exhaling my actual life essence. ‘You know me. I don’t like baking. It’s just something from my childhood. Something my gran used to say. Her secret recipe for rock cakes. I don’t know why I mentioned it. It has no relevance. I’m all over the place at the moment.’ I stroked my fingers over the part of the phone which was delivering his voice to me. ‘I don’t like the world without you by my side, without knowing that you’re there when I need you. The guy I had sex with, he wanted more. He said he was in love with me and it was so horrible telling him I wasn’t interested. He’s just a work colleague, someone I hardly give a passing thought to. How can you do it to me? How? When we’re so close, so the same, when my heart beats to please you, how can you say that you don’t want to see me?’

  ‘I do want to see you.’ His voice was soft. I was scared I’d imagined his words.

  ‘Then see me. I’ll be with you straight away.’ My own voice came out strangely soft and fragile. ‘I was so lucky that we met when I was young, that I didn’t have to struggle through all this meeting people thing, hoping and praying that you somehow match up with a near stranger and keep on matching each other through your lives and your personalities don’t twist in different directions. Just one night on the internet and I can see how difficult and painful dating is. And the guy who fucked me, he didn’t do it how I wanted, how I like it with you, but for some reason I couldn’t tell him to fuck me harder, or spank me. I don’t want to be so vulnerable with anyone else. You’ve been through it all with your wife; you know better than me what it’s like. And you saved me from all this, so why are you throwing me back into it now?’

  ‘You don’t understand yet. It’s not a good reason to stay with me, sweetheart, because you’re scared of the rest of the world.’

  For a moment I thought he’d gone. I pressed my ear against the phone until it hurt. There were tears in my eyes that had nothing to do with Hugh Grant finally kissing the women of his dreams on the television screen.

  I heard my lover’s breathing. He was still there. He was still with me.

  I had a chance; I just needed the right words. My mind was blank.

  Silence.

  ‘Be a good girl and look after yourself, be safe.’

  The phone went dead.

  This time he was gone.

  I stared at the phone for a while, feeling I’d been cruelly betrayed by an inanimate object. I threw it in the direction of the perfect people celebrating their perfect happy ending in their perfect film-scripted world. It bounced off Hugh Grant’s charming, smiling face and landed with a clunk on the floor.

  I tried to remember exactly what I had said to my lover.

  The wrong thing.

  The wrong thing.

  The wrong thing.

  Had it sounded like I only wanted to be with him because I was too shy to tell a man with a huge cock to fuck me harder?

  And I’d mentioned his wife. I’d actually mentioned his fricking wife. Way to go in convincing a man to commit to you by making him think about the woman he’d completely trusted who’d almost succeeded in completely breaking him.

  Why couldn’t I have explained it right? Told him in a way he could believe in that I loved him, that I was lost without him, that I hadn’t truly wanted Joe to spank me, that I wanted the things I did with my lover to remain unique and special. I wanted to belong to him and him only.

  I retrieved the phone and took several deep breaths. But I couldn’t dial the number. What if I did say it right and he still rejected me? What could I do then?

  I placed the phone carefully on the side, switched the television off, and switched my laptop on.

  Our relationship made most sense when I didn’t think about it, when my brain was calm and my spirit was free and I just knew that everything was how it was supposed to be. So I wouldn’t think, I would do. I wouldn’t analyse, I would flirt and fuck with more people. I wouldn’t worry, I would return to my lover and tell him I understood, I’d experienced enough of the world and I wasn’t scared of it, I just didn’t want it. I wanted him. I always wanted him, for ever and ever until death us do part. And it would work. If I didn’t think.

  I went to the website that I’d made a profile on. A message flashed up in my inbox. I clicked it open.

  It started “Dear Mistress” and ended, after reams of words in one block paragraph, “with much respect from your pathetic slave”.

  It was from slavetothee; the name that had made me think of my master.

  What had I said to him? I barely remembered the details of our conversation. I noticed the chat history button and scanned through what I’d said. The last thing being tell me everything about you and I’ll decide whether you’re worthy.

  Why had I said that? I hadn’t had any intention of speaking to him again. Had I? Fuck knows.

  But he had responded to me. I started to read through his clunky sentences and bad spelling and was going to give up before I recalled he was dyslexic and I felt guilty again for mentally tiring of his mistakes.

  He told me that his mother had died when he was a child, immediately dipping into the natural empathy I felt for anyone who had lost a parent.

  He said his dad had quickly remarried a woman slavetothee suspected he was seeing while his mother was still alive. She didn’t like children, so eventually him and his brothers and sisters had been separated and sent off to live with various relatives. He’d ended up in Devon with grandparents – well, at least Devon was pretty, but that was the only tiny positive. Who could resist such a tragic childhood story? Not a girl like me who was already so emotionally sad that she cried at predictable, manipulative romantic comedies.

  Then it got confusing as he started to write about his sexual experience. I didn’t quite get how many mistresses he’d had. One seemed to have finished with him for little reason, leaving him empty and disappointed. Empty and disappointed. Unfortunately, there was nothing confusing about those words.

  He said he liked having cigarettes put out on him and something about masturbating in front of mistresses.

  I paused for a moment, then flicked to his profile. I could only see his photo when I added him to my contacts, but there was nothing obscene or private about it. He was wearing a shirt and tie with jeans, sitting on a nondescript bench with nondescript countryside in the background. He was smiling, but it was the kind of smile you gave when you were posing for some work photo and someone had told you to look relaxed and happy. He was of slim build, very white, nothing remarkable about him. Examining the photo, I thought that maybe his nose was slightly too big, or slightly too angular for his oval face, but it was a small thing. He was average-looking, non-threatening, perhaps approachable, perhaps friendly.

  I imagined him naked in front of me, me pressing a cigarette into the pale flesh of his cock. Could I do that? Did I want to do that?

  No. No.

  My lover occasionally smoked; outside his back door, leaning against the wall, staring up at the night sky (it always seemed to be late at night when he reached to the back of the pasta cupboard to retrieve his emergency box).

  ‘Forgive me,’ he’d said. ‘It’s a filthy habit.’

  ‘I like filthy things,’ I’d said, but felt secretly ashamed of how attractive and sexual I found him with the cigarette between his lips and the way he breathed out thin curls of smoke into the cold night air.

  My lover had never pressed the fiery end into my skin, though, and the thought of doing it had somehow never crossed my mind until now. He’d melted candles and let the wax drop onto the bare skin of my stomach. He’d cut off a lock of my hair and burnt it in the bathroom sink.

  I’d once read
an erotic novel with branding in it and been excited, titillated, and relieved that the burning flesh was held safely within the pages of a book.

  I focused back on slavetothee. His tag was “willing to please and serve to your demands”.

  Willing?

  My whole being, every nerve ending, every skin cell, every muscle fibre, yearned to be kneeling before my lover again.

  Willing. This wasn’t about love. I wasn’t even sure it was about passion. This site was about trying, with the least possible hassle, to find someone who would fulfil your base sexual needs and not judge you.

  That was how it worked, wasn’t it? If watersports was your thing, you didn’t need to have the courage to approach girls in the club; then, after many dates and lots of expensive presents and less expensive compliments, summon the bravery to confess that what you wanted most in the world, more than anything else she could ever do for you, was to have her squat over you and let her warm piss stream down on your face. All you had to do was log on to a site like this one, find someone who had it in their profile, and type out a few exploratory chats in the comfort and safety of your own room.

  slavetothee’s next line was “obedient, looking to worship a strict mistress who demands obedience”.

  Lots of emphasis on obedience. Wasn’t that assumed in a sub/dom relationship, though, or what was the point? Although I supposed there were those bratty types who constantly liked to fight and be reined in.

  There was nothing else that interesting in his profile; the thing that stood out was how uninteresting it was. No drugs, no tattoos, no piercings, clean shaven. He lived about 50 miles away, not too far. But he was looking for erotic mail or chat. That could suit me. No meetings. No puppy eyes begging me to love him. I could tell my lover I’d had new experiences without actually having new experiences. No mess. No hurt.

  But how did I go about this?

  No thinking.

  I typed a quick reply telling him to give me his mobile number, then shut the computer off and went to see if there was any reality show on telly that could kill enough time before bed.

  No thinking.

  Chapter Six - Crimson

  Dean didn’t think he had ever been as familiar with anything in his life as he now was with the square foot of carpet he stared down at. He knew the exact proportion of the leaves to the flowers, how many petals, how many fronds; the spot which for a long time he puzzled over being an asymmetric part of the pattern, but eventually decided was a food stain, probably curry.

  He tried to follow the plot from the voices on the television; he thought it was about a man having an affair with his wife’s sister, but then one of the women – he didn’t know which as he kept getting confused between the wife and the sister, making the plot seem more convoluted than it probably was – said she was a lesbian and he gave up trying to work it out.

  Thinking about anything except the woman’s feet resting on his back became more and more difficult with every passing minute, until it was impossible. She didn’t move at all. There was no respite, no relief. He never realised that such a small part of a lady’s body could feel so heavy. The material of her tights irritated his skin; the heels on her shoes were digging into his flesh to the extent that he seriously imagined them sticking right through and protruding out of his ribs.

  ‘Are you enjoying yourself, worm?’ Mistress Crimson asked in a voice that sounded like she already was fully aware of the answer.

  ‘Could I have a break, please, mistress? Or could I please ask you to move your feet a bit if it wouldn’t be too much trouble?’

  She pulled her feet away and prodded him in the side. As soon as the pressure was removed, Dean regretted asking her to move. He thought of the silky material of her tights against his skin, how close he was to touching her, and it sent a thrill of regret and excitement pulsing through him.

  ‘That wasn’t even half an hour. I don’t know why I changed my mind and bothered to contact you again. What use are you? No wonder that blonde doesn’t want to marry you.’

  If only that was the truth, Dean thought.

  ‘I’m very pleased you did contact me,’ he said. ‘I really want to serve you and learn. Would you like me to do some more cleaning?’

  ‘Stand up and let me have a proper look at you.’

  Dean stood up. He kept his hands by his side but he had a childish urge to use them to preserve his modesty. He was more conscious of his nudity now than when she’d commanded him to undress on his arrival.

  He looked at her as she gazed at his body. Her face didn’t look impressed; it looked more like she was suppressing laughter. Was this part of the mistress act to further humiliate him, or was it the true effect he had on women when they saw him naked?

  ‘Would you like me to do some more cleaning, like I did last time?’ He repeated his question more to break the silence than anything else, but ever since that day when she’d invited him over, he’d wanked up to three times a day mentally reliving each and every moment of the encounter. He hadn’t believed his luck when he’d heard from her again.

  ‘Yeah. You can go and scrub the oven out. And make sure you do it properly.’

  Despite the work and cleaning fumes that made him choke, Dean’s cock was alive with yearning and desires. He longed to study himself in a mirror to see whether Mistress Crimson’s heels had left permanent marks in his skin. She was so confident, the way she told him what to do without a doubt that he’d obey her. Her husband was blessed.

  Dean was blessed that she’d chosen to see him again. There were a hundred reasons why she wouldn’t and none he could think of for why she would want his company again.

  A fit of coughing struck him but he resumed his scrubbing with extra fervour. If he could get all these black bits out and discover the shiny metal underneath, maybe she’d reward him by letting him lick her out this time.

  The thought made him hard.

  But how did you lick a lady out? How did you give her pleasure?

  If only there had been time to do some research on the internet; he smiled at a stray thought about how amazing the internet was, that sitting at his computer he could read a study on Genesis, research the old wiring in his flat, and find tips about performing cunnilingus for the first time. How his life would have been different if it had existed when he was a kid. But maybe it wouldn’t have; if somehow his family had been able to afford a computer he would never have been allowed near it.

  That was the past, though. This was the present; being naked on his knees in a near-stranger’s kitchen, scrubbing through years of filth and built-up grime in the faint hope that she might give him a sexual treat.

  He experimented twisting his tongue around his mouth and lips. What would a woman taste like, feel like?

  Another stray thought flashed up into his mind. This one wasn’t so easy to dismiss.

  Helena.

  What he was doing wasn’t cheating, though. There was nothing like traditional sex between him and Mistress Crimson. The closest they’d got to touching tonight was her heels resting on his back. Dean’s body reacted with pleasure thinking of the heels, the stockings, against his flesh. Would Helena do that for him after they were married? When they settled down in front of the telly after their evening meal, could he strip off and be her footstool for the rest of the night?

  But no. This was going to stop. He was like a smoker finishing off their last packet before starting a clean life of abstinence and healthiness.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, worm?’ The harshness of Mistress Crimson’s voice shattered his thoughts.

  For one awful moment he was scared he was going to burst out crying, or else come. He recovered himself and spoke in a clear voice. ‘Cleaning the oven like you told me to, mistress.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear the car pull up outside? It’s my husband! Get upstairs. Hide under the bed and stay quiet whatever else you do.’

  It was only when he was squeezed under the mattress, wedged between disc
arded shoes, handbags, and general junk, with something unknown and sharp sticking into his thighs, that Dean thought logically about the situation. Mistress Crimson, hearing the car, could have grabbed his clothes, which were in a neat pile in the lounge beside where she was sitting, brought them to him in the kitchen, and he could have escaped out of the back door.

  It was easy to be logical after the event, though. She’d probably panicked, as he’d done, and at heart, she was surely too kind to push him outside into the cold night stark bollock naked.

  The husband took an age to come inside. Dean lay still, hoping that Mistress Crimson had hidden his clothes well. He didn’t want her to get into trouble on his behalf when she had been so nice to take pity on his patheticness and let him come and visit her again.

  A deep voice rumbled up the stairs. Her husband. Dean couldn’t make out the words, nothing more than a low growl.

  Mistress Crimson’s voice was unmistakable. ‘Come upstairs, babe, I’ve missed you.’

  Footsteps on the stairs.

  Dean held his breath.

  The bedroom door creaked open.

  Dean was certain he would be seen. He waited, his body tensed, for the shouting and anger.

  ‘You have missed me, haven’t you, you horny bitch?’ The voice somehow didn’t sound as menacing in the same room as it had when the man was downstairs.

  Dean softly exhaled.

  ‘You better believe it,’ Mistress Crimson purred. ‘I’ve been so busy cleaning the house up to surprise you when you came home.’

  ‘I know. I saw. But that’s not the only thing you been busy with, is it? You’re sopping wet. You been frigging yourself while I was away, you dirty little slut?’

  Dean’s heart beat fast; the crude language equally offended and excited him. The idea of calling a beautiful mistress a slut and a bitch and describing her as “sopping wet” went against all the politeness and respect he desperately cultivated within himself. But the words played again and again through his mind, seeming more obscene each time. He dared to move his head slightly and peek across the floor. He saw a glimpse of Mistress Crimson’s heels before some item of clothing – a rough work shirt? – fell to the ground and blocked his already limited view.