“I’m too tired!” I shriek after a minute, and rather than reassurance, I get a resounding swoosh-crack across my stretch-lycra bum that makes me squeal and lift my feet higher.
“That’s it. Keep running,” says Sinclair laconically at my side. For a split second I get a mad urge to snatch his crop from him and whack him across the head with it. I put the energy distilled from my rage and loathing into my running, feeling newly adrenalised and able to jump over mountains.
“Good!” encourages my tormentor, though obviously he isn’t so impressed that he can forego five more swats of the crop before the dread quarter hour is up. Every time my feet start to drag, or I clutch more heavily at the bars for support, my backside is treated to a slice of fire, cutting across the still-present cane welts and waking them up to throb afresh. When Sinclair begins to turn the dial down, slowing the pace little by little until I stagger to a halt, I am more exhausted than I thought it was possible to be, with a sore bottom to boot. I’m sure this isn’t a training method sanctioned by the governing bodies of athletics.
Sinclair takes my arm and helps me from the machine, which is just as well, because I am wobbling like a weeble and unable to put a foot in front of the other.
“Good girl, well done,” he murmurs coaxingly into my ear, bringing me down to sit on the floor between his legs. “Come on, I’ll help you stretch.”
I lean back into him and he slowly, sensuously pulls one arm up into the air, massaging it from elbow to shoulder, repeating the process with the other one. Then I lie down and he scoots in between my thighs, lifting one leg up and rubbing its burnt muscles back to life, then the other leg, then he lets me lie like a knackered starfish, immobile on the floor for a beautiful, peaceful age. I have floated off beyond the Beth. I am just an elastic band that has been pulled tighter and tighter and tighter until all resistance has gone slack and limp. I am just a body in stasis.
Until Sinclair nudges me with the toe of his boot and says, “Come back now. Go and shower and I’ll be waiting for you in the bedroom.”
*
My shower has the magical property of washing away all the sweat and negativity and leaving only a beautiful buzzy endorphin-high. I smile widely at my glowing reflection and wrap a towel around my invigorated, but rather overstretched, body. Sinclair is waiting for me in the bedroom. Finally, my reward.
He is lying on the bed in his satin robe, reading L’Heptamèron, one hand behind his head, protecting it from the wrought-iron bedframe. It really is the perfect bed for tying things (i.e. people) to. I wonder if that was his sole purchasing criterion when he bought it. Bet it was.
“Eww, medieval French,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “Isn’t that hard to read?”
“Scarcely any different than the modern version,” he tells me. “Come and see.”
I sit down next to him and have a quick look. He’s right. It’s almost the same. “Not like Shakespearian English, full of words that have fallen out of the language,” I note.
“Quite.” He puts down the book. “Take off the towel.” I shrug it off and sit docilely while he runs a hand slowly over my refreshed upper body, creating exquisite whorls of sensation with his fingertips. “You have a beautiful body, Beth,” he tells me, frowning in concentration as he plucks a nipple between thumb and forefinger. “You need to maintain it. Do it for me.”
Ah, he has me there. I will do anything for him. I want to be the best I can for him. I resign myself to dull hours of treadmill-pacing hereafter, since it is his will.
“Lie down on your back,” he intones, his voice now low and hypnotic. I look up at his face, which is transfigured by desire, his sensual lips slightly parted and his eyes ferocious. He continues to move his long, pale hands over my sensitive skin in sweeping motions, circling my belly, cupping and tweaking my breasts, moving down to my pubic area, which I remembered to depilate after my shower, thank goodness. “Mmm, good,” he murmurs, resting a thumb on my mons while his hand slides sideways between the crevasse of my thighs so that his fingers can access my innermost parts. He flexes them lazily – “You’re wet,” he tells me unnecessarily – and gives the area a thorough digital inspection, moving his other hand up to my face and stroking the thumb insistently across my lower lip until he pops it into my mouth to suck on. “I had no idea when I decided to take you on,” he says, still in that trance-inducingly deep tone, “that you would be so very responsive to me. You’re like a little circuit board….all I have to do is put the wires together and your light beams out and your bell rings…until I take the wires away…and then I put them back together again…All I have to do is touch you, Beth, and you’re wet. Why is that?”
“Because I want you,” I gasp, pressing my clit down against his probing fingers, the words thick and sticky around his thumb in my mouth.
“Yes, you do. You want what I give you, don’t you? You want me to take your will and surrender it to mine.” He pushes his fingers, oh, just there, oh, just right and I begin to jiggle and whimper, feeling the pre-tremors of the quake building. “I want to see your face,” he hisses intensely. “I want to see your face when you come; you do it so sincerely, you give yourself up so completely. I want to see it. Come for me.” My heels drum into the duvet, I chew down on his thumb, singing out and undulating my hips like a bellydancer while the fire flows out of me, my gift to Sinclair.
“Not bad for starters,” he whispers to me, dropping a kiss to my famished lips. “Let’s see how far I can take you.” He takes advantage of my depleted condition to fasten my wrists to the headboard again, then he reaches into his bedside drawer and produces something…something that buzzes when he flicks a switch. Oh, what the hell? It’s a silicone vibrator, thick and flesh-coloured, and with attachment at the base. I feel instantly swamped with coyness. Sex toys just make me want to giggle schoolgirlishly. Can’t take them seriously. If my hands weren’t tied, I’d cover my face with them. I content myself with biting down on my lip to keep the giddiness from spilling out, looking away from the peculiar thing.
“Something amuses you, Beth?” He returns to his twixt-thigh billet and begins to circle my entrance with the rubbery tip of the vibrator.
“No, sir, just…”
“Just?”
“Those kinds of things always make me think of…I dunno…bad seventies comedies, I suppose.”
He smirks a little, looking up into my eyes with vivid interest. “Curious girl,” he says. “Let me assure you that within, oh, a few minutes, bad seventies comedies will be the last thing on your mind.” He edges the vibrator into me, little by little, jiggling it as he does so, judging the level of stretch needed to accommodate it. It feels nice, but I wish it was him. I’d always rather have him. Once it is ensheathed within me, the small rubber tongue at the base rests snugly against my clitoris, just pressing down enough to induce urge to rub myself a little harder on it. The strange flesh-but-not-flesh feel of it is intriguing. Sinclair fiddles about with it until it is in exactly the right position, rammed up hard enough that I can’t expel it, nor shift aside from the clitoral stimulator, then he flicks a switch and watches my reaction, sitting back on his heels. A low buzzing emanates from my private parts and – oh my! – waves of delicate, trembly pleasure begin to radiate outwards from the double-core of me. I think the shaft bit is rotating; I can feel all kinds of wrigglishness in my channel, not quite like penetrative sex, but enough like it to…ah…powers of description starting to tail off….off the cliff…over the edge…cruel vibrations against my already-swollen clit….ah….wow…
Then Sinclair says, “You may not come until I give permission.” And I snap out of my woozy spell and lift my head as far as I can in my state of bondage.
“But…you can’t stop me…I can’t stop myself…” It is difficult to find words when you can feel yourself slipping away…past the point…way past it…
Sinclair picks up the riding crop which has been resting on the nightstand after our gym session. “You can stop your
self,” he says firmly, running the flat tip up and down my writhing thighs and flicking it slightly at the sensitive inner flesh. Ouch! That does…help. Puts it off. Can I put it off? Oh, I don’t think…it’s as if my orgasm is that fellow in The Shining, hacking his way through with an axe, and it’s inevitable that he will find his way to me in the end, however hard I push my shoulder up against the door, but I try, I push my shoulder so damn hard, and Sinclair is tapping the crop against my thigh again, which just turns me on even more, and I say, “I can’t…I can’t…”
And he says, “Not without my permission, Beth.”
And I say, “Pleeease….”
And he says, “Not yet.”
And….heeeeeeere’s Johnny!
Bliss, torment, failure, humiliation, gushing torrents of bliss again, my hands working desperately but uselessly at slipping their bonds, my eyes screwed shut. I very much don’t want to look at Sinclair at this moment. The vibrations continue and it feels tortuous. I want to remove the damned thing but I just can’t.
“Oh dear.” Sinclair’s voice is unctuous with false disappointment. “We need to work on this, Beth, don’t we? Open your eyes. Look at me.”
He has to tap my flank quite stingingly with the crop before I obey.
“Self-discipline, Beth. Control. A swift deterrent and then we’ll try again.” No, please, not again. But he has both my ankles gripped in one hand and is lifting my legs into the air, so high that my bottom is raised off the counterpane. He takes advantage of my defenceless position to add six more strokes of the crop to those he has already placed; six burning red welts for my collection. I moan and hiss at the pain while the vibrator continues to roil away inside me and whirr against my clit. The river of juices on my thighs is starting to feel cold and clammy and my clit feels as if it might explode, but he lowers my legs again and spreads them.
“One more try,” he says. I make a dramatic sobbing sound, but to be honest, I don’t think I’ll be able to come again. My clit feels worn to a nubbin already. But….oh god…he flicks the switch again, so the buzzing increases in volume and frequency. Oh God. What did I just say? I begin to thrash wildly and mindlessly, pulling at my restraints, rubbing my hot backside against the sheets, finding that the stinging there creeps up and around my throbbing sex, adding another flavour to the feast of sensation already in progress there. The long shaft presses mercilessly against my slippery walls, round and round. Sinclair stands up by the side of the bed, staring down at me, arms folded, so intimidating that I have to shut my eyes again.
I can’t believe I’m having to ask already, but I feel the tremor beginning and I wail, “Please, sir, please let me come.”
“Again? So soon, Beth?” is all he will say. Bastard!
“Please…please…” But I cannot wait for his reply; however hard I try to clamp down on every nerve ending, my climax will not be denied and out it roars, thumbing its nose at Sinclair, who watches impassively from the sidelines. I keep my eyes closed again, my tongue lolling uselessly in my mouth as I feel Sinclair return to the bed, lift my legs once more, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, six more in rapid succession, cutting into my bum with heartless precision, then the vibrator is pulled out with a soft slicking sound and tossed aside, and before I can open my eyes, my heels are on Sinclair’s shoulders and he is ploughing straight into me, hard and fast, hands on my hips. Despite my multi-orgasmic malaise, I sigh with pleasure at the feel of him, his warm, human flesh on mine, his thick rod slipping up and down my well-used slopes, and after about ten minutes of this joyful primal coupling he growls, “You may come, Beth,” and…I do. Just like that. Just his voice, his words, are enough now. He fills me up and comes down to rest on top of me, his hands on my silk-strapped wrists, his mouth over mine. Our tongues dart and flick lazily against each other. I am in another place now, a place far away from the world I once knew. I am in Sinclair’s possession.
Chapter Nine
Now that I am Possessed, there has been a shift in my perspective on life. Nothing else matters except the higher will of Sinclair. I don’t have to chew my fingernails with worry, fend off my bank manager or do any of that tedious decision-making stuff because Sinclair does it all for me. Even chewing my fingernails. OK, I made that last part up.
My priorities have altered beyond imagination. Where before they might have been listed thus:
1) Don’t get thrown out of University
2) Don’t get thrown out of accommodation
3) Don’t get taken to court by bank
4) Opera practice
…they can now be listed quite differently:
1) Do what Sinclair says
2) Do what Sinclair says
3) Do what Sinclair says
4) Opera practice
We spend most of the time in bed or studying, together or independently. Nothing and nobody intrudes into our perfect cocoon. By Thursday Sinclair has introduced me to sexual positions even the Kama Sutra doesn’t recognise; I have been taught how to deep-throat (tricky) and how to insert ben wa balls (easier); I have been spanked innumerably, paddled (twice) and tied down to the coffee table with a dildo inside me and a strap applied to me while the curtains of the picture windows hung wide open so (admittedly very eagle-eyed) passers-by could see the tableau.
I am learning to be what he wants. If I can be what he wants, then he will never leave.
But on this Thursday, Sinclair has to go out. He has a meeting with the TV company. I am left with instructions to spend forty five minutes on the gym equipment, take a shower and then wait for him, on my knees, naked on the living room carpet with the riding crop between my teeth. If he is satisfied with my pose on his return, I will only get six. If not, he will double the total. Or treble it, if he is really very dissatisfied.
I do spend the allotted forty five minutes in the spare room, though I spend most of it at a dawdling pace on the running machine, daydreaming about Sinclair and I holidaying on the French Riviera, sipping café noir at pavement cafes and shagging on the beach. Will he take me abroad? Will he still want me, come the summer?
I shower, carefully depilate, then when I am completely oiled up and perfumed as he desires, I make my way to the living room. On the way, some errant impulse makes me stop by the office door and turn the handle. It is unlocked. Nothing more to conceal from me here then.
I tiptoe in, shivering slightly at the sight of his canes – I’m still faintly marked from that experience – and look for a lurid novel to read while I’m stuck in slave-ready mode. There are plenty to choose from, many of historical interest and quite a few in French. But as I slip The History of the Human Heart out of the shelf, I notice something lodged behind it. A videotape.
I take it out and inspect it. “Mel’s Birthday” is written on the label. Is this…a sex tape? I check the clock; he will be gone for another hour. I’m going to do this. No, what if it’s awful? I’m going to do this. What if it really upsets me? I can’t not do this!
There is ye olde VCR, just above the DVD player on the console. I slip the tape inside, switch on the television and await enlightenment. Should I get some popcorn? I idly debate the wisdom of getting a drink from the kitchen, but my attention is grabbed straightaway when a slightly wavy, discoloured Mel appears before camera, dressed to the nines in a rubber dress and spike heels, grinning up at me brazenly. Her hair is different; this must be a few years ago. When was Sinclair with her? Ten years ago…no, it can’t be as long ago as that. The music playing in the background is by Zero Seven…five years? Roughly.
Lounging on an overstuffed sofa in the background is Rob, wearing only a bathrobe and a lecherous smile.
“Guess what?” says a marginally tipsy Mel. “It’s my birthday. I am 30! Oh my God! 30! Sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me then.”
Rob sings a couple of bars. “Aren’t you going to join in, Sinclair?”
Fuck! Sinclair is behind the camera. What is going on here?
“Aw, Sinclair, you should
sing! Use that lovely voice.” Mel winks to camera. “Sinclair here is my birthday treat. I wanted a proper good old-fashioned birthday arse-whipping, and nobody tops quite like Sinclair. No offence, babe.” She throws her head round at Rob, who waves a hand. “Rob is going to help him out. I’m a bit of a handful and sometimes it takes two. But now I’m going to get this thing off, and I’m not doing it for camera! This rubber is a bugger to get out of.” She shimmies off, humming “You’re the tops” and the film goes grainy for a second.
I feel sick already, but the scene changes so that the camera is pointing to a sofa set in the middle of the room. Rob, now in an open-necked shirt and smart trousers, strolls into shot and sits down, back straight, looking slightly uncomfortable if truth be told.
“Mel, I want you here now,” he says peremptorily. Mel scurries on screen, now nearly naked but for a cupless leather corset and a pair of hold-up fishnets. “Kneel.” Rob points to the floorspace between his knees. Mel kneels, her back to the camera, so her tight tanned bottom faces the audience. “Now, Mel, as you know, we’ve been having some difficulties with your attitude, haven’t we?”
“Spose so,” says Mel sulkily. She is not a great actress, so it is clear from the start that this is role-play rather than a genuine disciplinary scenario such as I get from Sinclair.
“You suppose so? I know so. A bit too much backchat. Staying out late without calling. Sulking when I remind you how you should be behaving. It’s not good enough, Mel, not good enough at all. So I’ve decided that it’s time for a lesson.”
Lecture Notes Page 14