After she’d finished with the cane, and Thomas had finished with her – for the moment at least – she moved back into my field of vision and picked up the accursed paddle. As my inner monologue wondered for the thousandth time why the fuck I’d thought buying it was a good idea, she stared at the lettering cut into it and smiled.
‘So this is the famous slut paddle.’
I looked up to answer as Thomas replied. This keeping silent thing was not a natural state for me.
‘This is the one. She hates it. Always concerned I’m going to mark her with it and she’s going to end up caught out at the gym.’
Charlotte smiled and I felt a little cramp of fear in my stomach. Had I not noticed the slightly sadistic curve of her lips before? Or had I inspired this? It made me wet and fearful at the same time, even as I knelt there, my arse in the air, waiting for what happened next.
‘So it does work then? You can end up effectively branding her with “slut”?’
Thomas laughed. ‘Well, I can. Just about. It takes a lot of effort and some big swings though. In a lot of ways it’s even more precise than the cane. It only works if you hit her in the right spot, really, really hard.’
As she moved behind me, for a split second I hated him. And then all thoughts except enduring this faded from my mind.
Well, you had to give her marks for trying. She hit me really hard, many times. I couldn’t tell you how many, as all I was doing was trying to withstand the blows, to minimize my sobs and contain the worst of my shaking as the loud cracks rained down on my already burning arse. I don’t know how effective I was at either if I’m honest.
There was no rhythm to her movements as, when she connected with a crack which she thought had made the mark, she stopped to check her handiwork. I would kneel there, hoping to hell that actually she had marked me, just because then at least she would stop. But then she would pick up the paddle and continue and the agony would start again. Suddenly any mental debate about whether I should or could or would submit to her was academic. Somehow, with that punishment, in that room, I was hers. It didn’t occur to me to disobey her, although I wished she’d get the mark she wanted so she would stop hitting me.
After a while – a long while – she seemed to get bored trying. She dropped the paddle on the bed and, over my head, told Thomas she’d be back in a moment.
As she left the room he moved closer and crouched down level to my face. As he brushed tears from my cheeks with his thumbs his voice was soothing.
‘How are you doing? Are you OK? Are you enjoying this?’
I nodded, pressing my lips together to stop them trembling, unable to even begin explaining in words exactly how I felt, knowing I might be able to after the event but that right now it was simply beyond me.
He smiled at me. ‘Good. Because seeing you submit to her for me is so fucking hot. I love that you’ll do anything for her because I tell you to.’
The usual running narrator of submission was there, protesting that actually I wouldn’t do ‘anything’, but it was fogged out, pushed away by the sensations, the myriad of tides of pain and the ebbing warmth of the pleasure between my legs. As the door reopened he leaned forward and kissed me, briefly and brutally, and then moved away.
The action surprised me, as did the tenderness of his mouth on mine. But in that moment, that kiss was a reminder of his dominance and it warmed me. Reassured me. Which was particularly good as suddenly he and Charlotte were behind me, as she said: ‘I didn’t think it could happen, but I got bored of hitting her. Well, actually, I’m not bored, my arm got tired.’
Thomas laughed at the audible pout in her voice. I saw the humour, but didn’t even smile as I wanted to know what was coming next.
‘I had another idea.’
Shit. This would be what was coming next.
There was a tickling feeling on my arse. After all the punishment I had taken that evening, it should have felt like a welcome change, but actually it was just a different kind of pain. My legs wobbled as it traced across the lines of the cane, the red fire of the paddling. It wasn’t hard, but it was focused, like she was tracing her finger along my flesh.
Except I soon realized that it wasn’t her finger. Thomas’s murmur of appreciation was the first giveaway.
‘I like that. Give me a go.’
More pressure, this time on the other arse cheek. A giggle from Charlotte. I tried to turn my head subtly to catch even the briefest glimpse of what they were doing, but my movement caught Thomas’s attention and a twist of my nipple made it clear he wasn’t allowing any such thing.
He tutted, and then said, ‘It would appear Sophie wants to see what we’re doing. Should we show her?’
Charlotte giggled again. ‘I think we should turn her over and then she can see.’
Between them they manoeuvred me on to my back on the bed, Charlotte making a little ‘awwww’ of sympathy at my gasp of pain as I first landed on my arse.
She leaned forward to brush some hair out of my eyes, and I was reminded for a second of the smiling girl drinking wine and blushing as we sat in the beer garden.
‘I decided that rather than making my arm any more tired than it already was, I would write on you. The effect’s the same and it’s much simpler, don’t you think?’
And then the girl from the beer garden was gone.
By the time they were finished my body was covered in insults, all in a rich, deep red lipstick. My arse marked me ‘slut’, obviously, but elsewhere I was ‘whore’, ‘bitch’, ‘slave’. And once they had finished writing on me they mauled me with their hands, amusing themselves by trying to make the lipstick smudge – ‘Well, all true sluts have smudged lipstick’ – their touch making me writhe in pleasure, in spite of myself.
After a little while Charlotte tired of the game and urged me forward so she could paint my mouth with the sticky, blood-red lipstick. As Thomas stood beside her, I felt a pang at what a stunning couple they made – still dressed (well, she was still in her corset at least), pristine, sexy. I in comparison was a dishevelled mess – naked, covered in lipstick insults and marks from my punishment. The heavily painted red staining on my mouth just finished it off.
As they kissed in front of me, Charlotte urged me forward, gesturing at Thomas.
‘On to your knees. I want you to show us how much of him you can take in your mouth. I’ll check his cock for how high the mark of your slutty lipstick comes, and if it isn’t far enough I’m sure I can force myself to punish you a little more.’
On an ordinary day my inner monologue would have been screaming, but I didn’t give a toss. I moved from the bed eagerly, the pain of my arse ignored in my haste to sink to my knees in front of them both. I unzipped his trousers, pulled him out and put my mouth around him, enjoying the taste of him, feeling him grow as I angled my head to suck him deeper. I felt Charlotte move around me and suddenly I could hear the two of them kissing above me, as I kept sucking him. Charlotte’s hand slid to my head and she stroked my hair. It was one of the most incongruously arousing things I have ever experienced. Well, at least until they started fucking and I crawled up between them to fasten my mouth round Charlotte’s clit.
By the time Thomas had come once and Charlotte twice I was squirming with a desperate need to orgasm myself. All three of us were lying on the bed, Charlotte gently stroking my arm while I pressed a kiss to her stomach.
‘Would you like to come, Sophie?’
I opened an eye suspiciously. I knew where this was going, and what was really awful was by this point I had no compunction about it. I knew I would hump her leg if I had to.
‘Yes, please.’
Her smile was beautiful and her mouth curved when she leant down to kiss me softly. ‘Come on, Sophie, you can do better than that. I’ve heard you beg before remember. I know how well you do it.’
I flushed as both Thomas and Charlotte turned to look at me. Staring past them a little, I managed to ask them both – I wasn’t risking a
breach of etiquette at this point in proceedings – in a stammering voice if they would please allow me to come.
Charlotte tutted. ‘Are you begging, Sophie?’
I sighed. ‘Yes, Charlotte, I’m begging you. Please let me come.’
Charlotte laughed at me. ‘I will, if you kiss my arse.’
I’m fairly sure my eyes widened in comedy fashion. ‘What?’
‘Kiss my arse. And then, actually, I think I’d like to feel your tongue running up between my arse cheeks. If you do that, I’ll let you come.’
I was agog. This was something I knew Thomas wasn’t into, would never ask me to do. I’d never worried about doing it, it just wasn’t an option.
My body ached, I was so desperate to come. But her arse?
Suddenly, Thomas’s voice was loud in my ear. ‘I told you, she won’t do it. Get her to hump your leg instead.’
I felt a twinge of fury, feeling like a piece of meat, something they could discuss between themselves. Then Charlotte moved closer, kissing me softly on the lips, looking intently at my face.
‘Sophie, I could make you hump my leg. You know if I slapped you or picked up that cane again you’d be weeping and begging me to do whatever I wanted very quickly. Between us Thomas and I could hold you down, I could sit my arse on your face, I could force you. But I don’t want to force you. I want you to submit to me willingly. I want you to crawl up here and worship my arse, to do something you’ve never done before and something I’ve never had anyone do to me before. And while you do it Tom will make you come. I don’t want to punish you, but I do want your obedience. Yes, you’ve been obeying me because Thomas gave you to me –’ I wasn’t sure this was entirely true but didn’t want to interrupt her flow ‘–but I want you to do this for me. Just me. Now.’
The room was silent and still for a few seconds. I didn’t move, but I knew exactly what I was going to do, that I was going to obey her.
I crawled gently down her body and pressed a kiss to her lovely smooth arse. And then as Thomas pushed his fingers deeply inside me I began licking and kissing her in perhaps the most intimate way possible. It was a humiliation I had never considered, but in that room, in that moment, she had convinced me. I submitted for her, not Thomas, to please her, and did so eagerly. She moaned in pleasure, reaching back to stroke my hair, and then I came, gasping and whimpering into her arse as the release juddered through me.
Once my mind-blowing orgasm had dissipated a little, a smiling Charlotte explained the bet that she and Thomas had made. Tom was adamant that she would not be able to get me to rim her and had told her that if she did she would get to fuck me with her newly acquired strap on. If she didn’t, then she would be severely punished, ending her turn as top. As we continued long into the night, a tangle of limbs and combinations and some of the sexiest experiences I’ve ever had, I was very thankful indeed at being inspired to submission.
I did still owe Charlotte some revenge for the whole leg-humping thing, though. On the other hand, she and Thomas both helped me move flat the following weekend, so she gets brownie points for that.
10
The move was both a long time coming and something that happened ridiculously quickly. I’d been at my paper for almost three years. The nature of regional journalism is very much that wages start low and don’t get too much better unless you can get promoted. There’s a straightforward process to go from trainee to senior reporter, and the next obvious step if you want to stay in the same company is to go for a specialism or move into management, the first rung of which is becoming a news editor.
I genuinely loved my paper, my patch and my newsroom. The people – both my colleagues and the people I talked to through the course of writing my stories – were, for the most part, interesting and good natured, and our news area was big enough that there was always something good going on. But the fact was it wasn’t just me who loved the dynamic of the newsroom. There were no specialisms available, and the news editor, deputy editor and editor had around forty years’ experience at the paper between them and weren’t going anywhere till it was time for retirement.
There was no chance of promotion, and while thinking about leaving made me sad, a couple of things made me decide it was time – firstly, the fact that my salary, even as a senior, made for a pretty frugal life once my student loan, rent and bills were paid, and secondly, that I missed my family more and more. My parents came to visit whenever they could, filling my fridge and taking me out for lunches and clothes shopping when they did in a way that made me hug them even tighter and feel even more bereft when they went home. I popped home for a weekend every couple of months to see them and my brother, but suddenly it didn’t feel enough. Every time I saw them my parents seemed a little older – their hair flecked with a little more silver, always an anecdote about a trip to the doctors with a new ailment for one or other of them. I wanted to be closer, to see them more regularly, although I wasn’t planning a full return to the nest, as I was pretty sure that the novelty of me moving home would wear off sharpish once they had to live with me full time.
As there were no promotions available I did the next best thing for a journalist wanting to progress their career – I moved to a bigger patch and paper, where the money was slightly better and which, happily, was much closer to my parents. Of course, by the time I’d found somewhere to live the increase in pay had been eaten up, but my mum popped round a couple of times a week with portions of whatever new recipe she’d been trying ‘for the freezer’ or a cake, which helped me eke my money out (and her lemon cake made me friends in my new newsroom – there’s only so much cake one woman can eat, after all).
Apart from the return into my life of epic baked goods and Sunday roasts en famille, the main change brought about by my altered living situation was the amount of time I spent with Thomas. Suddenly it was a few hours’ drive to get to his, and my shifts, the costs of petrol and his burgeoning relationship with Charlotte meant we didn’t have a lot of time to spend together setting the world to rights while watching DVD box sets in the way we had before. The change took quite some adjustment; it brought me up a little short. I’d enjoyed being with him, and the things we’d done together were fun and filthy milestones for me. But the fact was, I knew I wanted a proper, albeit improper, boyfriend, someone I could potentially live with, go on holiday with, marry, have kids with, all that good stuff. And while I was seeing Thomas every other weekend, having plenty of no-strings rude fun, there wasn’t really the impetus to be open to potential new relationships or suitors – it all felt like too much faff, not least because I am the most rubbish person I know when it comes to the rules of dating.
My move felt like a good time to end things. Not our friendship – never that, we had too much in common, had shared too much, and he was and remains one of the kindest-hearted people I know – but the sexual side of our relationship. It made sense. I was moving away, things were getting serious with him and Charlotte, and in our typical no-muss, no-fuss way we decided we should just stop the beneficial side of our friends with benefits relationship.
For me it felt timely. While we’d talked about threesomes for a while, I’d always been a bit wary because, let’s face it, sex is pretty much designed at its basest form to be a two-player game, and as such I feared threesomes were ripe for making someone feel left out or overlooked. While the risks were, in my mind at least, reduced because I didn’t have the feelings of sexual jealousy that I might have had if it were my boyfriend who was doing filthy yet hot things to another woman right in front of me, the intensity of the threesome was still a bit discombobulating and while I’d enjoyed it, somehow it cemented in my mind the feeling that I was ready to move on from rude fun with someone I trusted to a fully fledged relationship. In addition, while I had by no means felt overlooked, even to my occasionally oblivious eyes the connection between Thomas and Charlotte was strong – it definitely felt the right time for me to take a step back.
Of course, just b
ecause it made sense didn’t mean that it didn’t ache a bit for a while. Moving home is fine and dandy, but you forget in your years away that everyone else has also moved along. What with that, taking a deliberate step away from relying on Tom as my support network and social circle, a new flat and a new job, it’s fair to say it took me a while to find my feet.
It’s ironic now, but when I first met James, I really didn’t like him, although if I’m honest, at that stage I really didn’t like anyone. Despite the fact I’d ostensibly moved ‘home’, I found myself confused by how much I missed Thomas and I was in a bit of an odd funk. We chatted as much as ever, and he was the supportive friend he’d always been. He was chatty, open about his own life – clearly happy with Charlotte, who had begun spending weekends with him in the way I had previously. But it hurt. I was annoyed with him, confused as to whether I should be annoyed with him, annoyed with myself for not knowing if it was right to be annoyed with him, and having constant flashbacks to the things we had done together. It left me feeling both aroused and furious, simultaneously. My brain was always working, trying to understand it. I was exhausted.
I was also mostly a hermit, disinterested in seeing people, going out or making small talk that suggested I was interested in anything other than my misery. Unfortunately, when your job is that of a journalist there are times you get pushed out of the office to do those things, whether you want to or not – and trust me, at that point I really didn’t. Despite the new job, bigger patch and increased responsibility, apathy was impacting my work life for the first time, which of course just made me feel worse. However, even in the depths of the doldrums, my new force-of-nature news editor was not going to let me stew too long. Having reminded me several times about an interview I had scheduled for a forthcoming article, in the end she shoved my coat, bag and umbrella into my hands and corralled me towards the door. I was too apathetic to demur, which, I guess, means I only have myself to blame.
The Diary Of A Submissive: A True Story Page 13