As She's Told

by Anneke Jacob

  As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

  ground, and I lingered…. I heard a deep growl of warning from behind me;

  "Maia!" and hastily I lifted my tail off the floor.

  When the drawer at last was wide, I saw it was full of s/m gear, neatly stowed. Coiled straps, whips, lengths of chain. "Bring me the gag, girl, the one with the red ball. You might as well get that into your mouth right now."

  This required some awkward manoeuvring, but at last I had other things out of the way and my mouth above the ball. I opened wide and pressed my face down over it, felt it slip behind my teeth, the strap not quite straight. I tried unsuccessfully to shift it round with my tongue, straightened up, turned and began to shuffle back to my master.

  "Close the drawer!" came the impatient command. I turned back and obeyed, head down. I'd never been gagged before. I'd been forbidden to speak often enough, and even during conversations when it seemed I could say anything, I'd always watched carefully for the moment when permission would be withdrawn. This was different. A thing in my mouth that pressed down on my tongue and rendered me dumb. He adjusted it and buckled the strap tightly, pulling it deep into my mouth. Then he rearranged me on the couch as before, not forgetting the nipple cords, and returned to his amusements.

  When my back was arched and my legs were trembling, straining toward the next touch, no matter how painful, he said, "That's enough of that," and dumped me unceremoniously on the floor again. One long leg made use of me as a foot rest. I spent a long while with my forehead to the wood grain, gradually simmering down. I was no longer sure that one more flick or pinch would tip me over the precipice. It might have taken two or three.

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  Chapter Ten

  His Own Thing

  Anders stood over his girl where he had placed her, curled on her side, her hands before her face, wrists linked to the headboard. His hands ran over the skin that was fine taut silk, over the marks from the corset, the day's welts. He felt the body respond: a cat-like curl, a flinch; closing in, opening again. She was his. Really his. His own thing.

  His own thing. A very old ballad with those words began playing solemnly in his head, and he hummed along. Lyrics of a man in love, wishing for the woman to be his "ain thing." Given gender relations in the sixteenth century, once he'd got her she would have become more or less his property. The chains less literal than the ones he used, but much more legal.

  Like that first hour in which he had explored Maia's flesh, Anders was once again the proprietor, the squire. Lord of the manor, in fact. His hands touched intimately over his terrain. He'd had an impact since then, he thought wryly. Ploughed up some furrows, changed the locks on some of the landmarks. Mastery.

  But there was something mysterious still about the warm, silent flesh, this body that was quiescent, but vibrating from its core. He thought about the entity beneath his hands, the strange intellect that lived beneath the thick dark curls, inaccessible, separated by bone and flesh and a system of nerves and synapses with no physical link to his own. No matter how he dominated this being beneath his hands, no matter how thoroughly he invaded and occupied, that separation would not be bridged. He would know her by words and signs; maybe pheromones: guesswork. Anders suddenly wanted nothing less than telepathy. He wanted to infiltrate the mind beneath the curls, link to it nerve by nerve, and take her over from within.

  How much more at peace they would be, if only he could do this! For he sensed that not only would he feel his ownership more secure, but some of her fears would be assuaged, if only he could reassure her in some way that was beyond doubt.

  But they weren't inhabiting some science fiction tale; no minds conjoining. They were doomed to be always reaching, but never quite there.

  Perhaps in time they would know each other so well that mind reading 136

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  would be what it felt like. If they were lucky. For now he had to know her by words and signals, by vibrations and responses. He stood, and saw her watching his face. Searching for signals.

  Light out, he snuggled in behind her and took a breast in his hand. After a minute he murmured, "Tell me what happened when I fed you." He didn't mean a recitation of events.

  She turned her face further from him, and after a pause whispered, "I'm sorry – Master – I don't know…. Just so scared….”

  “Of what?"

  She shivered, and after a long moment said something indistinguishable.

  "What?"

  He counted five long breaths before he heard the almost inaudible whisper. "That you'd despise me."

  He tightened his hold on her, kissed her shoulder, her hair. "Little one, people don't despise their pets; why should I despise you?" She groaned and snuffled a little, her face buried in the pillow. A sound part protest, part frightened animal. Anders propped himself onto an elbow and turned her face toward him, searching it in the dim light. The dark eyes were shadowy pools, two anxious sparks shimmering. Gently, he stroked a brow with his thumb.

  "You're afraid I'll go too far. That I'll end up with contempt for my own creation."

  Her mouth twisted. Eyes closed, opened, stared at him.

  "You'll have to trust me. That won't happen."

  She whispered again. "Even if I'm an animal…" Her lids fell, the sparks were hidden.

  "Crawling… grovelling… filthy…?"

  He smiled. "I'll keep you reasonably clean, don't worry."

  The eyes went wide. Her breath was ragged, her eyes still dark with fear, and with something else. Suddenly he scented her like an animal in the dark; his own body urgently oriented itself to the source. At a touch he felt a ripple deep in her belly, and then another. Her whisper came thickly to him out of the dark, begging reassurance. "You do want me – like that?”

  “Yes." His grip tightened. "That's exactly how I want you." His cock found her, pushed into her from behind. "No human rights, no dignity. Get used to it, girl. Or not; it doesn't much matter. That's the way it's going to 137

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  be."

  He nudged her to elbows and knees, and held her nipples hard against the sheet, keeping her in place as his hips shoved her forward, impinging on welted flesh. Her struggles against his belly and chest incited primal urges, urges to bite and thrust. Teeth on her shoulder, he plunged the soft, slippery, convulsing depths of her, felt her shudder and spasm. The chain's rattle and yank in his ears provided a counterpoint to her repressed, irrepressible cries.

  ***

  Despite the chain, the soreness, the cataclysmic nature of the day, I dropped into sleep like a rock falling off the end of a pier. And I didn't dream at all. At some point in the night I half woke, tried to turn over, and found myself hampered by an apparent inability to move my hands, and by a big arm over me, my breast held in its grip. I subsided again.

  When I surfaced the next time I was conscious enough to be afraid of disturbing him, but managed to wriggle onto my other side, stopping at every rattle of the chain. His sleepy arm gathered me in again, the hand this time grasping a sore buttock. Snuggling, I slept until light edged the windows. When I opened my eyes, Anders was lying face up beside me, his head thrown back a little.

  I examined his profile in the growing light. The gleaming hair was muted in shadows, and the eyes with their agate depths were hidden. It was a powerful face stripped to its basics, like the last portrait of a king rendered in stone on his sarcophagus. A primitive kind of awe stirred in me. What was he? Something beyond me. Harder than flesh and blood; some other order of being.

  Then the eyes rolled beneath their lids and the chest rose to take a deeper breath, breaking the stony spell. A live hand beneath the blanket found my thigh, and the body rolled toward me. The other hand fumbled the fallen covers up over my shoulder and took a proprietorial grip on my arm.

  Suddenly the eyes with their depths were open and searching. His hand mov
ed to test the chain and feel over the cuffs, and when these met with approval he fingered my shoulders. I was a little stiff from the restriction, and sighed as his fingers eased them. He sat up, pulled the covers off and looked me over for a minute or so. Then he went off to the bathroom.

  Shivering a bit, I wriggled over onto my other side, and wondered what Sunday morning in a slave-owning household would be like. Would we read 138

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  the paper, him at the table reading the political news, me with the comics on the floor? I grinned. Croissants? I was hungry. There'd been croissants in Story of O, and, come to think of it, Carrie and Jonathan had devoured them in Safe Word. But this wasn't Paris, or even Montréal; there was no boulangerie just round the corner. Damn.

  Anders returned and trundled me off to the bathroom. The tub was a big, squarish enclosure with more than enough room for both of us. A piece of nylon rope hung from the ceiling and I submitted meekly as he fastened my wrists above my head. Then I watched, biting my lip, as the soap slid down his long body. Down between muscle and muscle, bone and tendon, belly and thigh. He was humming the same tune as the night before. It had been new to me, but sounded old; something slow and solemn. The occasional ricochet of water got me in the face; I wiped my eyes as best I could on my upper arms. When he was done with himself he turned to me, and I submitted blissfully to being soaped and stroked and handled. His song had words now. "An thou were my ain thing, I would love thee, I would love thee…"

  I'd never heard the words from him before; there'd been no need, really, because despite all my fears I'd never had a doubt of it. It figured, though, that he'd use a piece of music to put words to it. In response I kissed all the places I could reach.

  Then the first part of the phrase sank in and I looked up in astonishment.

  He stopped singing. "What?" he said.

  "Your own thing?"

  "Yes, indeed. Don't tell me this is news to you." His arms slipped around my waist and pulled me hard against him, his tight skin warm and slippery. His mouth was stern, but his eyes looked happy.

  "Of course not, Master, but – " I sucked in a steamy breath, and said into his chest, "it's odd, because – I've been thinking about the same – words like that for weeks. You know the tale of Patient Griselda?"

  He leaned back and wiped some water from his face. "I know roughly, but I don't think I ever read it. Chaucer, isn't it? Why?"

  I told him the words Patient Griselda used: 'I am thine owen thing, werketh after thy will.' We both looked at each other, a little bemused, the water drumming around us.

  Finally he said, "It's weird enough, you know, that we both have 139

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  anything in our heads that dates before 1800. 1950 would be the limit for most people. That we both hit on that phrase…."

  "Spooky."

  He kissed my forehead, and for a moment pressed his head to mine, temple to temple, as if trying to listen to my thoughts. At that moment they had something to do with my desire to lick him from his toes to his eyelids.

  He might have read my mind on that one, but I doubt he had to.

  Straightening up, there was that dancing light in his eye; something had amused him. Then he unhooked the rope from the ceiling and held it while he pushed me to my knees. I sucked his huge, water-tasting cock with my bound hands high against him, my eyes closed against errant spray. Trying to give him every sweetness of suction, every delicacy of tongue and lips.

  And then I opened my throat and gave up any vestige of self-will. That was my purpose in that moment – to be an adjunct to his body, a vessel, a kind of utensil. A thing. And I wanted more than anything to be a good one. Perhaps it was just the bathroom acoustics, but I think by the sound of his orgasm I did well.

  This time I accepted the humiliation of the dog dish with barely a whimper. I was still mortified at what I was doing, but I wasn't quite so afraid of his contempt. My fear had taken another direction. The cane was still propped in the corner near my head, its threat anything but idle. Its tracks were still painfully livid on my behind, each one swelling much wider than the cane's slim profile. The night before I had wanted desperately to obey him, to exercise a choice to do what would please him, and that motive wasn't gone. But this morning there was no choice. The inescapable physical compulsion made my decision for me.

  I felt the chain slide cool and heavy across my back as I crouched before the dish. The cane hovered in my peripheral vision. The house was soundproof. My master, who loved me, also did exactly what he liked with me. He outweighed me by a factor of two, and in strength by far more. He held all the implements and all the keys. I pulled gently at my locked wrists, settled, despite my fear, into a sense of security as reassuring as gravity, and lowered my face into my scrambled eggs.

  ***

  The lengths of strap beyond the locks would have to go, Anders decided. The extra leather was raising the profile too high. But how much of 140

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  them? "Does your size change at all through your cycle?" he asked her, tugging at a loose end. Maia stood with arms above her head, swaying slightly at the end of her chain. The luminous dark eyes startled a little and regained some focus. A network of dark straps enclosed her lush little torso; they pressed wide and hard into waist and chest, surrounded breasts and buttocks. Her vulva swelled between the straps that outlined it. She hadn't uttered more than faint groans since the process began.

  She swallowed. "Not much. If at all. I don't notice any. But – " She looked down at herself, swayed her hips experimentally. "— I don't normally have to deal with such small tolerances." She smiled faintly.

  "Well, we'll leave a notch or two of leeway for now. You're about mid-cycle, yes?"

  A pause for thought, an attempt at a deep breath that was cut short by the harness. "Yes." Anders marked straps, removed, cut, refinished, replaced, tightened, adjusted. Pressed the locks home. He snapped thin formed leather into place over her breasts, making a bra of sorts. Then he released her and tried dresses on her, one by one; stood back to examine the effect, had her walk and stoop and shift the piles of books he'd brought in for the purpose. He frowned as he set aside one of his favourites, the russet one that she'd been wearing when they met. It was too thin and soft to conceal the harness. So was the blue jersey. Another had too wide a neck, and a fourth was too short for safety. They'd need to do some shopping. As he adjusted the shoulders of the last dress, their eyes met in the mirror. He raised his right hand solemnly. "I swear I never played with Barbie dolls."

  A grin flickered at the corner of her mouth, and she opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  He raised an eyebrow. "You might as well say it; go on."

  Her expression in the mirror was both sly and apprehensive. "Just thinking perhaps you were making up for lost time."

  He ran his hand up beneath the back of the dress and pinched her, making her yelp. "Yup, no question about it. Lego was never like this." He stroked her ass and the straps that demarcated ass from thigh. "Not like this,"

  he said again, stroking the deep curves between the straps. Skin like hot, welted satin. Stroking it was nearly a hypnotic experience. "Tha's got an arse," he rumbled, attempting a rural English accent, "as a man loves in 'is guts. Especially in harness. I feel like a perverted D.H. Lawrence."

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  She laughed, and then sighed and flinched and sighed again. He ran a light hand across the hair of her cunt and watched her eyes start to glaze over again.

  "No, now, that's enough. Let's see you move." She worked at his command, and he watched for harness showing through, accompanied her up and down stairs, and at last was satisfied.

  "Okay, we're going to do a dry run downtown, the route you'll take to work. Let's go." He rapidly unlocked her collar and cuffs, had her put on sandals and shepherded her out the door. On the doorstep he fel
t her hand anxiously gripping his. He didn't need to look at her face to know how scared she was at the sudden transition. They stopped on the porch and he gave her a minute to adjust.

  The sun shone through gaps in the clouds that covered most of the sky and reflected in the windows opposite. Pale leaves were flickering in the breeze. Anders looked down at Maia's tense face.

  "It's all right," he said. "No one will know."

  "How about…"

  "What?"

  "Wind under my skirt?"

  "Too narrow."

  She ran her hand carefully down her narrow dress. "Someone brushing up against me on the streetcar?"

  "They'd have to be feeling you up before they'd know anything."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I'm sure. No one will know."

  She bit her lip. "I'll know."

  "Yes, you will, won't you?"

  "Will I wear this – every day?"

  "Probably. Or something worse." He smiled benignly at her. He loved watching her adjust to his inflictions.

  "What if I – can't concentrate?"

  "You'll have to learn. You'll manage." He ran his fingers over one cheek, then gave her ear a little tug. "I'm not letting you out the door without it. So I'm afraid you'll just have to figure out how to deal with it."

  She murmured acquiescence in accepted form: "Yes, master," and lowered her eyes, but her hand didn't relax its grip.

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  They walked down toward the streetcar stop. Half a block away they heard the rumble of the approaching car, and he pulled her into a run. Not much of a run; more of a light scurry in her case. Still, she was panting when he steered her into a seat at the back. She gave him a look more plaintive than reproachful.