by Anneke Jacob
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As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob
The routine varied here and there in other ways. Anders sometimes took me out, for long walks or to listen to folk music or jazz; sometimes blues.
There was always a great deal of bondage beneath my clothes, to remind me that I wasn't as other people were. He played at the folk club again, this time in the company of others playing guitar, drum and flute, and I sat below, my heart pounding, as music flew from his fiddle. It seemed like magic, the skill of his fingers that could produce sounds like that. I felt the familiar stirrings of fearful semi-worship, like early man watching electricity crackle through the sky. Why I made so much of this I don't know. Anders had picked up the fiddle when he was a kid, and practiced like anyone else; there had been a neighbour who'd taught him in Copenhagen, and various mentors in Toronto. He wasn't born out of his father's head, radiating complex harmonics and laser light shows from his outstretched hands. But sometimes I caught myself thinking of him that way.
One thing that got introduced as part of the routine was exercise: D/s as part of a healthy lifestyle, as Anders reminded me with that characteristic glint. I had never been especially athletic, but I'd done quite a lot of yoga, and some aerobics off and on, usually when I'd been studying non-stop and felt restless. Anders decided that I'd do these on alternate days, evidently for the dual purpose of my fitness and his own carnal entertainment. The yoga took place after the harness came off and before the corset went on, with minimal bondage. I was only linked to the living room floor by a collar chain, like the day I'd moved in. Very simple, as befit the culture from which the discipline emerged. I learned to work around it. Anders sat back and watched me stretch and bend and twist. He particularly liked anything that resembled a bondage position – lying on my back with my legs over my head, for instance, or the half moon, in which I stood and bent my back in an arch. The bow was a voluntary hogtie position, and the camel not only had me on my knees but displayed my tits nicely.
I was reasonably good at these positions, and doing them naked for my master was hot as hell. At first he didn't know enough about yoga to criticize, but he brought the large mirror down from upstairs and had me do a running commentary in which I critiqued my own performance. After a while he was familiar enough with my self-expectations that he could take over, and suggest a better alignment, a straighter leg, a more extended stretch. And before long these suggestions became demands, and I was no 176
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longer allowed to be sloppy or lazy. Aerobics days were different; they started out tough and only got tougher. Although it was fun that Anders used fiddle music CDs for the background instead of ghastly pop, he pushed me much harder than I'd ever pushed myself, and he used a whip. I found out how much more a whip can sting when used on sweating flesh. The last few minutes were always frenzied, frantic; he invariably drove me a little further than I thought I could possibly go. Trapped between exhaustion and that insistent, stinging lash, I sometimes envisioned a dramatic collapse as the only way out. I never had quite nerve enough to try it, though.
The fiddle music got to both of us, and a lot of the time I ended up just dancing, hard. At first I improvised steps as best I could, since I didn't know, for instance, how to jig. Anders did, and he taught me. He was really good at it, actually, which was intimidating. The more I tried to learn, the more I realized how good he was, though he was completely offhand about this unexpected talent. It was an incredible turn-on, just watching that long body move: loose-limbed and casual, and yet with that centred coherence that was his trademark. Sometimes I got swatted for admiring him, because I was forgetting to dance myself.
One does not normally jig naked, for reasons which should be obvious.
Breasts tend to bounce in an odd rhythm that doesn't quite match the rest of the body. Anders definitely enjoyed it. We also had some funny moments dancing together, him clothed, me naked in collar and cuffs, him stamping loudly with his big shod feet and me echoing with my small bare ones. He'd grab me sometimes and dance me round the room. Every once in a while when the music was right, he'd leap into a hornpipe, waving the whip for emphasis, with an expression of such roguish self-mockery that I'd double up laughing. But a lot of days he said he got quite enough exercise at work, thank you, and made me do all the work. And made me, and made me. I got noticeably stronger, more limber, and more aware of my body. This provided some interesting contrast, given that I was kept literally powerless for hours at a time. But then, the stronger I was, the more restraint I could handle. I could sit still for much longer periods on my chain, and after a while even hogties no longer left me with stiff muscles. In fact, I felt healthier than I'd ever been in my life. Those regular, balanced meals in my bowl probably also had something to do with it. It was a bit like being a valuable racehorse, systematically fed and conditioned.
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I was well broken to harness now, too – his humiliating phrase. The harness felt twinned with me, really; my naked body plus its confining leather web was the thing I was, most of the time; the thing he sent out the door each day beneath conventional camouflage. I moved within those arousal-inflicting confines as if they were – if not normal, at least deserved.
My naked vagina went untouched as promised, for two solid weeks after the piercings, except for shaving, which procedure a s a result became excruciatingly erotic. Anders didn't even use my ass; he said the risk of bacteria travelling wasn't worth it. Without direct teasing I wasn't, thankfully, hovering helplessly on the edge of a crescendo. But I was always well into the adagio. It became an ache, like a background of insistent drums in the distance, sometimes ignorable, but always present.
On laundry days I'd haul baskets of dirty clothes down the stairs, breathing in the atmosphere of Anders' sweat and sawdust and trying not to groan with desire. The machines thrumming behind me, I'd find myself drawn to the incomplete art deco fireplace, with its formal, sensuous grooves just made for stroking fingers.
By the second week I was so desperate to be touched, I would have been happy to be teased and left hanging. But he withheld his torments, at least to that particular region, and teased me by not teasing me.
In fact it turned out to be good training. I was forced to focus on serving his pleasure, since my own was in abeyance. He hadn't made that particular bit of learning easy for me, with his preference for keeping me so constantly aroused. There had been so much focus on my body, on its display, management and discipline, that I'd sometimes forgotten that the whole exercise was for his benefit, not mine. This had of course been made clear to me in words many times, starting with that night in Philosopher's Walk. But he'd also put me through more stimulation and sensation in the short time I'd known him than in the whole course of my previous life. As a result I was getting obsessed with myself. I was being shamefully egocentric, and it was time for that to stop.
One hot day just after the two weeks were over, Anders came home and released me from my waiting spot (the floor at the foot of the bed), and when he pulled me to my feet I could see he was wiped.
"Long day, master?" I ventured.
He groaned, and stretched his back until it cracked. "Hauling bricks up a 178
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ladder all day. Mike is sick, and Eric didn't show."
"Jesus. Are you okay?"
"Just tired."
"I thought Eric was doing better." Eric was a young guy, a former street kid who worked for Anders in between bouts of rehab.
"He was. He's back at it. Stupid bugger. I went over there, but there's no way to get him into detox till the drugs run out. A day or two."
"Um… didn't you just pay him? It could be longer."
"Yeah. I'll have to talk to him about that. Maybe I'll have to go back to paying him in groceries and doling out pocket money. Shit." Anders rotated his head around and pressed fingers into the back of his
neck. "At least his rent is paid." By agreement, that part of Eric's wages went straight to his landlord.
"Master, let me get that?" He sat down and I did my best to massage his neck and shoulders. Small fingers have limited effectiveness on that much muscle mass; I used the heels of my hands, and pressed with a balled-up fist on the tight spots. And I mused on the Eric saga, that had been going on since long before my time, starting when Anders found the kid shivering in a doorway and got him to a shelter before he froze. Gradually there'd been progress: stable housing, welfare, addiction counselling, job skills. But the drug problem kept coming back. And who took the brunt? It bugged me to see Anders' support repaid in this way. I redoubled my efforts on the tired shoulders. "Is Eric – I mean, you're so good to him, but there's a limit to –
isn't he kind of – self-destructive?"
The muscles bunched up under my hands. "There are limits to what I can do for him. I know that. I don't try to do it on my own. That's – "
He went utterly still. For some reason I held my breath, my hands still on his shoulders, and my chest tightened in sympathy. What…? Gently, after a minute, I kissed the tight cords at the back of his neck. Anders sighed, rolled his head again, and I went back to massaging. Then he spoke, his voice once again confident and calm, and I felt my own breath returning.
"Eric's got a hell of a lot going for him, though he doesn't believe it. The abuse he's been through…. He's done damned well, considering." He rotated his left shoulder and I burrowed into the area between spine and shoulder blade. "When people like this need help, you've got to accept that it's two steps forward, one step back. Used to be three to two, or five to four when 179
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we started. This round will be shorter; you'll see."
"Okay." His voice carried immediate conviction; clearly all was well, or would be. My wrists began to give out. He kissed one, sighed and got up.
"I'm ordering a pizza tonight; no way am I cooking." I felt guilty and he saw it and smiled. "No eggs for dinner, either, though I'm sure you'd boil them very well. But you can take care of me in other ways."
After his shower and the pizza (cut up in my bowl in my case) came my aerobics session, which he pushed to new limits, presumably out of misplaced revenge for his day. Evidently I also had to pay for Eric's relapse.
This was hardly fair, but after all, who else was the whipping girl around there?
Then Anders fastened my hands behind my back, stretched out on the bed and had me take his clothes off, piece by piece with my mouth. Well, he helped a little. I licked and nuzzled and caressed, kissed his skin from his toes right up into his hair, loving it. Up the inside of a thigh, across the washboard muscles of his stomach, around his nipples, up his long throat to the scar beneath his chin. Sometimes he directed me, and sometimes he let me use my imagination. Then his eyes closed, and I would have thought he'd gone to sleep if it weren't for the tension in his belly and groin. His erection responded with jumps to the brush of my hair or the soft pressure of my breasts. I straddled him and kissed his eyes, the prickle of his cheek, his neck just behind the angle of his jaw. Gently I bit one pale, hard shoulder. I squirmed very slightly where I straddled him. Big hands closed around my hips. Watching my face from under half-closed lids, Anders manoeuvred me over his cock, then let me get on with it.
I made it last as long as I could. At the end he took over, hips and hands using me, his face like a martyr going to heaven. I loved, I loved, making him feel like that. Being the instrument of his pleasure. And then he pulled me down onto his chest and I rested there, our damp genitals still in contact.
He dozed, and I kept still. And I thought about pressing my hips forward just a tiny bit. Just enough to touch my swollen clit to him. Maybe just once. Or twice. The most minimal movement might do it. Perhaps he wouldn't notice.
Perhaps he'd think I was just shifting my position. Perhaps I'd lost my mind.
My resolve to focus on him and not myself had been supported, I suppose, by the secret assumption that he'd be more generous with the orgasms when the two weeks were over. Vain hope. He just made use of my 180
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accessibility to tease me more. The distant drumbeats moved in under my dress. Sometimes he'd get me to the edge several times in one night, until I was verging on a multiple the size of the Sky Dome, and then allow me one, just one. I began to dream porn in Technicolor.
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Chapter Thirteen
Anemone
Anders kicked through cool water, flippers propelling him lazily upward. The intense colour of the light, the way it filtered through variations of azure, meant Costa Rica, the year he turned eighteen. Blues shaded to green as he swam up toward sunshine.
He was carrying a passenger. The invertebrate that had attached itself to his thigh seemed determined not to break the suction. What was it? Red-orange fronds, oddly hot for a sea creature, a cute little thing, but big enough to wrap around his leg and not let go. Something he couldn't place at all.
Maybe it was an undiscovered species and he'd get it named after him. He hit the surface to startling blackness, and a confused alarm lest his creature die out in the air. No fear. Maia's thighs were clenched round one of his, her wet vulva splayed against him. She was locked to the bed by wrists and ankles, but despite this their bodies often tangled in the night. Had she been moving against him? Her breathing was rapid. Was she awake? "Maia." No response. He was about to gently pry her legs apart and disengage himself when she stiffened, moaned and locked her legs on his like a vice. She was awake; he felt it. "Stop it, girl!"
She wailed a protest, and before he could pull away she came, her urgent pelvis thrusting hard.
Anders disentangled and sat up. The clock said 4:43. He turned on the light.
Maia's head was wrapped in her arms. Her legs were drawn up as high as the ankle chain allowed; she would have rolled into a cringing ball if she'd had the option. He rolled her onto her back and firmly pulled her arms out of the way so he could see her crying face. Her skin was rosy and damp, and she smelled of sex. She was still panting, and groaning faintly on the exhales. It must have been a hell of a good one. He looked at her hard, and pressed her arms back against the pillow when she tried to resume her protective curl. She whimpered, and her head thrashed back and forth. No apology. "Well?" he said at last. Maia swallowed, then muttered, "I'm sorry, master.”
“I don't believe you."
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She stared at his chest, tears spilling over and trailing toward her ears. "I
– I – am –" She snuffled hard. "I will be, anyway." Her voice shook and she started to weep again.
"Damned right you will. You brazen little bitch! Did you think you could get away with that?"
"No…no," she sobbed. "I'm sorry! I was half asleep, and then…"
"Don't tell me you didn't know what you were doing."
"I didn't! I don't think I did. Not at first. Then I – I was so close!….
Master, master, please!"
"Please what?"
"I can't do it! I can't stop myself any more! Please!"
In Maia's wet eyes there was a desperate light of defiance. Sobs wracked her. Anders sat beside her and let her turn onto her side, his hand on one shaking shoulder.
Once again he'd miscalculated. He'd got the timing wrong. And about the same thing. He sat cursing silently to himself.
He'd thought he knew her, had her mapped, inside and out. And yet clearly he'd mistaken her outward composure for something deeper. Just because she had an air of self-control didn't mean it was more than camouflage. Hell, she'd even told him the day he got her pierced. What did he need, a kick in the head?
But she'd gotten herself well and truly on the hook now; letting her off was out of the question. "Why didn't you say this the other day when you had the
chance?"
She turned her head and stared at him, wiped her eyes on her arms, snuffled. "Question time?" she asked, her voice clogged. "I thought – I don't know, I thought – I could do it. I thought I had to." She let out a long breath.
"It seemed so – insubstantial a thing to complain about. And I've never, I've never…."
She'd never responded to those scheduled time-out catechisms with any kind of a problem, except her problem with the questions themselves. So he'd relied on close observation and his instincts instead, and they had seemed to serve them both very well. How had he missed this? Apparently he'd seen only what he wanted to see, so wrapped up in the sadistic pleasure of denial that he perceived her as more capable, or less desperate, than she actually was. He had been far more careful to keep an eye out for her 183
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physical limits; this one he hadn't taken seriously.
He yawned, looked down at the apprehensive face below him, and thought for a while. Smiled secretly, thinking of his frantic little sea anemone, using his thigh to come. Or now that he was back on land, his little hunhund. Very hot, though he wouldn't tell her so. What now?
"Master?”
“Mm?"
"I really am sorry." Her face crumpled up. Now she was telling the truth. Guilt was radiating off her like heat off an engine.
"I know you are, sweetheart." He caressed her cheek, thumbed away a tear or two. "And I'm sorry I missed the signs. But if you think you're going to disobey, from now on you must tell me, do you understand?" Chin trembling, she nodded. "You've been a very bad girl, and that means some serious punishment…" she nodded again, eyes swimming, and kissed his palm. "…which will take some thought, and which isn't going to happen at five in the morning. Although… hmm." He eyed her speculatively. "Okay.