‘Speak respectfully to the Mistress,’ I warned him. ‘And do not exaggerate. It’s quite obvious to me that a simple man such as yourself could not possibly have more than one or two thoughts in his head at the same time. Do you agree?’
‘I’m sorry, Mistress. You are right. I know I exaggerated.’
‘Go on. Spit them out, and then I’ll force you to take what you deserve.’
‘Truthfully, Mistress, the thought uppermost in my mind right now is that I hadn’t expected a professional dominatrix to be so attractive. And when I first looked at you, I couldn’t help wondering immediately what you were wearing under that coat.’
Which I hadn’t yet removed, and now most certainly wasn’t going to, knowing that at the first opportunity he had, he would be eyeing out my body while taking an inventory of my kinky clothing. The thought made me feel sexy and incredibly self-conscious at the same time. It was lucky I was standing behind him or he might have seen how his words had caused my face to turn crimson.
‘You’re going to suffer for that,’ I hissed, and let him have it with the whip again. ‘Count the blows down, and remember to thank me after each and every one.’
I gave him twenty of the best with the short crop. He writhed and twisted under the blows, his buttocks clenching and his legs tensing as if he was looking to escape – but the firmly anchored chains offered him no refuge. By the time I had finished his buttocks were a sea of red – or actually, given their compact size, more like a small dam.
My arm was aching. This was the most severe beating I’d yet administered.
‘Are you hurting, slave?’ I asked in tones of mock gentleness. With my now-gloved hand, the suede still damp from the earlier washing, I gently stroked over the worst of the redness. The glove meant I couldn’t feel the smoothness of his skin any more, although I could still make out his muscles, tight and firm.
‘I’m in agony, Mistress. I think I have had enough punishment for one day. Please, no more.’
The anguish in his voice was so convincing that I almost relented …until I remembered he’d said he had a high pain threshold and he hadn’t used the safe word. He’d challenged me to take him to his extremes, and now he was testing my authority.
‘You really are a wimp,’ I spat. ‘Do you honestly think you can get out of what you deserve so early on? That’s very cowardly, and I don’t allow cowardice in my dungeon. You’re going to have to take all the punishment I give you.’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
‘Stand up straight. And tell me, did you ask for permission to become hard?’
‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t.’
‘Next time, don’t dare do it without asking first. And now I am going to dress you as a maid. That should help you to curb these shameful desires.’
‘I need all the help I can get, it seems,’ he agreed.
‘I’m going to untie you now and then I want you to put on that pink frilly apron. Then you will stand in front of me, holding the edges in your hands, and curtsy twenty times. Each time you’re going to repeat, ‘Mistress, I apologise for my filthy erection.’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
He’d wanted creative torture. What more could I do that might surprise and delight him? I glanced at my desk and my gaze fell on my make-up bag. In there I knew, because I’d used them only yesterday, was a pair of eyebrow tweezers.
‘If you don’t curtsy respectfully enough, or low enough, we will start from one again. Every time we go back to one, you will be punished. I will order you to raise your apron and I will pluck out three of your pubic hairs using these tweezers.’
His gaze met mine for a moment and I was struck by its intensity, full of challenge and mischief. ‘And keep your eyes on the floor!’ I shouted. ‘What are you doing looking at your Mistress without permission?’
‘I’m sorry, I really am, Mistress. It’s just that, as I said, I find you …’
‘Silence,’ I thundered. ‘Start your training. Do those curtsies. Nice and low, just like a girl would do.’
I managed to find fault with his performance three times, forcing him to start again and each time ordering him to raise the apron. I yanked a total of nine springy, brown hairs from his groin, carefully avoiding any contact with his erect cock in the process, hearing him catch his breath as I extracted each one.
Finally, we reached number twenty successfully.
‘Get back into position between the chains again and bend over,’I told him. ‘You’re wasting my time here today, and you’re testing my patience, too. I don’t know why you can’t just do what I ask you to do right the first time. You are pathetic.’
‘I apologise, Mistress. Truly, I am as pathetic as the plot of a lowbudget porn movie.’
Amused, I retorted, ‘And as lacking as its dialogue.’
‘Oh, dear, Mistress. I’m not doing very well, am I?’
‘Not at all. In fact, I’m afraid to say you’ve just earned yourself another beating. Slave, meet my pussycat.’
I picked up the cat-o’-nine-tails and rattled the fine chains, trailing them down his back and hearing him gasp at the kiss of the cold metal links. This instrument, I knew, I would have to use more lightly. It was going to create a sting rather than a thwack.
But after only four strokes I had to stop when the chains broke his skin.
My heart nearly stopped, too.
One minute I was sending the silvery chains jangling across the mottled surface of his behind, and the next I was gaping in consternation at the ribbon of blood that had appeared.
How in God’s name had I managed to cause an open laceration on my client’s buttocks when I actually hadn’t been hitting him that hard?
Never mind the hows. It had happened and I had to take charge of the situation. And quickly.
But how on earth did I handle this problem?
Doubled over as he clutched the chains, every muscle in Simon’s body looked rock hard. He was breathing fast, although apart from that he’d made no sounds during this part of his session.
‘The cat has caused a minor laceration on your buttocks, slave,’ I said. I was trying not to sound breathless myself, but instead to adopt a businesslike tone while hoping desperately he wouldn’t look up and see I’d turned sheet white. ‘Clearly, you’re too much of a wimp to take your punishment, which is very disappointing. I’m afraid that even though you deserve more correction we’re going to have to postpone further punishment until next time.’
I lowered the cat and wiped a trickle of sweat from my forehead with the back of my glove.
He straightened up slowly, inching his way into a standing position again, then bent forward and leaned against the wall. I honestly think there were tears in his eyes. More worrying still, however, was that his massive erection was still in evidence under the frilly apron. Whatever I’d done for him, from hair extraction to the drawing blood, it hadn’t been enough. It hadn’t achieved the necessary result.
‘Do we have to stop?’ he asked.
Dear God, what more did this man want?
‘It’s a dungeon rule. We cannot continue if there is an open wound.’
To my surprise, instead of arguing further, he whispered, ‘Thank you, Mistress,’ took off the apron, and made his painful, limping way towards to the bathroom.
I made a mental note to put a first-aid kit in there. It concerned me that I’d actually broken his skin, and that he was now leaving, dripping blood, without having had so much as a plaster applied. In fact, I decided, it wasn’t on at all.
‘Wait there,’ I called. ‘Give me two minutes.’
I opened the folly door, called for Goodness to buzz the gate open and raced up to the main house. I thundered up the stairs, and skidded into the bathroom.
What resources did I have that could provide emergency assistance to an injured slave?
Savlon, cotton wool, and, thank heavens, a quarter roll of Elastoplast.
I grabbed these vital medical supplies and pound
ed back to the folly, ignoring Goodness’s worried look.
Gasping for breath, I tapped on the bathroom door.
‘If you don’t mind … I’d just like … to put something on that cut. May I come in?’
‘Of course.’
It was quite odd – out there in the dungeon he’d willingly stripped naked to be whipped. But now, session over, he was protecting his decorum with a towel held in front of him. Despite his efforts at modesty, the bathroom was a lot smaller than the folly, and I had the overpowering sense that there was barely enough room inside for the two of us. I could smell the faint, spicy scent of his deodorant, and my arm brushed against his as he moved aside to allow me to reach the basin.
I dampened the cotton wool and diluted some Savlon. I thought of telling him that it would sting but then realised how redundant such a warning would actually be. Bending over and squinting at his behind, I dabbed the three cuts, which were small in size and not as deep as I had initially feared. I guessed whipped bums bled more easily. It felt quite strange touching the cotton so gently to those areas which I’d brutally beaten.
As I tended to his cuts, Simon stood as still as a rock, leaning over the basin, supporting his weight on his toned arms. I noticed that he had tan lines that ran from his biceps to his wrists, and from mid-thigh to his ankles. Perhaps he was a runner. Or a cyclist who wore gloves.
Two minutes later and the cuts were covered with strips of plaster and I had thrown the bloodstained cotton away, rinsed my hands, and left the bathroom.
‘Thank you very much,’ he said when he emerged fully clothed once again.
‘I’m sorry about that. If you want to repeat the session, I’ll gladly do it at no charge.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll pay for this one.’
I was convinced, though, that he was trying to be polite and that I’d never see him again. Once he’d settled his bill he didn’t linger but instead headed outside. I noticed he was still limping slightly. And then I saw, with a little start of guilt that three of the cats – Sparkle, Bob the Cat, and Cat Four – were perched on the top of his car; a row of furry, inscrutable mushrooms in a deep green field.
Great. Not only had I lacerated his backside, but my pets had left dusty paw prints all over the pristine paintwork of his luxury vehicle.
Simon didn’t seem to mind, though. In fact, he spent a minute stroking all three of the cats before lifting them gently off the roof and easing himself, with some difficulty, into his car. The door thunked shut, the engine started with a purr, Simon buzzed the window down and called out a ‘thank you’ to Goodness as he opened the gate. And then he was gone.
He hadn’t rebooked, and doubtless wouldn’t.
I’d had three clients. One who’d been fully satisfied, one who had agreed to compromise with candles, and one who’d left my premises injured and without achieving orgasm. That was not good enough. I needed to do better.
I continued to stew over my shortcomings as a dominatrix while I soaked my cat-o’-nine-tails, whip and belt in a ten per cent bleach solution and carefully bundled up Simon’s blood-flecked towel ready for a cold cycle in the washing machine.
Chapter 12
It had been ten days since I’d last visited Mark. I’d been in the habit of going on Thursdays – but this Thursday had been busy, and so had Friday. Two extra days of grace – it had felt like a holiday not having to walk through the doors of that nursing home at the end of the week. Still, I had to admit that when I got into my car on Saturday morning the stop-start journey across the city to Rest Haven felt just as endless as ever. In fact, it might even have felt longer than usual, because of all the doubts and unanswered questions weighing on my mind.
Rest Haven itself was, as the brochure stated, a tranquil oasis for care and rehabilitation. It had an actual rehab wing for addicts in a central and separately fenced section, as well as the care home for the mentally impaired, which was nearer the gate.
After checking in with the security guards, I drove past some of the well-tended gardens and carefully mown lawns before parking in the visitors’ area outside high care. The pleasant surroundings notwithstanding, I couldn’t help feeling, as I always did, that as I climbed out of the car I was stepping into a bottomless pool of depression.
It didn’t matter that the flowerbeds were a glorious riot of colour, or that the two wheelchair-bound women being taken on an outing by a pair of nurses looked cheerful and waved at me warmly. It didn’t even matter that I’d managed to snag the very best parking spot, right opposite the main entrance.
My associations with this place were too deep and too painful. Walking up the path towards the doorway, I felt far more stressed than I had done in my dungeon the day before, raining down blows on Simon’s smooth backside, punishing it until the skin burst and bled.
I offered the cheerful black matron on duty my usual brisk, forced smile.
‘How’s Mark doing, Gladys?’
She beamed. ‘He is very well. You can go through.’ She waved the way down the passage with a flourish, as if she was sure that walking along that polished linoleum to Mark’s room was going to be the highlight of my week.
The corridor smelled of disinfectant and cooked cabbage, just like every other health care institution in the history of the world, and despite the fact I’d never actually seen cabbage being served.
High care was where the profoundly brain damaged and physically disabled patients lived. Unlike Mark, almost all the other current residents had been that way since birth. Parents, siblings and friends had spent a lifetime with them, and they had never known them any other way.
It was different for me. I hadn’t had much more than a year to come to terms with things.
Initially, the absolute shock of hearing that Mark was in a coma after the accident had given way to stubborn optimism. He would get better. I would make him recover. I’d spent hours and hours by his hospital bed, talking to him, encouraging him, willing him to regain consciousness.
A month later, I’d been filled with wild hope when he’d started showing signs of responsiveness. Even though the doctors had warned that he was not likely to improve very much, I believed I knew better. I had been expecting a miracle, but when it never happened, my hope had given way first to anger, and then to the bleakest despair.
I felt it now. I always did upon seeing him in his room, so familiar and yet so terribly changed, listing sideways in his wheelchair as he stared at the floor with blank and half-closed eyes.
‘Hello, Mark,’ I said in the same falsely cheerful tone, sitting down beside him and squeezing his left hand, which was now, like the right, permanently curled into a spastic claw.
No reaction.
There very seldom was. Sometimes, on exceptionally good days, he would smile. He’d offer up a huge and happy beam, even though it was not directed at me, nor at anyone, and his eyes lacked focus.
He could swallow food, well enough that most times he could be fed by the nurses. But now his mouth gaped open and a ribbon of drool shone from the corner of his lips. He could sit supported in a wheelchair for most of the day, but he had very little coordination. Transferring a one-hundred-kilo man from bed to chair and back again, washing him, turning him over, and changing his nappies was a major operation requiring five or six nurses, and it was the primary reason why, in spite of the saving of costs it would represent, I’d never taken him home.
That, and the fact that occasionally, he suffered from severe fits.
He was well cared for here. I saw that his fingernails had been recently cut – nearly all the way down to the quick, a fact that would have horrified the old Mark – and his hair, too, had been trimmed, so that I could clearly see the white and pink railway tracks of the scarring that traced its way across his forehead before disappearing into his hairline.
I’d brought him some Tennis biscuits, which I put on the shelf above the narrow bed with the padded railings. The nurses would dunk the biscuits in his tea and feed th
em to him that way. They told me he seemed to like them.
There was a vase of fresh chrysanthemums and daisies up there today. A nice touch for visitors, although Mark could never have lifted his head high enough to see it.
I wondered often if he would have chosen to die rather than live like this. He probably would. He’d always been so aggressively independent, so fiercely opinionated. So crazily enthusiastic about his insane business ventures and pigheadedly stubborn in his refusal to listen to me on those rare occasions when I tried to insist that, this time, I was right and he was wrong.
Now life happened around him. He was a rock in its river.
Even though I knew how damaged he was, I had a rule. Nothing negative was ever said in his presence. I always had the lingering worry that despite his nonreactive state, at some level he might understand.
‘Everything’s going fine at home,’ I told him. ‘I’ve made some money this week. I’ve started up a new business venture. It’s early days yet, but if it carries on going well, I might even manage to keep the house.’
Silence, apart from Mark’s breathing. It was slightly nasal and he made small snorting sounds as he inhaled. He’d always suffered from allergies at this time of year.
‘The cats are well,’ I said, not that he would have cared much about that, but at least it was a topic I could speak about without too much effort. I wasn’t going to tell him that they all slept on the bed with me now, with Bob the Cat in pride of place on my pillow. That had been forbidden under his rule.
What I did want to ask, but knew I couldn’t was: Mark, what happened with my pearls? Did you buy fakes and tell me they were real? Were you conned, perhaps? Or, in a fit of pique following one of those vicious, meaningless fights that we seemed to have more and more often over the years, did you sell them and replace them with artificial ones?
‘They say there’s going to be a lot more rain this week. The property is looking wonderfully green. Goodness has been mowing the grass nonstop,’ I said, and checked my watch, wondering how many more warm and airless minutes I could endure in the company of my catatonic husband before I could take my leave.
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