Then I lashed out again, more gently this time, catching him with the shaft on his inner thigh.
The saner half of my brain was screaming at me, asking, ‘What are you doing? You’re playing right into his hands. He wants more from you, and while your voice has been telling him no thanks, your whip is telling him yes please. You fool!’
But the other half of my brain was immersed in the fantasy. For the first time, I felt the pleasure when he felt it, and when he felt the pain, I took pleasure from that too. I knew that he knew how I was feeling. How could he not, when I was stroking his inner thighs with the flexible shaft of my whip.
‘Oh, yes,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, yes.’
I had no idea whether he meant, ‘Yes, Emma,’ or, ‘Yes, Mistress.’ Who was he addressing? Perhaps he didn’t know either. My breath was coming fast. I was tingling all over. Every cell of my body felt alive, awakened. I brought down the whip again and again, knowing how much he wanted it, feeling, as if through osmosis, the pleasure he felt in submitting to the pain I gave him. For as long as this punishment lasted, I was in complete control of his fate and my own.
When I finally lowered the whip he straightened up. Red marks and crisscrossed lines on his skin spoke of the harshness of my beating. He turned towards me, naked and aroused, staring down at me with his brilliant blue eyes.
He took my left hand in both of his warm ones and lifted it above my head. The chain felt cold against my skin and he closed my fingers over it.
Then the right. He slid the handle of the whip from my grasp and placed it on the horse. My right hand was guided upwards to clasp the other chain. The message was clear. I was to stay there; his prisoner for now, trapped in place even though my bondage was through choice and not coercion.
‘You are amazing,’ he whispered. ‘You are so beautiful, my Mistress.’
What was I going to let him do to me? Would my body allow me to have any say in the matter at all?
Calmly, deliberately, he undid the bow that held the laces together at the top of my basque. With gentle fingers and extreme care he slowly pulled them apart. Inch by inch he eased the garment’s front fastening open. I stood there, watching him work, as he unlaced it completely, opened it up and let it drop to the floor.
My face felt hot with shame and shyness as I stood in front of him, naked from the hips up, exposed for the inscrutable regard of this man who was, still, a virtual stranger.
And yes, the humiliation was a turn-on.
‘Beautiful,’ he whispered again.
Tell him to stop. You have to. Now. You’re on a slippery slope here.
He bent forward and brushed his lips over my neck, moved his fingers down, following the line of my breastbone and then circling inwards, spiralling over the delicate skin of my breasts with a touch that was exquisitely light, before pinching my nipples briefly and sensuously, an action that seemed to activate an electric wire that hooked up directly to the pit of my belly.
Steady on, Emma … you’re going to lose yourself here … this is unwise. Folly indeed, at its most base.
My body had become a storm-zone of desire. A pulse was beating so hard between my legs that it almost felt painful. He bent forward, his tongue flicking at my nipples as his hands cupped my buttocks before moving down towards my thighs, his fingers following the fabric of the panties as they crept inwards and stroked, just for a single breathtaking moment, the moist area between my legs.
At what point, Emma, in this intimate little tableau, do you stop being a dominatrix and start becoming a prostitute?
For a moment his eyes met mine but I was clueless as to what he was thinking. Then he moved round to stand behind me and I could feel his chest against my shoulder blades and his erection pressing firmly into the small of my back. As his fingers brushed down over the front of my panties, easing their way under the fabric to move and press against my swollen lips, I couldn’t tell whether it was me or him who moaned as I felt his touch there. I longed for them to push inside, where I wanted them … where I needed them …
He’s going to be gone in an hour. Maybe he’ll be back, maybe he won’t. But one thing is for sure – these memories will always be here. You’ll never be able to think about this place in the same way again.
‘Enough,’ I gasped, and felt his fingers halt their sliding exploration. ‘Please, stop. Ochre. Hell, I mean … um … amber.’
I’d temporarily forgotten my own safe word. Such was the extent to which he’d addled my brain.
Gently, he removed his hands.
‘Enough for a minute? Enough for today?’ he asked, his breath warm in my ear. ‘Or enough, full stop?’
‘Enough for in my dungeon,’ I told him, sounding ridiculously out of breath. ‘Please … I’m sorry, I can’t go any further. Not now, not here.’
I was still holding onto the chains. Stupid, I know, since all that was keeping me there was my own grasp. I couldn’t let go. But just as if he’d tied me to them, he reached up and opened the fingers of my now-sweaty hands before lowering my arms to my side. I could smell myself on his hands; the salty-wet, warm fragrance of arousal.
Then he walked over to the chair by the entrance door, and picked up my trench coat which was folded over the back of it. He carried it over to me and slipped it around my shoulders, preserving my modesty far too late and doing so with just the hint of a smile.
I was beginning to regret the idiocy of my statement. Because, by saying, ‘no, not here’, I’d given him the unmistakable message ‘yes, somewhere else’.
And he’d understood it clear enough.
His smile widened very slightly as he stood in front of me and drew the lapels towards each other.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he said.
Chapter 22
When Simon called at 11 a. m. the next day, I managed to avoid answering by sitting on my hands. Let him think I was busy, I told myself. Let him imagine me in my dungeon chastising a slave. Let him not know that I was sitting at the dining-room table, on my third cup of coffee, watching the phone unblinkingly, the same way Bob the Cat watched birds outside the window.
A minute later it beeped, signalling that I had a voicemail, and I snatched it up.
‘Good morning, Mistress. It’s Simon here. If you’re not busy on Saturday night, I’d like to take you to dinner. Give me a call when you have a chance.’
I decided to take Admiral out on a ride before returning his call. An hour later, I was standing by the front door in my jodhpurs, which it must be said were fitting me far better now than they’d done a couple of months ago, and dialling his number. ‘Dinner on Saturday sounds good,’ I confirmed, my tone brisk, doing my best to sound in control of the situation.
‘Excellent. I thought we could go to The Saxon.’
The Saxon? That was the dizzyingly glamorous boutique hotel where Nelson Mandela had stayed while he wrote his autobiography. I let out an almost audible gasp.
And before I could respond, he continued. ‘I’ll book a table for seven
p. m. And – since I’d like you to enjoy the evening to the full, I’ll also reserve us a suite for the night. If that’s ok with you, of course. I thought it might be a good opportunity for us to continue the dialogue we started the other day.’
Despite my gulping as hard as I could, my heart remained lodged in my throat. I wished I could see his face now. Was he wearing that wry expression, as if he knew just how unsettled I was by his offer, and was looking forward to hearing my response?
‘I think it would be a good opportunity,’ I agreed, keeping my voice carefully casual. ‘You can go ahead and make the booking.’
‘Do you have a set fee for the night?’
For the night …? Dear God, he wanted to pay me for enjoying dinner, bed, breakfast and unspecified erotic activities with him at one of the most expensive hotels in Johannesburg.
My first nervous thought was: what will he want in return?
My second was: don’t be so stu
pid. You know what he wants. He’s already told you. In fact, this whole situation is very simple. He’s going to pay you for providing a service. It will be just like what you’ve been doing in the dungeon, only you’ll have to let him touch you intimately. Which, seeing you’ve practically melted into a puddle of lust on the two occasions where he has actually made physical contact with you, is not going to be overly much of a hardship, is it now?
Not for the money. Think of the money, Emma.
And that was my third thought.
This payment should swing it. I’ll be able to cover the final bond arrears on Monday.
‘You know, Simon,’ I said, ‘I don’t do this with clients. I never have. I’m making a big exception for you without even knowing quite why. So I have no idea what to charge. You’re inviting me, so you decide. I’ll see you tomorrow night at seven.’
Then I put the phone down, stumbled into the house and collapsed onto the couch, tasting sour coffee in the back of my throat and feeling bludgeoned by the enormity of what I had just done. I’d crossed a line and there was no going back.
I was going to spend the night with one of the deviant creatures with whom I’d promised myself I’d never socialise outside my dungeon.
When I went to visit Mark the next day I found that the physiotherapist, whom I’d met once or twice before, was busy working on him to stretch his muscles and tendons. Keeping him as limber and supple as was possible in the circumstances.
She gave me a smile as she pressed one of his feet to her chest. Feet with neatly manicured nails – never in the time I’d been married to him had he been groomed quite as well as he was here.
‘Hi there. Emma, isn’t it? You just missed Mark’s sister. She left ten minutes ago.’
‘Mark doesn’t have a sister. She was a sister-in-law, I should think.’
She pondered this fact while raising his other leg and pushing the ball of his foot towards his chest.
‘That was it, then. A blonde woman. I don’t recall her name.’
‘It could have been Tamlyn. Or Bee-Bee.’ Names dredged themselves up reluctantly, along with memories of his brothers’ wives, women with whom little mutual affection was shared. Both were artificially blonde. Both were whippet-slim with silicone breasts. Each had produced two, naturally blonde, children to carry on the family line, apparently without any effort and without gaining so much as a pound. Both of them, I sensed, scorned me for not fitting in with their mould.
In fact, Mark and I had tried to have children for a while, although he’d always been more enthusiastic about the prospect than I had. My enthusiasm had dwindled as the months went by and vanished entirely when we reached the stage of visiting expensive specialists who poked me and prodded me and did humiliating tests and asked equally humiliating questions.
Eventually, all female fertility avenues exhausted, Mark had gone in for testing, only to discover that his sperm count was to blame. Zero swimmers. His problem, not mine. Not that I’d ever let his brothers or his sisters-in-law know that. It was kinder to allow them to believe I was the one ‘at fault’. Poor Mark had enough of an inferiority complex with regards to his brothers as it was.
He had also hated the occasional family functions we attended. Inevitably, some horrific impromptu sporting event would take centre stage – Mark’s younger brother, Adrian, had been in the Olympic fencing team about ten years ago and had never let anybody forget it. The meat would be abandoned on the braai until it was blackened and the conversation, such as it was, would be all about new cars and overseas holidays, the latest electronic gadgets they’d acquired and the achievements of their kids and how safe they felt living in their security estates. And the fridge would be stocked with juices and beers and various alco-pops and not a decent bottle of wine to be found. We’d soon given up on bringing our own, because we never got more than a glass apiece before everybody else homed in on it.
The last party we’d attended had been well over a year ago and I still remembered the hellishness of the ‘jolly’ family volleyball game that had been played. A net had been set up on the verdant expanse of lawn. Mark’s brothers, bare-chested in swimming trunks, and their wives, wearing tight-fitting jeans and sporty tops, went leaping and diving around endlessly, intent on scoring points. The afternoon had been punctuated by the smack of palms and the hollow bouncing sound as the ball was shot back and forth, back and forth, again and again.
‘Come and play, Emma,’ they’d called, and I’d joined in briefly, wanting to show willing. Of course, I hadn’t managed to get the ball over the net successfully, although it had hit me on the head twice and I’d slipped on the grass and landed on my backside once, all to the accompaniment of cheers from the other side and derisive jeers from my own.
‘Give me a horse,’ I’d hissed to myself as I’d scrambled to my feet, teeth gritted, trying to ignore the barbed jests about hand–eye coordination that were flying around as fast as the goddamned volleyball. ‘Give me a horse and I’ll show you what I can do.’
And, of course, despite all their talk of wealth and fine living, after Mark’s accident his snippy relatives had come up with umpteen reasons as to why they weren’t able to pay a penny towards his ongoing costs.
‘I wish we could, Emma, really. But the kids … children are so expensive,’ Bee-Bee had told me when Mark was three months into his coma and I’d pocketed my pride and gone over there to beg.
She’d smoothed her hands over her skinny jeans and smiled dotingly at the two fair-haired monsters racing around the spacious living room of their five-bedroomed home. ‘I’ll speak to Gavin, of course. Maybe we could help you with a once-off, but really, we’re not in a position right now to contribute anything regularly.
‘Yasmin!’ she’d yelled at her oldest child, who was brandishing a silvery grey, stiletto-heeled sandal. ‘Not Mommy’s Ferragamos. You do not touch those shoes, ever. Now go outside with Jayden into the garden to play and ask Patience to go with you. No, you can’t have Nkosi go outside with you. Nkosi is busy cooking supper. Patience must go. She’s finished doing the ironing.’
She rolled her eyes as she turned back to me. ‘Kids!’
I’d finally got out of there later that afternoon, my eyes stinging from shame and a slim wad of cash in my handbag, which I was pretty sure had come from a far larger stash in the safe. I’d had to wait before I could leave because in the meantime Gavin had come home, parked his brandnew Subaru Outback directly behind my Renault, and gone into the back garden to practise his golf swing.
I could only be relieved that I hadn’t met up again with any of the revolting Caine family here, at the care home.
The physio treated me to a brisk, professional smile before lowering Mark’s leg and pulling the sheet back into place.
‘Well, there you go. All done. He should stay nice and comfortable until his next treatment.’
She left the room, closing the door behind her.
I looked down at Mark. He seemed peaceful enough. Despite the therapist’s best efforts, I guessed that his hamstrings were too shrunken by now ever to allow him to walk again. Not that it really mattered, given his lack of brain function.
‘It’s your birthday coming up soon,’ I told him, feeling my eyes start to sting. ‘I’ll bring you a present, ok? Maybe a new jacket for winter. In blue, your favourite colour.’
His eyes were closed. He did not acknowledge me, nor offer one of his rare, vague smiles. I felt awful sitting there, knowing I was going to spend the following night with Simon. However I attempted to justify it, the truth was that it would be a betrayal, and guilt was gnawing at my insides. Luckily, drooling placidly onto the floor, Mark was unaware of it.
‘The house is empty without you there,’ I said.
It was true enough. Empty of conflict and frustration, but also empty of spark and emotion. My marriage to Mark had not been perfect. After all, what marriage was? But it had the huge advantage, in retrospect, of having been familiar territory.
Although things had not always been good with my husband, at least I had known how bad they could get.
Chapter 23
I arrived at The Saxon just before seven the following evening. Paranoid about being late, I’d actually got there far too early and had spent ten minutes driving around the neighbouring streets, sweating with fear that I’d end up taking a wrong turning and getting lost, never to find my way back.
Finally, it was time to make my entrance. I drove through The Saxon’s imposing gates, up the winding driveway and, after being given directions by a smartly dressed security guard, parked in a row of bays that seemed miles away from anywhere. No sooner had I climbed out of the car, clutching my travel bag, than a large black Mercedes drew up and the uniformed chauffeur climbed out and opened the back door for me.
Shuttle service to the hotel, Saxon style.
I climbed inside, and spent the stately five-minute journey alternately touching up my lipstick and gazing out at the exquisite frontage of the hotel we were approaching.
I’d expected that the staff would escort me to the dining room, but when I walked in behind the porter who was carrying my bag, I saw Simon was waiting in the lobby. He was chatting to a man in a grey coat whom I supposed was one of the hotel managers. I saw them pointing up at the cornices, no doubt discussing some or other matter of architectural significance. In honour of the occasion, Simon was wearing an elegant black suit.
As soon as he saw me, he strode over.
‘Good evening, Emma,’ he said. He stood close to me and took my hands in his own. His grasp was warm and firm. I looked up into his dark blue eyes, deep enough to drown in, and his gaze caught and held my own.
Last time I had seen this man, he had been pressing his hard-on into my back while I clutched at the chains in my own dungeon. Now here I was, ready to spend the night with him, but still I knew virtually nothing about him. Other than that he was generous, had extreme sexual desires, clearly liked cats, and his bum would have scored a perfect ten from any judge in the world.
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