by Vina Jackson
I shuddered at the idea and She grinned wickedly.
‘He would hate it,’ she said. ‘But he would do it.’
I had no doubt about that. The activities of the past twenty-four hours had been just play-acting for both Grayson and I. She was his domme. And ordering him to dominate me might provide her with an ideal opportunity to reassert her authority over both of us.
‘First,’ she said, ‘let’s find you an outfit. Gray is bound to have something here that will be suitable. As you saw today, he likes to bring the domme out of his female clientele.’
‘What’s in it for him?’ I asked. I was suddenly curious, and perplexed in the same way that I had been when Liana had described to me the enjoyment she took from submission.
Some of the men at the club subbed just so they could get close to attractive women. Most of them were about as charismatic as a wet teabag. But Grayson was a good-looking guy, and I doubted that he’d have any trouble finding a date that he didn’t need to kowtow to.
‘Why don’t you ask him?’ she replied, heading towards the studio. Her kimono wrapped around her long legs as she walked, giving the impression that it was a living creature caressing her flesh. She was wearing matching silk slippers with a thin sole so that her steps were soundless on the wooden floor.
Grayson was sitting in an office chair in a small room attached to the studio, flicking through images on his computer screen. He was engrossed in his work and by turns his face lit up animatedly or dropped into a frown when he saw something that he wasn’t satisfied with. He either hadn’t heard us arrive or was ignoring us entirely.
‘Lily wants to know what you get out of submission. Tell her.’
Pulling his attention from his work was a visible struggle, but it was a battle that She won before too long and he turned to give us his attention. And sighed.
‘Sometimes people just are the way they are, you know. There’s no reason.’
‘You can do better than that, Gray,’ She said. She sauntered up behind him and leaned over his back, running her fingernails up inside the front of his shirt and then circling his neck with her hands. The gesture could easily have been mistaken for a simple affectionate caress, but I could see his eyelids flutter closed and his breathing quicken as she tightened her grip and began to restrict his airway.
He made a noise in the back of his throat, half growl, half purr, certainly an expression of intense pleasure. As soon as Grayson began to relax into her grip, She stood back, leaving him unfulfilled, but not before reaching into his open shirt again and twisting one of his nipples so hard that he jumped.
‘When the right buttons are pushed by the right person at the right time,’ he said, ‘there’s an overwhelming desire to please, to be subsumed, to serve, and when pushed harder, to debase oneself or be debased, humiliated to better worship the domme, the mistress. Why? I don’t really know. For me it doesn’t feel like a choice. More like an instinctive response. Some believe that the loss of power is associated with the powerlessness of being a small child, with its safety and comfort and freedom from having to make a choice. I don’t prescribe to that theory entirely. It’s all a bit Freudian. But I agree that when I submit to She I feel safe, and comfortable, and free. It’s relaxing to not have to make decisions. Not being responsible. And for some it’s a way to enjoy pleasures that otherwise might provoke guilt or shame.’
‘And dominating?’ She asked. ‘Tell her what you get out of dominating.’
‘Nothing.’ He laughed. ‘Absolutely nothing. It’s hard work, you know. If you want to explore your dominant side then you need to be prepared for some very hard work. There’s a great deal of skill involved in beating someone properly, or tying them up. To know exactly what your sub’s limits are and to push them just far enough but not too far. It’s a great responsibility to hold someone’s safety and their service. Some subs can be very demanding.’
She rolled her eyes.
‘It’s the eternal question,’ She said. ‘Who is really serving whom? But at the end of the day, we all do it because it gives us a thrill. Gray is right. It doesn’t matter why. Now. Put this on.’
She threw me a black corset and a long stretch-lace pencil skirt with a Victorian style frill at the bottom. When I unrolled it I realised that not only was it see-through, but there was a hole at the back where my bum cheeks would peer through.
‘I’m not wearing this!’ I protested.
Grayson laughed. ‘You reckon?’
She was standing with her hands on her hips, staring me down.
‘I’ll help you with the corset,’ she said.
I peeled my clothes off for what felt like the tenth time in twenty-four hours and shimmied into the skirt.
‘Turn around. Hands against the wall.’
She sounded like a cop from a TV drama and I had to admit that the thought of She clad in uniform and brandishing a baton and a pair of police-issue handcuffs was not unappealing.
The corset’s steel boning pressed uncomfortably into my ribs as She pulled the laces tight.
‘I can’t breathe,’ I complained.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ she replied without a modicum of sympathy.
The club was just getting started when we arrived. A few couples stood at the bar nursing drinks and chatting to each other. It was early and the music was low to encourage conversation. As the night warmed up, the sounds of whips cutting through the air and paddles beating flesh would reverberate through the adjacent dungeon and blend into the heavier beats that the DJ would begin to play after midnight.
‘Wow,’ Richard, the club’s Dungeon Master, whistled when he clocked my outfit and the towering heels that She had lent me. Usually I wore more sensible shoes when I was working and would stay behind the front counter most of the night.
‘Mistress,’ said a soft voice, near my feet. I looked down.
One of She’s regular club slaves had approached, crawling on his hands and knees. He was naked besides his routine latex hotpants, which barely covered his arse, exposing an inch of bare crack and the curved, fleshy sides of each buttock. Tonight he was wearing a hot-pink pair with a white frill, which lent an extra layer of humiliation to the ensemble. On each of his nipples hung a clamp and a thin chain with a tiny bell attached to the end, which tinkled when he moved to warn of his approach.
At the sight of him prostrate in front of me, my nerve endings began to tingle and I felt my blood heating up and rushing through all of my limbs, as if I’d just gulped down a shot of whisky or necked a glass of champagne.
She appeared by my side. I hadn’t noticed her gliding across the room, as silent as a shadow.
‘Stuart is offering pony rides tonight,’ she said, holding aloft a human-sized leather saddle and a riding crop. The saddle was pale tan and well used, with cracks running across the leather. It was padded underneath with sheep skin and had a high pommel for the rider to hold onto. Stuart lifted his back a little as if to invite me to climb aboard. He continued to stare at the floor.
‘Go on then,’ She said. ‘Take him for a spin.’
I took the saddle gingerly from She’s outstretched hand and leaned down to Stuart.
‘May I?’ I asked him. Domme or not, it seemed only polite to check first.
‘Please, Mistress,’ he replied.
The saddle slipped over his back easily, as if it had been made especially for him.
There was no dignified way to climb atop. My skirt was so tight it simply wouldn’t stretch far enough for me to sit astride him unless I rolled the fabric all the way up to my waist so instead I kept my knees together and began to bend down to sit side saddle, hesitating before I lowered my full weight onto his back.
‘Won’t I hurt him?’ I asked She.
‘Trust me,’ she replied, ‘he doesn’t mind.’
Stuart had raised his head and was sniffing the air eagerly as if he were a real pony.
She thwacked his arse with the crop and then handed it to me.
I clenched my thighs to keep my balance as he jolted forward in response to the smack on his arse.
‘Don’t be long,’ she said, ‘I want you to try something when you return.’
For the first few steps I felt foolish. I was riding on the back of a grown man! Something I hadn’t done since I was a child and had played horsey on the rare occasion that my father had time to spend with me after work before falling asleep.
But as I found my rhythm and noticed how the other club-goers parted to allow us through, I began to enjoy myself. At first I was gentle with the riding crop, uncertain how to wield it or how hard I could bring it down on Stuart’s skin without making him yelp, but after a few delicate taps I found my confidence and brought it down harder on the right side of his buttock which I could just reach without tipping myself off.
I had no desire whatsoever to fuck him. Even the idea of it seemed wholly wrong. Unimaginable. But I did want to grab his balls and bring him to his knees in front of me begging for my mercy.
We lurched back to She and when we arrived at the tips of her stiletto boots, Stuart stretched forward onto his flanks with his face flat on the floor. As I came to my feet I glanced down to thank him and saw the tip of his tongue flicking out and trailing along the front of her shoe. He was polishing her boots. With his mouth. She shifted her weight and lifted her foot infinitesimally to allow him better access.
‘Now,’ She said. ‘Time for you to try how the other half lives.’
‘Gray,’ she cried out, beckoning the photographer over from his relaxed position leaning against the wall behind us where he was surveying our interaction with a wry smile on his face.
Tonight he was dressed in a pair of low-slung leather trousers with a studded belt and a pair of heavy silver boots. Over the top he wore a black mesh vest that clearly displayed his lean torso and also a pair of nipple clamps with a thick chain running horizontally across his chest connecting one nipple to the other.
He didn’t appear to be discomfited in the slightest by the contraption that made him vulnerable to a cruel tug at any moment that She decided to reach over and pull the chain.
Grayson took a moment too long to collect his thoughts and saunter across to us and, in a blink of an eye, She had one hand around his throat and the other hand resting on the chain, heavily enough to make both him and me wince as the teeth of the clamps bit into his nipples.
‘Spank her,’ she hissed.
I grimaced.
Spanking. Of course I had suspected it as soon as I’d seen the skirt that She had made me wear, but I had still hoped against hope that she might have something else in mind. Spanking was in my mind the most foolish and humiliating of all the submissive practices that I could think of. I found it distasteful and silly, a reminder of all the things that I disliked about tacky porn films and cheesy upstairs-downstairs erotic tales that inevitably involved a poorly dusted living room and a PVC-clad maid who needed to be punished.
Grayson seemed just as pleased about the whole idea as I was. She looked back and forth between us and grinned like the cat that got the cream.
‘I’m waiting,’ she said with an air of authority, giving his nipple chain another tug.
‘On the bench,’ Grayson turned to me and ordered.
I took another look at She’s scarily impassive expression and complied. It might be humiliating, but it would be over quickly and I supposed that I would learn something. Half a dozen people had suggested to me that since I worked here I ought to at least have a basic understanding of how our customers got their kicks.
The first smack was fairly soft, but the shock of it made me jump. The second was harder and I had to stifle a low moan. I wouldn’t give either She or Grayson the satisfaction of seeing me vulnerable. The third smack made a loud crack noise and, listening to the mumbled responses around me, I became aware that a crowd had gathered. It was no surprise. I’d never noticed Grayson at the club before and She only ever appeared when she was working, not as a participant. And no one had ever seen me getting involved either as a submissive or as a dominant, let alone both in one evening.
Blood rushed into my face, heating my cheeks, as I flushed with shame imagining how I must appear bent over the spanking bench with my head hanging low and limp like a doll’s and my bare arse in the air and fully exposed to all and sundry. I was briefly grateful for the cut-out buttocks as I knew that no matter what, She would have insisted on my spanking being on bare flesh. Having just my arse exposed was humiliating, but nowhere near as bad as it would have been to shimmy my skirt up to my waist and display my legs and bare pussy to anyone who cared to look closely enough.
Grayson’s breath was hot against my skin as he bent forward and whispered into my ear. ‘Try to let go,’ he said. ‘Let yourself fall into it. It’ll be easier.’ He stroked a lock of my hair as he drew away. It was a simple gesture, but full of affection and reminded me that we were both unwilling partners in this exercise and I was not fighting against him. Just trying something new.
His next few blows were more rhythmic and I tried to follow his advice and relax into the sensation of his palm slapping against my skin. Eventually the slaps began to blend into each other and the impact was no longer painful, but more like being exposed to a source of heat. After the stroke he would cup my buttocks gently, as if he were catching the pain in his hand. I began to learn the pattern of his strokes and press back against him each time he rested his hand on my arse, to encourage him to keep it there longer. I also noticed that as I pushed forward and back to match his rhythm, I had begun unwittingly grinding against the rough leather padding that covered the bench.
Then I lost control and cried out as a much sharper blow landed from a smaller, cooler hand. She. Grayson’s warm palm was quick to apply pressure to ease the sting.
Her voice was harsh in my ear.
‘Think about how much he hates this,’ She said. ‘How he’s only doing it to serve.’
I imagined She leaning over Grayson and directing each of his blows. The frustration on his face as his instincts warred with each other and his compulsion to submit to She won over everything else.
Briefly I felt almost drunk as I pictured how it would feel to have someone feel that way about me. How I would humiliate them, hurt them, debase them, care for them and hold them safely through it all.
‘Oh,’ I moaned, this time with pleasure, as Grayson brought his palm down on my flesh again.
‘That’s enough,’ She said. ‘I don’t want her to enjoy herself too much. The night is still young and we have so many more treats in store …’
6
The Eye of the Lens
Neil held the door open for me, removed my coat and then gallantly pulled out my chair once we reached the restaurant’s dining area.
He looked the picture of the London gentleman in a crisp white shirt with a grey waistcoat over the top, matching cigarette-cut suit trousers and pointed black shoes that shined like mirrors when they caught the light. His usually curly hair was slicked back into submission bar the one stubborn lock that had been falling over his left eye and irritating him for as long as we had known each other.
I leaned forward and tucked it back into the rest of his fringe. Neil took my hand and held it across the table.
‘It’s nice to see you, Lily,’ he said. ‘It’s been too long.’
‘Yes,’ I murmured, pulling away and upsetting the flower arrangement that stood between us. Neil caught the falling vase just before it crashed over the pristine white tablecloth.
Our relationship had been strained and uneasy for the past few months since I had walked out on him after his unsympathetic reaction to my then recently ended romance with Leonard. I’d received a few emails and text messages from him, breezy updates about his new job and flat in Hoxton. I had read and swiftly deleted them all without responding.
The last time I’d spoken to Liana, she had surprised me by standing up for him.
‘Don’t be so hard
on the guy,’ she’d said. ‘It’s not his fault he’s done well for himself.’
So when Neil called and invited me out to dinner, I agreed. He’d just been promoted and wanted to celebrate.
‘But not with my workmates,’ he’d added.
‘How come?’ I asked. ‘Are they so bad?’
‘Not bad, exactly,’ he said. ‘Just all so full of themselves sometimes. I want to spend a night not thinking or talking about PR for once. And see you.’
He’d taken me to Miyama, a Japanese restaurant in the City. He said it reminded him of Brighton and the time that Liana had blown a wad of her father’s money taking us all out to dinner at the sushi restaurant near the pier where we drank too much sake and took all the chopstick wrappers off the tables and made them into origami swans and frogs.
We’d just begun on the sharer plate of sashimi delivered by a young Japanese man with thick black-framed glasses when Neil waved his chopsticks in front of my face to catch my attention.
‘Earth to Lily,’ he said. ‘Your phone is ringing’. His voice brought me back to the present and the sound of my mobile. I’d been distracted, imagining how the waiter’s flesh would look constricted by a web of rope. Images like that had begun jumping into my mind more and more often lately and I was sometimes a little disturbed by the frequency and intensity of my kinky thoughts. I shook my head slightly in a vain attempt to clear my mind.
‘Nice ring tone,’ Neil said, as I pulled my phone out of my bag. It was the True Blood theme, ‘Bad Things’ by Jace Everett. Liana had programmed it into my settings when I’d been to visit her and I hadn’t got around to changing it back.
Neil raised his eyebrows even higher when the word ‘She’ flashed up on the screen.
I answered immediately.
‘Lily,’ She said, and continued talking without so much as waiting for me to reply. ‘Are you free tonight? Sherry’s called in ill.’