Anders was reading the Sunday paper after breakfast with Maia as his footstool when the doorbell rang. ‘Sit up,’ he said. She sat back on her heels. The person he expected was on his doorstep, spiked white hair, seven facial piercings, equipment in hand. ‘Hi, Zoë. Come in,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate this.’
‘No problem. Scenes a speciality.’ She caught sight of the naked woman and grinned. ‘Oh, yeah. This is what I like; no formalities, no delays.’ Maia was wearing collar and cuffs, the wrists linked in front, and a very tight waist cincher in black leather, but nothing else. She had also flushed her brightest red. Anders took her by the leash and led her toward their guest. ‘I’ve got things set up upstairs. Do you want anything before we start?”
“Nah, I’m fine. Nice place.’
‘Thanks. Go ahead.’ He ignored his slave’s questioning and terrified looks, and followed Zoë, leash in hand. ‘The door at the end of the hall.’
He’d raised an old exercise bench to waist height and placed it in the middle of the room, with a few modifications and a small table on one side for equipment. ‘Will this work?’
‘Yeah, this is good.’ Zoë put her bag down by the table, shook out a folded white cloth and began to lay things out. Anders drew his slave forward by the collar and watched her face as she took in the packages of what appeared to be medical paraphernalia.
Zoë drew paper and a pen out of her case and glanced at Maia, then back at Anders. ‘She still has to sign the consent; I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’
‘I know. Here, girl.’ He put the page on the bench in front of her, but thought it unlikely she was taking it in. Her hands were cold and her eyes weren’t moving. No matter. She looked up into his face, and he nodded toward the pen. She picked it up, twisted her wrists around until she’d found a way to hold the pen effectively, and signed.
Anders took out a ball gag, one with plenty of holes in the hollow ball, and held it up as Zoë came back from washing her hands. ‘Do you mind if I gag her?’
The woman looked doubtful for a minute, and then shrugged. ‘Oh, well. Why not?’
Maia opened her mouth, not quite wide enough; he had to hold the back of her neck and shove the ball in with his thumb, murmuring, ‘Come on, girl.’ She was shaking. He lifted her onto the table and locked her wrists to the bar behind her head. Then he fastened her ankles to the weight rack, high on either side. As good as stirrups. The waist cincher had rings, which he used to strap her down. ‘I’ll get her shaved while you finish setting up.’
The whole process took a while: three 10-gauge holes through each labia majora, widely spaced. The piercer consulted with Anders on placement, and was very good; she hardly spoke to the bound creature on the table except to tell her when to take a deep breath. Maia let out some sharp yelps, and panted through a couple of piercings and ring insertions; evidently some hurt more than others. She hardly bled at all.
But when Zoë stood over the gagged face and began examining the septum, Anders could see the whites all round the girl’s eyes; she was panic-stricken. Anders stroked her hair and said, ‘Relax. I’m not making you go to work with a nose ring. Not that kind. We’re using a retainer. It’s going to be hidden.’ Zoë showed her the U-shaped piece, and some of Maia’s colour returned, though she lost it again when the needle went through.
When that was done, Anders brought Zoë a drink and they cleaned up and talked about aftercare, Maia still on the table.
She examined Maia’s nipple rings. ‘These kind of lock, don’t they? I’ve seen them before.”
“Yes.’ Anders showed her the little tool on his key ring that opened them, and she fit it into one of the locks as an experiment before she gave it back. ‘What are you going to do with the labia piercings, can I ask?’
‘I’m going to lock up her cunt.’
‘Cool!’ She glanced at Maia’s face. ‘And I take it she didn’t know that until this minute.’
‘Nope.’
‘I also take it she’s got no choice about it.’
‘None at all. But don’t worry. It will make her very, very horny. Won’t it, little girl?’ Maia groaned, a bleat of distress and frustration that made them both laugh.
***
‘Are you really going to – lock me – like you said?’
‘Yes. After they heal, of course; you heard Zoë. A couple of months, probably.’
She was kneeling with her head against his thigh. He’d already put her in a warm salty bath. She’d been on a lead on her hands and knees for an hour since Zoë had left; he figured it was easier to keep her legs apart that way.
Anders ran gentle fingers down the muscles of her back and shoulders, feeling for the tension and anxiety that sometimes gathered there. He found some, but not the frozen feel of panic, or even the hard lines of real fear. Her small, warm movements suggested curiosity, like a dog held back by the command to sit, but watching for permission to investigate. She glanced up at him. ‘Locked – with, like, padlocks?’
‘Mm. You’ll see when the time comes.’ He smoothed her hair. ‘I wanted to get the punishment for the nipple rings out of the way first, you see. Before the next set.’
‘I thought you’d forgotten that.’
‘No.’
‘And – it’s so weird to have no hair, master – are you going to keep me shaved?’
‘Yes, I think so. Maybe a little bit in front. I’ll play around with it and see.”
“She said, she said no sex for two weeks….’
‘No penetrative sex. And I think to be on the safe side we won’t touch that area at all for that time. Apart from looking after your new holes. We don’t want any infections.’ Anders stroked her head and smiled; she was whimpering again. Another plea from the null side of the power differential.
How he loved that sound! Wordless, needy; the language of abjection. In that one little plaint, the distilled quintessence of helplessness. He could close his eyes and bask in that music, were it not for the straining erection it gave him.
‘Fortunately your cocksucking skills are improving, so there’s no problem.”
“Yes, master, thank you,’ she murmured submissively into his leg.
‘And as we’re on the subject – ‘ He unzipped. Her throat opened now with barely a hesitation, though tears trickled by the time he finished; a physiological reaction on her part rather than an emotional one. He sat back and basked for a few minutes, his slave’s head back on his thigh.
‘Master – ‘ She looked up at him.
‘What, girl?’
‘It’s going to be so hard – not coming. I’m – I’m thinking about it all the time already.’ She whispered, ‘I can’t help it.’
He stroked the hair back from her face. ‘I know. You have no idea how gorgeous you are when you’re all hot and wet.’
‘But – master – ‘
He lowered his brows and slowly shook his head at her. ‘Aren’t you learning anything, girl? What just happened this morning?’
She looked down. ‘I got – you had me – pierced.’ She took a deep breath, let it out. ‘And I guess you – laid claim?’
He was amused. ‘So to speak. Not that I haven’t been perfectly clear on that; I hope you haven’t forgotten.’
She shook her head.
‘I thought you understood the other night. Try to get it through your head.’ He took a handful of dark hair in his fist, and centred her face beneath his gaze. ‘You have the nerves and synapses that connect that pretty body to its brain. A sense of ownership because of that, naturally. But get over it.
This property is mine.’ He gave her head a little shake. ‘I own the body, and the nerves, and the brain, too. So I decide what the feelings will be.’ He clenched his fist a little tighter. ‘I’ll make you feel whatever gives me pleasure. Me, not you.’ He leaned in, half an inch closer. ‘Have you got that now?’ Only her lips moved: a small, whispered, ‘Yes, master.’
He released her. ‘Have you really got it, or were you just hoping I’d let go?’
She kissed his leg. ‘No – yes – I think so. Master, you mean that when I feel – when you make me feel – frustrated – I’m giving you pleasure?
Serving you?’
‘Yes. Exactly. You are. The operative words being I make you.’ He stroked a finger along her jaw. ‘Just make sure you understand who’s doing what to whom.’ He watched her eyes reflect and respond, taking that in.
This would take some time. But they had plenty.
***
To my relief I could walk normally by the next day, and if I sat very little at work I could get the rings out of my mind for whole minutes at a time. The bare nakedness of my crotch actually took almost as long to get used to. That uncovering made me feel so naked I kept having weird moments of terror out in public, like those dreams in which you’re searching, late, for the elusive location of your last final exam, and it occurs to you that you’ve neglected to get dressed. I’d look down in a panic, momentarily sure I’d forgotten my clothes.
When Anders saw me trying to peer at my crotch, he let me get a good look in a mirror. What he’d had planted in me were fixed bead rings, fairly thick, small in circumference, and relatively deep. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, was standard, but these weren’t the kind that hung down visibly; they almost hugged the edges of my labia. Whatever he was planning with regard to locking me up, it looked like it was going to be a close fit.
I kept forgetting about the metal in my nose; I’d scratch an itch and give myself a jolt. The retainer was black and virtually invisible, but I could imagine what an actual ring would look like, and had visions of potential uses that were truly scary
The days rolled on, spring into summer, and the strange, impossible pattern continued, becoming a little more ‘normal’ with each passing day.
Those odd, anomalous questions – now down to once a month – got asked again. I had no idea how to answer them. Anything vital he’d missed? Well, were orgasms vital? Obviously not. Anything beyond what I could handle?
Daily, it seemed, but so what? Did I need to walk away from this?
Unimaginable. My mind shied away from the very phrase ‘walk away,’ as if the mere words could lure me to perdition.
There were a few variations in the routine. Anders let me meet Nikki for lunch, for instance. By that time, I rather dreaded it, based on her phone calls; fending her off in person was going to be even more difficult than on the phone. But it turned out better than I’d expected. She took a long look at me when we sat down, and then said, ‘All right, Maia, I’m not going to give you a hard time.’
Politely I pretended that such a thing had never occurred to me. ‘Sorry?
What do you mean?’
‘Leda said I was being too pushy. Instead of being supportive. Which you need more than lectures.’
‘Well…’ I smiled, and handed over one of the menus. What form was this support going to take? ‘Thanks. I know it all seems pretty weird.’
‘I’ve been asking around, and looking it up. And all right, TPE does exist; people actually do it.’
I’d never liked the term ‘Total Power Exchange.’ The first two words were fine; it was the ‘exchange’ part that never felt right. As if it was a seesaw that tipped both ways. But I wasn’t going to quibble. ‘They do,’ I agreed.
‘Though the only websites I saw were people who’d been married for years, and they wrote as much about their kids and their jobs as their kink.
And they went to play parties, lots of them.’ She eyed me meaningfully. I had heard multiple times that she didn’t like my isolation.
‘Mm. Keep in mind that the ones on the net are the exhibitionist types.
Kind of by definition.’
‘And you’re not?’
‘No.’
‘And Anders isn’t either?’
‘Not so far.’
He’d been moody that morning. One of his street acquaintances had been assaulted and was in hospital. A debate on public housing in the legislature had gone nowhere as usual. And as a minor but irritating bonus, the mantelpiece he’d tracked down had turned out to be the wrong one. I had listened from the floor and shared his frustration, and wished I could do something, anything to help. My harness got yanked extra tight, so perhaps I provided some distraction, if nothing else. Not much room for lunch today as a result. I looked at the menu, which was basically burgers and beer –
Nikki’s choice, not mine. There had to be a salad somewhere. I was actually going to eat at a table for the first time in weeks. I hoped I remembered how to use cutlery.
‘But you could show up. I mean, you wouldn’t have to scene if you didn’t want to.’
She was still on about the play parties. ‘I know.’ It’s not up to me, Nikki, I wanted to tell her, but why start a fight?
She sighed. ‘I told Leda you were clamming up on me. She said it was because I was judging you, of course you’d stop talking.’
I shrugged apologetically. ‘You were just worried about me. It’s okay.”
“Oh, stop it! Stop being so nice and just spit it out!’
I winced. ‘Sorry. Ms. Nice Guy strikes again.’ I stared at my plate for a minute, trying to marshal my assertive forces, such as they were. ‘Okay, when we’ve been talking, I have been feeling – kind of bossed, a bit. And judged.’
‘Finally. Well, kinda. In the politest possible way. Girl, you are absolutely turning me into a switch. I never knew I had a dom side until I met you. Do you have this effect on everybody?”
“Hey, maybe.’ I opened my eyes wide. ‘That would explain a few things.’ She laughed, and I laughed, and the atmosphere lightened up. When the food arrived, I picked up my knife and fork and began on my Caesar like a lady, making frequent use of my napkin. Bottled dressing; Anders did it much better.
‘Okay,’ said Nikki, spearing a fry, ‘I’m accepting that you’re safe and happy, like you keep telling me. And I’ll stop bugging you about the play parties. I guess you don’t get to decide anyway.’
Hah! I thought.
‘Though you could always ask … sorry.’ She waved the impaled fry at the end of her fork. ‘Forget I said that. But what’s he doing to you?’
She wanted details. I knew what Nikki wanted to hear, and I owed it to her, after her most kind surrender. So I told her about the Island picnic, not the conversation but the teasing on the way home. She loved it. I told her about the piercing scene, leaving out the long-term use he’d threatened for the rings. She gasped and exclaimed and empathized in a most satisfactory way, and had heard of Zoë and approved of her, which was reassuring. I agreed that this had, in fact, been a scene of sorts, and tolerated the smug look on her face. She asked why I wasn’t wearing a collar, and I explained that I only wore one at home. I didn’t get around to mentioning the rest of my accoutrements, including the tight web of harness hidden beneath my dress. In short, I gave her a quarter-inch-deep version of the truth that wouldn’t upset her. We whispered and giggled, and she reciprocated with descriptions of her most recent play party. It was fun. But Nikki may have intuited a little deeper past the surface than she let on. Pulling back from our goodbye hug she gave me a careful look, and reminded me that if I was ever in trouble I only needed to call. Though I appreciated the girl talk more, it was nice of her to make the offer.
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 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.
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 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 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 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.
