Aqua Domination (4 page)

Jack’s tone of suppressed excitement made Mary realise just how much he was aroused by the idea of being dominated. Suddenly she understood him much better. ‘Maybe we should try it at least once to find out if it helps our relationship,’ Jack said. It was pathetic how hard he was trying to sound cool.

‘Yes, let’s try it,’ Mary said with a slight shrug. ‘It’s no big deal.’ She felt a surge of curiosity. Revenge was also a motive, though she could hardly have said why. It was as if everything had gone wrong, and so she would take her revenge for that fact against Jack simply because he was making himself available as a victim. Most of the relationships in the world, she reflected, were formed like that: here is a victim.

‘Let’s start,’ said Mary. ‘Strip off.’

Jack obeyed instantly, a fact that Mary found curiously pleasing. So, she thought, this is what it feels like to have power. Soon Jack was naked. His fully erect cock pulsed, rising and falling with every beat of his heart. Usually he took longer to get it up.

From the goodies on the bed she chose a tawse, a gag, some cords and a box of clips. Suddenly she had an inspiration: she would dominate Jack in the bathroom rather than the bedroom. Why not? That was what David had done to her, so she was used to it. She could do a better job on Jack in there, and she would surely come more.

‘Go and take a shower,’ she ordered.

She gave him two minutes, then followed him into the coldly sterile hotel bathroom. Jack looked alarmed as he read in her face and superb bearing a new depth of motivation and resolution. She put her pieces of domination equipment in the sink.

‘Lie down on the floor,’ she ordered sharply. ‘Other way round, you fool. Your head here, your feet there.’ Quickly, Mary tied his hands together behind the toilet bowl, and then she fastened his ankles together, using red cotton cords that David had used on her. So many times. So many ways.

‘I feel so helpless,’ Jack murmured, gazing up at Mary in awe.

‘Yes, it’s easy and exciting to be helpless, isn’t it?’ she replied with real bitterness. ‘Any damn fool can be a victim, and so every damn fool is. The hard thing is to take the responsibility of refusing to be helpless and passive and weak. The acceptance of the dominant role is the beginning of courage.’

‘You’re thinking of David. As usual.’

‘No, I’m not! Oh, now you’ve made me angry. Shut your mouth. You’ll regret what you just said, you bastard, you’ll regret it the rest of your stupid, lousy life.’

Contempt for Jack filled Mary as she saw how frightened he was. As if I were as dangerous and crazy as David, she thought. How could Jack think that? He must be a coward. She hated cowards.

Slowly and with great pleasure, the pleasure of anticipation, Mary began to strip. Nudity seemed to pad stealthily towards her like an animal she secretly loved, a deadly carnivore that visited her in blackness and silence. Pride warmed her as she revealed the magnificence of her body, and she thrilled to the imminence of ecstasy. Pleasure stalked. She haunted Jack with an unhurried revelation of her height and strength, her curves and her femaleness, all her perfections suddenly untouchable, and so transformed into the ultimate desire of unattainability.

Hunger and fear ran across his face as she taunted him by her very existence. By her own experience she knew that not only was he afraid of her, but also of his own dark desires, his own personal and solitary abyss.

How good it felt to have him helpless! So this was how David had felt when he dominated her. No wonder that used to be his consuming passion. Mary knew now why she had to dominate Jack: it would help her to understand David.

‘You’re so gorgeous,’ Jack gasped.

‘Of course. What, you only just noticed?’

‘I never saw you clearly until now.’

‘Oh, shut up. Who cares about anything you think or feel or say?’ Mary snapped. ‘You’re nothing. Now there’s only one real person in this room. You have ceased to exist.’

What would David say if he could see her now? She seemed to actually hear his voice, and what he told her was that she had not fully secured Jack’s legs. It was odd to virtually hear David like that. She put the ends of the cord around Jack’s ankles under the bathroom door and closed it firmly. There, now he was secure. Thanks for the advice, David, she thought.

‘I’m going to sit on your face,’ Mary stated. ‘You will use your tongue to worship my bum.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Jack replied in a tone of disgust. ‘It’s dirty.’

‘You’ve just made the greatest mistake of your life,’ Mary snarled. ‘You’ve made me angry.’ Suddenly, she squeezed his balls and, when Jack opened his mouth to cry out, she slid a pear-shaped red rubber gag between his teeth and fastened its leather straps around his head to hold it in place with a swift certainty.

Shocked, Jack tried to cry out, but the bloated, bitter gag reduced his efforts to unimpressive bleatings through his nose.

‘You refused to lick me when I ordered you to. And now you insult me by having an erection. That’s the final straw. I order you to make your cock go soft right now. If you disobey me again you’ll regret it the rest of your life.’ Mary lightly brushed Jack’s cock with the very tips of her fingernails, and it pulsed with blood, straining taut with lust. ‘So, you’re determined to defy me. You demand the most extreme punishment.’

Lightly, teasingly, Mary caressed her full, taut breasts.

‘You think you know what’s going to happen now,’ she told Jack quietly. ‘You’ve read it in books, seen it in magazines and movies.’ She leaned over Jack and touched the tip of his cock, then whispered her next words so quietly that they were next to silence. ‘You know nothing about what is going to happen. Nothing at all. This is the end of your old life.’

Standing next to Jack, whose terrified eyes were staring fixedly at her, Mary began to masturbate.

‘You’ve made me so angry, Jack! You’ve always refused to dominate me. You thought I was weird. Yet you came crawling to my parents’ house because you couldn’t get me out of your mind, you knew I was special. Well, you’re not special, Jack. You’re ordinary and I’m bored with you. I hope I never see you again after tonight. Do you realise what that means? It means I can do anything I like to you now, because I don’t have to worry about your reaction, your feelings, the future of our relationship. But even that isn’t enough. I need to suffer too. It excites me. It helps me come more often and more strongly. If men are too cowardly to punish me, I must do it myself. So what I do to you, I’ll also do to myself.

‘And,’ Mary whispered, ‘the amount of pain I can enjoy is simply shocking. And the level of pain I can endure is even higher.’

She knelt beside Jack and leaned forwards so that her breasts’ perfection overhung his face; so cool and untouchable, such a beautiful danger.

‘We think we need all sorts of things,’ Mary murmured. ‘We’re wrong. We have exactly what we need here and now: our bodies, our fears.’

Mary took her right breast in her left hand and squeezed it with a dreamlike slowness, compressing and raising its yielding flesh with such a gradual tightening that there seemed to be no movement, but rather a growth of tension like the growth of a tree that finally shatters concrete with its unstoppable tenacity.

And Mary struck. The sharp fingernails of her right hand attacked her rigid teat, sinking in with sublime cruelty.

‘No more compromises,’ Mary gasped.

Jack rolled his head in disbelief and terror, bleating through his nose, struggling uselessly to escape his bonds. As Mary was crazy enough to hurt herself so much, was there any act so extreme that she would not perform it on his helpless flesh? Surely not. All at once, from every inch of his skin, sweat swam forth in a tingling eruption. He tried to free his wrists, but could not.

Mary knew, there was no going back. She would punish herself and this fool, this Jack, so severely that it had to be the start of a new life. She would be a Viking, and burn her boats on the beach of a new land so that there would be no temptation to go back to the past.

Hands shaking with lust and slimy with sweat, she picked up a set of small black plastic and shiny metal clips in a box. She stood so tall and proud, straddling her prisoner. He gazed up at what had become the centre of the universe: her engorged and streaming cunt.

‘How hard your cock is,’ Mary hissed mockingly, breathing hard as she rode her own discomfort like a masterful rider on a superb and spirited mount, a stallion that pawed the ground and snorted in the energy of its fine fettle. ‘Obviously you get a big kick out of seeing me in pain. And yet you haven’t the guts to embrace your own excitement honestly and dominate me yourself. You’re a hypocrite. You’re a coward and a weakling. I hate you.’

Mary squatted over Jack’s chest, leaning back to thrust her bulging vulva at his face. Magnificent with obsession, her superb young body gleamed with highlights that accentuated every sleek, firm curve. For fifteen minutes she tormented her own pussy and breasts in majestic and alarming silence. Sweat dropped onto Jack again and again. Drip, drop. Each like a burning kiss on his skin. He thought he must go mad. His cock thrashed. It jumped left to right, up and down, jerking about like a wild rat in a small cage. He would have sold his soul to be allowed an orgasm. To jet! To spurt! Mary gazed and gazed into his eyes. Surely she was a witch, and could see all the way to the back of his head.

Smiling dreamily to herself, Mary stepped into the bath and turned on the water. Sighing with delight, she stroked every inch of her flesh with her soapy hands.

Happiness filled her like a hot drink on a bitterly cold day, and she caressed her breasts. Jerking and quivering like a desperate fish out of water, Jack’s stiff cock looked merely silly and annoying, a nasty thing that needed to be squashed.

How good it is to cut loose and dominate another human being, Mary thought. Now she could certainly understand David much better, and perhaps even begin to forgive him for all he had done to her. How could he, after all, have resisted the temptation to treat her with such ecstatic cruelty?

‘I’m going to fuck you,’ she told Jack. ‘Listen carefully now. If you can manage not to come for twenty minutes, I’ll release you and you can do anything you like with me. To me. I’ll obey your every command, no matter how disgusting. But if you come before the twenty minutes is up, then I’ll punish you until dawn. It will be a truly terrifying ordeal. Just twenty minutes! Surely you can do it? But you can’t. I’ll make you come. Perhaps I won’t even move. I’ll still make you come. I’ll milk you. I’ll suck you in and spit you out.’

Mary straddled Jack and lowered herself on him like a beautiful spider settling down to devour a neatly wrapped, paralysed fly. She held his cock and swallowed it up in her slippery vagina as if it were nothing at all.

And then she did nothing for five minutes except play with her breasts and clitoris. She refused to move her hips or use her formidable internal muscles. Jack believed what she had said about releasing him if only he could refrain from orgasm. He believed what she had said about punishing him for hours if he came too soon. All he had to do was to hold out for what was, after all, a very short time. Then she would release him and he could tie her up, whip her and fuck her brains out. Then whip her again. All he had to do was to refuse to unleash the pent-up lust burning in his twitching cock. That was all. Very simple. Easy.

And of course he could not. Against all logic and sanity he had to thrust upwards at the triumphant slut straddling him and playing with herself.

‘What a fool you are.’ Mary laughed. And she came. She came and she came and she came. For nearly a minute she was possessed by an unbearable ecstasy that made her cry out, weep, cough, and finally laugh. Muscles locked rigid, she arched and writhed, impaled on a captive penis. Her internal muscles clamped and pulsed, writhed and swirled, like a mass of intertwined snakes bathed in hot oil and striving to crush their prey.

‘That was good,’ Mary stated when the last spasms had passed. ‘That was very good. Now I’ll make you come.’

Terror gripped Jack, and he tried to relax his every muscle to avoid orgasm. As soon as Mary began to methodically milk his cock with her highly trained internal muscles, he knew that his efforts were useless. He was doomed. Smiling slightly, Mary clenched and relaxed her cunt, gripping the captive penis around its head, then around its base. Jack was sucked up into her hot, oily succulence. As he started to come, Mary lithely scrambled off her prisoner, lay beside him and gripped his cock so that his mighty spurts deluged and spattered her face. She could not help being a little impressed by the huge amount of fluid he spurted, with such force that she actually heard a spattering sound as it sprayed so violently against her skin. Jack screamed again and again through his nose as if he would never stop.

‘Now see what you’ve done!’ Mary exclaimed. ‘How dare you come over my face like that, you disgusting pig? I already had some severe punishments in mind for you, but now I know that they aren’t severe enough.’ As Mary spoke, cream kept dribbling down into her mouth, so she spat it out. ‘I’ll have to make new plans now that you’ve insulted me with your filth,’ she complained, looking down at her breasts as little rivulets flowed over their curves. ‘What I’ll do to you will be so bad that you can’t even imagine it now. And when I do it to you, you won’t be able to believe it.’

Mary turned on the tap to begin filling the bath. She poured in a large amount of bath foam liquid. How she would enjoy herself! Soon she would transfer Jack into the deepening water. She was strong enough to do that even if he resisted.

Then he would learn the true meaning of domination with heat and slipperiness, wetness and humiliation. There is nothing that cannot be done in a bath.

Early the next morning, Mary drove away from the hotel without Jack. She felt proud of herself, for doing what all the self-help books and articles said she should: being proactive instead of passive.

Happy singing filled the car, and it was Mary’s singing. She would defy the world by being herself – but, no, she was no longer interested in the world, so there was no need for defiance. But if her free soul demanded the absolute and unconditional surrender of her flesh, so be it. Let her own flesh fear her! There would be no more compromises.

‘This is all well and good and true,’ said Mary to herself. ‘But what shall I actually do next?’ It seemed dull simply to go back to her flat and look for a new job and a new relationship.

A sign came into view, pointing the way to some place she had never been before, not at all on the way to Leeds, logic and normality. So she followed that sign. She felt it showed the road to freedom even though it actually said Melton Mowbray. Around noon she stopped to have lunch, and an hour after that she was feeling so sleepy that she stopped at a small hotel and slept the rest of the afternoon like an overfed cat.

Waking up hungry, she drove to a pizza place and devoured a jumbo all by herself, then went back to the hotel and slept without the dreams and nightmares that usually annoyed her so much. Next morning she had breakfast in Peter borough, then walked into a charity shop because she sensed there was something for her in there, though she knew not what. And there it was: a cardboard box full of science-fiction paperbacks from the 1950s and 1960s, all of them in excellent condition. David loved science-fiction books, especially old ones. Or at least he had. Now it seemed he was too depressed to be interested in anything, including Mary. Especially Mary.

She got the box of books at an absurdly low price, and one old man thought she was so good-looking that he even insisted on carrying them out to her car. Mary had that kind of effect on men. So, she thought, now she had to take these books to David, because he loved to collect them so much. She had not known what she was going to do that day, but now she did. This was obviously fate. Not her decision.

A brief look at her map told Mary the route to David’s, so she set off, in such a good mood that she sang to herself rather than turning on the radio. Beside the road, huge machines were getting in the harvest. Probably David would just tell her to go away and stop bothering him, but so what? She would give him the books anyway, because she wanted to. It was not a way of saying thank you, as she had no reason to thank him. It was not even an attempt to ingratiate herself with him, she was beyond that. He was nothing to her, in fact it looked as though he was, these days, nothing even to himself.

It was just a bunch of old books, that was all.

After lunch at a Tesco’s, she drove back to David’s house in a leafy, sleepy street drenched in hot sunshine and rang the doorbell. On David’s face when he opened the door was a look of annoyance and suspicion.

‘Don’t look so serious,’ Mary said with a laugh. ‘I’m not going to force my way in this time. Here are some books I rescued from a charity shop. If you don’t want them, just throw them away. Goodbye and good luck.’

Mary turned away and walked back to her car. She was certain that David would maintain his lack of enthusiasm and would not call her back, and she told herself again that she did not care anyway, but of course she hoped he would call her back. He did not call her back.

As she was opening her car door, two young women jogged around the corner.

‘It’s Mary!’ one of them exclaimed, and they both came to a halt.

‘Hi, Faye! Hi, Carol!’ Mary said, surprised and pleased to meet these two nice girls again. During the confusing period when she had more or less lived with David in an on-again, off-again fashion she had enjoyed some good conversations with Faye and Carol, who lived nearby. Both girls’ parents had consulted David about their investments.

‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ said Carol. ‘We haven’t seen you in ages.’

‘It’s so nice to see you again,’ Faye said with real pleasure and warmth.

‘What are you doing these days?’ Mary asked. ‘Going to university?’

‘Yeah,’ Carol replied. ‘We’ve finished the first year. Now it’s the summer break, but we’ve got a lot of projects and stuff.’

‘Our parents are away on holiday, so we’ve got two houses all to ourselves,’ said Faye with innocent pride.

‘We have fun,’ said Carol, and giggled.

Faye blushed and gave her friend a nudge. Mary wondered what they were getting up to. Then she heard David’s voice. She was amazed how her heart leapt.

‘Oh, Mary,’ he said. ‘Don’t go yet, OK? Hi, Faye. Hi, Carol. When you’re through talking here, come back inside, OK, Mary?’

‘OK,’ she replied.

David turned away and went back into his house. Faye and Carol looked at Mary and could see she was thinking hard.

‘We won’t keep you,’ said Carol. ‘But look, we really want to talk with you. You’re one of the few people we can trust. We want to tell you something and maybe ask your advice. So you must see us really soon. Visit us today or tomorrow. Please. I mean it.’

‘I will,’ said Mary. ‘I want to, I’m intrigued.’

The girls expressed their pleasure, said their goodbyes, and went off jogging together, though they kept looking back at Mary as though to make sure she did not intend driving off.

Things, thought Mary, are getting interesting. She took a deep breath and walked back into David’s house, joining him in the kitchen where he was making coffee.

‘Carol and Faye look great,’ said Mary.

‘They really do look great,’ David agreed, not sounding enthusiastic, but rather speaking as an expert on women.

Mary sat down at the table and tried to be very quiet. A voice at the back of her mind told her that if only she could be very quiet, she might be allowed to stay a little while.

‘These books are very good,’ David said with some reluctance.

He doesn’t want to be nice to me, he thinks it might be dangerous, Mary realised. She decided to pretend to be a quiet, calm woman.

‘Look, a very early Jack Vance paperback novel in near-mint condition,’ David murmured, almost speaking to himself as he laid the books out on the table. For all his depression and apathy, there was now a spark of interest glowing in his eyes. ‘Jack Vance is a genius. America’s least-known genius. Would it sound crazy if I said he’s the best writer of the twentieth century?’

‘I believe you.’

‘Yes, but you’re notoriously gullible,’ David muttered.

He poured two cups of coffee and gave one to Mary, then sat down with her and looked at the books, marvelling at cover art, titles and authors.

‘Well, now I know,’ he said. ‘The last thing to go in a man is the collecting habit. I’d thought I could never take an interest in anything again. Just look at this early Phillip K. Dick. Wonderful spaceships.’

‘What happened,’ asked Mary, ‘to make you lose interest in everything?’

‘I don’t really know,’ David said with the slightest of shrugs, as though he could hardly be bothered even to shrug. ‘I got sick of my work. I mean, derivatives are hardly even real. I got sick of my sex life. I’m a sadist, an extreme sadist, as you know better than anyone. I’m a sadist with a bathroom fetish. That’s just silly. I got sick of everything, Mary. Work, sex, people. So I quit everything. I can live on my investments.’

‘Sounds like clinical depression. Did you see a doctor? You should. Get some treatment. Depression is terrible. You can’t simply accept it.’

‘I just don’t care,’ David replied. ‘So, what are you up to these days? Did you say you’d quit your job?’

‘Huh!’ Mary laughed. ‘You don’t want to know about me. You just don’t want to talk about yourself.’

‘You’re clever,’ David admitted ruefully.

‘I’ll tell you about myself anyway. I quit my job and got fired at exactly the same time, after I mashed a big cream cake into the face of a bitch who really annoyed me in the office. She was lucky I didn’t punch her. And since I saw you last, I’ve dominated my ex-boyfriend Jack. Very severely. He came running after me but he wouldn’t dominate me, so I tied him up in a hotel bathroom and gave him the works. It was hell. For him, I mean. For me it was pretty good.’

David looked up from the early Ace Double paperback he was perusing to stare at Mary. She felt it was the first time he had truly looked at her, the first time he had seen her, the first time he had shown any interest in her, for two years. Perhaps it was the first time ever. It was a pure delight in her heart.

‘So,’ David said after a long pause. ‘You mashed a cake into the face of a colleague, and you dominated your boyfriend.’

‘No, my ex-boyfriend. He was already ex at that time, and now he is so much more ex. I convinced him of his status with my bum.’

‘And you masturbated in my bathroom, I recall you saying.’

‘Yes, using restraint and equipment.’

‘Obviously,’ sighed David, ‘I really screwed you up with our unfortunate relationship.’

‘Oh, no!’ Mary laughed. ‘Dream on! You’re not that good, David. Sorry to disappoint you, but you didn’t screw me up. I was born screwed up. Shit, anyway, I’m no more screwed up than anybody else. I’m just more honest, and I express more. I do more.’

‘You do more,’ David echoed, and laughed a small, tentative laugh that sounded rusty from long disuse.

‘Fuck, now I feel ten times better because of all the crazy stuff I’ve done lately,’ Mary said with her habitual sincerity and truthfulness that hardly anybody had ever liked. ‘You know, David, the thing is this,’ she added, leaning towards him and touching his arm briefly. She spoke in an urgent whisper. ‘I am so fucking sick and tired of trying to pretend to be fucking normal. Or even halfway normal. I’m never going to try like that again, David.’

‘I agree,’ David replied. ‘Fuck being normal.’

For a few minutes the man and woman sat in absolute silence. They drank coffee, had a biscuit each, and said not a word. David sorted his books into little piles, one for each publisher. Then he sorted them again, by writer. Then he arranged them in the order they were published. There are many ways in which a man and woman can sit together and say nothing. To her surprise, Mary realised that this particular silence was companionable. Despite all the terrible events and the shouting matches of the past, here they were sitting like the oldest of friends who say nothing because they no longer fear silence. Mary felt warm and cosy.

Lust came into her mind and body, taking her by surprise once more. She decided to ignore it and to leave quickly. Obviously it would be insane to even think of having sex with David even if he had begged her to, and there was no chance of that happening. He was certainly determined never to get involved with her again.

So what.

‘Let’s have a bath together,’ she said.

David started as though he had had an electric shock. He had trouble getting any words out. ‘We can’t begin it again, Mary,’ he said at last. ‘We mustn’t. We have to be determined. For both our sakes. It’s too dangerous. For both of us. We were lucky that you ran away two years ago.’

Mary leaned over the table and touched the huge bulge in David’s jeans.

‘You got a full erection,’ she pointed out quietly, ‘as soon as I spoke.’

‘My cock is not intelligent. My cock is very stupid and very cruel. I’m an absolute sadist. There is nothing else, that’s all there is. You must leave now, Mary. I beg you to leave.’

Mary knew that he was right. Of course she ought to leave now.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said gently. ‘We’ll have a bath together and it will be good, I promise.’ She held his hand and looked into his eyes. ‘I’ll have a bath with you and we’ll have a great time, because I insist on certain conditions.’

David’s erection inside his jeans was hurting him. He grimaced, and handled his penis so that it was at a better, less painful, angle.

‘What conditions?’ he whispered hoarsely.

And Mary knew she had him. Her mouth filled with strangely bitter saliva. She knew triumph.

And she knew fear.

‘You can dominate me,’ Mary stated. ‘But no restraint and no gags. You can whip me and punish me and order me around and you can humiliate me and you can insult me verbally. But I may well insult you back, verbally I mean. You can fuck me and order me to suck you. You can dress me up. It won’t be a perfect scene for you because I won’t be helpless, but it’ll be interesting for us both to see just how much punishment I can take without being restrained. Bound helpless. It’ll be more interesting for you than sitting around watching TV or however the hell you spend your time now that you don’t work and you’re so depressed.’

Mary said all this with as much outward calm as if she were talking about the weather. Inwardly, however, she was profoundly fascinated and exquisitely terrified. Mounting in her body, mind and soul was an excitement of an order she had hardly thought possible for any human being.

David was hooked, she knew that for sure. He had taken her bait despite all his very real determination not to have anything to do with her ever again. But what could she do with him now that she had him hooked? Was he nowadays a small enough fish for her to reel in safely? Or was he a deadly shark, as in the old days, who could drag her down into deep waters and devour her utterly?

‘I make furniture,’ David announced.

‘What?’

‘I make furniture, especially tables. Individual, one-of-a-kind, handcrafted tables. Using fine woods. I don’t just watch TV.’

‘Fine! You’re a craftsman.’

‘I can’t make them as well as I want to make them,’ David sighed. ‘But I know you don’t want to hear about my carpentry now. Look, Mary, I’m sorry I asked to hear your conditions. Actually we can’t have a bath or do anything else together. It’s too dangerous. What I want to do now is read this great book of Robert Sheckley short stories, then reread this underrated Katherine Maclean.’

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ said Mary as she stood up. She went to her car, got her black plastic garbage bag full of David’s equipment, and took it into the bathroom. There she turned on the taps of the huge red bath, and she poured in the rest of the old bottle of foam bath liquid. She returned to David in the kitchen.