As She's Told (19 page)

"In this house," he said with quiet emphasis, "you do not wear clothes.

When you walk in, you will always close the door, get down on your knees and take your clothes off.”

“Yes, sir."

He took hold of my face. His fingers were cool on my burning cheek.

"It's 'master' now, girl."

"Yes – master."

I was kneeling naked on a honey-coloured hardwood floor, just inside the front door. When I'd walked in I'd seen a house so light and finished that I'd had to trace some sort of resemblance to the gritty construction site it had been. As the grey outside of the house had appeared unchanged, I was a bit disoriented; it felt like old movie set jokes where the exterior of a little grey cabin opens into a mansion in full living colour.

Anders reached into a drawer in a good-sized hall cabinet to his right, and pulled out a circlet of metal. "You also don't go past this point without your collar." He pushed my hair out of the way and closed it around my throat. I heard a click. My hands rose and then I paused and looked at him.

He nodded. I reached up and felt the thing with both hands. It was smooth and thick, with rounded edges, snug against my throat, maybe an inch and a half high all round. There were rings folded down at the sides and at the back, but no sign of a lock, though there was a square thick area at the back in which I could feel something that might be a keyhole. At the front the ring didn't fold down.

I raised my eyes to Anders' face, my hands still on either side of my neck. He was looking down at me, his head cocked slightly. "I hope you weren't expecting orange blossom and an honour guard with crossed whips."

I smothered a laugh, and shook my head. Well, he did hate formalities. I envisioned enacting some ritual in front of Nikki and Leda and all the rest, and shrugged inwardly. What he'd given me was enough: my own collar, and his hands to put it on me. I wanted to reach for him, wrap my arms around his thighs, taste his skin….

"These too," he said, and showed me more metal bands, smaller 118

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versions of the collar, but lined and padded with something black. He sat down on a built-in bench next to the cabinet and clasped them round my wrists and ankles. Each one of them clicked shut.

"More rules," he said. "The furniture is not for your use unless I say so.

No couch, no chairs. I'm going to let you sleep in my bed for now if you're good. No TV, no computer, no stereo, and not the telephone either unless I give permission. Not much of damned near anything unless I specifically allow it. You wait for orders, and only do what you're told. Is that clear?"

"Yes, master, I think so." I thought I was managing to stay calm, but I could feel my belly trembling.

"Good." He reached into the drawer again and pulled out about four feet of slim chain, which he locked to my collar. At a tug I got up and followed him to a rug in the middle of the living room floor. Just under the edge was a thick ring recessed into the floor, as if providing entrance to a trap door. But there was no trap door, just an attachment point to which he locked the chain. I looked anxiously at the windows, but the shades were set to admit only light, not a view from outside.

Anders began bringing in boxes from the truck, and set some in front of me. "I want you to sort out the school papers that you might need for work, make sure they're organized, and file them in this." He handed me a file box.

"Garbage goes in here," he said, setting down a recycling bin, "and I'll store the rest away."

It wasn't quite the introduction I'd expected, but he had always believed in work before pleasure. Still, the fact that I was chained to the floor had me panting. Was this what normal life was going to be like? He'd said he'd keep me on a short tether…. Gingerly I shifted to the far box and the furthest length of the chain, just to test the extent of my freedom. The solid tug of the collar against my throat was revelatory; this was no joke.

The room was as different as possible from the dark-joisted space I'd been in before. White walls, furniture in warm, smooth wood and some bright blocks of colour in the upholstery and rugs. Uncluttered, a little bare.

The varnished wood grain around doorways and windows glowed. Still no fireplace; apparently that mantelpiece had continued elusive. My presence felt completely anomalous, naked and chained in all that cheerful, mundane daylight. I realized that I'd been associating bondage with nighttime hours, dark shadows, drama. Not this everyday world.

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An everyday world that was out of my reach. I couldn't try the couch in my new home or even touch it to feel the texture of the upholstery. I couldn't go from room to room exploring what he'd done with the place. Instead I sorted away as instructed, shivering a little when the door opened, feeling the collar and chain and wrist cuffs with every move, while he went up and down stairs with the rest of my stuff.

He spent some time at a big desk by the front window, fiddling with my laptop and then with the computer on his desk; he told me that he'd added my data to his hard drive, and then he put the laptop away. I saw it go with a bit of a pang. For so long it had been my gateway, the tunnel through which I'd peered at the world. But now it was just a tool, like any other. I had a different kind of interface now.

I expected to do more unpacking once I'd done. There had been a lot of books, personal files, dishes, all that stuff. There were glimpses of things going by: a coat going into the closet, my one good pot, a few toiletries. He set up my bookcase and rapidly filled it, organizing it according to his own methods without consulting me. My files went into his drawer. Then he sat down on the couch and emptied out my knapsack, which I'd used as both briefcase and purse all through school. Wordlessly he handed me the papers remaining in there from my last few weeks, and I filed them. Anders sorted through a mess of pens, notebooks, scraps, tampons, hairbrush, wallet, chequebook. I watched him go through the last two in detail. He took the money and debit card from my wallet, and set them aside.

"Here's how the money is going to go," he said. "We'll arrange for your paycheque to go into an account by itself, a joint one that will need both our signatures. What money you have now will go into it, too. You won't need it.

I can look after you on my own income for now. If at some point you decide to leave, the money will be there for you. If you stay, after a year we'll switch it over to my account. Clear?"

I hadn't even thought about money. Provider of power, instrument of autonomy and mobility. He was right. I nodded.

"You don't need to carry cash any more. Or a debit card. I'll give you tokens for the streetcar when you start work on Monday." This was a startling and scary idea. No cash at all? Not even a couple of bucks for coffee? But I hardly ever drank coffee. Lunch, then? But I was going to be coming home for lunch. Hell, what about a couple of quarters for an 120

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emergency phone call? But of course I had my cellphone….

Anders quickly disposed of the piles on the couch and floor: filing cabinet, back porch, basement. Then he stood and looked down at me, a little smile playing over his lips. "Well, little girl, good." He unlocked the chain from the floor, wrapped some of it around his wrist and sat down. "Come here." I knelt up in front of him, and at his direction put my hands behind my neck. He examined me for several minutes, weighing my breasts in his hands, stroking my belly and pubic hair. He opened my mouth and turned my head this way and that, apparently to examine my teeth.

"Turn around. Hands and knees." I obeyed. "Lift your ass to me. Legs wide. That's better." He squeezed my rump, pinched my cunt lips, fingered my asshole. Was there anything he was discovering that he didn't already know? A little yank on my collar, clink of metal on metal. My body turned toward the pull; he stopped me halfway, sat back with the chain in his hand to examine me from the side. I stared in front of me, feeling like a prize dog in front of the judges. A prize dog that couldn't stop panting.

A hand stroked my hair, stroked down my back and legs, and I sighed with pleasure. "Stay." I stayed.

Then he was back, taking the chain up short and signalling me up. I started to obey, but the slash of a whip on my thigh made me fall forward again with a whimper. The chain yanked harder on my throat. "Up! You don't stop obeying me when I hit you. More gracefully this time." I was halfway up when the whip landed again. This time I kept moving. When I was upright, my head tipped back to accommodate the tight chain, he said,

"You're going to learn to display your body better when you move. Back down, let's try again."

I tried to move more carefully, but got another flick of the whip on the way down and one more on the way back up. "Slower," he said. "Head up." I tried again, keeping my weight over my centre of gravity so I wouldn't shift from side to side. "Better," he said. The whip stung the underside of my breasts and I cried out. "Tits out." I arched my back. This went on for a while, till I was sweating and on the verge of tears. I did improve enough to be spared the whip on the last couple of attempts. But then he had me precede him up the stairs, and corrected my walking as we went.

I'd been in his bedroom and bathroom upstairs; the other two bedrooms I'd viewed only in passing, weeks ago. The one at the back, which had been 121

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full of lumber and a table saw, was finished now and full of light, like the rest of the house, if somewhat bare. There was a rather nice, thick Indian rug over most of the floor, a deep chest of drawers, a wooden chair and a large mirror on a stand. A wooden beam ran the length of the room, suspended a couple of feet below the ceiling on metal rods; it carried a few track lights. It looked innocuous enough until Anders positioned me beneath it, linked my wrist cuffs with another chain and fastened my hands just above my head.

Glancing up, I saw the hook recessed into the beam. Come to think of it, there had been a similar beam in the living room.

My belly was trembling worse than ever. I tried an experimental tug; nothing gave. The beam might as well have been set in concrete. The cuffs'

padding gave only so much and no further.

Anders took a ring of keys from his pocket. "Time for this to go," he said, and unlocked the little padlock at my waist. I opened my eyes in surprise and a vague sense of loss; I'd invested a lot in that chain in the way of emotion and symbolism. It had been something to hang on to in my lonely bed. I'm going to let you sleep in my bed for now if you're good. I guessed I didn't need it anymore. I hoped.

I watched in the mirror as he came up behind me, something black in his hands. "Black leather, just as genetically determined," he murmured as he opened the thing up and passed it around my middle. A corset, strong and stiff. An enveloping smell of leather. He fiddled to get it sitting right, kissed my shoulder while he was at it. "You have a gorgeous little body. Just right for a very –" tugging "– tiny waist." Unlike the waist cincher he'd made me wear before, which had covered only six inches or so, this went from just below my breasts to just over my hips. The lower edge followed my belly down almost to my pubis, and curved up to cradle the underside of each breast. Anders began to pull on the laces, tightening in a steady rhythm toward the small of my back until my breath was huffing out of me at every pull. Then he looked at me carefully, and measured my waist with his hands.

"Nope, not enough." He started again. I began to whimper as the air was forced from my lungs.

"Well?" he said when he'd tied it off.

"I can hardly breathe," I whispered.

"Does anything hurt?"

I explored myself internally. "No."

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"Are you feeling faint?"

"No."

He felt between my legs and laughed, forced his wet fingers into my mouth. I sucked them avidly. "You'll get used to it," he said. "And then I'll make it tighter." He fiddled around some more behind me. "You'll be wearing this a fair amount, I think," he said conversationally. "And there might be times you'd rather have it off. So we'll just make sure there's no tampering." There were those ubiquitous clicks again – a ratcheting sound this time. I looked over my shoulder but couldn't see the mechanism, or whatever it was. "This covers the knot, little one," he murmured. "You're not going to be able to untie it." More tugs and more clicks at top and at bottom.

He turned my back to the mirror. "See?" I couldn't twist much, but I could just see that there were three straps going into something metallic at top, middle and bottom, the middle strap indeed covering the knot; there was no sign of it.

Between the straps I could see that the corset had some space to go before it would be completely closed. I felt so utterly compressed that I couldn't believe he thought it could be any tighter.

His hand ran over my ass. "You'll notice that it's good and high in back.

I wouldn't want you to think that you had any protection there." He unfastened my wrists and had me walk around him in a circle at the end of a longish chain. The sensation was strange and wonderful; I felt terribly hampered and restricted, and yet my arms and legs were free. I walked around him feeling like an inadequately-schooled circus horse, or like that show dog again: a prize poodle tricked out with ruffs and collar.

After two circuits Anders locked my hands behind my back and had me continue. I was afraid he'd pick up the whip again, I was walking so awkwardly, but apparently he was letting me get the feel of the thing. Each step was an experiment in how to move, with so much of me immobilized.

Then he drew me in by the chain and held and squeezed my breasts above the corset. "God, you're beautiful," he said feelingly. "Look at yourself." He turned me around to the mirror and held me against him. I saw a creature with an incredible, sexy hourglass figure, the waist ridiculously small. My hips, never very big, now looked downright womanly in contrast.