As She's Told (29 page)

"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 179

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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 180

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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.

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Anders kicked through cool water, flippers propelling him lazily upward. The intense colour of the light, the way it filtered through variations of azure, meant Costa Rica, the year he turned eighteen. Blues shaded to green as he swam up toward sunshine.

He was carrying a passenger. The invertebrate that had attached itself to his thigh seemed determined not to break the suction. What was it? Red-orange fronds, oddly hot for a sea creature, a cute little thing, but big enough to wrap around his leg and not let go. Something he couldn't place at all.

Maybe it was an undiscovered species and he'd get it named after him. He hit the surface to startling blackness, and a confused alarm lest his creature die out in the air. No fear. Maia's thighs were clenched round one of his, her wet vulva splayed against him. She was locked to the bed by wrists and ankles, but despite this their bodies often tangled in the night. Had she been moving against him? Her breathing was rapid. Was she awake? "Maia." No response. He was about to gently pry her legs apart and disengage himself when she stiffened, moaned and locked her legs on his like a vice. She was awake; he felt it. "Stop it, girl!"

She wailed a protest, and before he could pull away she came, her urgent pelvis thrusting hard.

Anders disentangled and sat up. The clock said 4:43. He turned on the light.

Maia's head was wrapped in her arms. Her legs were drawn up as high as the ankle chain allowed; she would have rolled into a cringing ball if she'd had the option. He rolled her onto her back and firmly pulled her arms out of the way so he could see her crying face. Her skin was rosy and damp, and she smelled of sex. She was still panting, and groaning faintly on the exhales. It must have been a hell of a good one. He looked at her hard, and pressed her arms back against the pillow when she tried to resume her protective curl. She whimpered, and her head thrashed back and forth. No apology. "Well?" he said at last. Maia swallowed, then muttered, "I'm sorry, master.”

“I don't believe you."

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She stared at his chest, tears spilling over and trailing toward her ears. "I

– I – am –" She snuffled hard. "I will be, anyway." Her voice shook and she started to weep again.

"Damned right you will. You brazen little bitch! Did you think you could get away with that?"

"No…no," she sobbed. "I'm sorry! I was half asleep, and then…"

"Don't tell me you didn't know what you were doing."

"I didn't! I don't think I did. Not at first. Then I – I was so close!….

Master, master, please!"

"Please what?"

"I can't do it! I can't stop myself any more! Please!"

In Maia's wet eyes there was a desperate light of defiance. Sobs wracked her. Anders sat beside her and let her turn onto her side, his hand on one shaking shoulder.

Once again he'd miscalculated. He'd got the timing wrong. And about the same thing. He sat cursing silently to himself.

He'd thought he knew her, had her mapped, inside and out. And yet clearly he'd mistaken her outward composure for something deeper. Just because she had an air of self-control didn't mean it was more than camouflage. Hell, she'd even told him the day he got her pierced. What did he need, a kick in the head?

But she'd gotten herself well and truly on the hook now; letting her off was out of the question. "Why didn't you say this the other day when you had the chance?"

She turned her head and stared at him, wiped her eyes on her arms, snuffled. "Question time?" she asked, her voice clogged. "I thought – I don't know, I thought – I could do it. I thought I had to." She let out a long breath.

"It seemed so – insubstantial a thing to complain about. And I've never, I've never…."

She'd never responded to those scheduled time-out catechisms with any kind of a problem, except her problem with the questions themselves. So he'd relied on close observation and his instincts instead, and they had seemed to serve them both very well. How had he missed this? Apparently he'd seen only what he wanted to see, so wrapped up in the sadistic pleasure of denial that he perceived her as more capable, or less desperate, than she actually was. He had been far more careful to keep an eye out for her 183

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physical limits; this one he hadn't taken seriously.

He yawned, looked down at the apprehensive face below him, and thought for a while. Smiled secretly, thinking of his frantic little sea anemone, using his thigh to come. Or now that he was back on land, his little hunhund. Very hot, though he wouldn't tell her so. What now?

"Master?”

“Mm?"

"I really am sorry." Her face crumpled up. Now she was telling the truth. Guilt was radiating off her like heat off an engine.

"I know you are, sweetheart." He caressed her cheek, thumbed away a tear or two. "And I'm sorry I missed the signs. But if you think you're going to disobey, from now on you must tell me, do you understand?" Chin trembling, she nodded. "You've been a very bad girl, and that means some serious punishment…" she nodded again, eyes swimming, and kissed his palm. "…which will take some thought, and which isn't going to happen at five in the morning. Although… hmm." He eyed her speculatively. "Okay.

First we'll make sure there's no repeat performance."

He adjusted the bonds on her wrists and ankles, spreading them wide to put her inescapably on her back. Then he went downstairs and fetched a little bottle of Tabasco from the kitchen. "The trick," he said, unscrewing the cap, "will be to keep this off the piercings. So I think I'll just apply it to the very most relevant spot." He tipped a drop or two onto his finger, and with his other hand carefully spread her labia very wide, pulling the flesh forward a little to shift the clit hood off his target. As the tip of his finger made contact she arched and drew in a hissing breath. Anders stood up to watch. A fine sweat broke out all over her body; she shone with it. She was staring past him, her eyes as wide as a horror movie heroine's, mouth half open, breath held. A grating sound drew his attention from her face; the chains were scraping hard against the bed frame. Her eyes rolled back; she arched harder, let out a breath and held it again. Anders went off to wash his hand, careful to do so before he peed. He'd long ago learned to avoid the chili oil hazard. Then he settled back into bed, pulling the covers up over himself and the sweating creature beside him. In five minutes he was asleep.

***

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

upward course, heading for the stars. It took everything I had to keep still.

But after a while it got no worse. Everything was focused in that one small spot, all my straining concentration. I wanted it to stop. Then I wanted more.

Then I wanted it to stop. Then I tried in a panic to imagine how long it could possibly go on. Tears slid down toward the pillow and I rolled my head from side to side to get rid of them. Disgusting, disobedient girl! Stupid, sneaky, self-indulgent…. He was right to respond with this excruciating, finely focused punishment, exactly where I deserved. I tried to bring back some echo of the orgasm that had brought on this infliction of justice, but it had been burned away, wiped out of memory.

It was one thing to act like an animal when forced by my master to do so; it was quite another thing to take the initiative myself and hump his leg like a dog. The self-inflicted humiliation stabbed like a hot knife, burning guiltily between my legs – no, that was the hot sauce. No, that was my shame.

I didn't think I'd sleep at all, but the alarm tipped me out of a shallow trough into full daylight and a fresh sense of doom. The knife between my legs had blunted a bit, but all my limbs were stiff, and I was exhausted. I stumbled along on my leash, and it was a good thing that someone else was in charge of me, or I would have crawled right back into bed.

My fog was thickened by a yellowish pall of shame; when my master talked to me I was vaguely astonished that he was bothering to use language at all. Yanks and blows would have been the right level of communication for a creature like me. I whispered out the answers as to how the effects were persisting (numb and burning both), and never raised my eyes to his.

The cool morning air revived my higher brain functions a little, enough to allow the general dread and depression over my failure to focus and grow sharp. I knew something about the way Anders worked by this time. That drop of Tabasco was only an appetizer, a little preliminary to the main course. Or perhaps the first taste in a series – like tapas or dim sum. There would be more to come; a lot more. But would any of it be enough?

***

"I hope that wasn't your receipt; I need that for taxes," he said, as they 185

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closed the back of the truck.

Val gave him a smug look. "Jealous?”

“You just got a new girl last week; are you finished with her already?”

“Handy to have one in reserve."

"You'll have them fighting over you. I thought you hated that. Or are you getting kinkier? More than one at a time in your bed?"

"Hey, good idea. What about your own ménage? Planning to add a slave or two? Assuming you'll manage to hang on to the one you've got, of course."

Anders smiled, thinking of the clinging, frantic thighs of the night before. He'd probably manage.

He pulled out of the parking lot, feeling the restlessness over the events of the night, and how close Val was to picking up the signals. Not today; he didn't feel like an interrogation today. He could sense her turning in his direction, head like a radar dish.

"Speaking of hardware," he said, "have you ever heard of a ring for a piercing that will lock, and open and close easily? Not like I've already got.

Something round."

Val looked amused, and with the air of indulging a madman said, "No, Thygesen, I don't have your passion for obscure fetish technology." She pulled the receipt out of her shirt pocket and frowned at it. "Hang on, did we get the drywall screws? Shit." Her sliding thumb paused. "Okay, here they are; never mind." She tucked the receipt away. "Check with the woman who did Maia; maybe she's got something."

"She can get the same thing I've got already – round on top, straight on the bottom. Opens with a little tool. It's fine for nipples, but for a nose it needs to be round.”

“Why?"

He said dryly, "Because it's more aesthetically pleasing to me that way."