Master of the House (9 page)

‘You like the idea of it.’

I couldn’t answer him for a moment. He was too close to the truth.

‘Yeah,’ I admitted finally.

‘You want to try it,’ he persisted. ‘You’ve always wanted to try it.’

I looked away.

‘Be honest with me,’ he insisted. ‘I’m being honest with you. Come on.’

‘OK, yes.’ I hated to concede it, but I could hardly bang on about trust and then lie about this stuff.

‘Don’t deny it,’ he said. ‘Don’t repress yourself. Open up to it. Enjoy it. It’s who you are.’

How dare he tell me who I was? I bristled, then calmed myself down. It was a pep talk, that was all.

‘So, that was four,’ he said, clapping his hands together again. ‘Five is, confusingly, Fours. Let’s see you.’

Well, this had to be all fours, didn’t it? I felt creepily like the cover model on a top-shelf mag, dropping on to hands and knees with Joss lurking somewhere at my rear. I thought I’d be told to spread my legs again, but I wasn’t.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘But lift your head for this one. Look straight ahead of you. Keep your elbows locked.’

I was comfortable in this position and I was even starting to forget that I was naked – or at least to move it further back in my mind, until the next order was given.

‘Six is a slight variation on five,’ he said. ‘And it has the descriptive title of Arse. You put your forehead to the floor and raise your bottom as high as you can.’

Now I felt truly porny and seedy. Any minute he’d be asking me to give a cheesy little grin over my shoulder for the camera. I felt dirty and used and utterly turned on.

‘You need to spread for this one,’ he said. ‘Keep your palms flat on the floor.’

Nothing would be left to the imagination in this position. Holding it, I realised for the first time that these positions weren’t just designed to display a submissive. They had practical applications. Bend, for instance, was for a spanking. This one must be for … God, why was I so wet? He had to be able to see it. He had to know that, hidden as my face was, my mind was full of images of being penetrated by him. Of his cock squeezing into my tight passage, filling it, giving me his full length and girth. Or of even dirtier scenes, of him delving between my parted arse cheeks and putting things up there. I clenched my sphincter. I’d never done anything like that, but I’d thought about it often, and Joss was always the man in the mental picture. Damn him. Why did he do this to me?

‘You know, I think this is my favourite,’ he said. ‘Yes, I think it is. Seems a shame to break it but …’ He sighed. His imaginary finger coated my darkest crevice with lube. My imaginary hips quivered. The tingle and gush between my thighs, though – I wasn’t imagining that.

‘All right.’ Heavy regret. ‘Seven. This is called Wait. You kneel up, right up, breasts right out, hands behind your back. Like Kneel, but with this one you spread your knees nice and wide and your chin is up. Look straight ahead. No eye contact with anybody in the room though. That’s strictly forbidden.’

This was an easy enough one, though I still wished my glistening pussy was concealed from view. I tried to imagine that I was wearing a leotard and doing gymnastics but it didn’t quite work.

‘Very nice,’ said Joss. ‘Number eight is called Present. You lie on your back with your hands at your sides and your legs as wide as they can possibly go. Is that the widest? Are you sure? Are you feeling it?’

‘Yes,’ I grunted. They were far too widely spread for comfort. But my comfort wasn’t the point. I could see Joss from the corner of my eye, and he looked as if he was trying very hard to hold himself back. He moved around me, clenching and unclenching his fingers. His voice was higher than usual when he next spoke.

‘Last one,’ he said. ‘Inspect. Stand up.’

My upper thighs were starting to shake, so this was a welcome instruction.

‘Hands behind back,’ he said. ‘Legs wide, shoulders right back. And for this one, and this one only, you look at me.’

Suddenly I wasn’t sure I could do it. All the other stuff seemed plain sailing compared with the enormous task of meeting his eye.

‘Did you hear me, Lucy?’ he whispered. He had come around to face me. ‘Look at me.’

Outside the world, outside everything that made sense, we stood transfixed by each other’s attention. I don’t know how long we kept it up, but towards the end I had the impression that both he and I were falling forwards, reflected in the glisten of our gazes.

He pulled back his head and said, ‘Kneel.’

It took too long to pull myself back out of that alternative reality and I stood staring stupidly until he came up behind me, clapped his hands on my shoulders and pushed me firmly to my knees.

‘You need to learn these,’ he said. ‘No, you shut your legs for Kneel. Shut them.’ He nudged my right knee with the toe of his shoe.

‘Present.’

I stood up, then sat down, then finally remembered that I had to lie for this one.

‘Too slow,’ he said, leaning over me, wrenching up my hands and smacking each wrist as he spoke. He didn’t smack them hard at all, but the effect was salutary and startling. I stared at him.

‘You’re looking at me.’ He shook his head. ‘Bend.’

That one was easily memorable, at least. I arranged myself into the humiliating position as quickly as I could.

‘Do you deserve to be punished?’ he said.

I shook my head and uttered a panicky ‘No’.

‘Hmm, I’m not sure. Last chance, then. Arse.’

I dropped down in a flash, redeeming myself.

‘Down,’ he said, and I couldn’t remember what that meant for a moment.

He reminded me by pulling my legs out straight, but I still didn’t know what to do with my arms until he pinned them behind my back.

‘Too –’ he said, with another light smack, this time to my buttocks ‘– slow.’

He had done it. He had touched me. I had made no protest – in fact, it seemed natural and right and I wanted him to do it again.

Oh, God. He had me accurately pegged. This was what I wanted. This was me.

I hauled myself to my feet.

‘What are you doing? I didn’t give the order.’

I flapped my hands at him, making him step back.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Feel a bit … need air.’

And I rushed past him, through the French doors to the patio, the cool night breeze making the cold sweat on my brow ten times worse while my heart seemed ready to leap through the confines of my ribcage.

I was in deep trouble.

It was a long time since I’d seen the gardens.

I leaned on the stone balustrade, letting my eyes adjust to the dusky light, and looked out over them, finding little changed, though they were more overgrown than I remembered. The fountain, in which we had bathed naked, was switched off. The little maze of formal and informal gardens through which we had chased each other, around the statues and under the rose arches, was unkempt with trailing branches and bristling hedges, but they were essentially those same gardens. And, down by the edge of the lake, the fragrant bower in which we had lain and quoted poetry to each other and kissed and spoken words of love looked as enticing as it had ever been.

I had thought that summer would last for ever, a season of hot bare skin and overripe scents and bursting colour stretching eternally.

I could still be lying on the grass, smelling of factor fifteen and his mother’s Mitsouko, lazy and sticky from sex, a pile of little books with the Faber and Faber logo on the spines beside me, watching the sun sink through the cross-hatch of branches overhead. I could still be in his arms, pressed against his chest while his open shirt tickled my thighs, connected lip to lip, wondering yet again how it was possible that such a sensitive and kindred soul had been found in such a strange place.

And then the ringing of the phone in the distance and Joss breaking the kiss and frowning and muttering something about why his parents couldn’t get mobiles like everyone else.

I had no idea, when he kissed me goodbye and sent me off home for my tea, that it was the last I would see of him.

I could almost hear that ringing now, but this time I knew it for what it was. A death knell.

When he came and stood beside me, I wanted to ask him why, so badly, but something held me back. Fear, I suppose, of what he might say.
I just wasn’t that into you.
I didn’t want to hear it.

Instead I turned to him with a pathetic little laugh and tried to blame kink-nerves.

‘Sorry. Bit overwhelming,’ I said.

‘Am I taking things too fast? I’m sorry but we need to get moving if we want to be ready in time for this Christmas shindig. Submission takes a lot of practice.’

‘I daresay it does.’ I was trying very hard not to sound bitter, but in my mind’s eye I could see a cold, blue image of my eighteen-year-old self lying in my narrow Hall of Residence bed and crying myself to sleep. ‘Especially when it’s me and you.’

He bowed his head at that.

‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘I get that.’

‘How empathic of you.’

‘Lulu, I will prove myself. I will be a better man, for you.’

He sounded so sincere, but then, he was good at that. Good at the look and the sound of things, even if his heart was fundamentally a shrivelled old prune.

‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘I think I’m done for tonight. Can I take that cheat sheet with me?’

‘Of course. Prep,’ he said with an upward curve of his lip.

‘We called it homework at my school.’

‘Oh, you real worlders.’

He led me back into the morning room and handed the sheet to me with a flourish. I put it down and set to work dressing myself again.

‘I’ll be testing you next time,’ he said.

‘I’ll be testing you first.’

He stood to attention. ‘What’s my next detail, ma’am?’ he asked.

‘I want you to sort out that garden. And I don’t mean hire somebody in to do it.’

‘I can’t afford that anyway,’ he said.

‘Good. I want you to do it, all by yourself. Strip to the waist and shear those hedges. I expect it to be in tip-top condition for my next visit.’

‘When am I going to find time?’ he began, but he saw that he could expect no sympathy from me so he sighed and clicked his tongue. ‘Very good, ma’am.’

‘And no hip flasks in the wheelbarrow,’ I said, making it a parting shot as I headed out to the reception hall.

‘Of course not. Lucy!’ he called, hurrying after me and catching me just before I opened the front door.

‘What?’

He stood in silence for a moment, flushed and handsome and framed by the huge double doors that led into the biggest of the drawing rooms.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

* * *

For the rest of that week I practised my positions whenever I had some time and space to myself, which wasn’t often, given my accommodation situation.

In the car I worked on remembering which position equated to which number. I drove around muttering, ‘Arse – six. Fours – five. Present – seven’ until I had it off pat.

It probably wasn’t helpful of my brain to imagine Joss in a black silk shirt and tight black trousers standing over me with a riding crop while I rehearsed my poses, but my brain had always been a bit like that. Treacherous bastard.

In fact, my brain seemed quite happy to have Joss on it pretty much all day and all night.

‘If somebody broke your heart,’ I said, sitting with Jamila in a tea shop by Tylney Market on Saturday afternoon, ‘could you ever forgive them?’

She gave her scone a startled blink.

‘Broke my heart?’ she repeated. ‘I don’t really get that. I mean, broken things can be repaired, can’t they? I don’t believe in a permanently broken heart.’

‘Really? What if Akram cheated on you? Wouldn’t that damage you?’

‘Lucy, I don’t want to think about that while I’m planning my wedding! But it would depend on so many things. On the whole, I like to believe in giving second chances. I do it all the time at school. Children make mistakes – you can’t hold it against them.’

‘Akram isn’t a child though.’

‘He isn’t a cheater either.’

‘Fair enough. But if you had a man who wasn’t Akram, and you loved him more than anything, and he let you down so badly you took years to recover … could you forgive that?’

She put down her teacup and regarded me closely.

‘Lucy, who are we talking about here? Your man in Hungary? Has he been in touch?’

I thought I might as well let her labour under this illusion. She didn’t know about my history with Joss and I didn’t want to talk about it specifically.

‘No, but if he did,’ I said.

‘Are you really
devastated
?’ she asked, her head on one side. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t that big a deal and you were drifting apart anyway. Is absence making the heart grow fonder?’

‘Maybe I just miss Hungary,’ I said.

Budapest would be fiery hot at this time of year, the Danube brown and sluggish. It was warm enough here. I wondered if Joss was in the garden, shirtless, his strong body browning in the sun, his hair damp with sweat.

I ordered a glass of iced water from the waitress.

‘It’s not surprising,’ Jamila soothed. ‘Such a big part of your life, all over and done with. I can’t imagine it, since I’ve spent my whole life in the Dullsville Vale.’

‘You’re happy, though, aren’t you? You’ve got a good man, a job you love, a grown-up life with family and friends around you. It’s all coming together for you. My life is a mess.’

‘But you’ve achieved so much,’ she exclaimed. ‘You did so well at school, went to a good university, got an amazing job abroad. You’re the one we all envied.’

I laughed. ‘I’m living with my mum in a one-bedroomed flat, interviewing old couples about the secrets of their sixty-year marriages. So enviable.’

The cook shouted ‘Five’ from the kitchen, handing a plate to the waitress.

‘Fours,’ I said, out loud.

Jamila said nothing, having just taken a large bite of her scone, but the lines of confusion on her brow said it all.

‘Sorry.’ I coughed. ‘Nothing.’

Damn Joss and his perversions. Damn him to hell.

The phone rang. It was Kai at yet another summer fete, asking me where I was.