As She's Told (42 page)

"You know what?" he said, shifting me back again. "Tonight has been, to put it mildly, a royal pain in the ass. I think it would do me good to transfer a little of that pain to my slave's ass." The razor strop was still on the table next to him; he picked it up and flexed it. "My little whipping girl.

Fortunately, it's not my right arm that's bruised."

I submitted almost eagerly, glad to be of use. And thankful that he was alive to beat me. The unfairness of it felt surprisingly normal and reassuring, as did the huge and heavy cock that pressed against my hip. Once he had me crying he pushed me to the floor, gripped my head tightly by the hair on either side, fucked my throat, and made me swallow some part of his night's resentment.

***

The emotional impact on his slave took a little longer. He considered coming home earlier for a while, but decided against this kind of indulgence; the best reassurance would be sticking to routine. Each evening when he came through the door he found her body less tense, more like the eager puppy he was used to.

He, on the other hand, was mildly depressed. There was no obvious reason. He was busy as usual and things were under control, even the insurance and the police reports. Yet something inside him was off. How could a minor accident have this much impact? Shit happened, you dealt with it. But the mood wouldn't quite be shaken.

One night as he put Maia to bed he saw her watching him with a tiny line of worry between her eyes. Before he turned out the light he lay with his head propped on one hand, looking at her. "What's the matter, girl?"

Her eyes searched his face. "I was going to ask you the same thing."

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"Why?" He stopped himself. "No." Lying to her was ridiculous. "All right. I know. I've been a little down lately." Her eyes went dark. Anders at once caressed a shoulder. "It's not you, girl. It's not us. Something else. I don't know what."

Her face cleared. She was examining the lines of his face. "Since the accident, master. I think…"

"What?"

"I don't want to – to psychoanalyze you."

He smiled. " All-powerful gods don't require analysis, just worship, you think?" He ran his hand along her waist and hip. "Though it always seemed to me that for someone so all-powerful, the Almighty needed an awful lot of reassurance."

"Bad-tempered, too," she offered. "Jealous. You're much better at it."

He laughed. "Thank you, love. All tributes graciously accepted. So what clued you in?"

She looked slightly taken aback. "Well… Everything. Do you think I can't tell?" Anders shook his head slightly, and smiled. "I can list the signs if you want," she offered. "You've been going easy on me for one. Not like you.”

“Damn. So I have. Poor baby."

"I was kind of grateful for the break at first and then I started to worry."

"Turned out I was human after all, huh?"

"Master?"

"All right. I think I know what it is."

He settled onto his back and lay silent for a minute, looking at the ceiling. "The night of the accident, you asked me what happened that I couldn't control. It's old stuff; I thought I'd dealt with it. But it's taking me more and more effort not to think about it. I think that night got it going again." He turned and looked at her face. "You're not surprised."

She kissed his shoulder; her only caress with her hands chained. "No."

Anders stared at the ceiling some more. "I don't ever talk about it.

Which I guess means it's still more powerful than I want to admit." He let out a long breath. "All right. I had a very good friend in university. Guy named Sam. We were tight in first year; same dorm, same classes, same pubs. Camping a couple of times. A good guy. Quirky; very funny if you listened for it.”

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“In second year we rented a place near campus. Things didn't go so well. Sam started skipping classes. I mean, a lot. Important ones. And when he did show up he was a pain in the ass – getting off topic, irritating people.

That was new. He'd party for days at a time. A lot of drinking. Then a long stretch where he would hardly get out of bed.

"He'd been serious about school in first year. But it looked like he was regressing into stupid freshman stuff that had never interested him before. If he didn't shape up he was going to lose his year. I had to do something."

"What did you do?"

"Fuck," Anders sighed irritably, "what didn't I do? More and more as time went on. I started out just hauling him out of bed in time for class.

Trying to talk some sense into him. Then helping him with his papers. I thought it was temporary, you see; some stupid glitch that he'd get over.

After a while I was more or less running interference for him, working things out with people to keep him out of trouble." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Superman protecting the weak.”

“Did he appreciate it?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes not. But everyone else was getting fed up with him. Avoiding him, because he was getting weird. I stuck by him."

"You don't quit."

"No," he said quietly. "You're right there. I'd never failed at anything before and I wasn't about to start. And as I said, he'd been a really good friend. A terrific guy." He felt a weight in his chest, and swore silently to himself in an attempt to make it lift. No luck. He went on with it still pressing, his voice sounding muffled in his own ears. "Eventually even I had to admit that something was wrong; I mean really wrong. Tried to get him to the university health service. I couldn't get him out of bed. I called his family. They made him see a doctor, but he wouldn't go back a second time.”

“What did the doctor say?"

"Depression. Gave him pills. And Sam got even crazier. He raved that his parents had always been out to belittle him and box him in, and he refused to talk to them. And if I talked to them I was another one. What did I know? I was a little weird by that time myself, just from the sleep deprivation. Sam wasn't sleeping much and I was starting to be afraid to leave him alone. He was getting harder and harder to handle. All these crazy 265

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plans, crazy outbursts. I was afraid he'd take off, end up god knows where.

Get hurt. Get his head beat in.

"I finally persuaded him to go with me to the hospital. I had to get him to a doctor somehow. It was all I could think of to do. I don't know if he had any idea where we were going; he hardly listened to me. We were heading up Summer Street. It was snowing like a sonofabitch. Sam was going on and on about tobogganing down Citadel Hill. He didn't have a toboggan.

Naturally. He started inviting passers-by to join him. Shouting to people in cars. They thought he was drunk. I just pulled him along; I'd stopped arguing with him by this time. And then he got away from me and I lost him." His eyes stared bleakly into the shadows. Maia waited. Finally she said, "What happened?"

Anders took in a long breath, let it out. "He walked out a fourth story window. Apparently thinking he could jump to the ground. Broke his neck."

"Oh, god…. I'm sorry." She was still for a little. "Not suicide?"

"No. Apparently he was still trying to gather a tobogganing party."

"Did you – see it?"

He shook his head. "I was searching two streets over."

"The doctor must have been wrong. That doesn't sound like depression."

"Nope. Manic-depression. Bipolar."

"Then the pills probably were wrong."

"No question. If I'd talked to the doctor I could have given him the whole picture. But he only saw him when he was depressed. And Sam was smart enough, despite it all, to lie about what was going on and how bad it was. Guess he thought he had to. Even to me." Anders rubbed his eyes deeply with finger and thumb. "If I'd talked to the doctor… If I'd called the police when Sam got crazy… If I hadn't thought I was fucking omnipotent and had gotten help sooner…"

"Hindsight…," she murmured.

"Yeah. People kept saying that I did all I could, that I'd been a good friend. Not to blame myself. Even his parents. My parents. Shit." Anders'

hand had gone still over both eyes. "How could I not blame myself? I was an egocentric, overconfident asshole who was sure I could solve any problem if I just tried hard enough. No failure for this boy. Talk about delusions of grandeur."

Neither of them spoke for a while. At last she murmured, "You still 266

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think you could have saved him."

"What?"

"If it's your fault then you had the power to save him. Still makes you omnipotent.”

“Holy shit. What…wait." He lay still for a long time.

At last he spoke again. "I'm still seeing myself as the central force in the situation. The prime mover."

"Uh huh. A – a god screwing up on the job."

"Oh, fuck." They were silent for so long that he thought she'd gone to sleep. But when he turned his head her eyes were open, watching him. He put a hand on her leg and turned his gaze back to the ceiling. "I was just one element, wasn't I?"

She wriggled a little closer to him. "Uh huh."

"What a comedown for my ego." He put his hands behind his head, arched his back and stretched. Then he turned on his side to face Maia. "And when I fail to control everything, I get out of sorts. Charming." He kissed her. "Thanks, love."

"You're welcome."

He turned out the light.

***

Blaming himself. Not Sam's illness, not the stupid doctor, not Sam's parents, but himself.

It figured that Anders' strength would turn out to be his weakness. Like something out of a Greek tragedy. Hubris. Competing with the gods.

He'd never learned to fail at anything; never really figured out how to cope with it. Not like me. My history of success had always been patchy.

Odd to think that made me better off than him when bad things happened.

The role reversal felt distinctly odd. My master had actually accepted advice and support from me; a first. I'd never seen him vulnerable before; not like this. Admitting to a weakness. I took a tour around my insides to see if it was shaking any serious foundations.

No. Better a multidimensional, fallible man than a cardboard cutout superhero. I'd lived through him being human the night of the accident. This was another layer to the man I already knew – a man who examined his own 267

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insides, and who had some perspective on what he found. That strong thread of realism and self-deprecating humour. It made it possible for me to trust, despite all the extremes of our life together, that I'd never come to harm.

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Nothing was said the next day, though the light in my master's eye was sharp again. That evening he made it clear that whatever limitations he'd acknowledged in his control over the rest of the world, his sovereignty over me remained absolute.

He informed me that my posture and moves were getting sloppy, and made me spend some sweaty, painful and exhausting hours being trained back up to standard. First basic floor moves like sitting to kneeling, getting to my feet with and without my hands behind me; up and down, with multiple repeats. Then display postures. Then graceful crawling, leashed walking, hobbled walking and so on. All of this in full bridle and bit, making it hard to silence the whimpers, impossible not to drool. I'd thought I'd had these moves down long since, but my master used his whip to point out all my errors and lack of precision, and impressed these on me up, down and sideways till I shaped up.

And under the chastity shield were two thick plugs which extended his control from the mere surface of my body into the profound and pervasive depths. Naturally, if I reacted to these, or showed any autonomous responses whatsoever I was instantly punished. I'd thought that the self-absorption had been trained out of me, but when he pushed me harder it emerged again, subtle and insidious and disgraceful.

He let me have some water and fifteen minutes chained in a corner nursing stinging flesh, sore muscles and chagrin. I was glad that he was feeling better, and grateful that he was giving me his full attention again.

Still, the evening was coming under the heading of 'Be careful what you wish for.'

And then it was aerobics. Apparently my postures had been slipping there, too. Anders hooked my bridle to the wall, and pushed me through endless, endless repetitions and corrections. In between the lunges and the jumping squats I was begging for a respite, wordlessly of course, basically praying to the god of my world, or in other words my master. My prayers, naturally, went unanswered.

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my limbs. These orders bypassed all higher brain functions; my body simply sweated, suffered and strained to obey.

Finally it was over, and my shaky form was stretched and washed down.

Frantic arousal would have emerged and shown itself, had I any energy left to show it. The outer layer of my body remained as the merest casing for the pulsating soft cream filling that was the rest of me. My mouth was freed, used, bridled again. I followed my chain down the stairs, watched dimly as my master reached beneath the couch just where he usually sat, and folded something down from its underside almost to the floor. Inset a few inches from the front edge of the couch was now a wide square plank with a circle cut out of it. At a word I crouched there on knees and elbows, and saw the bottom half of the plank tilt and drop. A nudge sent me forward, like a cow into its stall, and I felt the wood below my throat move back into place. A snap by my ear. Shifting weight above my head; a sigh of couch springs.