As She's Told (48 page)

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

hands were deep in a big bowl. I sneaked the package round the door, tiptoed across the room and shoved it into the shadows behind the tree.

"What are you up to?" He was behind me, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. "Is that for me?"

I swung around hastily. "Mm. No peeking." My master took hold of my ass with damp hands and pulled me close, his clothes wonderfully warm against my cold bare skin. I inhaled him, all savoury and delicious, and could have gone on consuming him then and there. He kissed me and then straightened up and took a step toward the tree, dragging me with him. "No, master, please! You weren't supposed to notice until it was time to open it."

"Master knows all, sees all," he droned, waggling one Svengali eyebrow. "Anyway, it's a little big to overlook. You sly wench, what have you been up to?"

"You'll see when you open it. Tonight? Or tomorrow?" Christmas Eve was the Danish night for opening presents, but the North American Christmas-morning-blowout also seemed to be in the cards. All I knew was the meal schedule: the big one was late this afternoon. A hissing noise from the stove drew his attention back to the kitchen, to my relief. I got warmed up in there (and rapidly superheated). My nipples were dipped in lingonberry sauce and sucked clean, which gave us an interesting ten minutes. Then he decorated me: ornaments, bells, hat and all. I stirred a pot of mulled wine called gløgg, and sipped a little. But it hit an empty stomach.

Dizzily I moaned that I was starving, and Anders let me have a couple of little cookies to tide me over, in my corner out of harm's way, while he hauled the sizzling goose out of the oven, did things to it and shoved it back in. I mopped spills, wiped counters, fetched and scrubbed potatoes, and tried to subsist on the atmosphere of roasting goose, so thick it was nearly caloric.

The light coming through the blinds had faded to dusk when I was at last told to light the candles; he'd set out a couple of dozen of them all over the table and shelves and counters. Then I got to set the table. Two place settings! I was flabbergasted.

"A special treat for Christmas, hunhund," he said. "Christmas dinner requires more than one person at the table, so you'll just have to be a person today. Make sure you mind your manners."

So I sat in a chair in that room for the very first time, minding my manners as hard as I could, my naked bottom warming the cool wooden seat, 301

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my harnessed breasts and nipple bells brushing the table's edge. I felt like the ship's dog called to the Captain's table. He'd placed me at right angles to him, well within reach of his long arm. Danish Christmas music was playing, lively and almost completely unfamiliar. "Okay," he said happily, opening the oven, "here we go!"

There was the roast goose and browned potatoes and red cabbage, all of which smelled incredible. I also spotted a bowl full of dark grains. "Wild rice and apricot stuffing!" Anders grinned. "Have to honour all the traditions. I don't know if it'll taste anything like your mother's. Did she put pine nuts in hers? I thought it needed some pine nuts." It was better than my mother's; it was fantastic. Partway through the meal I groaned and begged him to loosen my harness.

He eyed me up and down, wiped his mouth on his napkin and pushed back his chair. "All right. Just this once. And only because I don't want your dinner to go to waste. Come here." Keys jingled; he pulled me onto his lap and kissed the spaces between the straps as he loosened them a notch. Then he turned me to face him, my legs straddling his, flicked my nipple bells, and slowly brushed open lips against mine. Pepper and lingonberry flavour.

And Anders himself, that essence that never ceased to enslave me. Hands gripped my breasts, his tongue was in my mouth. My body instantly, helplessly surged and clung. Then I was facing the other way with my feet on the floor and a smack tingling my bottom. I returned to my seat on trembling legs. Anders drank schnapps, sang along with the CD, tweaked my nipples and fed me morsels from his plate. We took a break before dessert, during which he turned up the music and danced me around the living room. The plugs were taking me to the verge of insanity, especially when he picked me up and continued to dance with my legs wrapped round him. At last he took a breath, grinned down at me and said, "I think we'll have dessert in bed. Up you go." Up I went. Stood while he removed the harness. Lay on my back as ordered, and had my wrists fastened to the headboard.

He'd brought up a creamy rice pudding on a tray. "This is actually the traditional start to the meal, but I figured if you began with that you'd never get through the rest.”

“No kidding." My voice was a hoarse whisper. "Look out for the whole almond; if you find it you get the prize."

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He gave me a spoonful. Then a warm sticky line circled my left nipple, and was licked away. "Nope, no almond." The same on the right. A long line down my belly. More licking. A little puddle from my navel. Still no almond.

Lines down both thighs, sweetly licked. "Let's try a little cherry sauce, shall we?" This was stroked along the diagonals between belly and thigh, and I whimpered. Then more rice pudding. "Red and white, very patriotic. A nice white cross on a swathe of red. Yum. I won't attempt a maple leaf." He brushed my lips with the cherry sauce and watched as my tongue ran round them. His tongue began searching up the inside of my thigh, almost to the metal of the belt. "So sweet," he murmured. "I think I'll open one of my presents." Key in the chastity belt. My insides contracted helplessly around the plugs as they slowly, slowly slid from my body. "Ah… ah… master, please…."

"Ah, yes, you need more pudding. In your mouth this time." Another spoonful slipped past my lips, and I swallowed. A swirl of tongue over my naked pubic bone. My whole body shook. "Hold still, girl; don't get the sheets sticky." His tongue lapping, licking, here, gone. Back at the insides of thighs, so close… A finger gently smoothing cherry sauce on swollen labia.

My body was a bow drawn tight, begging, beseeching…. The lapping continued, a vice-like grip on my thighs holding me still. Pleas came from my throat in a constant whisper.

My master loomed over me, a spoon in one hand, took my head, turned it, and gentled the creamy stuff into my mouth. Something hard and pointy in there. My tongue worked it free, then lolled forward and presented it. He smiled, and caught it before it hit the sheets. "Ah. You get the prize, little one." He leaned down and kissed me with sticky lips. "Usually it's a marzipan pig. But not this time." He was back between my legs with the cherry sauce, this time dribbling some right down the swollen crevasse of my cunt.

I felt the seeping trickle, and was paralyzed at the first touch of tongue on inner flesh. Paralyzed with fear; was it fear of him stopping or fear that he wouldn't? Could I bear it? The seismic forces had been held back so long; their release could be catastrophic. No. Yes. Please, no! Wait!

And at the fourth long lap of his tongue something devastating and uncontainable burst its bounds, shattering me, rolling outward through my 303

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body like an apocalypse, flooding with violence back into my centre. The tongue gathered it and drove it deep, searching chasms, swirling, making me thrash and scream and howl. Then the vortex reversed, I was sucked up as if into a cyclone.

Now he was between my legs and plunging hugely into the vortex, becoming the centre around which my body surged and stormed. And with each new convulsion, each new convergence of flesh on flesh, the network of nerves grew and spread and reached, all utterly exposed and vulnerable.

So that his whole hard body became the inflictor of the most terrifying pleasure.

Out of the absolute, boneless stillness that followed came a murmur in my ear: "Merry Christmas."

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Anders woke in the dark, stirred, and opened one eye to check the clock.

Seven-twenty. He smiled into the darkness. All his planning and devising, and he would get, first of all, to watch her face.

He turned over and listened for Maia's breathing. Still asleep. She'd slept like a dead thing all night. No squirming, no rattle of chain. He ran a hand along his property: the little heap of warm, somnolent flesh and felt, not her usual quiescence, but a profound, blissful, strings-cut immobility.

How gorgeous she had been. He had never seen her so overtaken, so thoroughly in the grip of an experience beyond her control. The previous evening came at him whole out of memory, and his usual morning erection swelled painfully. He was tempted, but two of his little receptacle's orifices were locked shut. Later. Plenty of time.

Still dark. It would be midday on Svend's Greek island. What kind of Christmas was he having? Was he dancing like Zorba around a cypress tree?

What did they cook for Christmas dinner there? Lamb, maybe.

Midday in Copenhagen, too. The house must be full of aunts and cousins, a constantly shifting stream of them. His mother loading plates, the steam from the pots making the glasses slip down her nose. His father genially setting out meatballs and herring. Janne clumping around the house long-legged in her clogs, inserting her own sly rhymes into the Christmas songs. Karl on the couch with an arm around Ria, observing everything from under sleepy eyelids. Did they miss him and Svend? Probably, though they wouldn't say so. His grandmother would be missing him, certainly, though no power on earth would pry such an admission from her wintry lips. He could hear her stubborn voice arguing over cooking times, and insisting that Strindberg had more to say than Sørensen about the human condition.

Yesterday morning when he'd called he'd had to assure her that his business continued to be strictly above-board and his account books up to date. For a few minutes he amused himself imagining Maia cowering under his Mormor's bleak eye.

The body next to him barely stirred beneath his stroking hand. "Time to wake up, girl." Slowly she surfaced, and as she did so, her belly found his, 305

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snuggled forward. "No, no," he said, "you've had that present already. Time for some new ones." The dark eyes sprang open, instantly in focus.

Anders got them downstairs in record time, turned on the lights, and watched Maia's face as she took in the packages, small, hefty and huge.

Amazement, and then a little sadness. "I only have the one thing for you, master."

"Never mind." He smiled wryly. "This stuff's not entirely for you. Think vanilla boyfriend providing sexy lingerie. Now, what order shall we do this in?" He fetched coffee and rolls, and they settled in, him on the couch and her on the floor, leash dangling from her collar. She stared at the biggest objects, boxes big enough to house good-sized appliances.

"Santa's judgment on you, as it happens, is both naughty and nice."

Maia rolled her eyes, but she had the apprehensive and excited look of a little girl who was next in line for the rollercoaster. "I don't think you'll find a lump of coal, but there may be a switch or two." She giggled. "But let's start with the nice ones. Open that little one there, the green one."

She opened various packages at his direction. First the books: one novel obscure and ancient, another modern and introspective, and a dictionary of environmental terminology that she fell on with a glad cry. Then two CDs of medieval dance music with ancient instruments. A sinuous pair of silver earrings, big enough to be visible through her hair. A pair of ice skates, and a promise to take her skating. And a beautiful new scarf which looked so fetching wound around her that he almost got sidetracked, and her gratitude for it all nearly got out of hand.

"Hmm," he said, disengaging and peering under the tree. "That's it for nice, I think."

The big boxes still loomed amid the litter of paper and still-unopened packages; he watched Maia's sidelong glances in their direction, sensed her smothered apprehension. "Master, could it be your turn?"

He'd almost forgotten her contribution, upright in a shadowy corner behind the tree. It was as tall as she was, and thick, roughly triangular in cross-section. She must have had a tough time carrying it home.

She was up on her knees, watching him. He hoped he'd like whatever it was, or she was going to be disappointed. What could she order from Home Depot that he couldn't have found for himself? He laid the thing on the floor, slit the packing tape, and pushed past empty paper. "This isn't the same 306

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shape as the box, is it?”

“Nope."

"Sneaky." The surface was wood, hard and a little rough. Anders swept the packaging out of the way, and lifted the thing clear. A long, rectangular, rather grimy slab of wood. Shaped to be the top of something. Walnut, with carving on three edges. He stared at it, then at her.

"The mantelpiece."

"Yes."

He looked the slab over from all sides. "It's the right one!"

"Yes!" She beamed with delight.

He was stunned. "How did you – ?"

"Just research. Persistence. I was getting worried toward the end there, but I found it.”

“Where?"

"A kind of junkyard. Mostly sells auto parts. Keele and St. Clair, roughly."

"But – but I thought you were using that Home Depot gift certificate."

"That was for Val. She picked the thing up for me and paid for it. It didn't cost much."

"You genius!"

She laughed. "Thank you."

He studied her for a little, set the slab of wood down, and picked her up.

"No. Thank you. You are amazing." He squeezed her, long and hard to the point of breathlessness. "You are clever and talented and thoughtful beyond belief. Lucky is the man who owns you." Anders kissed the brow behind which the clever brain lurked. "And incredibly sneaky, you sly and naughty wench. Imagine keeping a secret from me for so long; I must be slipping."