Eighty Days White (15 page)

She smiled wryly.

‘And what did you want to do to him? Tell me,’ she encouraged.

‘I wanted to rub myself all over his face.’ The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could think and I immediately wanted to take back what I’d said. Part of me knew that it was true, though, and wanted to crow with delight at the satisfaction of saying so out loud.

‘And? What else? No need to blush, my dear.’

‘I wished I’d had a cock. So I could choke him with it.’

She laughed, displaying two rows of gleaming white teeth.

‘He would have liked that,’ she said. ‘And would you have liked to fuck him with it?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ I replied honestly. I conjured up the vision in my mind of Grayson on all fours in front of me, his face pressed into the carpet, my hand wrapped tightly in his hair and then imagined how it would feel to ride him. The thought sent a ripple of excitement pulsing through my body and my hand shook briefly, spilling a few drops of espresso over the tiny cup and onto the smooth surface of the marble bench top.

‘I can see that you like the idea,’ She mused. ‘Have you ever worn a strap-on?’

‘No.’

‘Ever seen one?’

I shook my head.

‘Then we have a lot of work to do.’

‘Work?’

‘Domination requires training. I am going to train you.’

It was an order, not an offer, and I meekly acquiesced.

‘You’re not on shift tonight, are you?’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘Sherry’s on tonight.’

‘Good. We’ll start at the club. Have you subbed before?’

‘Never.’ I felt horribly inexperienced. She was my employer, and I worked at a fetish club, and I had never so much as tried even the most basic activities that our patrons enjoyed.

‘You’ve never been spanked? Tied up?’

I thought of Liana and grimaced.

‘None of those things have ever appealed.’

‘I understand why,’ She said, ‘I really do. But it’s important to try it from the other side, so that you understand what sort of sensations you’re inflicting on your sub.’ She paused for a moment and smiled as a sudden, pleasant thought occurred to her. ‘I can make Gray dominate you,’ she added.

I shuddered at the idea and She grinned wickedly.

‘He would hate it,’ she said. ‘But he would do it.’

I had no doubt about that. The activities of the past twenty-four hours had been just play-acting for both Grayson and I. She was his domme. And ordering him to dominate me might provide her with an ideal opportunity to reassert her authority over both of us.

‘First,’ she said, ‘let’s find you an outfit. Gray is bound to have something here that will be suitable. As you saw today, he likes to bring the domme out of his female clientele.’

‘What’s in it for him?’ I asked. I was suddenly curious, and perplexed in the same way that I had been when Liana had described to me the enjoyment she took from submission.

Some of the men at the club subbed just so they could get close to attractive women. Most of them were about as charismatic as a wet teabag. But Grayson was a good-looking guy, and I doubted that he’d have any trouble finding a date that he didn’t need to kowtow to.

‘Why don’t you ask him?’ she replied, heading towards the studio. Her kimono wrapped around her long legs as she walked, giving the impression that it was a living creature caressing her flesh. She was wearing matching silk slippers with a thin sole so that her steps were soundless on the wooden floor.

Grayson was sitting in an office chair in a small room attached to the studio, flicking through images on his computer screen. He was engrossed in his work and by turns his face lit up animatedly or dropped into a frown when he saw something that he wasn’t satisfied with. He either hadn’t heard us arrive or was ignoring us entirely.

‘Lily wants to know what you get out of submission. Tell her.’

Pulling his attention from his work was a visible struggle, but it was a battle that She won before too long and he turned to give us his attention. And sighed.

‘Sometimes people just are the way they are, you know. There’s no reason.’

‘You can do better than that, Gray,’ She said. She sauntered up behind him and leaned over his back, running her fingernails up inside the front of his shirt and then circling his neck with her hands. The gesture could easily have been mistaken for a simple affectionate caress, but I could see his eyelids flutter closed and his breathing quicken as she tightened her grip and began to restrict his airway.

He made a noise in the back of his throat, half growl, half purr, certainly an expression of intense pleasure. As soon as Grayson began to relax into her grip, She stood back, leaving him unfulfilled, but not before reaching into his open shirt again and twisting one of his nipples so hard that he jumped.

‘When the right buttons are pushed by the right person at the right time,’ he said, ‘there’s an overwhelming desire to please, to be subsumed, to serve, and when pushed harder, to debase oneself or be debased, humiliated to better worship the domme, the mistress. Why? I don’t really know. For me it doesn’t feel like a choice. More like an instinctive response. Some believe that the loss of power is associated with the powerlessness of being a small child, with its safety and comfort and freedom from having to make a choice. I don’t prescribe to that theory entirely. It’s all a bit Freudian. But I agree that when I submit to She I feel safe, and comfortable, and free. It’s relaxing to not have to make decisions. Not being responsible. And for some it’s a way to enjoy pleasures that otherwise might provoke guilt or shame.’

‘And dominating?’ She asked. ‘Tell her what you get out of dominating.’

‘Nothing.’ He laughed. ‘Absolutely nothing. It’s hard work, you know. If you want to explore your dominant side then you need to be prepared for some very hard work. There’s a great deal of skill involved in beating someone properly, or tying them up. To know exactly what your sub’s limits are and to push them just far enough but not too far. It’s a great responsibility to hold someone’s safety and their service. Some subs can be very demanding.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘It’s the eternal question,’ She said. ‘Who is really serving whom? But at the end of the day, we all do it because it gives us a thrill. Gray is right. It doesn’t matter why. Now. Put this on.’

She threw me a black corset and a long stretch-lace pencil skirt with a Victorian style frill at the bottom. When I unrolled it I realised that not only was it see-through, but there was a hole at the back where my bum cheeks would peer through.

‘I’m not wearing this!’ I protested.

Grayson laughed. ‘You reckon?’

She was standing with her hands on her hips, staring me down.

‘I’ll help you with the corset,’ she said.

I peeled my clothes off for what felt like the tenth time in twenty-four hours and shimmied into the skirt.

‘Turn around. Hands against the wall.’

She sounded like a cop from a TV drama and I had to admit that the thought of She clad in uniform and brandishing a baton and a pair of police-issue handcuffs was not unappealing.

The corset’s steel boning pressed uncomfortably into my ribs as She pulled the laces tight.

‘I can’t breathe,’ I complained.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ she replied without a modicum of sympathy.

The club was just getting started when we arrived. A few couples stood at the bar nursing drinks and chatting to each other. It was early and the music was low to encourage
conversation. As the night warmed up, the sounds of whips cutting through the air and paddles beating flesh would reverberate through the adjacent dungeon and blend into the heavier beats that the DJ would begin to play after midnight.

‘Wow,’ Richard, the club’s Dungeon Master, whistled when he clocked my outfit and the towering heels that She had lent me. Usually I wore more sensible shoes when I was working and would stay behind the front counter most of the night.

‘Mistress,’ said a soft voice, near my feet. I looked down.

One of She’s regular club slaves had approached, crawling on his hands and knees. He was naked besides his routine latex hotpants, which barely covered his arse, exposing an inch of bare crack and the curved, fleshy sides of each buttock. Tonight he was wearing a hot-pink pair with a white frill, which lent an extra layer of humiliation to the ensemble. On each of his nipples hung a clamp and a thin chain with a tiny bell attached to the end, which tinkled when he moved to warn of his approach.

At the sight of him prostrate in front of me, my nerve endings began to tingle and I felt my blood heating up and rushing through all of my limbs, as if I’d just gulped down a shot of whisky or necked a glass of champagne.

She appeared by my side. I hadn’t noticed her gliding across the room, as silent as a shadow.

‘Stuart is offering pony rides tonight,’ she said, holding aloft a human-sized leather saddle and a riding crop. The saddle was pale tan and well used, with cracks running across the leather. It was padded underneath with sheep skin and had a high pommel for the rider to hold onto. Stuart lifted
his back a little as if to invite me to climb aboard. He continued to stare at the floor.

‘Go on then,’ She said. ‘Take him for a spin.’

I took the saddle gingerly from She’s outstretched hand and leaned down to Stuart.

‘May I?’ I asked him. Domme or not, it seemed only polite to check first.

‘Please, Mistress,’ he replied.

The saddle slipped over his back easily, as if it had been made especially for him.

There was no dignified way to climb atop. My skirt was so tight it simply wouldn’t stretch far enough for me to sit astride him unless I rolled the fabric all the way up to my waist so instead I kept my knees together and began to bend down to sit side saddle, hesitating before I lowered my full weight onto his back.

‘Won’t I hurt him?’ I asked She.

‘Trust me,’ she replied, ‘he doesn’t mind.’

Stuart had raised his head and was sniffing the air eagerly as if he were a real pony.

She thwacked his arse with the crop and then handed it to me. I clenched my thighs to keep my balance as he jolted forward in response to the smack on his arse.

‘Don’t be long,’ she said, ‘I want you to try something when you return.’

For the first few steps I felt foolish. I was riding on the back of a grown man! Something I hadn’t done since I was a child and had played horsey on the rare occasion that my father had time to spend with me after work before falling asleep.

But as I found my rhythm and noticed how the other
club-goers parted to allow us through, I began to enjoy myself. At first I was gentle with the riding crop, uncertain how to wield it or how hard I could bring it down on Stuart’s skin without making him yelp, but after a few delicate taps I found my confidence and brought it down harder on the right side of his buttock which I could just reach without tipping myself off.

I had no desire whatsoever to fuck him. Even the idea of it seemed wholly wrong. Unimaginable. But I did want to grab his balls and bring him to his knees in front of me begging for my mercy.

We lurched back to She and when we arrived at the tips of her stiletto boots, Stuart stretched forward onto his flanks with his face flat on the floor. As I came to my feet I glanced down to thank him and saw the tip of his tongue flicking out and trailing along the front of her shoe. He was polishing her boots. With his mouth. She shifted her weight and lifted her foot infinitesimally to allow him better access.

‘Now,’ She said. ‘Time for you to try how the other half lives.’

‘Gray,’ she cried out, beckoning the photographer over from his relaxed position leaning against the wall behind us where he was surveying our interaction with a wry smile on his face.

Tonight he was dressed in a pair of low-slung leather trousers with a studded belt and a pair of heavy silver boots. Over the top he wore a black mesh vest that clearly displayed his lean torso and also a pair of nipple clamps with a thick chain running horizontally across his chest connecting one nipple to the other.

He didn’t appear to be discomfited in the slightest by the
contraption that made him vulnerable to a cruel tug at any moment that She decided to reach over and pull the chain.

Grayson took a moment too long to collect his thoughts and saunter across to us and, in a blink of an eye, She had one hand around his throat and the other hand resting on the chain, heavily enough to make both him and me wince as the teeth of the clamps bit into his nipples.

‘Spank her,’ she hissed.

I grimaced.

Spanking. Of course I had suspected it as soon as I’d seen the skirt that She had made me wear, but I had still hoped against hope that she might have something else in mind. Spanking was in my mind the most foolish and humiliating of all the submissive practices that I could think of. I found it distasteful and silly, a reminder of all the things that I disliked about tacky porn films and cheesy upstairs-downstairs erotic tales that inevitably involved a poorly dusted living room and a PVC-clad maid who needed to be punished.

Grayson seemed just as pleased about the whole idea as I was. She looked back and forth between us and grinned like the cat that got the cream.

‘I’m waiting,’ she said with an air of authority, giving his nipple chain another tug.

‘On the bench,’ Grayson turned to me and ordered.

I took another look at She’s scarily impassive expression and complied. It might be humiliating, but it would be over quickly and I supposed that I would learn something. Half a dozen people had suggested to me that since I worked here I ought to at least have a basic understanding of how our customers got their kicks.

The first smack was fairly soft, but the shock of it made me jump. The second was harder and I had to stifle a low moan. I wouldn’t give either She or Grayson the satisfaction of seeing me vulnerable. The third smack made a loud crack noise and, listening to the mumbled responses around me, I became aware that a crowd had gathered. It was no surprise. I’d never noticed Grayson at the club before and She only ever appeared when she was working, not as a participant. And no one had ever seen me getting involved either as a submissive or as a dominant, let alone both in one evening.