Fire After Dark (33 page)

I want to throw the goddamned thing across the room. ‘Why can’t we be normal?’ I shout at him. ‘Why can’t you just apologise? Why does it all have to include
this
?’

‘Because it’s my penance,’ he says in a low voice, as though repeating something he’s learned. ‘I have to do it.’ He takes off his jacket and then his top. He is bare to the waist.

Oh, my beautiful Dominic. I want to love you. I don’t want to hit you.

‘No,’ I say, barely above a whisper.

He gets up and comes to kneel at my feet, bowing his head. I run my eyes over the tanned expanse of his back, the soft dark hair at the back of his neck, the muscled curve of his shoulders. I want to feel him, touch his intoxicating mix of hard muscle and soft smooth skin. I put out my hand and ruffle the surface of his dark hair. He says softly, ‘I want to apologise to you, Beth, for the dreadful, unforgiveable thing I did to you. The most important part of our relationship was the trust, and I took your trust and abused it. I’m so, so sorry.’

‘I forgive you. I don’t want to punish you.’

‘Beth, please . . .’ His dark eyes turn beseechingly to mine. ‘I need it. I need to suffer as you did. It’s the only way.’

I look again at the whip on my lap. It looks so harmless, almost innocuous. But with the force of human desire behind it, it can flay you alive.

‘Please.’ That one word is so freighted with need.

How can I refuse him?

I stand up, taking the flogger in my hand, feeling its weight. Is this, I wonder, my most submissive moment of all? My beautiful, controlling, masterful Dominic wants me to give him a taste of what he inflicted on me. He has demanded it, and I will obey. ‘All right. If it’s what you want.’

Relief floods his features. ‘Thank you,’ he says, almost happily. ‘Thank you.’

He gets up and goes to the white leather seat. I remember the ecstasy I felt there, as Dominic made me soar to the very heights of pleasure. Now he lies on his front, taking his hands below the seat and holding onto the frame. His back is exposed to me from the nape of his neck to the waist.

‘I’m ready,’ he says.

I approach and stand by the chair, feeling the heavy whip in my hand. Its handle is a little too long for me to hold comfortably, and I guess that this is not the instrument a loving domme would use to begin a flogging. I remember how Dominic always warmed me gently with delicate strokes and softer materials before he laid on the sterner instruments.

Am I really going to do this?

It’s what he wants, I tell myself. And, despite everything, I love him.

I lift the whip and bring it down on Dominic’s back with a circular stroke. It’s an ineffective blow, hardly grazing him, but the sensation of using the flogger is so strange I can’t do it with any real force. I try again and again, but still I’m not able to put any true strength behind it. I am afraid that it is because I do not want to.

‘Try a different stroke,’ Dominic says. ‘Take your arm back and follow through in a straight line so the tails flick over me, then back in the same way. Don’t swing your whole body, keep the power in your arm and wrist.’

Lessons from the master,
I think wryly, but I do as he says and the first blow with any meaning lands across Dominic’s back. I gasp as I feel the reverberation in my arm.

‘Yes,’ Dominic says in a firm voice. ‘Carry on. Harder.’

I do it again from the same side, pulling back and pushing through. Now I see a darkening of the skin where the tails have bitten, and I sweep back from the other direction, landing them again in the same place.

‘Very good, Beth. Well done. Please continue.’

I begin to find my rhythm as I become accustomed to the weight of the whip and the feel of the tails slapping down on Dominic’s back. I begin to listen for the sounds, and the way they are forming a kind of beat to my actions. I start to forget that the crack of the tails on his back are causing him pain, even though I know this to be the case.

The strokes are growing in intensity. Dominic’s back is reddening, the skin puffing up under the blows. I realise that I’m beginning to feel a sense of what that power can feel like, of how the urge to rip into the willing victim can begin to possess with a dark, primitive strength. Maybe there is a brutality in me after all.

So perhaps the person the controller most needs to control is themselves. Their desires must be governed by what their submissive can take.

I understand now that this is how Dominic has failed himself. And me.

As I think this, any desire to relish the pain I am inflicting dies. The sight of the reddened skin, and the stripes of red and white that appear where the tails land cause any awful sadness to rise up in me.

But I go on.

Instinct tells me to change my stance and I stand almost side on to Dominic, taking my arm back and powering through like a tennis player hitting a strong forearm shot. Just before the whip strikes, I hold back the power so that the impetus drops and the tails bring their greatest force to the skin, and don’t continue on.

As the first of these hard blows hit, Dominic cries out. The sound rends my heart. He shouts again and again as the whip strikes with its flock of teeth. I notice that the skin on his back has begun to weep clear fluid, and the sight makes tears jump to my eyes, hot and sharp. Sobs begin to rise in my chest and I feel them break in my throat in time to the blows I am raining on his back. This is becoming too much, but I grit my teeth and force myself on.

Dominic is containing himself now. His eyes are shut and I can see the fierce set of his jaw as he fights to absorb the agony and not cry out. I know that every strike is cleansing him, giving the redemption he craves.

But I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. This is merciless, this is barbaric.

‘Don’t stop,’ Dominic orders, through gritted teeth. ‘Keep going.’

Keep going?
Tears are dripping down my face now as I obey, pulling my arm back, forcing it forward and round in a thwacking sweep, cutting the flogger into his back. The stripes are now indistinguishable from the mass of swollen redness on his back. It’s weeping too, the clear liquid sticky and shiny on his skin.

‘I can’t,’ I say, ‘I can’t.’ The sobs are beginning to choke me.

Then I see it. The ruby drops breaking through the surface of his tortured skin, erupting like miniature volcanoes. They speckle his back, and begin to flow. Blood.

‘No!’ I cry, and I let the flogger drop down, the power seeping from its tails. ‘No, I can’t do it.’ I start to cry in earnest. ‘Your poor back, it’s bleeding.’ Overcome I sink down onto my knees, the whip falls from my hand, my head droops and I start to cry. How has it come to this? I’m beating the man I love until he bleeds.

Dominic shifts and slowly raises himself. He is stiff with the pain, and when he turns to look at me, his eyes are wet too. ‘Beth, don’t cry. Can’t you see? I don’t want to cause you pain.’

This seems so bitterly ironic, that I cry even harder.

‘Hey, my girl, my girl.’ He gets off the seat and comes to me, kneeling close and takes my hands. ‘Don’t cry.’

But his own face is full of sadness, his eyes glittering with tears. I can’t even embrace him, his back is far too tender for that. Instead, I reach up and cup his beloved face in my hands. ‘How did it come to this?’ I whisper. Then slowly I stand up. ‘I can’t do this any more. I know you need to work through your guilt or whatever fucked-up thing you’re feeling, but I can’t be your instrument any more. It hurts too much, Dominic. I’m sorry.’

Then I turn for the door and leave him there. I don’t want to abandon him, but I know that if I don’t go now, my heart will burst.

Chapter Twenty

At work, James is gentle with me. He can tell my emotions are all over the place and that I’m working through something important. He must be regretting taking me on, I think, I’ve been nothing but a basket case since I started.

But I manage to turn my mind to work – it helps, in fact, because while I’m doing the exhibition organisation, I can forget about last night’s awful scene. When I do remember it, it’s with a kind of dull horror. I feel as though I’m caught up in some kind of nightmare, where love and pain are deeply, inseparably entwined, and for the first time I don’t know if I can stand it.

I think of Adam – placid, predictable Adam – waiting for me back at home. Perhaps that’s the answer after all. Perhaps the world of grand passions and high drama is not for me.

But it seems that there’s no solution: heartbreak if I carry on, and heartbreak if I don’t.

In the afternoon, James brings me a cup of tea and says, ‘I’ve had a bit of news from Salim.’

Salim is James’s usual assistant, and, from what I can glean from the files, he’s amazingly organised and efficient.

‘He’s out of hospital next week,’ James continues, looking a little sheepish. ‘And after that, he’ll be coming back to his job here.’

‘I always knew he would,’ I reply. ‘You’ve never pretended anything else.’

James sighs and takes off his gold-framed spectacles. ‘I know. But I’ve loved having you here, Beth. You’ve added quite a bit of spice to my life, for one thing. I wish we could find some way to keep you on.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I say with a smile. ‘I have to leave Celia’s flat next week. I always knew this was just a temporary life.’

‘Oh Beth.’ He puts his hand on my arm. ‘I’ll miss you. I hope you’ll always consider me a friend.’

‘Of course I will. You won’t be able to shake me off that easily!’ I’m trying very hard to sound normal but inside I’m in a whirl of uncertainty. What on earth can I do next? Even if Laura wants to share a flat in the autumn, I’ll have to go home in the meantime. With no place to stay and no job, what can keep me here?

Dominic?

I close my mind to that. It’s too painful to think about either of the alternatives: being with him and being without seem equally painful.

‘If anything right for you comes up, I’ll let you know,’ James says.

‘Thank you, James. I’d appreciate that.’

‘How are things with Dominic?’ he asks tentatively. ‘Any change?’

I’m silent for a moment, wondering how much I can tell him. Then I say, ‘I don’t think it’s going to work. We’re just too different.’

‘Ah.’ He sounds knowing. ‘It’s a bit like a woman falling in love with a gay man, I’m afraid. You might think you can change him, but the reality is, you can’t.’ He rubs my arm comfortingly again. ‘I’m sorry, hon. You’ll find someone else, I promise.’

I can’t trust myself to speak so I just nod. Then I have to bow my head and get on with changes to the client database before he can see that my eyes are filled with tears.

London is bursting with Friday evening jollity as I walk home, even though the sun has now well and truly disappeared under a thick grey haze of cloud. It’s still warm, though, almost muggy, and the air feels thinner than usual.

I sense something different as soon as I head up in the lift, and by the time I’m opening the door to the flat, I know for sure that there is a change in the atmosphere. For the first time, De Havilland doesn’t come trotting out to me, his tail in the air. Then I see the two large suitcases in the hall.

‘Helloooo,’ comes a voice, and a moment later, a smart older woman is standing in the doorway of the sitting room. She is tall and elegant, dressed in a blue printed silk wrap dress, her skin is lined but baby soft and her hair is a chic silver crop. It’s Celia.

I gape at her in astonishment.

‘I know, I know,’ she declares, coming towards me with her hands outstretched. ‘I should have called! I meant to, but when I wanted to call, my phone didn’t work and when it did, I was too tied up with passports and airports and what have you.’

I’m still processing everything as she clasps my hands and kisses me on both cheeks. ‘Have I got it wrong?’ I ask. ‘I thought you were back next week.’

‘No you’re right, but I couldn’t bear that wretched retreat a moment longer! I’ve never been locked up with so many frightful bores for so long. I can’t believe I managed as long as I did. And the food . . .’ She raises her eyes to heaven. ‘I must be spoiled, darling, but I believe there’s no moral imperative that means food should taste ghastly! In fact, I behave a great deal better when I’m able to eat delicious things three times a day. Now, don’t be disappointed because I’m home early.’

‘Of course I’m not,’ I insist, but I am. Horribly.

‘You don’t have to leave, you can stay here till the time is up but I’m afraid I shall have to reclaim my bed. Little old ladies of seventy-two must have their luxury mattresses and supportive pillows, I’m afraid. But I’ve been told my sofa is more comfortable than many a hotel bed. So you can have that.’ She smiles at me. She really does have the most amazing skin: it looks as soft as tissue.

‘Well, if you don’t mind,’ I say hesitantly. I don’t have anywhere else to go, after all, and I still have a week left to work for James. Perhaps I can make some other arrangement next week, although I can’t think what.

‘Of course I don’t. The flat looks wonderful and De Havilland is positively glowing. You’ve obviously taken care of my little angel. Now, do you have plans for this evening, or will you let me take you out for supper?’

I had no real plans, except to see if I could see Dominic in his flat across the way. That will have to wait now, I suppose.

‘Supper would be lovely, Celia, thank you,’ I say brightly.

‘Excellent. We’ll go to Monty’s Bar. They do such wonderful food and I really feel I deserve it after all I’ve suffered.’

Monty’s Bar and the dinner Celia buys me is wonderful, but I can’t help wishing I was back, alone in her silent apartment, able to see whether Dominic is at home or not. She is very interesting and amusing, and she asks me plenty about my time in London and my job at the gallery, but I feel as though I’m supposed to be somewhere else. By the time we get home that evening, it’s late and when I at last have the opportunity to look out of the sitting room window, the flat opposite is in darkness.