Mistress of Night and Dawn (29 page)

Finally, as if sensing the change in her attitude and rapidly plummeting self-esteem, one of her training supervisors arrived.

It was Miss Greysuit. Bereft of any proper conversation for so long, Aurelia poured her heart out to the nameless woman who sat primly on a stool across from her, carefully jotting down every word that came from Aurelia’s mouth on a yellow legal pad.

‘Never be ashamed of sex,’ her confidante said at last. ‘Only be ashamed of violence.’

Miss Greysuit did not expand any further upon this remark and nor did she provide any other explanation or advice, but her few words soothed Aurelia.

When she reflected upon it she found that the nights that she had spent with other lovers had not altered the deep yearning that she felt for Andrei, nor changed the degree to which she longed for the touch of his skin against hers. Perhaps it would be possible for her to belong to both Andrei and the Ball. But she could not forget the look of sadness that had crossed his face as he had explained that she would be ‘trained’ by others.

More than anything, she wanted to hold him in her arms and make him know that, despite everything he might have seen, he still owned her heart. Her only comfort was that she knew that his arrival in her bed must be imminent, under the terms of her initial agreement with the Network.

The next night, he came and fucked her with the urgency of a man possessed.

His breath was hot on hers when their lips met and Aurelia recognised him in an instant. The heart of ink on her chest had begun to ache from the moment that he had approached, as if her flesh recognised the road map of his movements, the sound of his footsteps, the pattern of his breathing before their skin had even touched.

‘You came,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘I came.’ His voice was rough with grief and desire, but the intricacies of both emotions remained unspoken and communicated only through the way that he lifted her up and carried her to edge of the room and fucked her against the glass so that all in the Network probably watching could see Andrei take Aurelia.

He held her so tightly that his grasp was like a prison, but one that she would like to remain trapped in for eternity and, as the length of his cock pierced her, every marking on her body flared so brightly that Aurelia felt as though the sheer strength of her need for him would cause her to spontaneously combust and they would both be consumed in the fire of her lust and leave nothing behind them but ash.

The next morning she woke before dawn to find that he was already gone again and in that moment Aurelia understood why her mother had run away.

It was all too much for one person. She carried enough desire inside her small body to fuel an entire army. It would destroy her.

She could not bear it. But bear it she must, and she would.

And throughout it all, she treasured the idea of Andrei, his very existence metamorphosing into her own personal treasure at the end of the rainbow, the final destination of her journey, her training.

The sun was only just beginning to break over the horizon and cast its rays on the Network’s gardens and her washing attendants would not be due for at least another hour. Aurelia knew that she would not find another minute’s sleep, so she threw off the covers and hunted amongst her bathing supplies until she found a spare toothbrush and then she got down on her knees and began to scrub the length of the pagoda’s whitewashed floor.

There was no sound in the room besides the dripping of water from the brush and the relentless scrape of the bristles against stone. Her knees began to ache. But she enjoyed the rhythm of the simple back and forward motion of her arm and hand moving the brush and she quickly became acutely aware of each and every bodily sensation. The way that her muscles extended and retracted, the dampness of the water on her skin, the pressure of her cotton vest top against her breasts.

She had the vague sense that she no longer existed as Aurelia. As if, since she had been with the Network, she had shed the skin that marked her as an individual and now she was a mass made up of flesh and bones and sometimes thoughts and feelings, but none of those belonged to her. The idea was freeing, and the strong emotion that had gripped her when she woke dissipated in the act of labour.

For the first time in her life she enjoyed simply being without worrying about what she should do next. With that realisation another tattoo bloomed: a red and black winged ladybird on the pad of one of her fingertips.

That evening, after a light supper of a warm liquid that was vaguely but not exactly tomato flavoured and reminded Aurelia of barbecues on warm afternoons by the seaside, Madame Denoux entered her bedroom and advised her that she was now ready.

Aurelia did not ask her for what. It now seemed unimportant.

Her next day’s bathing routine took longer than usual. After being washed and dried, perfumed oil was massaged into her skin. Each time she moved she caught a faint whiff of her own scent. She smelled sweet and summery, like a combination of freshly squeezed lemons and the petals of a pink rose. Her hair was brushed out and left unadorned. Her attendants did not dress her and Aurelia waited expectantly for the sound of a decorative jewellery clasp snapping or the touch of a razor against what remained of her pubic hair since she had last shaved before her arrival in Seattle, but nothing came. She was led naked, with her eyes closed, out through the glass doors and into the garden.

The grass was soft and wet and Aurelia imagined that she could feel the pressure of each blade caressing the soles of her feet. She smiled as a gentle breeze ruffled her hair and she did not stop to tuck back the stray locks that flew over her eyes. Unable to see, she could not be certain how many people were around her but she believed that she had been led to the centre of a small crowd. There was a faint hush of inward and outward breaths and the occasional whisper of conversation.

And the faint but unmistakable scent of pomegranate.

The fragrance was like a bell to one of Pavlov’s dogs. Aurelia’s breath caught in her throat. Every cell within her came alive with desire. The tattoo over her heart burned even brighter. Her whole body began to shudder but, just as an orgasm was about to rock through her, a voice said: ‘Stop.’

And she did. Aurelia could not be certain whether she had prevented herself from coming or if the voice itself contained some kind of power that had doused her arousal like an icy blanket. Her power and the power of the other had blended into one.

She knew, without being told, the owner of the voice: Walter.

‘Get on your knees.’

Aurelia dropped down. The earth was damp against her legs. A cool draught brushed her skin as Walter stepped closer and loomed over her.

His palm was warm against her cheek. Then he pulled away and an almost imperceptible current of air drifted across her face as he lifted his arm into the air.

Without thinking, Aurelia braced herself but when Walter’s hand came crashing down again and caught her cheek in a sharp slap she still exhaled in shock. She fought away the desire to blink and nestled into the pressure of his fingertips, which now rested gently against her skin.

She heard a sharp hiss in the crowd. Andrei? Was he watching this?

Thoughts like bubbles floated gently to the surface of her mind. The slap hadn’t hurt, she realised. Nor had she felt any instinct to draw her own hand up to protect herself. She trusted Walter. Trusted all of them. She felt safe here. Accessing this knowledge made her even more relaxed. Aurelia sank into the earth. Allowed the blades of grass that she rested upon to take the weight of not just her body but her mind and any stray worries that arose as Walter moved around her.

‘Get up,’ he instructed. Aurelia rose to her feet almost before he had enunciated the words, as if even her limbs were eager to follow his instructions without needing the input of her thoughts. Her arms were raised over her head and bound at the wrists and her legs bound at the ankles.

Fingertips – still Walter’s, Aurelia believed, not that it mattered – trailed softly up her ankles and over the crevices on the backs of her knees and the soft skin of her inner thighs. Her body responded to his touch and she felt moisture gathering at her lips and as he neared her opening. He did not enter her, though Aurelia struggled against the bonds that tied her ankles to indicate that she would like him to. She was steadily becoming more and more aroused and she longed to feel the wonderful release that followed being filled.

When release came, it was in a different form to any that Aurelia had ever experienced.

There was that change in air pressure again as Walter’s arm rose into the air, but now it was not his hand that came crashing down but something else that felt both hard and soft at the same time and landed with a thud on her buttocks and then her back and between her shoulder blades. With every impact and exhale she felt as if some other part of her old life was departing her, disappearing with the vapour of each outward breath. Each blow was harder than the last and when Walter’s whip fell for the final time with an almighty crack, Aurelia’s whole body jolted forward and she cried out.

All of her thoughts and memories had drifted away and Aurelia felt nothing but the sense of existing in the present moment, a sensation of incredible lightness as if her body was floating in mid-air and not bound at all.

‘Yes,’ Walter said with a distinct note of satisfaction. ‘Now.’

He rested his hands on the back of her neck and a rush of heat and energy bolted through Aurelia’s body like an explosion that started at her feet and stopped as suddenly as it had begun at the points of Walter’s fingertips and with no escape began to burn beneath her skin with the same fiery throbbing that had accompanied the arrival of the other tattoos.

She was unbound and immediately collapsed to the ground. Andrei was by her side in a moment. Aurelia’s eyes remained closed, as she had been instructed, but she knew him in the same way that she had always known him. By his touch, his scent, the very particular way that he cradled her in his arms and rocked her back and forward, somehow absorbing all of her pain and confusion with the strength of his embrace.

Aurelia didn’t need to glance in a mirror to know what had happened, but when she did, she was unsurprised to see the now faint outline of another tattoo, this time around her throat.

The marks resembled a thick iron chain, decorated with a coil of tiny red and white petals, just like the ones on her Bonsai tree. And she realised this signified she now knew the power of pain and the precise intersection of that pain with pleasure.

She slept like the dead, and when she woke the next morning Madame Denoux was sitting in her usual place at the foot of her bed, notebook and pen in hand, ready to write down Aurelia’s thoughts as if the whole thing had been some sort of academic project.

No one had come to bathe her that morning, Aurelia realised. Unless they had sponged her down in her sleep. She raised her arm to her nostrils and sniffed. She still smelled faintly of the perfumed oil that had been massaged over her body the day before. The daily ministrations of her attendants had come to an end, then.

‘Is it over?’ Aurelia asked. ‘Am I trained?’

‘No,’ Madame Denoux replied. ‘You’re only just getting started.’

Aurelia nodded. She had long ago surrendered her existence to the Ball. Whatever was planned for her next and however long it would take was irrelevant. She was Mistress and so she would do it.

She brought her hand to her neck. Touched the place where she knew that the iron collar with its chain of flowers encircled her throat.

‘Does this mean that I belong to Walter?’ she asked. Since her association with the Ball and its staff she had seen many men and women wearing collars of different descriptions, including the marionettes who had danced at the exhibition. Of course, she hadn’t known what the collar had represented at the time. That it was a symbol of ownership willingly worn by a submissive and represented a heavy weight of responsibility to the submissive’s dominant.

‘No,’ Madame Denoux replied, ‘you do not belong to Walter. Nor anyone else. You belong to the Ball. The appearance of the collar indicates that you have surrendered fully to your responsibilities, to your place. That you have accepted your position and your future. You are now owned by the Ball, Aurelia.’

‘Can it be removed? Like a regular collar?’

‘It’s not a regular collar, of course. It’s etched into your flesh.’ A bemused smile lingered on Madame’s lips, as if Aurelia had asked a very stupid question. ‘You will never be able to erase the Ball from your life, Aurelia, but all of these things only operate with your consent. The collar cannot be worn unwillingly. It is conjured from within. Not foisted upon you. So yes, if you decided to leave your position, you could do so. The chain of iron is a symbol of your voluntary surrender, not your entrapment.’

Aurelia nodded.

‘What’s next, then?’ Laying in bed felt strange to her now. She had become accustomed to physical work and following instructions. Being idle made her uneasy.

‘Now you must learn how to direct others.’

Of course, Aurelia mused. It must be her turn at domination, now that she wore a submissive’s collar.

Madame Denoux dipped a hand into one of the pockets on her long robe and produced a tiny ornate brass bell intricately carved in the shape of a Chinese dragon’s head. The tongue of the bell was also the tongue of the dragon. It produced the most beautiful sound that Aurelia had ever heard, like the echoes of glass raindrops falling into water.

Within minutes a young man appeared and immediately fell to his knees in the centre of the room with his eyes downcast. Madame Denoux motioned for Aurelia to get up and approach him. She did so, curiously.

He was naked from the waist up and in his bent-over position the muscles in his shoulders and back were clearly visible beneath the covering of his taut, tanned skin. From the waist down he was covered by a white, flowing skirt-like garment, something like a toga. His feet were bare.