Switch - a full length bdsm erotic novel (21 page)

She tried to maintain the stance of a dom with berries in her cleavage and globs of cream splattered over her outfit. Another woman I’d have warmed to – I always had a weakness for the faintly ridiculous – but, knowing her for all of a minute, I already realised that she was not a person who engendered warmth.

‘Explain yourself.’ The first words Adora had ever spoken directly to me.

I shrugged. ‘It was an accident. Who brings a cake to one of these things anyway?’ The sullen teenager hadn’t been the response I’d been aiming for, but it was how my emotions came out.

A hand lightly grazed against my arm. The breath caught in my throat. My master was beside me. I didn’t dare to turn to him; would he be reassuring me with his protection, or chastising me for causing this scene and embarrassing him in front of his old friend?

‘That cake was a gift.’ The mistress’s voice became shriller. ‘This little bitch needs punishing. She needs to be trained; she’s clearly been spoilt and encouraged. She’s a fuck-up and if you won’t do anything, Adora, I will.’

She stepped forward with her hand raised. I stood still, surprised by the oddity that this stranger actually meant to slap me. My master saved me by catching her wrist in mid-air. He held it for a second before releasing it in a manner that suggested he’d touched something repulsive.

In a soft tone, he addressed Adora. ‘We have an understanding. No one else punishes April.’

Despite everything a tremor shot through me. My lover very rarely used my Christian name, I didn’t completely understand why he had now, but it worked for me as an aural caress linking us together against the world.

Adora gave my master a short but meaningful look. ‘Your sub needs to get on her knees and beg Mistress Janet’s forgiveness. She’ll lick Mistress Janet clean and we’ll all forget about this little
accident
.’

I bit down on my lip. I was a sub, I was representative of my master. There were more people looking at us and the atmosphere had changed. There were still the moans and grunts of people experienced in mixing pleasure and pain, but somehow there was an aura of tense silence in the small area of the warehouse that I occupied. For all these people in their beautiful clothes, escaping for one blissful evening from the terrifying mundanity of work and bills and weekly trips to the supermarket and boring endless conversations about nothing, I’d transgressed. I needed to play my role properly to allow the games to continue.

But that was my problem: I couldn’t play my role. I wouldn’t lick the cream off this stranger’s bodice, I wouldn’t eat the fruit out of her cleavage, because I didn’t feel it. No part of me wanted to. To pretend I did would undermine the black nights when my lover and I rolled naked under cloudy skies, half wrestling, half fucking, and I whispered into his ear again and again, ‘I’m sorry we lost those months. I didn’t say yes as soon as you asked.’

He would whisper back, ‘No apologies.’

‘You don’t understand. I am sorry that even though it hurt so much I wouldn’t change that time. I wouldn’t erase my experiences with Joe or my slave.’

‘I know. It was exactly how it needed to be.’ And then, depending on his mood, he would spank me, or tease me, or kiss me.

But it always ended the same with us, disappearing into each other.

‘I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to create any disturbance but I am not going to lick anyone clean.’ I addressed no one and spoke to everyone.

‘I’m sorry, mistress.’ He was there, my slave, naked apart from that pink fluffy collar around his neck; the chastity device had disappeared. He knelt in front of me, and it felt as if I had conjured him with my thoughts. ‘Please forgive me, mistress, it is me who created this situation. I brought the cake here as I foolishly was trying to impress Mistress Adora.’ His voice was the same, his body was the same, he was the same. ‘And it was me who gave it to Mistress Janet rather than dealt with it myself because I was talking to another slave, trying to learn how to apply make-up. It was all due to my own stupidity and selfishness; I still have so much to learn and grow to be a real slave.’

Adora started to speak, but I cut over the top of her. ‘Daisy, you will always be learning. That is the sign of a good slave, a good person.’ I put my hand under his chin and raised his head. He had blue eyes. I looked into them and I knew him. ‘Lick this poor mistress clean, slave.’

‘No. That’s not good enough.’ Mistress Janet wailed.

And although I had never heard her voice before I now remembered her from those long, factual emails Slave used to send me, filled with ropes and whips and wet cunts smothering his face.

‘It’s more than enough,’ I said.

‘You need to be punished for what you have done,’ she continued, as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘You are nothing and you tried to humiliate me. I demand that you get whipped. I’ll whip you myself and more. I want to see you covered in pegs and I’ll pull them all off. And then you can be hosed down and then caged and you can go in the dark room as well, when I’ve finished, to think about what you’ve done.’

I laughed. ‘Is that all? Thank fuck I didn’t spill your drink as well.’

‘Mistress Adora, please, if you feel that punishment is necessary let me take it all for my Queen.’ There was my little slave, all seriousness and duty, something I could never be.

‘Your Queen?’ Adora raised her eyebrows.

‘Yes, his Queen.’ I met Adora’s gaze. ‘He is my slave and always will be.’

Adora paused, and then she gave me a small nod of acknowledgement before turning to Mistress Janet. ‘Daisy will take all the punishments you’ve judged a ruined cake is worth, then you will leave this place and never enter my realm again.’

Slave said, ‘Thank you for giving me permission to take the punishment on your behalf, you are full of grace.’

I dropped to my knees and touched his lips with mine, the most gentle of caresses. ‘I accept your love.’

‘Thank you, mistress. Thank you, Beatrice.’ His voice was softer than mine.

I stood up and took my husband’s hand. I wanted to touch my slave again, but I turned around and walked away without looking back.

We were silent until I’d started the car and driven us out into the black night. There was a fine drizzle falling and I concentrated on the road ahead, but my mind was busy creating images of Slave’s pale skin being pinched with dozens of pegs, the marks they would leave when they were ripped off; him being hosed down with icy water. He would be composed throughout. The cage I’d never experienced myself. I could see him, though, squeezed into the small space with people prodding him through the bars. There would be minor pain, but the main point of it was humiliation. I imagined him enjoying that. And then the dark room on his own. That would be the worst. But he had love. He would close his eyes and think of me and our one kiss. Or maybe that was just my fantasy; maybe now he would think of Adora and how impressed she would be with how well he’d taken the punishments.

My master’s voice broke into my thoughts. ‘That went well, didn’t it? How did you manage to transform that into such a big incident?’

‘I don’t think any of them are fans of slapstick.’

He laughed, a sound of both relief and tiredness. ‘It is difficult trying to keep you entertained without losing all my friends.’

‘I know.’ I glanced over at him. ‘You know that job offer in the States you decided to decline?’

‘Yes, I do happen to know about that, my dear. I’ll inform them officially tomorrow.’

‘Tell them you’ll take it.’

There was silence. We both stared ahead of us.

‘What would you do in America?’

‘Something.’

And that’s where I am in my life, doing something in New York with minimal risk of bumping into anyone from my past. At the moment that something is:

During work hours – admin at a woman’s shelter and general coffee maker, shoulder to cry on, person to trust.

Out of work hours – jogging (an oddity which I don’t think will last as my breasts, even with a steel-reinforced bra, just weren’t made for that sort of bouncing, but sometimes there is a freedom in going against our innate nature); reading the huge pile of books my husband keeps recommending; caring for the man I love; being hogtied and fucked in the arse.

Very, very occasionally when I’m staring into the distance and thinking without realising I’m thinking, I imagine the life of a mistress where my every gesture, every failing, is overtly worshipped.

Very, very occasionally when my mind is silent and pieces of my past quietly slip into my thoughts, I wonder what a slim, blue-eyed man is doing, a man who used to send me daily emails reporting his every thought, hope, and dream, who called me his Queen and named himself my slave, my Daisy.

But that is just the twisted aspect of being human, to always think about what you haven’t got. Overall in this fucked up world, I think I might actually be as happy as I can be.