His Mistress’s Voice (12 page)

‘Bedtime,’ she said, using the remote control to switch off the TV. ‘Let’s be having you. She motioned for him to follow her. Tom got awkwardly to his feet, his cock sticking out stiffly and throbbing. Harriet struck it a light flick with her crop and it bobbed comically. Tom grunted, more in surprise than in pain. He was even more surprised by what came next: he did!

He felt the familiar wave of excitement pass through him, and then he realised he was going to lose control. He shuddered and his knees bent as he started to come. With his hands behind his back he swayed, almost lost his balance, and would have fallen if the settee had not been there to lean against. Some of the semen landed on the floor, but the rest ended up splashing Harriet’s thighs, staining the smooth black of her tights. He was too preoccupied to notice it at the time. It was one of the most intense orgasms he could remember. Later, when he had time to think about it, he assumed that the intensity must have been due to the prolonged cycle of arousal and denial to which he had been subjected throughout the long afternoon and evening. At the time he was too busy to do much else but utter a prolonged groan. His hips jerked as he moved in time with the orgasm.

Caught by surprise, Harriet didn’t move quickly enough. She glanced down at the sticky mess on her legs and back at Tom, who was still hunched over as he finished. She looked annoyed, as much at herself for misjudging his tolerance as at Tom for his lack of control. She recovered, and said, ‘Dirty boy. You’ll have to clean this up tomorrow, you know. So I hope you enjoyed that little lot. Stick with me and we’ll see if we can’t improve on it as we go along.’

She took Tom’s elbow and led him to the downstairs toilet, where she dampened a cloth to clean herself. She sponged the semen off her tights, the water leaving darker blotches on the nylon. Tom stared at her legs in fascination. When she had cleaned herself up, she sponged his still-erect cock. ‘You can put that away now, but you’ll have to practise more self-control in future. I was about to say you shouldn’t go off half-cocked, but you weren’t at half-cock, were you? However, there’s a price to pay, even for accidents. I was going to let you sleep in a bed tonight. Not mine,’ she added when she saw his look ‘but a bed none the less. Now you’ll not be so comfortable. Still,’ she said, talking as much to herself as to him, ‘you’ll be all the better for a little
Unruhe.
It helps to drive the lesson home.’

‘
Freude durch Schwierigkeit, Fraulein?
’ he asked sardonically.

‘None of that, now. It is a far cry from the excesses of our German friends during the war to the thoroughly scientific training regime I administer. You’ll soon grow to like it. After all, the rewards are better,’ she posed for him, ‘not just an extra crust of bread. Man doesn’t live by bread alone. Sex is also part of the diet. The dessert, you might say. Life is uncertain, so better order dessert first! However, in your case you’ll have to earn your dessert. A bit of the old
Arbeit
will make you more free.’

Tom couldn’t imagine how, but he said nothing.

Harriet drained the hand basin and hung the face cloth neatly on the towel rail. She was beginning to look like an everything-in-its-place person. ‘Want to pee before beddy-byes?’ Before he could answer she took him in hand and led him by the cock over to the toilet. Harriet lined him up and declared, ‘Fire when ready!’ When he was done she led him, still by the cock, down the hall toward the stairs. She stopped beside the door to the cupboard under the stairs and dropped his lead. Or rather let go of it. It wasn’t yet ready to drop.

The door and its frame looked much heavier than was usual for interior doors and cupboards, and the door opened inward against substantial stops. There was a light switch near the door frame. Harriet switched on the light and opened the door. Inside, Tom saw a thin mattress on the floor. These were apparently his sleeping quarters. There was no latch or handle on the inside of the door, nor was there a keyhole. There was also a stout bolt on the outside of the door and Tom concluded that it wasn’t meant to be opened from inside. There was no light switch inside either. The cupboard was actually more like a cell. He didn’t think he’d have much luck breaking out.

‘This is my little holding tank for visitors,’ Harriet remarked as she pushed him inside. ‘Sit down.’

The ceiling barely cleared his head when he stood inside. He sat awkwardly. Harriet knelt beside him and he smelled her perfume as she reached past him, brushing lightly. Tom felt his desire for her grow again. He wanted to have her then and there.

As before, Harriet seemed unaware of his need. She grasped a ring protruding from a hole in the floor near the foot of the mattress. It proved to be attached to a short chain, which she pulled up. Harriet unlocked one of the irons on his ankles, slipped it through the ring at the end of the chain, and relocked it on him. This left Tom chained by the ankles to the floor of the cell. She withdrew in a whisper of nylon and a gentle creaking of leather. She went back to the downstairs toilet and returned with a bucket. ‘In case you need to go again in the night,’ she declared. She withdrew again and closed the door. Tom heard the key turn in the lock. There was a metallic scraping as she slid the bolt home, Harriet’s muffled ‘sleep well’ came through to him as the light was switched off.

It was almost totally dark. Only a small chink of light came through beneath the door. He listened to Harriet’s receding footsteps. Presently there was the sound of a toilet flushing, and then splashing noises. Presumably she was washing before bed. She had apparently forgotten about him and Tom felt another kind of excitement rising in him as he lay chained in the dark closet. Harriet was going to leave him there while she slept. If he could, he had better sleep too. The stairs creaked overhead as she went up to her bedroom. He imagined the play of her legs and bottom as she climbed. That exercise didn’t make him any calmer.

Tom tried to make himself as comfortable as possible for the night but soon found that it wasn’t going to be all that comfortable. The handcuffs prevented him from lying on his back or side. He could lie face down but that felt unnatural because he couldn’t use his arms to pillow his head. He found that he could lie half on his side and half on his front, but after a short time his hands went numb behind his back and woke him. He was about to resign himself to a sleepless night when he hit upon the idea of propping himself into a seated position in the corner. The wall behind him supported his back and he used the adjoining wall to lean his head against. He slept fitfully, waking up from time to time to shift his position fractionally. He dreamed he was in prison – which in a way he was, but with a most agreeable jailer.

In his waking moments Tom thought of Harriet lying in her bed out of his reach. He imagined her sleeping in the leather corselet and tights. That made him get hard. It was disturbing not being able to reach his cock. If he couldn’t have Harriet, he could at least relieve himself, or he could have if his hands had been free. Perhaps Harriet had anticipated just this situation when she had left him chained; she seemed to think of most things.

At some time in the night Tom woke and had to pee. He tried to remember where the bucket was in the dark closet, and after a good deal of squirming he managed to locate it and made his slow way over to it. He got awkwardly to his knees and knelt beside the bucket. He aimed by centring it between his knees, hoping his calculations were correct. His aim was good. Though still frustrated, he felt some relief afterwards. There was a faint odour of piss in the confined space, but he couldn’t escape that. Tom worked his way back to the corner and settled down once more. The rest of the night passed in fitful sleep and lurid dreams.

Even before he heard the first faint sounds from upstairs, Tom knew it was daylight by the light filtering through the crack under the door. Then there came the sound of Harriet’s footsteps and the sound of a toilet flushing. Tom wondered if she was coming for him and what she had in mind for this day. He felt the now-familiar mixture of anticipation and dread that coloured all his contacts with Harriet. The sounds from upstairs ceased. It looked as if she was going to lie in. He would have to wait for as long as it took Harriet to decide what she wanted to do. The sense of being in someone else’s power came home once again to him as he settled in the closet to await her whim. But even as he waited he could sense his excitement growing once more. His cock, out of reach, was most definitely
not
out of mind. It grew stiffer by the moment, until it positively ached, but there was no relief for him, only more waiting.

Eventually there were more sounds from the upper floor. Footsteps coming down the stairs, the treads of the stairs creaking over his head. Dominatrix descending a staircase. They stopped outside the door. There was the rattle of a key in the lock and the sound of a drawn bolt. The light was switched on, dazzling Tom after the hours spent in darkness. The door opened and his mistress stood over him, looking sleepy but still somehow daunting. Her brown hair was tousled and she stifled a yawn as she bent over him. She was wearing an ordinary dressing gown, belted at the waist but with enough of the top open to allow a generous amount to show. There was no trace of the working gear she had worn the previous day, and Tom felt a small stab of disappointment. He had been expecting to be greeted by Harriet in her form-fitting leather costume. Only as he looked at her now did he realise how much he associated her outfit with her role. He recalled his dream about Harriet sleeping in her tight leather corselet and wearing her high heels. That fantasy had excited him greatly.

As she came into the small closet to free him, Tom smelled her fragrance and felt a rush of desire for her. He said, ‘Good morning’, the only thing that came to mind. Even as he did it he realised how banal it sounded in these bizarre circumstances. Just what was the proper greeting for the woman holding you prisoner after a night in chains? The etiquette books were silent on this point.

Harriet did not respond to this sally, but when she noticed his erection she gave a small smile of approval. ‘Been thinking creatively, then, haven’t you?’ As she unlocked the leg irons and freed him from the tether she wrinkled her nose at the smell from the bucket. Tom had grown used to it but it must have seemed quite strong to someone who hadn’t been living with the odour all night. Harriet took the leg-irons off and then reached behind him to unlock the handcuffs.

Tom got to his feet slowly and stretched his arms and legs. They felt stiff after the night in chains.

‘Come out of there. I need coffee desperately,’ Harriet ordered.

Tom came out into the hallway and stretched some more. It was a dull morning. Silvery rather than golden sunlight. Not dismal. Not rainy. Just not the sort of morning one usually called glorious. He felt happy, though, as he stood before Harriet at the start of this new day.

‘Coffee now,’ Harriet repeated, half-mockingly but with an undertone of seriousness, ‘before I do something you’ll regret.’

With a shiver of anticipation Tom remembered the riding crop. He knew she would use it on him if he didn’t please her. Last night had shown him that. He moved toward the kitchen to make the coffee. Harriet went through into the sitting room. As he filled the coffee maker with water Tom wondered if he was going to spend every night at Harriet’s house in the cupboard. When he remembered the erotic dreams of the night before he thought that another night there wouldn’t be so bad. Certainly better than sleeping alone. And even, he realised with some surprise, better than a night with Beth. When he compared her with Harriet, she seemed more ordinary. He realised with a start that he was beginning to enjoy this far-from-ordinary situation much more than he had enjoyed the nights with Beth. It wasn’t that she was unattractive. But the memory of their relationship was beginning to pale when set beside the Harriet alternative.

As he waited for the water to boil, another thought struck Tom: he had better go empty the bucket in the closet. Harriet had said nothing but he sensed that she expected him to slop out. Better that than risk her displeasure. After he had emptied the bucket down the toilet he rinsed it out and splashed some disinfectant into it. Then he replaced it in the closet in case she decided he needed another night there. She didn’t look forgetful, but he wanted to be sure he had some place to go if he needed it. Another night in the cupboard might not be so bad, but he caught himself thinking that a night or two in Harriet’s bed would be much better – if he dared aspire to it. She had hinted that this might be his ultimate reward, but she had set no time limit on how long he might have to wait for it. Doubtless, in her scheme of things, she thought the wait would be good for him. Character building, she might say.

When Tom got back to the kitchen the water was boiling, so he made coffee and looked about for something to prepare for breakfast. He didn’t know how Harriet felt about cereals and such things, but he sensed that she liked a prepared breakfast. Prepared by someone else, him, in this case! He was doing his best to please her, something he had never done so thoroughly for the other women in his life. Tom wondered idly if he was becoming the ‘new man’ that the feminists were always on about. No, he concluded, he was pretty much the old man but was being introduced to a new mode of sexual reality. Harriet had never said anything about changing the status of women by teaching him the pleasures of subservience and submission. She had never said anything about the political or social aspect of domination. Rather she seemed to be doing it because she enjoyed the experience. And so did he, although that was not her main concern.

When the coffee was ready, Tom made up a tray for Harriet and took it through to her. He remembered last night’s session and her remark about cleaning up in the morning. He took a damp sponge and a saucepan of water with him when he went into the sitting room. Tom poured the coffee, then knelt to clean the small crusty patches left on the carpet from his unexpected loss of control. This action gained him another small smile of approval from Harriet. Tom smiled in return, pleased that he was doing what pleased her as well. As he worked he wondered if she would
really
use the crop on anyone rather than employing it mainly in a symbolic fashion, to underline her wishes. He concluded that she could well apply it in earnest. She seemed the type of determined person who would.