His Mistress’s Voice (17 page)

Tom saw that she intended to leave him in one of the cells he had seen earlier. ‘When do I get to use the bedroom upstairs?’ he asked, more to be saying something than in any attempt to change her mind. He already knew that there were easier things to change.

‘That’s for special guests,’ she retorted. ‘You’re not one of them. Yet,’ she added, softening the rebuke. ‘Keep on working at it and you may be promoted. Play your cards right and you could be spending your nights in the room next to it.’

Once more Harriet preceded him down the stairs. When they reached the bottom, she asked him which cell he preferred. The two were almost identical, but he guessed that Harriet didn’t offer many choices. He might as well take what ones there were. He chose by walking into the one on the left of the stairs, where he sat down on the cot inside. He waited while Harriet made a short inspection of the room. He didn’t know what she might be looking for, and he concluded it was done more for effect: let the other person know that you have to see everything for yourself. Take nothing for granted. Let others know you’re checking up on them.

When she was done, she wished him a curt good night. She closed the door and he heard the sound of the key turning in the lock. The staccato sound of her high heels receded, and the door at the top of the stairs closed. The light went out. In the basement it was as dark as a cave. As she had said, it was bedtime. There was nothing else to do. Feeling slightly oppressed by the utter darkness, Tom lay down on the cot. He slept fitfully, dreaming of what they had done that evening and last weekend. And wondering what surprise Harriet had in store for him.

Not too surprisingly, he woke up with a hard on. This was partly the result of his dreams, and partly because he needed to pee. He groped his way to the toilet, guiding himself mainly by feel and his memory of the layout of the room from his earlier tour. He didn’t need any light after he found the toilet and had sat on it (not trusting himself to aim accurately in the dark; it wouldn’t do to have Harriet find him with piss all over the floor). So naturally Harriet turned the lights on at that moment. Murphy’s Law worked as well here as it did anywhere else. The brilliance dazzled his eyes after the hours of total darkness.

He heard Harriet’s footsteps on the stairs. He could tell from the sound that she was wearing high heels. They made a different sound from other types of shoe. It occurred to Tom that he preferred heels to flats, both acoustically and aesthetically. He wanted to get off the pot before she came in and saw him in an undignified position, but the sitting posture had told his body that it was time to shit too. She unlocked the door just as he reached for the toilet paper, and he met Harriet’s interested glance.

‘Haven’t you seen someone on the pot before?’ he asked, wanting to get in the first shot and so salvage some of the dignity he felt he was losing. ‘And what about knocking before you come in?’

‘Hundreds of times, to answer your first question. It’s an occupational hazard in my business, something lots of people pay for as well. As to the other, I set the rules here. Try to remember that.’ She changed tack abruptly. ‘Did you sleep well?’

Tom nodded cautiously, not expecting such solicitude after her previous remarks. This morning she was dressed for going out. As he had guessed, she was wearing high heels. A beige blouse and knee-length skirt completed the outfit. She wore matching beige tights (or was it stockings today?). On the whole he preferred her in dark or black tights, and in the outfit she had worn the previous night. But he had to concede that it wasn’t exactly something one wore to Marks and Spencer’s.

‘Good. It’s breakfast time out in the wide world. The sun’s in the sky, the lark’s on the Wing, the wolf’s at the door, the . . . You get the idea. I’m famished. Hurry up with your business and come get me something to eat. I’ve a full day ahead of me. Places to be, people to see. But I see I’m running on.’ She paused abruptly. With an air of taking a grip on herself, something Tom would have liked to do, Harriet turned and left him to it. ‘Come straight up,’ she threw over her shoulder as her footsteps receded up the stairs. ‘And wash your hands, too,’ came more faintly down to him.

When he had finished, Tom went up to start breakfast. It was a clear sunny day, just the sort of day for going shopping if you liked that sort of thing. Harriet clearly intended to do something of the sort. She gave no sign that she intended to take him along, which was just as well. He hated shopping at the best of times. As he boiled the eggs and made toast and coffee, Tom watched the birds outside the window. The food he had put out last night was gone. Doubtless they had put it to good use making more birds. Tom put marmalade on the tray with the cutlery and napkin and carried it through to Harriet.

She gave him a perfunctory thank you, as if addressing and dismissing a servant. He went back into the kitchen for the coffee. When he had served Harriet, he went back and ate his own breakfast standing at the worktop. As he ate he looked out at the weather. It was just the sort of day that demanded he be up and about. Up he certainly was (in several senses of the word), but he hadn’t any idea of what he should do. It was just as well that Harriet had taken over the planning. If I were an existentialist, Tom mused, I would be pondering on the interrelationship of freedom and compulsion. But as I’m not I just have to take whatever comes, which is exactly what everyone else, whether existentialist or not, has to do. He concluded he was no worse off than anyone else. At the least, he was in an interesting relationship which was developing in unknown ways. And at the best, there was the promise of becoming Harriet’s assistant in what she called her B&D bawdy house. So far he had only a vague idea of what she wanted him to do, but it was early days yet. The idea of becoming an assistant in what he smilingly thought of as a house of ill repute (relishing the Victorian flavour of the euphemism) appealed to him. He might even be able to quit his job and devote himself full time to it. Become self-employed. After all, the government was always on about becoming self-reliant, by which they meant signing off the dole and taking a job that paid peanuts. They held up the idea of being one’s own boss.

‘Tom.’ Harriet’s voice broke into his thoughts. She stood in the kitchen doorway. He hadn’t heard her approach. ‘You look as if you were miles away. Penny for ’em.’

Tom looked at her. ‘Sorry. I was thinking about what being your assistant might involve. I like the idea but still don’t know exactly what you want me to assist with. Did you want something else?’

‘Never mind. That will come in time. And no, I didn’t want anything else. You can clear up in there. I’ll be going out shortly and you need to be prepared for being left alone here most of the day.’

Tom looked quizzical. Harriet continued, ‘Don’t worry about it. Think of this as part of your training: you’ll be doing unto others a lot of what I’m doing unto you. The golden rule of good B&D people – watch and learn – another good rule for most things. I’m full of good advice this morning but I do know what I’m doing. I’ve been at this for some time. You’re in the hands of an expert, even if I do say it myself.’

Tom smiled. ‘If you say so, Mistress. Excuse me now.’ He went into the living room to collect the breakfast things. Harriet stood aside to let him pass and then went down the stairs into the basement. By the time he had washed up and put things away she was back with a carrier bag full of things from her collection. It was beginning to look like time for the next lesson. Tom found he was curious.

Harriet went into the dining area and motioned for him to follow her. There was a table and four chairs. When she set the carrier bag on the table, Tom saw that it contained a fair quantity of rope and some things made of leather whose purpose was not immediately apparent. He imagined he’d find out soon enough, and didn’t ask any questions. She drew the curtains and the room darkened. ‘That will keep the curious passers-by from seeing more than they’re meant to,’ she remarked. ‘No point in calling undue attention to the operation. Mrs Grundy and her minions are everywhere, and seemingly starved for gossip. I don’t like to oblige them. It only takes a word in the wrong ear and we’ll have the coppers swarming. In spite of what Sam Goldwyn said, there
is
such a thing as bad publicity – at least in this trade. Oh, I know that we’d have more new customers and more enquiries from the idly curious than we need if the word got around, but that wouldn’t help if the coppers were also in the woodwork. You can’t deal with customers if you’re in court defending yourself.

‘I’d have to find a new venue, which is a nuisance and an embarrassment and it’s sure to be noted by the police. Once you let them get their teeth into you, become “known to the police” as they phrase it, they never give you any peace. If you can’t be prudent, then discretion is the next best thing.’

As she was speaking, or lecturing would be more precise Tom thought, Harriet was laying out her equipment on the dining table. He had been encouraged by her use of ‘we’ and by the confidential nature of her remarks. He could appreciate the need for discretion as she brought out her selections. He felt his pulse accelerate and his breath become short as she made her preparations as if she were performing some elaborate ceremony. Which she Was. They were playing roles: she the mistress and he the slave.

She approached him with one of the tie wraps she had brought with her to their first meeting. ‘You know what this is for, don’t you?’

‘How could I forget?’

Harriet smiled as if to encourage a particularly bright student as she slipped the tie wrap through a brass ring. She passed the strap around his scrotum just above the balls and pulled it snug. After testing it for slippage, Harriet snipped off the excess strap with her side-cutting pliers. Tom winced involuntarily at the decisive snip of the tool so close to home. Harriet noticed, as she seemed to notice everything. ‘Not to worry,’ she said as she cupped his balls. ‘The family jewels are safe in my hands.’ The pun came out deadpan.

Harriet knotted a length of rope to the brass ring and let it dangle to the floor. ‘Be careful not to step on it,’ she cautioned. Next she selected a slim but aggressive-looking dildo with a hole through its blunt end. She lubricated this instrument with hand cream, remarking, ‘Our American cousins call this a butt-plug, which is apt but terribly vulgar. What you’d expect from Americans. Bend over, please.’ She threaded the rope’s end through the hole. ‘Keeps it from getting lost inside,’ she explained, and slid the plug home into Tom’s anus.

Not since the days of childhood enemas had he felt so full back there. He knew that some gay men and some women of either persuasion had anal sex, but he had never been at the receiving end. To his surprise, he found himself getting hard.

With a flourish Harriet pulled a chair out into the centre of the floor and indicated he should sit down. When he did so, she pulled the rope through between his legs and tied it fast to one of the vertical slats in the chair back. He felt his balls pulled insistently by the rope. He sat very still. It could prove uncomfortable if he moved too much. Tom was also aware of the plug inside him as it was pressed against the chair seat. An unfamiliar but not an unpleasant feeling. Not all new experiences need be avoided on principle. He wondered if this was how a woman felt when she was penetrated.

With another length of rope Harriet tied his hands together behind him and around the chair’s back. Then she bound his elbows to the sides of the chair. ‘Now for the fun part,’ she said as she knelt beside him and took his cock in her hands. ‘Just like last night,’ she continued, ‘you have to hold on and not come.’ She made a fist and masturbated him until he was hard.

Her next move was unexpected – which could be said of most of the things she did. This constituted a good part of the attraction she held for him. Harriet slipped an ordinary condom onto his shaft and taped it securely in place around the base with surgical tape. ‘I have lots of this stuff, so I can be lavish with it,’ she said as she wrapped him. She finished taping him and produced a pair of scissors with which she snipped off the end of the condom. ‘Hold still,’ she ordered him brusquely as he squirmed. ‘I hardly ever draw blood.’

Harriet inserted a length of surgical tubing into the end of the condom and taped it in place. She was making a crude but effective catheter. ‘There,’ she said brightly, ‘that’s you done. Now you won’t have an embarrassing accident if nature calls while I’m away.’ She dropped the free end of the tubing into a bucket and taped it there so it wouldn’t fall out onto the floor.

Finally she tied his legs together at the knees and ankles, bringing a short length of rope from his wrists down under the chair to join them. She was being very thorough, which augured that she intended to be away for some time.

‘This is all very nice,’ Tom said, ‘but what happens if there’s a fire or a break-in while you’re away? I can’t move. And how long will you be out?’ Despite his misgivings, Tom was beginning to feel excited by the prospect of being left tied up in the empty house. He remembered the weekend Beth had directed him to leave her bound and gagged in her flat. Had she felt the same excitement? Probably she had. Otherwise why do it?

Harriet responded. ‘Nothing is ever perfectly safe. You have to assume some risks – take a chance – with new experiences or become stale. Are you really worried or just trying to give yourself some more excitement? I can’t say that a fire would be pleasant, but the house is as safe as I can make it. You must remember that I do this or something similar all the time with other clients. And as to a break-in,’ she smiled briefly, ‘that would depend entirely on who was to break in, wouldn’t it?’

On that enigmatic note she picked up the bit she had promised him for afters the night before and slipped it between his teeth. She pulled the straps tight, forcing it deeply into his mouth and pulling the cheeks back into a grimace. ‘You look frightful,’ she said as she buckled the leather strap behind his head. ‘But you won’t have to look at yourself. Or at anything,’ she said as she blindfolded him with a leather mask with foam rubber pads that fitted into his eye sockets and cut off all light. ‘The shrinks call this routine sensory deprivation,’ she said as she buckled the blindfold in place. ‘And they charge the earth for it. I call it light entertainment; and I don’t aim to bankrupt the punter. Relax and try to enjoy it. I’ll see you later. Part of the fun lies in not knowing how much later.’