'I thought you would be,' Matthew said proudly.
'Oh,' said Charles, 'I mustn't forget. I brought Beth a present.'
'Ooooh,' said Beth. 'I love presents!'
Charles fetched a package. It was a black cardboard box, tied with a red ribbon. Beth opened it; inside was an exquisite pair of black satin knickers. There were ties at each side to adjust them.
'Put them on,' said Matthew.
Beth drew the knickers up and tied them on each side. They were a good fit.
'I love them,' said Beth. 'Thank you so much.' She gave Charles a kiss on the cheek.
Charles opened a bottle of wine. He took some pictures of Beth. It was at this point that I knocked on his door, having arranged to meet them when I had finished work. When I walked in Beth was wearing nothing but her new knickers and holding a glass of wine. (These were the very same knickers that I found the picture of the other day, when I started writing this tale.) She looked happy, having had the undivided attention of two men all afternoon. Charles poured me some wine too and we chatted about this and that, all of us fully dressed except Beth.
Finally she put her clothes on, still wearing the new knickers, and we all went out to dinner. As we walked to the restaurant Matthew gave me a quick resume of how things had gone.
'Has she been fucked?' I asked.
'No, just spanked and manhandled,' he said with a smile.
I wondered if Charles was disappointed not to have had Beth. If so he didn't show it, chatting amiably at dinner with us all. We parted on the best of terms. I thought it likely that we should see him again before long. I was not to know that our paths would not cross again.
Chapter Seven
Several weeks passed. Beth continued to write her blog, which now attracted a lot of readers, almost all of them submissive girls who were fascinated by the tale of an owned girl being trained by a married couple. I have to say that Beth's take on our arrangement was entirely her own. It's not that she was untruthful; but everything was seen from her point of view, and subtly but increasingly she saw herself as hard done by, almost a victim, albeit one who professed undying devotion to her owners.
A typical episode would go like this. Beth would be dissatisfied with something that Matthew had imposed on her. Often it would be some minor detail of the regulations with which he sought to control and change her behaviour. Perhaps she felt she was made to go to bed too early, or to wear clothes she felt did not suit her, or, most frequently she chaffed under the restrictions put on masturbation and orgasm. Typically, Beth would request permission to come via a text message. Matthew would deny her. She would protest. He would insist she follow instructions. She would pout or sulk. He would tell her that this was unacceptable, that he needed her not only to obey, but to obey with a good grace. She would be unable to bring herself to do so. He would tell her that there would be punishment. She would protest although she knew it would do no good. The next time she came round, punishment would be imposed, a spanking or a whipping, Beth would make a tearful apology, and a week later the cycle would start again.
However, it soon became evident that Beth's dissatisfaction went deeper than the irksome regulations Matthew imposed. It had been a year since Brian had been sent packing. In that time Beth had had no sexual contact with any men except Matthew, and the two gentlemen, Aidan and Charles, he had allowed access to her. She was beginning to chafe against the hermetic nature of her existence. She wanted to go out, meet other people. She wanted to date boys.
I could see Matthew wrestling with this. He didn't want to lose her by trying to impose impossible restrictions on her. At the same time, he couldn't really face the thought that she might want other men. It was different if he found men to use her, made her submit to people he had chosen. But letting her choose someone for herself, go out on a date with him, perhaps have physical contact; he found it difficult to accept this.
But eventually he was persuaded that he ought to at least let her try once. Of course he imposed strict conditions. Firstly, if she found a likely candidate, Matthew and I were to vet him first, not necessarily meet him in the flesh but check him out to see that he wasn't obviously unsuitable. Clearly Matthew still didn't trust Beth's judgement.
Secondly, Beth had to inform the boy of her status as an owned girl. Matthew knew most suitors would be put off once they knew what she was. Very few men could overlook their vanity to the extent of dating a girl who was owned by another. Perhaps Matthew thought that once they knew the truth, there would be no suitors at all. But he was to be proven mistaken about that.
The third restriction concerned what the boy was allowed to do. He might hold her hand, and at the end of the evening he might kiss her on the lips. But Beth was not to open her mouth to the kiss, and the boy was not to touch her in any other way.
I could see that Beth didn't particularly like these conditions, but she had little choice but to accept them or condemn herself to further isolation. She went on a number of dating sites, sites for vanilla people; no dominants, Matthew insisted. Eventually she found a boy she liked the look of. She showed us his profile. He seemed unremarkable to me, not bad-looking perhaps, but what he said about himself didn't make him sound too interesting. But perhaps Beth wanted something else besides conversation.
The boy seemed a little surprised to learn the details of Beth's personal circumstances, but was apparently willing to abide by the conditions and give it a try. So he and Beth fixed up a date. It did not go well. Beth reported back to us that they had gone out to dinner and talked. But contrary to his assertion that he was not worried by the fact of Beth's being an owned girl, it seemed as if this was the only thing he wanted to talk about. At first he seemed to disbelieve what she had told him, preferring to think that it was just a game that she merely pretended to be at the beck and call of a married couple. Eventually Beth managed to convince him that she had spoken the literal truth, at which point the boy turned peevish, even aggressive, and called Beth some unpleasant names. The dinner ended in tears, with Beth leaving him in the restaurant and running out into the street.
Matthew seemed gratified by this outcome, as if it vindicated his stance on dating.
'At least you left him to pay the bill,' I remarked. 'Serves him right.'
Later, Beth resumed her campaign. This hadn't been a real date, she complained. She deserved to have another go. Matthew at last agreed, though I could see he was reluctant. This time Beth offered us three candidates she had found on the dating site. We chose a boy who, though far from ideal, seemed the least worst option. The rules were the same as before.
This time things went a little better. Beth liked this boy, and he was genuinely interested in her unusual sexual circumstances. Indeed, from what she said he was rather turned on by the thought that she was owned. After they finished dinner they walked a while and Beth allowed the boy to kiss her. When she came round to see us the next night, she confessed that she enjoyed the kiss so much that almost without knowing what she was doing she opened her mouth, and his tongue slid inside.
'I said no penetration,' Matthew said sharply. 'That means not in your cunt or your ass or your mouth.'
'I'm not a child,' Beth said petulantly. Matthew looked cross. I could see we were headed for trouble.
'I make the rules,' Matthew insisted.
'Yes,' Beth whined, 'but if you set the rules so that any self-respecting boy is going to be scared off, that's not fair. If a boy takes a girl out, is it so bad if he wants to kiss her properly? If you won't let me do that, no boys will take me out a second time. We're not living in the nineteenth century.'
Once she got on a roll, Beth was inclined to build up her sense of being hard done by, her belief that she wasn't getting a fair crack of the whip. She was supposed to be the submissive, yet the way things were now, increasingly she behaved as if Matthew and I weren't coming up to her expectations. And she was always determined to fight her corner, trying to wear us down till we conceded her demands. In some ways she behaved like a child, moaning and complaining till she got her way. In another way she was an extremely manipulative adult, adept at twisting arguments round, teasing out our weak spots, playing on our sense of fairness. One of her advantages was that she was very tenacious; often when arguing with her I found myself giving in through sheer fatigue.
This wasn't how it was supposed to be with an owned girl, a pet who would be there for our pleasure and convenience. Of course we always wanted Beth to get as much out of the relationship as we did. But increasingly I wondered if the tail was wagging the dog. Topping from the bottom is a familiar concept in the world of domination and submission, the tendency of some submissives, while apparently ceding control, to subtly dictate the terms of the arrangement in a way that suits them, and to set the agenda. Beth was adept at this.
She wheedled out of Matthew an agreement that she be allowed another date with this boy, whom I shall call Robert (I can't actually remember his name; he was only ever a pawn in Beth's long-standing battle of wills with Matthew and me). She managed to get Matthew to consent to the boy being given greater licence the second time. But what transpired was something that was clearly beyond what Matthew envisaged, and which nearly brought a rupture between the owned girl and her owners.
After a second dinner, during which, evidently, Beth and Robert spoke on very intimate terms, she invited him back to her apartment for coffee. When she described later what had happened, Beth began by being a little vague, deliberately so, no doubt. But Matthew's insistent cross-questioning eventually elicited the confession that she had given the boy a blow-job. This was of course totally outside the limits of Beth's instructions.
'You let him put his cock in your mouth?' Matthew looked outraged.
'I knew I wasn't allowed to fuck him,' Beth said, 'though I wanted to. He's really very cute. But when I told him so, he looked so crestfallen I felt I owed him something.'
'Don't you think,' Matthew said caustically, 'that you owed us something too, as the owners who have taken such pains to educate you in sexual conduct?'
'I didn't swallow when he came,' Beth said, as if that somehow mitigated her offence. But Matthew merely glared at her.
There was, I must admit, a certain self-righteousness in some of Matthew's confrontations with Beth, as though everything he did was entirely for her benefit and his behaviour was always and only an altruistic striving to foster her well-being, in no way gratifying for himself.
Beth pouted. She did this quite winningly, as always. She was a cute girl and she knew it. But such conduct always drove Matthew to anger.
'Right,' he said. 'Clearly some attitude modification is required. Bend over the table.
Beth looked sulky, an expression which she must have known was exactly calculated to make matters worse. For a moment I thought she might refuse, but she shrugged and bent across the kitchen table, holding on to the sides with her hands. Matthew took off his belt and folded it double, always a sign that things were getting serious.
He lifted up her skirt and pulled down her knickers. He stared for a moment at her bare bottom but without touching it. He raised his arm and brought it down hard, very hard. Beth cried out. I couldn't watch without flinching. I'd never seen him spank her this hard before; in no time at all her bottom was criss-crossed with vivid red lines. Beth wriggled and squealed, but she didn't move away. I think she knew that she deserved what she was getting, had in a way provoked it. Matthew must have hit her thirty or forty times before he lowered his arm. Beth was sobbing, and when he stopped she rubbed her bruised and burning bottom.
I held her and comforted her. 'We just want you to be our good little girl and not get yourself into trouble with boys,' I said.
'I'm sorry,' she sobbed. 'I promise I'll do better.'
But the next day it all started up about the boy again. Beth wanted Matthew's permission to let the boy fuck her. Matthew refused. He told her she simply wasn't ready, that he feared she would fall for this guy and that he would prove unsuitable and then she'd get hurt.
'But I have to get experience,' she wailed. 'How can I ever find the right boy if you won't let me experiment?'
I had to admit she had a point, but Matthew was adamant. In part he was simply imposing his idea of discipline, that no meant no and that Beth must accept all his decisions without question. But there was more to it than that. It was clear to me he couldn't face the thought of another man's cock in her. I could see that if someone didn't give way there would be a serious rupture. I decided to try to make peace.
'Why don't we meet this boy?' I said to Matthew.
He was reluctant, but agreed. Beth brought him round a few nights later. He seemed very young. He was clearly attracted to Beth; he kept glancing at her, even when answering the questions Matthew and I threw at him. We wanted to know if he really understood Beth's status as an owned girl.