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by Clarice Clique

  When we arrived she was almost immediately beside my husband, her arms around him, giving him a lingering kiss on his lips.

  ‘Have you fucked her?’ I asked my husband one time. ‘Which one of you was in charge?’

  ‘There doesn’t always have to be someone in charge,’ he replied.

  ‘There does. Even if it’s not explicit someone’s always got more power than the other. And you didn’t answer my question,’ I said.

  But that was the end of the conversation and we both knew it.

  ‘You look mesmerising tonight, Adora,’ my husband said, keeping his hands on her corseted waist.

  Adora was apparently mesmerising every time he saw her. She had an ageless quality to her that intrigued me. She did not dye the grey out of her hair and there was a deepness to her voice and a confidence in her composure that made me think she was over 50, but her face and neck were smooth. There weren’t even any tell-tale age spots on her hands.

  ‘I always dress to please you, darling, even when I hold out little hope that you’ll accept my invitations.’

  ‘I’m not as young as I once was. The excitement of seeing you too often would put my heart at great risk.’

  My thoughts drifted away from their mock flirting, which could go on eternally. Adora never acknowledged me and I was never a part of their conversations, which was fine. I was here as a sub, there shouldn’t be any reason for her to notice me. I focused instead on the marks that were still visible on my wrists from the time a couple of weeks ago when my husband had twisted my arms behind my back and cuffed me before proceeding to abuse my arse.

  Then my mind snapped back to the present. Adora clicked her fingers. The gesture wouldn’t have summoned my attention; she was always clicking them, clapping her hands, ordering her minions around. I probably didn’t even notice it at the time, and my memory has inserted it in retrospect. It’s what happened afterwards that was significant.

  A slave came trotting up to her, his head bowed even though he was balancing a tray of drinks in one hand and a platter of vol au vents in the other. It was a slave I’d never seen in Adora’s presence before. He was naked apart from a leather chastity device and a pink collar with the name “Daisy” engraved in white lettering.

  I gazed at the slave’s slim, exposed body as Adora chatted at my husband.

  ‘This one is a real gem, a true find. I discovered him through a mistress I had never previously rated, but she had this man in her possession and he has been incredibly well trained. It is no exaggeration to say he’s the best I’ve come across. I saw his worth immediately and he’s now serving a probationary period with me. It is a formality, though, I can’t foresee any problems. He’s a perfect slave: discreet, obedient, and he disdains safewords.’ She said more. I wanted to listen, I wanted to know, but her words became formless and incomprehensible to me.

  Without saying anything to my husband, I walked away from the group and tried to focus on the event.

  I wandered around watching; pretending that I could fill my eyes with enough visions and forget about Adora’s “gem”. Pretending that I could forget I’d once seen the man who now held the dominatrix’s refreshments getting fucked on the floor of his lounge under my command.

  There was enough going on that I should have been distracted from myself and that small moment in my past.

  The party was in full hardcore swing. Literally. A man was trussed up in a swing frame with a woman dressed in a latex nurse’s uniform fisting him.

  Susie Doll, Adora’s transsexual slave, was overseeing a queue of people waiting to fuck a fair-skinned woman secured in a device similar to stockades.

  There was a person lying abandoned in the floor, a discarded toy. It was impossible to tell whether it was male or female as they were bound in a black, whole body straitjacket, complete with hood, the only visible gap being breathing holes at the nose.

  There were various groups sitting around chatting with naked slaves on all fours acting as chairs.

  For no obvious reason I stopped by one of the contraptions Adora loved so much. A woman dressed in nothing but a black peephole PVC bra, with countless piercings, and a flame tattoo that covered most of her back, was held upside down on a metal wheel. I thought I recognised her as one of the mean girls that Adora kept around, but in truth I never paid too much attention to the individual identities of the other guests; they were one body, one face acting out the communal BDSM yearning.

  There were three youthful looking women kneeling by the constrained mean girl. I gazed at their slender bodies and breasts which were little more than buds.

  ‘Are you ladies old enough to be here?’ I asked.

  It was a stupid question. Of course they were old enough to be here; Adora was very strict about whom she let in and no one under 21 would be in this room. They just looked so tender, and right now I felt inexplicably protective of them.

  They turned to me, obviously disconcerted by my appearance and trying to decide whether I was a mistress or fellow sub before they made a mistake in their reply.

  The mean girl spoke for them and gave my question the answer it deserved. ‘Fuck off back to your daddy, bitch, before he realises how ancient your cunt is and finds himself a tighter replacement.’

  I smiled. There was an undeniable quality to a woman who could squeeze such venom into her voice when she was hanging upside down and her head was at knee level. I imagined Slave would appreciate her abuse. I stopped smiling for a moment.

  A sissy slave arrived carrying a silver tray heavy with three bottles of champagne. He was dressed in a French maid costume, with smoky black eye make-up, applied with more skill and patience than I’d ever achieved. Did Adora ever have Daisy dressed in this manner? I recalled how I had made him dress in woman’s underwear and how he’d struggled with the bra strap.

  I stared directly into the sissy’s face. He met my gaze briefly before coquettishly lowering his eyes.

  I realised I couldn’t remember the colour of my little slave’s eyes.

  The sissy put the tray down on the floor, uncorked the first bottle, and handed it to one of the girls. She waited while he opened the other two and passed them to her two friends. Then they stood up and poured the champagne into the upside-down mean girl’s spread cunt lips.

  When the bottles were spent the sissy slave worked the machinations to turn her the correct way round; the three girls fell forward and lapped at the bubbly liquid as it ran down the mean girl’s legs.

  I would have watched longer, more out of a sudden deep lethargy than curiosity about how it would all play out, but I thought I heard my husband calling my name. His voice, the prospect that he wanted me, made all else insignificant.

  I turned abruptly and knocked into someone. Someone who was holding a massive sponge cake filled with cream and fruit that slammed against her chest. It happened so quickly that laughter spilled out of my lips before I could check myself with a reminder of where I was. My other immediate reaction – to reach out and help the woman and give her my apologies – was also wrong.

  The manner in which she jerked back from me and glared at me displayed that she was a dom, and an angry rather than amused dom. I stepped back away from her with my head high. I knew the expected response was for me to drop to my knees and supplicate before her. I knew I was never going to do that. We stared at each other. A dollop of cream slid off her bodice onto the floor.

  ‘Clean that up,’ she commanded.

  Adora appeared before I replied, which was probably for the best as the words resting on my tongue would have only made the situation worse. I glanced around, but there was no one else I knew with her.

  The woman spoke to Adora, but continued to stare straight at me. ‘This slut has been incredibly disrespectful. She deliberately humiliated me and then laughed in my face. I don’t expect that kind of treatment, especially not here, at one of your events. Look at the way she’s dressed, she doesn’t belong here. Why have you let her in? I thoug
ht you were supposed to have standards? This is all a joke to her. I want to know how you’re going to punish her.’ A moment ago I had been the audience, now I was the entertainment; people were stopping their own games and looking over at us. A few took up the cheer of “punish her” – not in a vindictive way, I was just a new potential addition to their fun. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same for the woman I’d bumped into. She looked at me as if I had devised and delivered an insult that questioned the right of her and her whole lineage to exist.

  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.