That’s when he set me my deadline.
He tucked a strand of hair back behind my ear as he explained what would happen next. And it made the world shift for a second as I tried to understand what he was saying, what he was expecting.
‘The thing is, even while you’re crying and whimpering and shaking this is making you wet.’
I opened my mouth to argue, but before I could speak he pressed the curved end of the spoon against my lips. I tasted myself on the wood, blushed and closed my eyes, to hide the truth of my body’s betrayal. As he moved the spoon away I pressed my trembling lips together and swallowed the denial, deciding discretion was the better part of valour and I should probably just shut up.
‘I think if I spanked you for long enough you could come.’
My eyes flashed open and I looked at him smiling down at me, a picture of smugness. The more we’d played the better he’d got to know my limits. This was sometimes amazing, as when he pushed me into the unknown it felt like I was flying. However, at other points – points like this, when he was looking arrogant as he merrily pushed me into the abyss – I could have quite happily told him to go and fuck himself. Except, as ever, the small voice in my head already yearning for the next time this would happen kept me quiet. For a while.
‘So I’m going to give you a deadline. A certain number of strokes by which time you have to come. If you don’t, I am going to do things to you that will make this feel like a walk in the park. And if you don’t come, well, it won’t matter to me. Because I will, either by having you suck me off or by just giving you a damn good fucking’ – at that he ran a hand between my legs, which made me buck underneath him as much as I could within the constraints of my bonds – ‘and then I will punish you in ways you can’t even begin to imagine. You will be begging me and you won’t know whether you’re begging me to stop or continue. But I will use you however I want, for however long I want until you want to just crawl away and recover. And since neither of us has to be back at work until after the weekend now, that could be a very long time. Do you understand?’
I felt fear in the pit of my stomach, excitement, and – ridiculously – the kind of burst of adrenaline that I always get when given something to work to. Yes, I am a journalistic cliché. I was already aching to come and competitive enough that I was going to try and get through this no matter what. I could do this. The pain couldn’t go on too long. My voice was quiet but, I like to think, fairly assured. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. Well, since we’ve not been counting up to this point, I think we’ll assume that I’ve given you twenty smacks so far. Does that sound reasonable? If we count on to a hundred. I think that’ll be fair.’
The rhythm was what got me. Even with the pain – and believe me, it was a kind of agony I had never felt before – the insidious rhythm of his strikes began to work its warmth through me. He made me count off the strokes and thank him for them and his pace was so fast that I was gasping out my thanks as fast as I could speak, as fast as I could process the pain. At stroke sixty-three the sensations shifted. He hit me, as hard as he had up to that point, but the sound of the wood connecting was wet. The sound of my arousal was obvious. And with every hit it got more so, until I closed my eyes in embarrassment. My tears of pain were still streaming from beneath my closed lids, and yet the increasing wet patch I was squirming in, that was coating the back of my thighs and my arse, proved that, despite my brain telling me otherwise, on a cellular level this was working for me.
At stroke sixty-nine I opened my eyes, and saw him pulling away from the stroke I was still gasping at. There was a strand of wetness leading from between my legs to the spoon as he moved away and the visible evidence of how much this pain was turning me on shocked me for a second, freezing my brain. When he hit me again I couldn’t think of the number. Were we on sixty-nine and this was seventy? Or was this sixty-nine? Shit. I guessed, ‘sixty-nine.’ He shook his head in displeasure and told me we’d go back to sixty to make up for my error. I had to bite my lip to stop myself beginning to sob at the thought of nine extra strokes.
By the time we got to eighty-five he had shifted his angle so every strike had maximum impact on my clit. It was the most intense treatment it had ever received and my body was already building up to an orgasm which I feared the strength of. As we moved inexorably closer to one hundred my breathing was ragged, my still-pegged nipples jiggling as I gasped, and my thighs trembled as I built to my climax.
On the hundredth strike I orgasmed. I would have been rolling my eyes at the fact I had metamorphosed into some ridiculous cliché of slutty kinky conditioning, but, having endured all I’d endured, after every ounce of feeling had been wrung from my body, I didn’t give a toss. I wanted to come so much it consumed me. It was all I could taste, all I could smell, and I felt like I needed it more than I needed to breathe.
My orgasm was vicious and painful and made me thrash against my bonds in a way that left me with marks round my wrists and ankles that I had to hide with long sleeves and trousers for a few days. The keening noises coming from the back of my throat didn’t sound like me and as I came, pulsating around the spoon, James had to grab the back of the chair as I was about to tip both it and myself over with the force of my movements.
As I came back down to earth as if coming out of a trance, still shivering with aftershocks from the intensity of what had come before, he was undoing his trousers and moving over to me. He pushed viciously inside me, putting his weight on to my still-pulsating, puffy, bruised and aching core. I couldn’t hold back a scream. He started to fuck me, a cruel reminder of the rhythm of the spoon just minutes before, the sensations so painful and intense that I was bucking from underneath him, doing everything I could to push him off, which, because of the handcuffs and rope securing my ankles, was very little.
He shifted deeper inside me and then stopped moving for a moment. He anchored his hands in my hair, and kissed me deeply, then bit hard on my bottom lip until I was sure I could taste blood. His fingers twisted on the pegs on my nipples, adjusting and tightening them until it felt like my entire body was on fire. I was sobbing, tears streaming down my face, and as he resumed fucking me he whispered, ‘You came on stroke 109 because we went back when you miscounted. You missed your deadline.’
Through a haze of pain and intense pleasure I realized exactly what this meant. And I trembled, knowing that over the next minutes, hours, days – however long he wanted – I was going to be pushed further than I ever had been before.
No ifs, no buts, no maybes. You never miss a deadline.
The days that followed were the most challenging of my life. He used me. Abused me. Humiliated me. He made me cry. He made me ache. Pushed me. He never broke me but at times it felt like he was trying to. He fucked me, when he wanted, how he wanted, and when I was so exhausted I could not summon up the energy to do anything more than lie there, a fuckhole for his pleasure, he slapped my face and pulled my hair to make me move my weary body. By the time he finished I was marked all over, like an abstract canvas documenting our time together: the bite marks on my breasts, the angry redness of my tormented nipples; the bruises on the tops of my arms; my arse cheeks criss-crossed with red welts that made me squirm, made me wet thinking of what had happened, for weeks afterwards; his spunk drying in my hair and on my breasts. By the end, the tracks of my tears had washed away my carefully applied make up and my hair was a mess. I was a mess. He had demolished my defences.
It was freeing, cathartic and yet, at points, terrifying. He pushed me to the very edge of what felt acceptable to me. As the hours and days passed all I cared about was him – pleasing him, satisfying him, not doing anything to give him reason to punish me. He was my world and for the first time I truly understood the kind of submission which consumes you as, for the first time ever, the voice in the back of my head, calling out my shame, asking me why I was doing this, was silenced. I felt connected to him in a way that I never had to another person – he unders
tood me completely, even when I didn’t understand myself. As I sobbed, begging him to stop caning me, pleading that I couldn’t take any more, and he continued anyway, I hated him. But he pulled my face to his, his hands hard on my chin and, while I stared at him with loathing in my eyes, he asked me if I remembered my safe word. Through gritted teeth I said yes, and while I battled with stubborn pride and a competitive spirit that meant I then lapsed into silence, he made me beg him to resume before he started again. He caned me until it hurt so much I couldn’t breathe, until I was sure I must be bleeding, and then, when he felt I couldn’t take any more, he ran a leisurely finger down my slit. I came, from this gentlest of touches, and when I came back to earth, sated and yet confused at how the caning could have inspired such a vicious orgasm, I saw him smiling down at me, leaning to kiss me softly before he told me I would have to be punished for coming without permission.
When he finally finished he tethered me to the foot of the bed like an animal, my wrists tied behind my back, and left me to sleep the sleep of the exhausted, curled in an ungainly way as I unconsciously tried to find a part of my body to lie on comfortably.
It may sound odd that such cruelty and humiliation inspired the thought, but by the end of our weekend I knew I loved this twisted, clever, tender man who got upset at people being cruel to animals but took joy in doing horrible things to me. He had understood the parts of me I could barely articulate, and coaxed them into achieving and enduring amazing and cathartic things. The intensity of it took my breath away – it was like no one had ever known me as well as he did; no one could understand my nature, my personality, better than him.
16
So what happens after the most intense sexual experience of your life, the thing that leaves you aching and mentally and physically affected for days afterwards?
Well, it would seem, the answer was nothing.
When we said goodbye he was quiet but no more so than he would normally have been at the prospect of us going back to our respective homes, the weekend over and work beginning again. At least that’s what I thought at the time, when I stretched up to kiss him, enjoying the warmth of his embrace as he hugged me goodbye and we went our separate ways.
I texted him when I got home, the way I always did. I didn’t get a reply but figured that as it was late he’d crashed out in readiness for his early start the next day. But the next morning I didn’t hear anything; in fact, I didn’t hear anything at all that day. It was odd – James and I had spent months in contact multiple times a day and his silence meant I couldn’t help but worry that something was wrong. I sent him a second text, asking him if all was OK. Nothing. Then I tried dropping him an email – a link to a news story I thought might interest him – I didn’t want to seem clingy, although I sent it to both his home and work addresses, but I wanted a response.
Nothing.
For three days I was pretty much beside myself. Texts and an aiming-for-casual-and-bright-but-really-not voicemail went unanswered. I went about my daily business, going to work, heading out for birthday drinks with a friend, but through it all in the back of my mind all I was thinking about was James. Was he all right? Why hadn’t he got in touch? On the morning of the fourth day I couldn’t stand it any more. I rang his office. I didn’t give my name, which perhaps makes me sound like a mad stalker woman. The receptionist was very helpful: yes he was definitely in, she’d seen him this morning, he was at his desk already, but on another call. Did I want to leave a message or did I have his address to email him?
I told her I had his address and very politely hung up.
I was furious. I was upset. I was confused. It was so unlike him, but I couldn’t really think of the best way to deal with it at that moment – I knew that any attempt to talk to him while he was at work was a complete waste of time so I spent most of the day thinking about the best way to raise my concerns without seeming like some furious harridan. There was also the D/s dynamic to factor into it. After the intensity of the time we had spent together I didn’t want to come across as disrespectful, but I had no intention whatsoever of letting it go like I was some kind of wilting flower. But what to do?
By the end of the working day I still had no clue.
I decided to send a casual, non-shrewish, text.
Hey you, you’ve been really quiet since we got back from the weekend. Hope all’s OK, will try ringing tonight.
I didn’t get a reply. In my heart of hearts I wasn’t expecting one, although I still had no fucking clue why.
The clichéd depiction of break-ups is that once you have been spurned by your beau you sink into the pit of despair with some high-quality ice cream and cheesy pop rock of the 70s and early 80s. If that works for you, then great. But for me, to paraphrase Billy Ocean, when the going gets tough, the tough get baking.
I rang James twice that night and it went to voicemail both times. Then I switched on my PC and, thanks to the joys of social networking, found that he’d been online in various places that evening, happy to talk even if he apparently didn’t have the inclination to do so with me. By the time I’d hunted down a post he’d made to an obscure music website, asking for help with his speakers – ‘I’m lying here with an aching heart and a pounding head wondering what on earth’s going on and you’re re-cabling your living room?’ – I knew it was time to step away and do something else.
I’m not a natural cook. Living alone makes anything other than ready meals a lot of hassle and waste, and I’m usually bored of the prospect of eating anything I make part way through the cooking process anyway. But baking, baking I love. Partly, I guess, because biscuits and cakes and all that stuff are good comfort-type foods, but partly because I enjoy the straightforwardness of it. If you weigh the ingredients out correctly, if you cream the butter and sugar to the right consistency, if you bake it the right length of time, you can create something lovely – and you can give the fruits of your efforts to the people around you in silent apology for walking around permanently close to tears and with a face like a smacked arse.
It was 1am when I decided to start baking ginger shortbread. I don’t know why ginger appealed specifically, but I was convinced. By this point I had already drunk most of a bottle of wine, so driving wasn’t an option. I pulled my coat on and walked to the twenty-four-hour petrol station with attached shop to buy what I needed there.
Now, I’ve never been the sort of person who buys petrol – or indeed anything else – at a petrol station forecourt late at night. But it turns out that they lock the doors and instead serve you through a glass window with a grille, not unlike visiting someone in prison, passing things underneath the – very small – gap in the bottom of the Plexiglas screen. This made explaining my late-night baking needs rather more complicated than it would have been otherwise.
To start with the bloke behind the counter was adamant that unless I wanted fuel, cigarettes or condoms he couldn’t sell me anything else. After listening to me argue for five minutes he grudgingly told me he thought they had some flour he could get me. Once he’d cracked and got that it didn’t take much wheedling to get some sugar out of him, but by the time I was asking him to hold up packs of butter to see if I could ascertain which was unsalted there was a look of loathing in his eyes. He gave me short shrift when I asked if they had any ginger – I admit it was unlikely, but heartbreak and drunkenness hadn’t dented my optimistic streak – and instead sold me a bar of fruit and nut chocolate to break up in lieu of chocolate chips. By the time I had fed the cash for my overpriced grocery shopping under the gap and he had passed through a carrier bag and then each individual item for me to pack into it, I was so effusively grateful that my eyes were filled with tears at his kindness. As I stumbled away home I think his probably were too, albeit tears of relief that the mental woman buying baking ingredients had sodded off to leave him with late-night petrol buyers and stoners with the munchies.
I woke up the next morning on my living room floor having passed out watching DVDs whi
le waiting for the second load of shortbread dough to chill in the fridge before baking.
If it seems tough waking up with a hangover after being dumped (if that’s what this was; it was hard to tell when the person I was dating – well, almost – was such an emotional fucktard that I wasn’t entirely sure), then waking up in a furnace – the oven had been on all night, obviously – to find a kitchen in chaos is worse. There was flour on the floor, butter on the cupboards from my overenthusiastic greasing, and every bowl and wooden spoon I owned seemed to have been used and dumped on the side. It was like I’d been burgled. By bakers. Combine that with a banging red wine hangover, sleep deprivation and – as I found when I dragged my sorry self up to the shower – dough in my hair, and I felt awful.
I went into work, still not really there (although the batches of shortbread did much to minimize any co-worker snarking about me not pulling my weight). I tried not to think about James. But thinking about not thinking about James probably didn’t count.
In the weeks that followed my colleagues, friends and family did well out of my heartbreak. I made endless variations of golden shortbread, only moving on to Victoria sponges when our assistant editor raised concerns about all the butter having an effect on his cholesterol. I made carrot cake, rock cakes, cookies, and as I beat the eggs, stirred the dough and waited for everything to cook, I went over every element of my relationship with James, the smutty and the not-so-smutty. It made me cry and it made me wet and more than anything it made me angry. I couldn’t work out whether everything that had happened between us had been founded on the lie that he was as interested in me as I was in him, or if he had just got bored with me, or if I’d done something to piss him off or what. However I weighed it up, he had thrown away something that, from my end at least, seemed quite special. He had thrown me away. It sounded pathetic – made me feel pathetic – but I was bereft and I wanted to weep. James still hadn’t got in touch, although a mixture of stubborn pride and embarrassment made me stop contacting him. I knew he was alive and well, and over and above that all I knew was that he didn’t want to talk to me. And that meant I didn’t want to talk to him. I’d be buggered before he realized how much he’d hurt me.
The Diary Of A Submissive: A True Story Page 23
