Ultimate Submission

by Cathryn Cooper

  He snapped his fingers and conditioning took over. My eyes locked onto him, my mind and body going still as I refocused on him, the small impersonal room fading away.

  ‘Talk.’

  I wasn’t allowed to look away, but I couldn’t meet his gaze. I slid my attention to his eyebrows. On one hand I hated this sort of intense interest in my thought process. On the other hand, this was exactly why I chose to be submissive. I needed him to know me inside out, I wanted to submit to this kind of stripping away of privacy, to not even have my thoughts be my own. It was unbelievably difficult and unrelentingly intimate.

  ‘I relaxed, sir.’

  ‘Over talking about ye like ye weren’t in the room, aye, but body piercing?’

  ‘I didn’t know about that.’

  ‘But ye never reacted.’

  I wanted to shade the truth, to be less vulnerable.

  ‘It was you,’ I declared, meeting his eyes.

  There was a second of incomprehension then understanding dawned.

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘Pearce.’

  ‘What’s the rule?’

  ‘If I can’t say it then I’m not ready for it.’

  He cocked an eyebrow, waiting. A long minute later I swallowed and began to speak,

  ‘I decided to relax because you control everything.’ ‘Define everything.’

  ‘Everything,’ I repeated helplessly. ‘I love you. I trust you. I agreed to submit to you. So I decided to stop fighting, sir.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  I shrugged, giving up and relaxing into the inescapable honesty he demanded.

  ‘It wasn’t that easy, but yeah, just like that,’ I smiled, a feeling of relief spreading through me as I admitted, ‘I’m yours. You own me. And you don’t have to look so stunned.’

  ‘Ye do this now?’ he protested, burying his head in my lap.

  ‘Honey, I told you: not like this,’ I reminded him, my fingers playing in his hair.

  His voice was muffled in my skirt as he spoke, ‘I didn’t realize ye were finally admitting me ownership.’

  ‘You’ve been taking ownership since the day we met.’

  ‘I know that, ye eejit. It’s slow because you, luv, fight accepting my control.’

  ‘I know that,’ I echoed his words. ‘But you put up with it and you’re everything to me. So I got with your program.’

  He kept his head down in my lap for several minutes without speaking. Lifting his head, he stroked the back of his fingers along the line of my jaw.

  ‘Right, so ye’ve stopped fighting, have ye now? I’ll be believing it when I see it, but it’s the thought that counts, aye?’

  I opened my mouth to protest then thought better of it. Pearce watched me make the decision and laughed at my final conclusion, tapping my nose as he stood.

  ‘Careful, that was a decision based on how yer owner’ll react. Ye may want ta ease inta that thinking, not over-tax yerself the first half hour of it.’

  ‘Rude, Pearce.’

  ‘Rude, sir,’ he corrected good-naturedly, holding me captive with his assessing gaze. ‘Yer mine, eh Rach?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He dug a hand into the front pocket of his jeans.

  ‘Hold out yer hand.’

  I obeyed, unable to still my trembling fingers. Pearce supported my hand in his, raising it to his mouth to kiss my palm. Lowering my hand he dropped a smooth, round silver charm onto the spot he had kissed. The interlocking engraved letters centred on the charm were his initials. Flipping it over I found three delicate lines of engraving, my name, the word owned, and a series of numbers.

  ‘You planned this,’ I accused as I realized the numbers were today’s date.

  Pearce laughed at me again, the lilt of his accent turning his words to music, ‘Of course I did.’

  It All Depends On How You See It by Kitti Bernetti

  ‘Of course men see sex everywhere.’

  ‘That’s because there’s sex in everything.’

  ‘No way. It’s just ’cos you’re a man.’

  ‘It’s true, it’s a primal urge, you can’t get away from it.’ Joe drained his glass and refilled us both. We were having another one of our Sunday evening pub conversations. They could be about anything: Saddam Hussein; whether God is a woman, but we usually got round to sex at some point.

  ‘That’s rubbish. There are some things in life which just aren’t sexy.’ I tasted the sharp alcohol on my tongue giving myself time to get my argument honed.

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like things you hate, things you can’t stand. Things you find repulsive. They’re just not sexy.’

  ‘Ok, give me an example.’

  ‘Work, I hate it. I never ever feel sexy at work. I’m surrounded by grey suits talking money.’

  ‘Right Vanessa, I’ll look on that as my first challenge.’

  I sort of forgot about the conversation after that. When Joe and I had been at uni we used to sit up till the early hours with these dopey off the wall debates. Now, still mates even though we were tied to work and paying rent on our flats, we were reluctant to grow up. After a bottle of chilled white any old tosh seems worth talking about and our Sunday-night specials had become a sort of end-of-the-week ritual. The next day when the alcoholic haze has worn off you’re shot back into the real world with a shudder.

  I work in the world’s unsexiest building. There isn’t a curve or a sensuous line in it. It’s all uncompromising angles, strip-lighting and magnolia patterned with dirty fingerprints. I feel like a white mouse in an experiment designed to see how long one sentient being can spend in a box without turning magnolia herself.

  At least it was Monday, 5.45 p.m., nearly my time to escape. I shrugged into my jacket and put my handbag on the filing cabinet below the mirror to put on some lippy. As I was poised, gloss in hand I noticed the window cleaner behind me in the mirror. Funny time of day to be turning up, I thought, but then windows can be cleaned any time.

  Now normally I don’t go for big muscles but I guess that’s because I never see them close up. I only see them baby-oiled in those horrid weight-lifter mags that make guys look like they’ve got mumps of the chest. But these, even from a distance, I could see were not oiled and were delightfully real, gift-wrapped in a white t-shirt. And they were coming this way. He sauntered across the rapidly emptying car park with a ladder under one arm and a cloth draped over his shoulder like a cape slung over a military man. In the other hand he held a bucket slopping with soapy water. And he was looking at me. I kept my back turned ’cos it’s easier to stare with your mouth open when you’re spying on someone in a mirror.

  He came over to my ground floor window and stood with his legs apart, grounding himself. Lifting the ladder aside he leant it out of the way against the wall. I stared mesmerized at the strength in his forearms and the way carrying all that weight made his chest expand. Slowly he tucked the cloth in his belt, pulling his jeans down a couple of inches. I now had a ringside view of the line of blond hairs snaking down from his navel to his crotch, like a road sign indicating a one-way street. For some reason, I’d become all fidgety, moving from one high-heeled foot to another. I closed my mouth and gulped. I was going to miss my train. Did I care? Nooooo way.

  I really wanted to turn round, to drink in the full force of him but maybe if I had, it would have broken the spell. I could see well enough as he leant down, dipped his sponge in the bucket, and slapped it against the window. Round and round he rubbed, the soapy water dripping down his upheld arm and soaking those hefty shoulders. As he moved his arm right and left, his hips swayed in time, grinding the zip of his jeans against the window ledge. Through the thin cotton t-shirt, the dripping water revealed cheeky man-nipples. Then the water crept down to the soaking bulge between his legs. It barely hid a cock which looked as if it was ready to burst under the denim. A wet patch spreading down to his thighs and the halflidded look of his eyes made him look like a man almost ready to come.

/>   I imagined myself, turning around. For a second I could see us both immobile. Then, I pictured one of his eyebrows raising a fraction, his lips quirking into the essence of a smile. In my mind, he issued me with a challenge.

  I dreamt I walked over to the window, swung my swivel chair and placed myself in it facing him squarely.

  My heart was thumping as I imagined easing my tight navy blue skirt up to my bum till I was sitting on the hem. In my mind’s eye I took first one, then the other stockinged foot and hitched it onto the window sill giving him an eyeful of lacy stocking top and thigh.

  As if he could read my mind, the real man impatiently ripped open the top button of his jeans and yanked down the zip, liberating a cock which sprang out proudly at right angles to me. Stunned at this blatant display, I dropped my lipstick and turned around. He really was the most delectable piece of manhood to cross my path lately. If he was ready to do the business, I thought I’d give him a bit of a hand. I sat opposite him, parting my lips and putting my middle finger in my mouth, watching his eyes follow me as I eased open the top of my knickers and slid my finger inside my waiting cunny. At the sight of my dampening panties he dipped one hand into the soapy water using its moistness to lubricate his dick. Looking soapy and filthy and clean all at once, I could see him sliding his hand rhythmically up and down. His arm muscles tensed, standing out like a relief map of the Pyrenees as he gained momentum. His jutting hips bucked in time. There are few things more erotic than looking at the concentration on a man’s face as he approaches eruption. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth and I smiled with triumph as he pulled frantically while his cock shot hot salty come onto the window in a sputtering fountain jet.

  Seeing the thick essence trickle down the window sent my hormones into overdrive and I was just settling down to finish myself off when my mobile rang. It plummeted me into reality as sharply as if the fire alarm had sounded. What the hell was I doing pleasuring myself in front of a total stranger when the guard could come round the corner any minute? Shock made my legs straighten, shooting my roller-coastered chair backwards where I narrowly managed to save myself by grabbing the desk.

  ‘What?’ I yelled down the phone, standing on trembling legs.

  ‘Joe here. You sound flustered.’ I could tell he was smiling. Then light began to dawn.

  ‘You bastard, you set this up, didn’t you?’

  Itching with frustration, I looked at my window cleaner zipping up his jeans and running a squeegee down the glass. He wiped away all that lovely come and my plans for the evening with it.

  ‘I think I win round one. You see work can be sexy. Was he any good?’

  ‘Good, he was fucking brilliant. Although his cleaning’s crap. He’s left the window all streaky.’

  ‘That’s ’cos he’s a builder. You don’t think he got muscles like that nancying about with a sponge do you? He’s a good friend. I do all his computer set-ups for him so he owed me a favour.’

  ‘You have got to give me his number.’

  ‘Do you want the mobile or the home one? The home one he shares with his wife and three kids, that is.’ Joe laughed, somewhat cruelly I thought, ‘that guy is so unavailable.’

  My ‘window cleaner’ at this point waved a cheery farewell, stepped into his white van and disappeared like my fantasies in a puff of smelly exhaust.

  I had to admit Joe had proved his point. Sulkily I said, ‘you made me miss my train.’

  ‘Sorry sweets. Trains are like men though. There’ll be another along later.’

  ‘You still haven’t won your bet. Not everywhere is sexy. Work was too easy, it closes and there are places to lurk. I’ll bet you can’t make a 24-hour supermarket sexy. Those places are hell on earth and there’s nowhere to hide from screaming kids and old ladies.’

  ‘Good challenge,’ mused Joe. ‘I need a couple of days’ planning time. Go Wednesday evening and I’ll prove my point.’

  Of course, I was on tenterhooks till then. I was in danger of admitting Joe had been right. After his escapade at work I was tortured every time I called the photocopier man with thoughts that he might be some hunk about to go down on me in the photocopier room. I cursed Joe for turning me into a sort of sex-obsessed tart.

  Tuesday was a nightmare. I couldn’t wait to get off the train and dash into my local Tesco, and that’s a first! As I wandered round looking at the zombie-like shoppers I found myself peering in corners and even surreptitiously pushing doors marked ‘no entry’ in a feeble attempt to guess what Joe had in store for me. Like Pandora, desperate to open the box, I prowled around unable to leave. I swear I was stalked by a store detective I was acting so suspiciously; I bought a bottle of Chianti to calm my nerves and legged it home.

  On Wednesday morning I was so keyed up, I found myself spending far too long in the shower, playing with that nice fine jet of water. I had my eyes closed and my head back when the doorbell went. Hell, all thoughts of window cleaners faded as I tramped, soaking wet and pink from an unfulfilled orgasm to find the postman with a special delivery package. Sitting on the bed, I tore it open to find a walkman with a tape inside and a note from Joe.

  ‘If you listen to this before you get to the supermarket this evening I’ll know. All bets are off and I win.’ The swine. How was I meant to spend a whole day doing what I was told? I took the walkman to work and could almost feel it burning through my handbag. Every time I sat in a meeting where I wasn’t expected to speak I found my mind wandering to that rotten tape. I sat there, feeling the pressure of not being able to satisfy myself mount. At one point I was massaging my neck when unconsciously my hand wandered down, over the light silk blouse I was wearing, to settle over my breast where I found my nipple had hardened like a pebble. When I caught one of the partners eyeing me up as if he could read my thoughts, my cheeks turned puce and I was forced into a mock coughing fit to try and make out I had been nursing a poor ailing chest rather than feeling myself up. One thing you could certainly say of my old friend Joe, he knew how to build up the tension in a girl.

  At last I was in the supermarket. As soon as I got through the barrier I plugged in the earpieces and listened. There was a bit of Barry White and then a snatch of Donna Summer. Huh, cheesy. If Joe thought that was going to make this seething palace of consumer greed sexy he was way off the mark. Then came Joe’s voice. Deep and sensual, I had never heard him talk like that. Instantly I felt arousal drifting up my thighs and settling somewhere in the pit of my stomach. Joe’s voice sounded as if he was lying down and was very, very relaxed.

  ‘Okay Vanessa,’ he said, ‘I’m in your head now so let’s just forget about all those people rushing around. They’re in the real world. You and I are going somewhere much sexier than that. First, I want you to grab a basket and start walking upstairs to the underwear section. Obvious I know but it’s a great place to start. I’ve timed this perfectly so we should be exactly in sync, even bearing in mind those ridiculously tight little office skirts and clicky heels you love to wear.’ As I walked along hearing his instructions, I listened to my heels and smiled. I never even knew he’d noticed.

  ‘Right, you should be there about now. Look along the rails, to the left, and you will see a perfect coffee-coloured lace two-piece. There’s something about skin tone underwear that does it for me. It sort of shows everything and yet it doesn’t, don’t you think?’ I fingered the lace, it was a beautiful set, right at the upper end of their ‘finest’ range. Joe’s voice carried on. ‘I’d guess you were a 36D, am I right?’ He was. ‘Well, this time just get yourself a C cup. This is underwear for playing in and a little tightness restricting those full globes of yours will make for a better game.’ My stomach did a flip. I’d always been a bit fed up with my breasts. They were heavy and I had to sort of clinch them to stop them clanging when I ran. ‘Full globes’ made them sound celebrated. I longed to run my hands over them with pride but, hey, I was surrounded by strangers and I could do without being arrested.

  ‘Now you ne
ed some cooling down,’ came Joe’s breathy tones. He sounded to me like he could do with a bit of cooling down too. ‘Go back downstairs, turn right and make for the cold cabinet. Right over in the corner, you’ll see the cans of whipped cream. Don’t you just love cream? It’s sweet and silky and those little nozzles on the can are so useful. Take the can in your hands and just imagine what it would be like to be lying naked on a bed, face down with your eyes closed. I’ll bet you’ve got one hell of a neat arse. I’ll bet it’s just the sort of arse that cries out to have that little nozzle placed in it and squirted. I can almost hear that cream collecting around your tight little bud, and oozing out of the top of your legs. Sticky, drippy cream, it just calls out for a finger to be dipped into it and rubbed up and down inside those glorious bum cheeks. Can you feel it Vanessa?’

  There was five seconds silence where I almost collapsed onto the floor, my arse was quivering like a samba dancer’s. There was a guy standing next to me examining butter. Quite frankly, if he’d come up, pushed me over the cabinet and shagged me senseless I’d have got down on both knees and given him a blow job as a prize. I was that horny. I wasn’t sure how much of this I could take. I found I was staring at the guy like an idiot. I grabbed a can of cream and darted round the corner, getting some relief by standing next to the cold chicken legs.

  ‘Now, the next stop is aisle 13. Unlucky for some, but not for us.’ With extreme difficulty I made my way there and ended up in front of crystallized ginger and icing sugar. The cake making aisle. It was in danger of making me think of my mother. Noooooo!

  I stood and concentrated hard on Joe. His voice was faster now, panting. ‘Just take a look along the centre of the aisle, and you’ll see glace cherries. Gorgeous aren’t they? Round and red, glistening cherries. The best thing to do with those little babies is to lay on your back on the bed and have them, one by one, pushed inside you. Boy do those little sweeties pop in easily. Trouble is, once they’re there, you need to get them out. The best thing is for someone to kneel down and put their tongue inside that juicy little gash. The first ones almost pop out, the next ones require a good long suck and the last ones need a seriously hard fingering.’ With memories of the cream still fresh in my mind, I couldn’t take it any longer. I was creaming so hard myself I was worried I might make a puddle on the floor. The swine, he’d won again. I spent a sleepless night masturbating like a woman possessed. But I wasn’t going to give up that easily.