by Vina Jackson
Madame Violet and Nibbles looked expectantly at Neil. He was rooted to the spot, his face paler than I had ever seen it.
‘It won’t be bad,’ I said quietly to him. ‘And it won’t hurt that much. I’ve been through this too, you know, and on my face.’
‘Come on, boy,’ Nibbles said sharply.
Neil failed to understand.
‘Get your boy to undress, Lily.’
It dawned on Neil that the point of no return was irreversibly long gone. He slipped out of his beige tailored cotton jacket and draped it across the back of a chair. He was about to unbutton the front of his silk blue shirt when Madame Violet peremptorily shouted out, ‘No! Just your trousers. We have no wish to see your puny chest.’
I stifled a murmur of protest; Neil was no buffed bodybuilder, but neither was he an eight-stone weakling.
Now increasingly self-conscious under the voyeuristic gaze of three women, Neil’s hands tentatively moved down to his leather belt, which he unfastened. Then he pulled his zip down and stepped out of his trousers. Down to his jockey shorts, he had no hesitation – as if he had now grown resigned to his fate – and swiftly took them off.
Yet again I couldn’t help admiring the tense harmony of his butt cheeks as he was bending over. He straightened and his long, thin cock came into view. He was semi-hard, involuntarily aroused by the turn of events. But he still had his black socks and shoes on and I couldn’t bear to see him look ridiculous. ‘Take those shoes and socks off, Neil. They make you look like silly.’ This time it was me giving the orders. He meekly obeyed and ended up standing there bottomless in our presence and totally helpless.
Madame Violet circled him, and briefly took a hold of his dangling cock, as if weighing it before she let it drop.
‘His ass? You’re really certain, Lily? Last time we marked a sub, we were much more imaginative …’ Her grin was truly wicked and a parade of obscene visions flashed in front of my eyes. But I fought the impulse.
‘His arse. An L,’ I confirmed.
‘So be it,’ Madame Violet concluded. She gripped Neil by the hair and led him a few steps to a tall stool, and forced him to bend over it so that his butt was fully displayed, almost as if he was being disposed for a spanking or a flogging. Neil offered no resistance.
Instruments in hand, Nibbles approached and dabbed some disinfectant across his arse cheeks, lingering maliciously as she did so. She took a step back and kicked his legs further apart to compound the humiliation. Standing behind him, with an obscene view of Neil’s arsehole, I could only imagine the look of horror taking hold of his features.
‘I think Gothic lettering sounds right,’ Madame Violet proclaimed. Nibbles nodded her agreement and bent over Neil’s backside, her instrument purring monotonously and began tracing the letter across his skin. When I saw how large it was, I had an impulse to stop her, but I held back in silence, remembering the indelible impression the number 1, just a few inches from her smooth pubis, had made on me when I had seen Thomas leading his slave at the ball, and also recalled in a flood of warmth the way I had seen marks and words denoted in all their various forms on both men and women by way of collars, paddles with letters set into flesh that marked the word ‘Slut’ in fierce bruises, Liana’s genital piercings, even once a barcode.
Now, Neil would be forever associated with me, whether I liked it or not. I hadn’t planned it. But the thought excited me more than I would have imagined before our visit to the House of Bamboo Dolls.
‘You could have just said ‘no’ and I’d have willingly left the place,’ I said to Neil. ‘Not gone through with it.’
We were in London in his new flat near Maida Vale. From the bay window on a clear day we could see the low walls of Lord’s cricket ground and below a faint, distant strip of green from the pitch. We’d been back two days already and were still fighting jet lag. The initial ardour of our frenzied week in Darwin had cooled and a sense of unease had fallen over us both since our return to England and the events in San Francisco.
Neil was sitting on a kitchen stool and appeared uncomfortable as he shifted from side to side, seeking some form of balance.
‘Does it still hurt?’ I asked him.
‘Not really. But I feel like scratching it all the time and have to hold back.’
I hadn’t seen the mark on his arse cheek, my mark, since the House of the Bamboo Dolls after he’d quickly scrambled back into his pants and we had fled the establishment after a few coffees and some desultory form of conversation with Madame Violet and some of the other dommes present who were curious about our story and backgrounds. Freshly inked and dark black, it dominated the pale surface of his arse like a scarlet letter, a heavy gothic font. I wondered how often, when I was not present, Neil would take a peek at it in his bathroom mirror and what it made him think of. And in what manner he now associated it with me.
‘We could have left the place, not gone through with it,’ I remarked again.
‘No, Lily, it was my choice,’ he declared. ‘My way of accepting the dynamic of our relationship.’
In the heat of the tropical sun on the other side of the world, his exuberance had seemed so natural and I had enjoyed being waited on hand and foot, worshipped. But my behaviour at the House of Dolls had shocked me, and now that we were back to normal day-to-day life, I feared what we might become.
I felt bad about it all. As if I had deliberately lead him on and not given him anything in return, treated him like a pet, played with him and taken his emotions for granted. Whatever I felt about it now, he would wear my mark forever.
Tomorrow his holiday break would be over and he had to return to work. Should I keep on crashing in his flat or should I somehow begin to look for somewhere of my own to live? And a job? I couldn’t sponge off him eternally, even if he got off on the way I treated him and never complained.
‘Why me, Neil?’ I asked him, just as we were about to slot a DVD into the player. We had spent ages arguing about the choice of movie to watch and reached a halfway compromise which neither of us was enthusiastic about. ‘With your job, your looks, you could have any girl, surely?’
I observed him choosing his words ever so carefully before gazing up at me, looking me straight in the eyes.
‘I’ve always wanted you, Lily. From the first day we met. It’s not a question of looks. Though, for the record, I’ve always thought you beautiful. When you know, you just know. You attract me, you annoy me, you sometimes make me angry and at other times I feel like shouting at you, but it makes no difference. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before.
‘Initially, I wanted to be with you, to fuck you, sweet or rough, in all ways possible and obscene. I was even ashamed of all those terrible fantasies you evoked in me, the things I wanted to do with you, that sometimes made me feel ashamed of my own thoughts. Don’t laugh, but for months on end I would fantasise of dominating you, taming you, using you like a whore, exposing you in public with a rage I didn’t know I was even capable of, ordering you to do the most degrading, disgusting things, offering you to other men and watching. See how sick I was …’
I opened my mouth but he resolutely continued.
‘So imagine my surprise, my terror, when I found out that I was the submissive one when I was with you, that I had to silence all those thoughts and the only way to be with you was for me to be your pet. At first, I was taken aback by this streak you have inside you, but then I realised that pleasure works in such different ways, and reconciled myself to the fact that accepting your nature was the way to keep you, to be with you.
‘And now I find I am addicted. I need you. More than ever. And I’m scared that you don’t truly understand this and that, eventually, you will tire of me, drop me for another pet, abandon me, empty and unfulfilled. It’s not just the physicality of it, it’s the emotional involvement. When you use me, you take me to places I never knew existed, and I, melodramatically, think I’d die if I were to be denied access to that space again.’<
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‘I think I understand, Neil, but I’m not the only domme around, you know. Others are so much more experienced, I’m still learning.’
‘I realise that, but I don’t have that personal connection with them that I have with you.’
‘I just don’t want you to depend on me, Neil,’ I protested. ‘I don’t know if I’m capable of being all the things that you want. That you need.’ His shoulders stooped as if I had delivered a mortal blow.
‘I agreed to be marked for you, Lily.’ He was pleading now, and all it did was stoke my anger. I hadn’t asked for this level of dependency. I didn’t want to own him. He was a friend. A close friend. A lover. I didn’t want him to be just a toy. It was a responsibility too far.
I knew what I didn’t want.
But did I know what I wanted?
11
Eighty Days
The woman wore only black boots that reached above her knees and a thin gold chain around her waist. She was not in the prime of youth any longer, probably in her forties, but with gym assistance and a suspicious all-over tan, she could easily have been mistaken for someone ten years younger. Only the lines in her neck betrayed her.
Both men were bald or, at any rate, shaven-headed and similarly tanned, as if they’d just stepped off the plane from a nude beach in the Caribbean. They were stocky and, from a distance, could even have been taken for twins. The woman had been laid out on a thick grey rubber mat and lay slightly on her side so that one man thrust into her from the rear while she raised her head an inch or two to accommodate the other hairless man’s cock in her mouth, sucking it greedily, her moans orchestrated by the bobbing movement of her head as he held her hair and pulled her towards his hard shaft with machine-like regularity. The men were relentless, pounding her metronomically, like synchronised athletes in training, never missing a beat or a thrust inside her.
I stood there with my mouth gaping.
It was animalistic, but it was also beautiful, a ballet of flesh in motion, a hedonistic dance of the senses.
I’d arrived at the club around mid-evening hoping to find She and to convince her to let me have my original coat-checking and general dogsbody job back. My anger at the way the photo shoot had panned out had long since faded and I wanted to extend the olive branch. I hadn’t recognised the bouncer at the door, but he was relaxed about letting me in after I’d advised him that I used to work there.
In my absence, the main room had been totally reconfigured and the atmosphere had radically changed. The stone-clad walls that used to house all the paraphernalia of BDSM – rows of instruments and toys, hooks, chains and pulleys and a dazzling assortment of hardware whose use had not always been clear or demonstrated to me – were now concealed by heavy velvet curtains, which made me think of a suburban Indian restaurant. The lighting, once muted and elegant, creating areas of light and darkness in clever harmony allowing for both discretion and exhibitionism depending on the evening’s mood, was now harsh and unforgiving, isolating the protagonists in an explosion of white light, while the rest of the room was not just in dark shadow but murky and uninviting, a haven for voyeurs and hangers-on. The club had lost all its joy.
But, nonetheless, the spectacle of the copulating trio was gripping, if only because of the expression on the woman’s face as she was being fucked. It was beatific, not far off the look I had often witnessed on subs’ features when they reached that special space. This was the happiest woman in the whole wide world and she was totally oblivious of anything happening around her, the spectators, the other couples sitting in alcoves in varied states of undress, a few lone women on the dance floor staggering on awkward heels to the beat of some terrible electro-rock, drunk like refugees from the storm.
The club had changed beyond recognition and had now become a sex joint. I tore my eyes away from the rutting trio as the sounds from the woman’s throat took on a despairing note as she rode the waves of her orgasm and the untiring duo carried on her orchestrated destruction.
There were a dozen or so people in the room, and I noted their attire was different, vulgar, shoddy, devoid of all the ritualistic gleam of BDSM nights, like bikers crashing a wedding, loud and cheap.
I looked towards the bar and again didn’t recognise any of the staff.
My attention was drawn to the stairs that led down to the dungeon. A curtain was spread across the vaulted entrance, and access to the club’s lower levels was blocked.
I stepped back into the hallway just as the two men swapped places inside the woman and, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the one who had been face-fucking her slipping on a condom. The new bouncer was standing there.
‘The club’s different,’ I queried. ‘New people, new … activities.’
He gave me an odd look. Then smiled. He was almost two heads taller than me, built like a distaff wrestler, his biceps straining the material of his black T-shirt.
‘Oh yes, love, there are new owners. It’s now a swingers’ joint, no more of that leather and kink stuff any more … You didn’t know? They begin work in a couple of weeks downstairs to change the space into a sauna, so we’ll be properly up and running.’
Noting my disappointment as I stepped out past him onto the street, he called out to me, laughing, ‘Sorry to disappoint you, girlie, but come back any time and I’ll let you have a good spanking in private. Won’t even charge.’
I gave him the V-sign.
What had happened to all the regulars? To She and Richard? Had they found a new place, or were they now orphans in the storm, cut off from their pleasure fix?
I assumed She was still with Grayson and I could find either of them in Shadwell. Or should I take this as an omen, a sign that part of my old life had now come to an end? I knew one thing, though: with or without Neil, I was not about to begin attending swinger parties.
As I made my way back to Neil’s place to consider my options, I couldn’t help recalling that transcendent look on the woman’s face as the two men fucked her, as if she was visiting a place I’d never managed to approach. Even with Leonard, when the lovemaking had been alternately tender and rough and my insides melted alongside the rational part of my brain, I knew I could never quite let go in such a manner. Likewise when I was domming men. It was a different kind of pleasure altogether.
I wryly recalled Leonard once saying one evening in Barcelona, ‘The problem with folk like us, Lily, is that we think too much. Sometimes we can’t avoid holding back. Simpler people are so much less complicated when it comes to their pleasure. They assume it unconditionally.’
My sweet and sad philosopher and soft-hearted philanderer.
Where was he now? Out of my life was my only certainty.
The club I had known and where, in a way, I had perfected the latter part of my sexual education was gone. Replaced by a cheap, vulgar joint where people unemotionally swapped partners or just prostituted themselves on the altar of nostrings sex. It made me feel unclean, but also conflicted. Who was I to judge the people who now went there and seemed satisfied with their lot? Surely, had they known, they would see me as the freak, the girl with the teardrop tattoo who got off on dominating men, cruelly playing with them, all in the service of my anger and frustration and an illusory sense of superiority over the common masses. They couldn’t understand me, or the ecstatic deliverance I offered the subs who kneeled down to me, figuratively speaking. We were on opposite sides of the mirror and it dawned on me that no one knew what the right side of the mirror happened to be. We were all right and we were all wrong. And I was caught in the middle, Lily in wonderland, Snow White wielding a whip.
Neil arrived back from his office around seven. He’d left a message earlier asking me not to cook as he wanted to go out and eat Chinese tonight.
‘The fetish club has been turned into a sex joint,’ I mentioned to Neil. ‘It looked so … sordid. Did you know about it?’
‘It happened just a few weeks after you left for Australia,’ he replied.
> ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought you would have known.’
‘I didn’t. How did you find out?’ Apart from his visits there with me, I didn’t think that Neil had visited the place on his own.
‘From She,’ he said.
‘You’re still in touch with her?’
Neil looked up at me, blushed.
‘What is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes what?’
‘I did see her again a few times. Following your departure.’
His tone was hesitant.
‘Tell me about it.’
‘The property company they had been leasing the premises from wanted to redevelop the block, so notice was served. At one stage She was hoping to convince Grayson to pitch in and make an offer for the club instead, but something went wrong, and after planning permission was declined by the council, it passed into the hands of some sauna and swing club group. I haven’t been since.’ He averted his eyes.
‘But you went on your own before it closed down?’
Again there was something shifty about his attitude.
‘Er … Yes.’
‘Just you?’ I was curious. It just didn’t sound like the Neil I knew.
‘I went with She, Ms Haggard.’
‘Oh?’
‘She contacted me, wanted to find out where you’d disappeared to. At the time I didn’t have a clue where you’d gone as you hadn’t yet been in touch. I just informed her. She didn’t appear particularly concerned. Became all friendly. Well, you know her. She was fishing, of course, but I had nothing to hide. Then the subject moved on to the things you got up to with me. I was aware she’d been your mentor, had trained you. She dropped heavy hints she could provide me with … more. Show me—’
‘Neil!’
‘You weren’t here, Lily. And you’d given me a taste for it. I was craving those feelings, those emotions, the play had awakened in me.’
