As She’s Told

I lay curled beneath the desk one Saturday afternoon, inhaling warm and gingery baking smells, listening to half a conversation in Danish above my head. The legs beside me took themselves off toward the kitchen. Through the slats I saw my master, phone in hand, looking through cupboards. An ingredients search, it looked like.

We were well into December now. The tree was up and decorated.

Danish tradition was to leave it till just before Christmas, but Anders was using it to substitute for the lack of family fuss, and to be the recipient of decorations as we made them. He’d showed me how to make paper hearts in red and white, apparently traditional, and strings of little Danish flags, of all things. Plus small baskets of chocolates.

He’d been spending long hours in the basement, clanging and banging, leaving me tethered upstairs. Normally I got to spend some time chained beneath the bench, watching him work. I missed keeping him company down there. He’d fastened me to posts or joists and amused himself between the worktable and the lumber pile. When he’d been in a whimsical mood, he’d use me as a holder for small items, hanging them from nipple and nose rings. But I hadn’t been downstairs for weeks; he’d even taken over the laundry. It was obvious he was hatching more surprises than usual.

A really big Advent calendar now hung on the wall in the back bedroom, and starting on the first of December I’d been allowed one item a day. There were pockets of all sizes velcroed on; I suspected Anders of shifting things around to the day’s date to suit his mood. Things like nipple clamps, new whips, chocolate truffles, vibrators, cookies. Whatever it was I got to wear it, eat it or have it applied to me. And the non-edible items accumulated and got combined another day. Clamps were decorated by weights shaped like Christmas ornaments, vibrated, joined by silvery chains.

Today I’d gotten a break from the clamps; the day’s pocket had produced various small bells. One for each nipple ring, one on my nose ring, which made me feel truly silly, and some for my collar and cuffs. Oddly, they all seemed to produce different pitches. I tinkled like a wind chime.

There were six left over which he’d put aside. Something told me the use to which they were going to be put.

Anders sat back down at the desk still in the midst of his conversation, and clicked away at the computer. I suspected him of downloading recipes, or perhaps his mother was sending them? Lately he’d been trying out all sorts of goodies on me, holding up tidbits and making me beg first, of course. He’d have to be careful, or the restraints would need to be let out a notch; that would be a first. His culinary skills never ceased to amaze me. I felt more than lucky to eat what he made, even from a plastic dog dish.

Given my own ineptitude in the kitchen, I was still giving thanks that my work as a slave didn’t include attempts at cookery.

I curled around his leg, and felt a hand briefly in my hair. After a while the phone went down, and a bare toe flicked my nipple. The bell jingled.

Anders went back to whatever he was doing on the computer.

The big production he was making of Christmas rather amused me, but his enthusiasm was infectious. I hadn’t felt this much excitement over it since my cynical adolescence. My manufacture of ornaments had gone on from set pieces to productions more or less original. A few miniature dreamcatchers first of all. As I made those I could feel my grandmother’s hands guiding mine, their warm, thin skin spotted and shiny with age. I also constructed little figures out of bits of cloth and paint and Anders’ leftover wood scraps. Some of these he had me make into Julnisse, elf-characters in pointy red hats. Apparently the originals hung around making mischief at Christmas unless fed. These were all male, with the exception of one completely nontraditional female Julnisse with dark, curly yarn hair under her red hat.

The other figures were whatever my imagination could come up with. A construction worker, complete with a round shampoo cap hard hat, was my favourite. Every afternoon I sat naked over these things, and then searched for empty branches from which to hang them. I’d made a couple to send home to amuse my parents.

Anders had already kindly allowed me the use of a debit card and a couple of afternoons to do some shopping for my family, with time and location tightly specified, of course. The resultant package was probably safe in the keeping of Homeland Security by now. This didn’t solve my constant problem, which was my present for Anders. Gifts were flowing in one direction only, from a lavish and imaginative soul. I had so little ability to reciprocate. But I was determined that come hell, high water or GPS

tracker, he was going to find a surprise under that tree.

The week before I’d gestured toward a piece of paper on the dresser, the Home Depot gift certificate bestowed upon me at the Halloween ball. It was half hidden under a pile of small change and a telephone bill.

‘Could I have that?’ I’d asked him.

He’d looked puzzled, then amused. ‘Sure. Hey, you won it. Do you need more time to shop?’

For a split second I was tempted. Shopping on my own, even in Home Depot, now had an air of forbidden adventure. But he’d know eventually that it hadn’t been necessary, and then I’d be in trouble. ‘No, master, thank you.’

He’d glanced at me with narrowed eyes, and for a second I’d thought he was going to squeeze it out of me, but he’d let it go.

The bare foot slid out from beneath my breast, and the legs were gone again. Oh, lord. Anders was near the tree, hanging something from the ceiling beam. My heart began to thump. ‘Come here, my little ornament, and let’s decorate the living room some more.’

I crawled out from beneath the desk, jingling all the way, and presented myself to him. The apparatus above me wasn’t the wrist and ankle cuff arrangement, but a sling of some sort. He extracted me from the chastity belt and lifted me up into it. I swung a little, feeling momentarily like a little kid.

‘What are you looking so shiny about?’

‘Wow, a sitting position!’

‘Why of course, my dear. Your comfort is my goal, always.’

I snorted, and peered around. He’d put me at about at his own eye level, and the floor was surprisingly far away.

‘The house looks so different from this angle,’ I said. ‘How bizarre to spend your life at such an altitude.’

He tingled the bell hanging from my nose. ‘So speaks the floor-dwelling tambourine.’ Daringly I stuck out my tongue at him, and got it yanked.

‘Behave yourself, moppet. All right, hands behind you. There. Legs now. Wider. That’s good.’ He strapped my thighs and ankles to the sling.

Then he ran his fingers through channels and inclines, and over the arc of pubic bone. Tiny squirms were amplified by the setup; I began to swing. He steadied me, and confirmed my expectation about the remaining bells, hanging them from the labia rings. They were heavier than I’d expected.

I watched him stand back and consider me. ‘You’re extremely ornamental, but I think I’ll make you a little more obviously seasonal.’ He went off and came back with garlands and glittery chains, which he spiralled round my neck and legs and around my breasts. Two tree ornaments ended up hanging from my ears.

‘Better. Very festive. This calls for a beer.’ From the kitchen he came back with a dark and foamy glass, wiping his lips. ‘Wait, I forgot the hat.’

Red and pointy, on it went. ‘That really is cute,’ he said, standing back and admiring.

He brought out a couple of those little wooden sticks with balls at the ends. ‘Okay, let’s see how the bells sound. Get you tuned up.’ This turned into serious musician business; one bell was trifle flat and he spent several minutes fiddling with it. A few got moved around on some harmonic principal or other; he exchanged a nipple bell with the nose bell, and rearranged me to be more upright so that the collar bell would hang free.

Then he began to play. First a scale and an arpeggio, then a tune, initially clumsy but defter with practice. I was vibrating along with the bells.

‘Recognize that?’ he asked conversationally.

‘Um…something about drinking…harvest supper…?’ I breathed.

‘Very good!’ He continued tapping, and belted out the tune in his deep baritone, loud enough for a whole roistering table full of farm hands.

Our sheep shear is over and summer is past, Here’s a health to our mistress all in a full glass, For she’s a good woman and provides us with cheer, Here’s a health to our mistress, so drink up your beer.

He grinned at me and took a deep draught. ‘Here my good mistress, try this, it’s the Granite’s Peculiar; outstanding stuff.’ Dutifully I took a sip. It all tasted the same to me: like beer.

A lively little jig now. ‘Stop whimpering, you’re out of tune. Name this one. Quick, now.”

“The – The Sailor’s Wife?’ The bells seemed to keep vibrating even when they weren’t being struck. Despite my efforts to hold back, my hips thrust rather desperately forward, causing Anders to strike a wrong note. I got a good whack across the ass that hurt quite a lot even through the sling, and set everything jingling at once. ‘Hold still!”

“Sorry, master.’

The next song seemed to be in the key of the nose bell; anyway, the tune kept returning to that one. My head started to buzz. The bell was tingled four times in two bars and I sneezed. ‘Hey!’ he laughed, but he didn’t stop.

At the next nose vibration I sneezed again, and we both cracked up. ‘All right, that’s it, it’ll have to go somewhere else.’ A brief pause while he strung a chain between my nipples, polished the bell and hung it from that.

He played a couple more tunes, quizzing me on each. I couldn’t dredge up the fourth one, though it sounded vaguely ragtime, and I got whacked again.

‘You know,’ he said, striking notes at random, ‘this would be a great way for people to start making their own entertainment again at parties.

Most of them have lost the knack; they just shove in a CD, and leave it to the music industry. Where’s the fun in that?’ Ping, pang, clangle. ‘Not everyone

– has your talent – master –’

He gave me a slow, rather ominous smile ‘Oh, but with such an instrument available – and so decorative, too – almost anyone could make a pretty tune.’ Suddenly I could envision the room full of people, laughing and drinking and joining in on the choruses. With me as the centrepiece.

He ran his sticks back and forth over the labia bells, hit the nipple bells with a little ta-ting, and then pressed one of the sticks up against my clit. Not moving it, just pressing. My voice slid upward in pitch, quavering like a violin tremolo. ‘See?’

The stick was withdrawn, and I groaned. ‘Oh, god…. Please, master…’

Here it came. Begging. Whether I wanted to or not. No matter how futile the exercise. ‘Please, master, please…’

‘Stop wriggling, slave.’ He sang a teasing chorus of ‘Beggin’ Woman.’

Then he wiped the stick clean and played on. When I couldn’t shut up and stay shut up I got strapped into a full gag and muzzle. The hat went back on top.

And somehow the stopping of my voice sent me inward, the recipient, now in no way a player but only played upon. The pure tones picked up some kind of harmonics in my flesh, which resonated with the ear’s vibration. Melody, in the key of exquisite arousal, with no crescendo. There was a faint echo in my mind of that story of Kafka’s, the ordeal and the enlightenment. What I was absorbing I couldn’t put words to; couldn’t have produced. I was literally nothing but the sounding board.

***

Anders stood back and observed the silent figure in the sling, the muzzled head sagging back, the eyes, framed by straps, deep in the glaze of subspace. Setting the mallets aside, he gently removed the labia bells. A little height adjustment. Then he was inside her, his cock gliding slowly, slowly along slippery walls, his hands gripping her hips. By now he knew well how to make use of his vessel, stage by stage and nerve by nerve, always bringing her along with him, always gently leaving her just outside the door while he stepped through. Every moment, every movement, had to be considered and deliberate. And when the long, slow orgasm, magnificent as a cathedral chord, had played itself out, he stood there with his eyes closed, using his hold on her to stay upright, shuddering with the aftershocks brought on by the urgent convulsion of warm wet flesh around his softening cock. The rigid thighs, the helpless moaning. So sweet. A little further decoration and then it would be time to make dinner. Anders hung his slave’s labia and nipples with the clamps and ornament-shaped weights that he’d been using all week, this time hanging the bells at the ends. He strung coloured lights across the ceiling from either side of her, down the sling, in a gentle loop between her feet, back under her to her bound hands. When they were turned on he swung her gently, listening to the bells’ tinkle and the faint groans at the additional drag of weight on her flesh, and made sure the lights made no contact with skin. Then he turned on some old wassailing songs from the 18th century and went into the kitchen.

Every minute or so, between cutting board and saucepan he looked over at his creation. A Pervert’s Christmas, he smiled to himself. The lights blinked, and skin and decorations glistened in their multicoloured glow. All the hanging things trembled at his footsteps’ vibration. His most recent decoration gazed mesmerized at the tree, into the button eyes of another small dangling red-hatted female figure: her companion piece.

***

Christmas Eve: a very quiet morning at work. The information centre was closing at the end of my shift. No one was around; even the phone and email requests had dried up. We weren’t exactly anyone’s go-to destination for last minute gifts. I got my utilization logs up to date. At twelve-fifteen there was a frantic call from a student with a paper on hydrogen engine technology to write over the holidays, and no data to speak of. Fortunately I could mop that one up in half an hour. It was always satisfying to save someone’s day, or year in this case. Her grateful relief took up another minute or two. Then it was time to shut the place down and go home.

I had my object all packaged up and ready to go. It was awkward to carry, but I’d tied on a couple of makeshift handles, and the thing was lighter than it looked. I was counting on Anders being so deep into food preparation that I’d be able to slip it past him. He’d stayed home to concoct a traditional Danish Christmas dinner. The oven and stovetop had already been full and bubbling when he’d sent me out the door into the cold. Now the temperature was dropping, and fine snow stung my face.

I stood in the damp steamy streetcar surrounded by mostly cheerful people loaded down with boxes and bags, trying to keep my package out of the melted slush on the floor. Blocking the erotic trance which called to me, sang to me, every harnessed inch of me joining in on the perfidious siren song. No, I mustn’t go there. I forced myself to think about the day I lost track and got out of bounds, and I shuddered. Pay attention, girl…no wandering. Imagine messing up now. Spoiling Christmas.

Anders had been teasing me relentlessly, escalating the intensity each day, using every trick in his considerable repertoire. The night before I’d been balanced teetering on the edge five times, maybe six. How I managed to come even close to counting them I don’t know, because by the time I was locked away again I’d devolved down into a primitive life form: mindless, incoherent, tormented and howling.

Even now I was wearing two plugs beneath the belt; I’d been wearing them to work every day for weeks. The flesh around them was heavy and aching. My nipples, even my lips felt swollen. If my frustration gave Anders pleasure, he’d been especially well served lately. Cautiously I angled my burden through the door of the streetcar, and hefted it along the icy sidewalks, pushed sideways by the sharp wind, gritting my teeth as the gusts played grab-ass with icy fingers beneath my coat. I was glad to get to the end of our street and into the house. The package stayed in the shadows between the two doors while I stripped, shivering, and donned chilly collar and cuffs. As I’d hoped, Anders only sent a greeting over his shoulder; his hands were deep in a big bowl. I sneaked the package round the door, tiptoed across the room and shoved it into the shadows behind the tree.

‘What are you up to?’ He was behind me, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. ‘Is that for me?’

I swung around hastily. ‘Mm. No peeking.’ My master took hold of my ass with damp hands and pulled me close, his clothes wonderfully warm against my cold bare skin. I inhaled him, all savoury and delicious, and could have gone on consuming him then and there. He kissed me and then straightened up and took a step toward the tree, dragging me with him. ‘No, master, please! You weren’t supposed to notice until it was time to open it.’

‘Master knows all, sees all,’ he droned, waggling one Svengali eyebrow. ‘Anyway, it’s a little big to overlook. You sly wench, what have you been up to?’

‘You’ll see when you open it. Tonight? Or tomorrow?’ Christmas Eve was the Danish night for opening presents, but the North American Christmas-morning-blowout also seemed to be in the cards. All I knew was the meal schedule: the big one was late this afternoon. A hissing noise from the stove drew his attention back to the kitchen, to my relief. I got warmed up in there (and rapidly superheated). My nipples were dipped in lingonberry sauce and sucked clean, which gave us an interesting ten minutes. Then he decorated me: ornaments, bells, hat and all. I stirred a pot of mulled wine called gløgg, and sipped a little. But it hit an empty stomach.

Dizzily I moaned that I was starving, and Anders let me have a couple of little cookies to tide me over, in my corner out of harm’s way, while he hauled the sizzling goose out of the oven, did things to it and shoved it back in. I mopped spills, wiped counters, fetched and scrubbed potatoes, and tried to subsist on the atmosphere of roasting goose, so thick it was nearly caloric.

The light coming through the blinds had faded to dusk when I was at last told to light the candles; he’d set out a couple of dozen of them all over the table and shelves and counters. Then I got to set the table. Two place settings! I was flabbergasted.

‘A special treat for Christmas, hunhund,’ he said. ‘Christmas dinner requires more than one person at the table, so you’ll just have to be a person today. Make sure you mind your manners.’

So I sat in a chair in that room for the very first time, minding my manners as hard as I could, my naked bottom warming the cool wooden seat, my harnessed breasts and nipple bells brushing the table’s edge. I felt like the ship’s dog called to the Captain’s table. He’d placed me at right angles to him, well within reach of his long arm. Danish Christmas music was playing, lively and almost completely unfamiliar. ‘Okay,’ he said happily, opening the oven, ‘here we go!’

There was the roast goose and browned potatoes and red cabbage, all of which smelled incredible. I also spotted a bowl full of dark grains. ‘Wild rice and apricot stuffing!’ Anders grinned. ‘Have to honour all the traditions. I don’t know if it’ll taste anything like your mother’s. Did she put pine nuts in hers? I thought it needed some pine nuts.’ It was better than my mother’s; it was fantastic. Partway through the meal I groaned and begged him to loosen my harness.

He eyed me up and down, wiped his mouth on his napkin and pushed back his chair. ‘All right. Just this once. And only because I don’t want your dinner to go to waste. Come here.’ Keys jingled; he pulled me onto his lap and kissed the spaces between the straps as he loosened them a notch. Then he turned me to face him, my legs straddling his, flicked my nipple bells, and slowly brushed open lips against mine. Pepper and lingonberry flavour.

And Anders himself, that essence that never ceased to enslave me. Hands gripped my breasts, his tongue was in my mouth. My body instantly, helplessly surged and clung. Then I was facing the other way with my feet on the floor and a smack tingling my bottom. I returned to my seat on trembling legs. Anders drank schnapps, sang along with the CD, tweaked my nipples and fed me morsels from his plate. We took a break before dessert, during which he turned up the music and danced me around the living room. The plugs were taking me to the verge of insanity, especially when he picked me up and continued to dance with my legs wrapped round him. At last he took a breath, grinned down at me and said, ‘I think we’ll have dessert in bed. Up you go.’ Up I went. Stood while he removed the harness. Lay on my back as ordered, and had my wrists fastened to the headboard.

He’d brought up a creamy rice pudding on a tray. ‘This is actually the traditional start to the meal, but I figured if you began with that you’d never get through the rest.”

“No kidding.’ My voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘Look out for the whole almond; if you find it you get the prize.’

He gave me a spoonful. Then a warm sticky line circled my left nipple, and was licked away. ‘Nope, no almond.’ The same on the right. A long line down my belly. More licking. A little puddle from my navel. Still no almond.

Lines down both thighs, sweetly licked. ‘Let’s try a little cherry sauce, shall we?’ This was stroked along the diagonals between belly and thigh, and I whimpered. Then more rice pudding. ‘Red and white, very patriotic. A nice white cross on a swathe of red. Yum. I won’t attempt a maple leaf.’ He brushed my lips with the cherry sauce and watched as my tongue ran round them. His tongue began searching up the inside of my thigh, almost to the metal of the belt. ‘So sweet,’ he murmured. ‘I think I’ll open one of my presents.’ Key in the chastity belt. My insides contracted helplessly around the plugs as they slowly, slowly slid from my body. ‘Ah… ah… master, please….’

‘Ah, yes, you need more pudding. In your mouth this time.’ Another spoonful slipped past my lips, and I swallowed. A swirl of tongue over my naked pubic bone. My whole body shook. ‘Hold still, girl; don’t get the sheets sticky.’ His tongue lapping, licking, here, gone. Back at the insides of thighs, so close… A finger gently smoothing cherry sauce on swollen labia.

My body was a bow drawn tight, begging, beseeching…. The lapping continued, a vice-like grip on my thighs holding me still. Pleas came from my throat in a constant whisper.

My master loomed over me, a spoon in one hand, took my head, turned it, and gentled the creamy stuff into my mouth. Something hard and pointy in there. My tongue worked it free, then lolled forward and presented it. He smiled, and caught it before it hit the sheets. ‘Ah. You get the prize, little one.’ He leaned down and kissed me with sticky lips. ‘Usually it’s a marzipan pig. But not this time.’ He was back between my legs with the cherry sauce, this time dribbling some right down the swollen crevasse of my cunt.

I felt the seeping trickle, and was paralyzed at the first touch of tongue on inner flesh. Paralyzed with fear; was it fear of him stopping or fear that he wouldn’t? Could I bear it? The seismic forces had been held back so long; their release could be catastrophic. No. Yes. Please, no! Wait!

And at the fourth long lap of his tongue something devastating and uncontainable burst its bounds, shattering me, rolling outward through my body like an apocalypse, flooding with violence back into my centre. The tongue gathered it and drove it deep, searching chasms, swirling, making me thrash and scream and howl. Then the vortex reversed, I was sucked up as if into a cyclone.

Now he was between my legs and plunging hugely into the vortex, becoming the centre around which my body surged and stormed. And with each new convulsion, each new convergence of flesh on flesh, the network of nerves grew and spread and reached, all utterly exposed and vulnerable.

So that his whole hard body became the inflictor of the most terrifying pleasure.

Out of the absolute, boneless stillness that followed came a murmur in my ear: ‘Merry Christmas.’