As She’s Told

‘Maia!’ Arms waved me to a table, through a room thick with students, trays of food, music, knapsacks and loud conversation. I squeezed between two chair backs, nearly got the back of someone’s head with my bag, gripped my tray with one hand and pushed my dress down nervously over my stocking tops with the other, and came close to spilling my tea down some guy’s neck. Gratefully I collapsed at the table. Po Ling pulled a notebook out of the way to make a little space for me. Heather efficiently unloaded my food and shoved the tray down next to the wall. She was listening to Isadore on the topic of software mega-giants as threats to individual freedom. This was a subject he worked into all his papers, even the ones on Medieval manuscripts.

‘It’s no joke,’ he said. ‘Do you realize how much of our lives they control? That’s why I’m designing my own operating system. How can you let those guys take over, watch you, manipulate everything you do?’ Heather looked impatient and resigned, both. Po Ling was going over pages of charts and making notes.

I kept my mouth shut, except to put food in it. At last, working a folded page out of my bag, I interrupted. ‘Isadore.’

He kept talking and eating, output and input, until I waved the paper directly between him and his plate.

‘What?’ he said.

‘You said you needed a contact for those archives in Prague.’

‘How did you hear about that? Brilliant!’

Heather leapt into Isidore’s gloating pause. ‘Maia,’ she said, whipping open a notebook, ‘we need those journals catalogued by Friday at the latest; can you do it?”

“It’s done. I’ll send it to you tonight.’

‘Wow! Great! How did you do that? I thought you had to do the water quality thing first.”

“That’s done too.’

They stared at me. Isadore spoke first. ‘Can this be Maia the haphazard?

Hey, you’re on a roll. You can help me write up my references.’

Both the other women protested, and I smiled uncomfortably. ‘No, afraid not.’

‘Oh, come on, it’ll only take you an hour or so, you’re so good at it. If you leave it to me, Heather won’t get my stats for ages.’ Heather was looking irritable again. I felt the stirrings of incipient guilt, stuffed it down and shook my head. Thought about that conversation with Anders, our first day. Bake voice until low but firm.

‘No, sorry.’ No explanations, nothing for him to argue with. I didn’t owe Isadore anything, had in fact done him more favours than he deserved.

Only one person I owed my utmost to, and he didn’t have to wheedle and manoeuvre to get what he wanted.

I’d been naked in the mirror that morning, examining the chain around my waist. When Anders had first put it on me I’d hardly dared to touch the lock, but as my confidence in it grew I’d pulled on it gently from time to time. This morning I’d grabbed the chain in both hands and pulled it apart with all my strength. This had made not the slightest visible impression. A bubble of elation had lifted me up and carried me into the day.

When I was busy I could forget about the chain for whole quarter-hours at a time. But it tugged at my consciousness: a constant presence, a fence that set me off, a property line. Its reality made me so excited sometimes that I could hardly concentrate.

They were talking to me, laughing at my abstraction. ‘Maia, wake up!’

said Heather. ‘What? Sorry.’

‘There’s an on-line conference tonight on internet ethics. We can pick up material for the censorship paper.’

‘Tonight? No, I can’t,’ I said hastily. Anders was coming at seven, and no way was I going to suggest to him that there was something else I ought to be doing. I gathered up my things and nodded farewells.

Po Ling caught me up outside the door. ‘You got a new boyfriend, ah?’

she said slyly. I flushed.

‘Mind is on other things, I can tell. I saw when he dropped you off at the library.’ Po Ling eyed me and her smile was arch. No wonder. The goodbye kiss had been epic. ‘Don’t forget your schoolwork, okay? But you’re more organized now.’ She nodded approval. ‘Making time for the boyfriend I bet. He a nice guy?’

‘Yes,’ I said truthfully. ‘Wait a second, I meant to show you, have you seen this?’ I rummaged hastily in my bag for a job posting I’d printed off that morning, just right for Po Ling. She ran her eyes down it, opened them wide. ‘Hey, that’s a good one!’ She looked up. ‘Why are you – Don’t you want it?”

“No, I’m – looking at other things. Got to go.’

***

>Sorry if my cautions sound like the warnings of elders. This is much more your role than mine, I think.

>You’re right. Svend and Janne always used to complain that I took the joy out of life. It’s an elder brother imperative, I think. But being over-responsible is no bad thing at the moment.

>Chain is very nice. Just do not send her through a metal detector.

She sounds not ready for the humiliation.

>No problem. It doesn’t set off the alarm at the university library, which is all that matters right now.

>Ria asks if your inexperienced sub has any idea how a whipping feels, before she agrees to stay with you.

>She’ll know how a whip feels soon enough. Before she has to agree.

Tell Ria thanks. Tell her I still remember her advice on cane technique.

>She had three men on their knees… I cannot tell you how fearsome and enthralling she was.

>Enthralling, good word. I remember her in that silvery outfit; she was awe-inspiring. But that tiger growl of hers is even better. Are you two still taking turns being the dom, or are you just taking it out on other people? Vanilla at home? Hard to imagine you two having an ordinary fuck.

Has Ria made up her mind about Chicago?

>took Tante Berta home and she will be okay with care. You heard this, yes? Our Mormor is predicting doom as always but secretly is pleased.

>Of course she’s pleased. She’s getting the chance to take charge in her sister-in-law’s house; it’s been her ambition for fifty years. She’s probably already using Rationalist principles to rearrange all the kitchen utensils.

>Tante Berta has the slice back in her tongue, by the way. I did the dutiful grand-nephew thing and called her yesterday. Sweet with me, but took her nurse apart and didn’t cover the phone.

>Is your girl believing yet she cannot leave?

>Right now she knows the choice is still there, and hates it. Give me time. The house isn’t ready for her yet. And I need to get further into her head.

***

The days went by in a weirdly contrasting diamond pattern: bright, sharp hours with Anders standing out against the ordinary, matte colours of daily routine. Except that gleaming threads had begun to weave themselves through the duller patches. The chain like a silvery cable, keeping me in place for the next encounter. The phone calls. The thrill every morning when I woke up and remembered that I was behaving according to someone else’s wishes and not my own.

My body felt subtly different, more receptive, as if it had gathered an extra layer of blood and nerve endings. As if my skin was one big erogenous zone. I kept searching for the signs in mirrors, but apart from the chain, I looked the same as always. Still, sometimes I felt as if I was moving under water, balletic and weighed down.

I tried in odd, breathless moments to guess what he might be planning to do with me. He had kept his promise not to consult or negotiate. I turned his words from our first meeting over and over in my mind, like prophecy.

As promised, we got to know each other better. Stories From My Childhood, that kind of thing. I’d get one view of the younger Anders, and then another that seemed like some other person. Like when you make plans at different times for the same day, oblivious to the conflict, the information filing itself in separate cul-de-sacs in your brain. When the neural pathways finally cross and stumble over each other, it’s a bit of a jolt.

There was the pragmatic northern-European social-democrat side, with eminently sane, rational, socially conscious parents. He told me without irony about family outings straight out of a milk ad, everyone skating and skiing and snorkelling together, collectively blond and wholesome. Even his dour grandmother, who sounded like something out of a Bergman movie, still skated along with the rest. A contrast to my own family, in which my father took his exercise on a keyboard, and my mother preferred hers at her upscale fitness club where she could combine Tae Bo with networking. I grew up thinking exercise was something you drove to. Then there was this other young Anders, still, oddly enough, with family. Brooding and smoking dope in a moodily-lit bedroom with his cousin Karl over Christmas and summer holidays, discussing floggers and gags and the rope harness demo they’d used their early height to sneak into. There was a long, licentious weekend in Amsterdam. Nocturnal expeditions in Copenhagen. This driven, dissolute Anders and his cousin biked home at dawn, downed bowls of muesli and got back on their bikes for jolly day trips with their family.

He laughed at my bemusement. ‘Did you picture me skating in black leather? Imagine what my grandmother would have said. Though after all I suppose I snorkelled in black rubber; very kinky if you’re into that kind of thing.’

I shook my head, unable to explain.

‘You know about living a double life, all the incongruity,’ he said.

‘Goes with the territory.’

‘Oh, sure,’ I agreed. ‘But for me the split has been between my – my internal and external – um – personas. My outward face and, you know, the ‘real me.’ I didn’t do the outward stuff like you did. I mean, you actually had a good time with – and – and identified with both sides, didn’t you? I just acted the one and identified with the other.’

‘Yes, I see. But why are you constructing them as polar opposites?

Darkness and daylight, wicked and pure, all that?’

‘No, no,’ I said, and paused. ‘Well, maybe. Darkness and daylight, yes.

Not wicked and pure. They just seem so opposite. But without the value judgment.’

‘That’s still a construction you’re imposing yourself. I don’t see them as opposed. Why can’t d/s be part of a healthy lifestyle, served with exercise and fresh vegetables?’

I laughed, and added this to my list of prophetic hints to be pondered.

That calm pragmatism of his was like a curtain, occasionally blown aside by gusts of anger and disgust when world’s idiocies pressed too hard.

But unlike my craven, retreating self, Anders actually took some action. I rarely got him all to myself on any downtown walk, because street people got more than money from him; they got camaraderie, conversation, validation. His customers got energy conservation in their renovations whether they asked for it or not. And despite his frustration with the subsidized housing funding situation, he always seemed to be conferring about potential projects that were long on social value, and noticeably short on profit.

Anders had some odd and eclectic interests: environment and behaviour, bonsai, the history of technology, jazz violin. His memory for blues and traditional folk songs, both music and lyrics, seemed to me to be encyclopaedic. All sorts of fascinating observations emerged at odd moments; things like why zebras were never domesticated, or what stopped the Mongols from taking over Europe in the thirteenth century. He seemed to know everything about the impact on cities of suburban sprawl and high rises (bad) and of European-style high-density lowrises (good). Anders could name every one of the Toronto projects that met his standards (not hard; there weren’t many), and dozens that were nightmares.

One day he gave me a tour of the work he was doing on his house. We picked our way through the lumber and trestles and toolboxes. There seemed to be an additional wall being built inside the current walls, and there were rolls of spongy material everywhere. This turned out to be soundproofing.

How something so mundane could shake me up so much I don’t know; I had one of those terror-joy moments.

Anders told me what he’d be doing with this room and that, but a lot of it went over my head. The house all looked pretty deconstructed; I had a hard time visualizing the surfaces freed of their layers of old paint and linoleum and construction debris. His long, self-assured body kept distracting me, moving ahead through the splintery shadows, leading me with a hard hand on my wrist. The resinous smells of cut wood were powerfully like the smell he carried about with him, and made me want very badly to get under his clothes. I did manage to pay enough attention to gather something about the kind of aesthetic he was aiming for. He showed me some of the good wood grain that lurked beneath the grimy paint on the windowsills, and talked about how this would look stripped and varnished.

There was a fireplace, or at least the outer portion, in amongst the lumber in the basement, a rather beautiful art deco design in honeycoloured wood. But the mantelpiece was missing.

‘It’s by Roberts, out of a series of midtown apartments from the early thirties. Which were taken down in the seventies when they were flattening anything with character. Sooner or later I’ll find the mantelpiece, and then I’ll put it in.’

‘Is there a fireplace?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘I didn’t see one.’

‘It’s covered over, but it’s there. Side wall of the living room. I could put something in there in the meantime, but I want to wait for this one. Look at this carving….’ He ran his fingers through symmetrical grooves. Suddenly I could feel those fingers in my own grooves. He gave me a long look over his shoulder, and his smile stripped me bare. Slowly he stepped over to me and ran his hands down my body. I leaned my head on his chest, and let the moan loose. ‘You’ll be installed yourself, soon enough, girl,’ he murmured.

A glance at his watch. ‘You have work to do; let’s get you back.’

Anders’ work and his other preoccupations – me included – revealed such a capacity for patience that at first I had it filed as a kind of character keynote. Not only the kindness-toweaker-creatures kind of patience, though he had plenty of that. What I also saw was thoughtful deliberation, a capacity for long-range planning and execution; a requisite, I suppose, for the complex, stepwise processes of his job. More than impressive to someone with my last-minute mentality.

But patience wasn’t always his leading a characteristic. For instance, Anders seemed to find formalities or ceremony of any kind quite intolerable.

I first got an inkling of this when, in the course of a long downtown stroll, we came across a political function of some kind in Nathan Phillips Square.

I never did get an idea of what it was about, because even though the politicians were the ones he approved of, more or less, he pulled me away, grumbling, ‘I hate speeches.’ I had to break into a trot to keep up with him.

Once the amplified voices were down to a muffled indecipherable shout and I’d caught my breath, I drew back on his arm and said, ‘What do you mean, you hate speeches?’

His glance at me as he slowed was grey and chill. That Viking chieftain look had given way to Reformation righteousness. My companion had morphed into a cold-eyed ascetic in a black robe, minus the black robe.

‘Mouthing platitudes,’ he pronounced. ‘Repeating the obvious, just for the sake of saying it from a platform. Planting little clues to policy for the reporters to pick over. Nothing but games and bullshit.’

There was that hint of a Danish inflection that meant anger. Not directed at me this time, thankfully. I wondered if he knew he did it. I could feel the nascent fear that anger always created in me, even when it was directed elsewhere. But for the moment curiosity was stronger. ‘What if it was an OCAP rally? I thought you used to go to them.”

“Got tired of the speeches.’

‘What about if it was the opening of a non-profit housing project?

Would you go then?”

“What for? So I can watch people congratulate themselves for funding something they should have funded fifteen years before? No way. I’d be in the building working, not in front listening to a bunch of crap.’

I couldn’t help smiling. ‘Oh, boy. No wonder you didn’t go in for politics.’

He snorted, and then grinned, one side only, and the righteous look fell away. ‘Not a game player.”

“Don’t you have to be diplomatic with customers sometimes?’

He laughed. ‘The truth can be very diplomatic. As long as I only swear in Danish.’

‘But the building projects – housing homeless people – trying to get that going – there’s tons of politics, surely?’

The smile disappeared. ‘Too goddamned much. Coalitions.

Committees. This and that pointless meeting. Yet another bloody task force.

Christ!’

Not surprisingly, Anders was very good at mechanical things. The sort of person you want around in a crisis. We were on our way to his place early one evening when he pulled the truck over to the side of the road without a word, and got out. I watched, puzzled, as he went over to an elderly, heavy man on a motorized scooter. Someone he knew? The man’s frustrated movements clued me in at last; the scooter was stuck. The next minute Anders was back at the truck for tools.

The comments and advice from the inevitable gathering of onlookers seemed to be neither here nor there as far as Anders was concerned; he just focused competently on the job at hand. His confidence was contagious; the old man started out querulous and agitated, but as Anders took on the problem he calmed down, and before long he’d perked up and was making jokes at his own expense. In short order Anders found the problem, fixed it, and had the man back on his scooter. He walked along beside him for a minute, listening to the machine. Then a quick handshake and we were on our way.

‘That was amazing!’ I said admiringly, as we pulled out.

‘What?’

‘What you just did. There’ll probably be a letter in the Star tomorrow about kind strangers. How the world’s not such a mean place after all.’

He shrugged, glanced over his shoulder and changed lanes. ‘Couldn’t just leave him there.’

‘What if you hadn’t been able to fix it so fast?’

‘I’d have hefted him and his scooter into the truck and we would have taken him home. Which would have been cosy.’

Cosy indeed. There was only the front seat, and the gentleman would have taken some hefting. I thought for a bit. ‘I think you’re even more – how can I say it – more generous with your skills than I am.’

‘Possibly. I do have limits.’ He shifted gears, and flicked a sly glance at me. ‘If you think I’m such a kind soul, think again.’

My heart skipped a beat or two. ‘Why?’

‘You’re forgetting how to address me, woman.’

The thumping in my chest accelerated, making up for lost time. ‘Sorry.

Sir.’

I kept quiet the rest of the way, watching his face from the corner of my eye. Once inside his door he reached for me, then looked at his hands.

‘Damn. Don’t move. This is what I get for random acts of kindness – lack of spontaneity – ‘ He went off and washed his hands in the kitchen. I looked around. The construction debris had shifted to a new area; that was the only visible change. Anders came back and briskly stripped my clothes off, trapped my nipples tightly between his fingers and stared down at me. ‘I think you’re taking my sweet nature for granted. Maybe it’s time to show you a little less kindness.’

He drove me naked up the stairs again, but this time he was crueller.

Like before, the first smack almost paralyzed me with lust; I felt it, crisp and heavy, right through me, from the top of my belly to the insides of my thighs.

‘Up!’ came the sharp command.

I managed to take a step and he smacked the other side. ‘Up!’ Another step. He smacked each thigh in turn; two more steps. Suddenly I groaned; there were hard fingers pulling down and back on my nipples, stopping me in my tracks. I could feel my cunt lips swelling slippery against each other.

The pull continued, harder, and my hands were on the stairs, supporting me while he pinched and twisted. Suddenly his fingers were back in my cunt, his thumb slipping into my asshole. I was breathing in huge gasps. Another stinging smack on my thigh. ‘Up!’ The hand inside me pulled up, keeping me flung forward on my hands, and I was forced up the steps on all fours, propelled by smacks and steered at the end of his arm like a household machine, like something you push around on a stick.

At the top he took his hand out of me; I was down on my elbows and knees, breath shuddering in and out. Another smack, and I crawled into the bedroom. ‘Stay.’

A sudden change in pace. He squatted down next to me. I felt his fingers light on my burning ass, and then on my cunt, playing round the edges. A thumb gently circling on my anus. A whimper rose in the back of my throat.

‘I know what I’ll call you,’ confided a deep voice in my ear. ”Hunhund.”

The two syllables both sounded the same, like ‘who’ with an ‘n’ at the end.

‘That’s a nice Danish word for a she-dog,’ he said. Not exactly a bitch, as I found out later, with all that the English word implied. Just a female dog.

But at that moment I was already so deep in humiliation and arousal that I hardly took it in. He went off and I heard water running, and then he was back.

‘Up on the bed, hands and knees. We’re going to find out just what makes you come, my little hunhund. And what doesn’t.’ The deep voice had downshifted, was warm, hypnotic, in rhythm with the stroking of his fingers.

Sensation was fed by the heat of spanked flesh: fed, amplified. His hand tickling, sliding through hot wet folds. He was touching, moving away, touching again… tension building, building…. Then the fingers were gone.

Sensation now at my nipples, circling and squeezing, on and on…. And a hand rubbing round circles on my ass, pressing the arousal deeper, deeper….

I crouched there for what seemed like ages, clutched the bedspread, moaning low in my throat.

Now fingers deep inside me, a tongue so sweet against my sensitized flesh, my swollen clitoris exquisitely licked and shifted and stroked…oh, god, here it came…! No. Tongue and fingers gone again.

‘Ah…ah…’ I moaned. ‘Sir, please…!’

No answer. My head sank into my arms. A long pause: my body abandoned, without contact, meaningless. And then the hands were back on my hips and he was sliding into me, and I cried out for it, shuddered and opened, angled myself to feel more, more – . But he stayed back, teased me, went deep so, so slowly…. His cock like sweet torment, pressing into me, through me, if only he’d grabbed my arms behind me, I might… He withdrew.

Something wet and cold on my anus, around it, pushed into it. Oh, god, he’d never done that before. I’d known it must be coming some time, was suddenly very scared. Involuntarily I tightened, hissed with pain.

‘Open, girl,’ he said, and I tried my best. ‘Open, that’s right, open up, relax, open, more, yes….’ His voice rose and fell in a hypnotic rhythm, and I found myself opening again for his fingers, able to take one, then two, then… oh, god! Something enormous sliding into me, too big; I cried out, wanting it to stop but it kept coming, pressing forward, hurting me, hurting, then backing up a little and then pushing forward again, further; back again and then so far forward that my mouth opened and no sound came out, would ever come out; I was invaded by something so thick and heavy that there was no room for me, for any form of consciousness. There was only an occupation, a superior force that rolled past any opposition like it wasn’t there.

I lay staked there, lost, could feel his hands stroking me, a confusion of the excitement building once more, reaching even higher this time, higher than I ever knew it could go. And yet there was no peak; I was on an endless plateau, so high in the clouds that I had no air to breathe. When he came he touched so deep inside me that I thought I’d faint. Then a long, slow withdrawal that seemed to go on forever. When I was empty I lay there with my eyes closed, unmoving. I heard water running again.

Then he was turning me over onto my back, kissing the insides of my thighs. I opened my eyes. He bit me gently and said, ‘Can you make yourself come?’ My hand moved to my wet cunt and touched it; that touch was a pebble falling into the centre of a pool, sending tiny, exquisite, preparatory waves through my body. Then I was caught back by the wrist.

‘No. I didn’t say do it. Can you? Are you capable of it?’

My hand twisted in his grasp, the other hand clenched, and my head rolled back and forth on the bed in frustration. ‘Yes! Please let me, sir…

just… please…?’

‘No. Here, get up.’ He pulled me off the bed. My legs were shaking. He sat down in a chair, lifted me onto his lap, and stroked my breasts, my trembling belly. He tickled my pubic hair ever so lightly, gently brushed the lips of my cunt, then pinched my nipples hard, and I rested my face against his shoulder and panted and mewled. Then he lifted me off and laid me face-down across his lap. ‘Do you think you could come if you were spanked or whipped?’

It was hard to speak with his knee pressed into my diaphragm, and the hand rubbing my ass made it difficult to get words out, much less frame a sentence. ‘I – I don’t know, sir. How can I know –”

“Do you think you could?’ His hand invaded my cunt, and I wailed.

‘Ahh! No, I don’t think so without – that – that – ah!…’ My legs lifted themselves out straight and trembled.

‘Are you feeling held down, Maia?’

‘Yes – almost – don’t know – ‘ I gasped.

A big hand pressed hard across the small of my back, his other hand still inside me. ‘How about now?’

I struggled between his hard hand and his hard thighs, suddenly galvanized. ‘Yes!’

His hand withdrew from my cunt. The other hand still held me firmly against his knee. ‘And now?’

I collapsed writhing over his lap, and my breath sobbed out of me. ‘Yes, but I need – please – ‘

‘No.’ His wet hand smacked down on me, a jarring blow. The other still held me firmly to his thighs. More blows, a rhythm of them now, and I was shaken, helpless, mindless. I was beyond pain, pushed beyond any familiar threshold. Further, further, but no trajectory, no end….

The hand stopped, cupped tight and hot over spicy flesh. His voice.

‘Would you come, girl? If I kept going?’

I was gulping for air. His voice echoed through my head, gradually coalescing into something that had meaning. It was a question. He wanted an answer. Slowly I shook my head, whispered, ‘No.’

He sat me up again, looking pleased. ‘Good. You can come easily if you’re getting direct contact with your clit. Or if you’re held down. Even quicker if it’s both. Otherwise it’s not so easy, is it?’

‘No….’ Unconsciously I was rubbing my face against his chest, then my breasts, my belly….

He set me on my feet and walked past me toward the bathroom. My hand went to my cunt. I’d never felt myself so wet. Along my slit my fingers slid and stroked, and I closed my eyes for just a moment. I was so close; if only he’d kept his hand in me…that hand….

His hand was on my wrist, pulling it firmly up behind my back.

‘Bad girl.’

I whimpered.

His voice close behind me. ‘You didn’t waste any time, did you? Didn’t I say no?’ Eyes under gathered brows searched my face. ‘But you’re not listening.’

An explosive smack on my ass. I gasped and startled, and there were a thousand fingers on every nerve, and my lungs were reaching for air. I was starting to sink with the heavy weight of flesh engorging….

A deep laugh. My glassy eyes looked up; caught his amused glint. ‘I forgot,’ he said. ‘Fuel to the fire. Let’s try another approach.’ He hauled me into the bathroom, stood me in the tub, took the shower head off its hook and sprayed me with cold water. I squealed and shifted frantically to lessen the impact of the spray, without success. The water was getting colder and colder, and I was thoroughly aware and conscious now. He aimed it in a steady stream at my crotch and said, ‘Well?’

Shuddering, pressing my legs together, I apologized for my disobedience, promised to do better in future.

‘I think you’d better,’ he said. ‘Now, spread your legs wide and lift your arms.’ I cringed. Slowly I shifted my feet, unclenched my tight hold on my torso and lifted my arms high. I winced as the spray played over my unprotected breasts and underarms, shook as the icy water slid over my shoulders and down my spine. Gasping and shuddering, I apologized for my disobedience, and I thanked him. At last he turned it off. I was shaking uncontrollably, but I kept my arms where they were until he took hold of them and helped me out. He toweled me briskly, but brought me naked and still cold back into the bedroom.

‘All right,’ he said, sitting in a chair, ‘it’s time to get your mind off your own needs, woman. On your knees.’

All at once I flushed with shame; I’d hardly thought about his pleasure in the desperate need to reach for my own. What kind of useless slave did that? Dropping to my knees, I tried my fervent best to make up for lost time.

He had me lick and stroke him from the feet up, using my mouth, my face, my tits, my hair. His orders, his hands, controlled me minutely, and I tried to ignore the heat that the cold water had only concentrated nearer my core, the heat that was rising again with every taste of him on my tongue, each sensation of his hard grip in my hair, on my wrists.

He made me go slower and slower toward the end, and I could feel his tension rise, until at last he had me release his penis from my mouth and give it one long, slow stroke of my tongue. A groan – how I loved that sound! – and the semen spilled from his cock, one spurt, another, and I licked it up as it slid down the sides, licked it from my lips where it fell. At last he leaned over me and kissed my forehead. ‘Good girl.’

My heart wanted to jump right out of my chest and nestle in his arms. I pressed my cheek to his belly and we stayed like that for a while, my arms round his hips, his hand stroking my hair. At last he tipped my head back and examined my face, touched my nipples and watched my breathing accelerate. ‘What have you learned, little girl?’

I closed my eyes for a moment. His fingers were gently flicking the rings. The lust that had made a strategic retreat ambushed me again. I spoke in a light voice over shallow breathing. ‘I’ve learned…that it’s your pleasure that matters, sir, not mine.’

‘That’s right. What else?’

I tried a deeper breath. ‘You decide if I come or not. And – and I’m not to touch myself if you say no.’

‘You’re not to touch yourself at all unless I say you can. The minimum to keep yourself clean; that’s it.’ He reached down and grabbed my cunt in his whole hand. My groan rose in pitch, up to a high, breathless whine. He stared at me, so close that I could see all the flecks of darkness in his eyes.

The grip tightened. ‘This belongs to me,’ he said. ‘I decide how it’s used, what it feels. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,’ I breathed.

He made me get dressed and he took me home. All the way there he sang behind the wheel, blues songs about a woman’s jelly roll. I couldn’t help laughing, though I was so horny I could have climbed the gearshift. I caught myself actually eying the thing.

When we got home he put me to bed, letting me wear a nightgown, I think for the pleasure of drawing back the covers and lifting it to look at my pussy. He drew a long finger through the saturated curls, slid it gently into me and watched me writhe around it. Then he leaned down and kissed my pubis gently. I was beside myself, feeling the heat and magnetism of his mouth, straining toward it. He sat up and his eyes raked my body, from splayed legs to soaked crotch, from stiff nipples poking through thin material, to flushed face. Then he gently pulled the gown down and covered me up again.

‘Be a good girl. I’ll see you Thursday.’ He turned out the light and was gone.

I could have howled. Actually I think I did howl, and I twisted onto my belly and heaved convulsively against the mattress. Oh, god, no! Forbidden.

I buried my hands under the pillow, curled up on my side and squeezed my eyes shut.

So close. I was so close. He’d tormented me for hours, and in the end had left me like this. How could he? I had to come. I’d never sleep like this.

And how would he know, one way or the other? My hand slid down, encountered the waist chain, stopped.

He’d know. He’d know because it would be all over my face. Or my voice would crack with it. He’d know because he’d ask and I wouldn’t be able to lie to him.

I had to obey him. I had to. I didn’t own my body any more. It belonged to him. I had to wait. How could I even consider disobeying him? Guilt suddenly slapped me across the face and I wanted to cry.

But I wasn’t even going to see him the next day. He was only going to phone, because I had work to do. Oh, god, I’d never make it that long.

Not fair! He got to come, I thought rebelliously, twice that evening as I recalled. He got exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it, and then he left me like this – .

Of course it wasn’t fair. He could give or withhold whatever, whenever.

It wasn’t supposed to be fair. My breathing quickened. I was getting even more desperate, thinking about this, and I groaned into my pillow. One touch…oh, god, I needed…. My hand slipped down, under my nightgown.

No! No. Not allowed. I felt for the chain and clutched it hard. My thighs rubbed convulsively against each other.

I hadn’t bargained for this. In all my passionate need to be property I hadn’t anticipated this. Being left on my own on the edge of orgasm with only his command to stop me. Not fair! He should have tied me down. Not fair to test me like this.

I slept in fits and starts, dreaming mostly of being late and unable to find my destination and at the same time secretly, excruciatingly aroused. I was in an office building, trying to reach something like the 125th floor, travelling in an arthritic elevator that stopped at every floor. I was frustrated and afraid because I was horribly late, but then it occurred to me that it gave me time to masturbate before I reached my destination. I lifted my dress and began touching myself, but I had to stop every time someone got on, start again when they got off. Just as I was on the verge of orgasm the elevator jerked and I woke with a start, my heart pounding. My hand was still on the chain, and I lay in a sweat of relief and frustration.

In dream after dream the late and horny themes continued. I kept waking in a panic to find my hand safely outside the danger zone.

When I yanked myself out of sleep the next morning I had no time to think or introspect about my night. I had forgotten to set my alarm, and I was late. The day took on a déjà vu quality: I ran to a succession of classes and meetings, more or less late for all of them, frustrated and snagged and stumbling on hurdles of secret, insidious lust. I thought my mind would clear as the day went on, but it grew worse, if anything. I continued out of sync, clumsy and distracted. I forgot about a room change and lost twenty minutes going to the wrong building. I mislaid a pile of journal articles and had to go back and search for them, while time ticked on. In the end I found them in my bag. I was hopeless in seminars, unable to think. And that night I had to write a take-home exam on social issues in information technology. I’d never make it.

***

‘Where are you going?’ Val demanded. ‘I thought you said the place was on King.’

‘Sorry.’ Anders looked over his shoulder and executed a tricky U-turn.

‘I seem to be on automatic pilot.’

She gave him a narrow look. ‘What’s with you?’

‘What? Nothing.’ He edged past a left-turning car and was silent for a few blocks. Finally he said, ‘I experimented a little last night. I’m waiting for the results.”

“Experimented how?’

He gave her the barest outline, including how the night had ended. Val whistled. ‘You mean bastard. I didn’t know you’d reached such heights of evil. That must have been fun.’

‘It was.’

‘So what are you so mad about?’

‘I’m not – I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s managed to hold off, that’s all.’

‘Oh, well,’ Val said, settling back comfortably into her seat. ‘If she did, all the more power for you. If she didn’t, you get to punish her. Once you wring the truth out of her. Either way you win.’

‘I know.’

‘But?’

‘Look, what did it come to? I spend the evening teasing the hell out of her. I toy with her, turn her inside out – but where are we now? I’m here and she’s wherever she is. I don’t know what she’s doing.’ He had a vision of her outside the circle of his reach, teasingly just beyond his grasp. His hands gripped the steering wheel. ‘She could have come a hundred times by now,’

he said between his teeth. ‘This is driving me fucking crazy.’

‘Jesus. I thought I was supposed to be the one with no patience. You’ll just have to wait. Give the girl some space and see if she passes the test.’

‘Yeah. Only I don’t want to test her. I want to run her. In real time.’

‘You are one controlling son of a bitch.’

At the customer’s condo Val began installing a ceiling fan and track lighting, while Anders measured space for cupboards. He forced himself to pay attention; mistakes in this kind of job cost too much. Then he had to work out designs with the owner, and come up with ways to get the most out of the cramped space. That was one part of the job he liked best, and it kept him focused.

But once he had done the math and figured out the materials and done the ordering, his mind was back with Maia. Following her up St. George Street, watching her in and out of Robarts Library. Who was she with? What was she up to? Had she cooled down? Or had she defied him, made herself come after he left last night? If so she’d be spending the day consumed with guilt and apprehension. Had she held out half the day, then ducked into a washroom cubicle to masturbate? He could see her, her face against the cold metal of the stall, eyes squeezed shut. Why the vision of her standing up? Of course. Because she’d been standing last night when he’d caught her.

He wanted to grab her, slap her hard, tie her hands to the stall and whip her, to hell with the noise…. He wanted her in his hands, now!

It was mid-afternoon by the time they put the ladder and the tools back in the truck and headed west. The rest of the crew was working on a restaurant renovation on Roncesvalles. ‘Still obsessing, huh?’ said Val.

He stared straight ahead, then shrugged irritably. ‘Yeah. Controlling bastard doesn’t begin to describe it. Why the fuck I feel this way I don’t know.’

‘Couldn’t say. Usually you act as though the world is a reno for which you hold all the tools.’

‘Do I?’ He grimaced. ‘I’ve been missing a few from time to time, then.’

‘Yeah, like when?’ He didn’t answer. ‘You make things go your way, Thygesen. I’ve never seen anyone better at it.’ She was silent for a minute or two. ‘What are you talking about, that homeless thing that got turned down?

That’s politics, bucko, get used to it. Or take it out of Maia’s hide; whatever.’

Anders frowned, sorry he’d said anything. She gave him a sidelong look.

‘Not the homeless thing.’ He didn’t answer. ‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘I guess even you can’t nail everything down.’

‘Yeah, I’m aware of that.’ A corrosive trickle threaded its way through familiar channels. Damn Val! He gave his thoughts a practiced twist, and was instantly back with Maia. Traffic was down to a slow crawl. He swung into an unfamiliar side street and cursed at the sight of speed bumps. A long one-way street and no escape. Slowing, he began easing over them, so gently that the pipes and tools in the back didn’t even clink. The friction was all in his head. Suddenly he was fed up with the fervid, repetitive thoughts, sick of himself.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘if you look at all this from some kind of normal perspective, what the hell am I doing? Look at me. I need to know her every move, don’t trust her for a minute, don’t let her use her own body as she likes. I want to know who she’s with and where she goes. That kind of thing’s usually the unlovely lead-up to a restraining order. How would anyone know I’m not some crazy stalker?’ And he hadn’t even included holding her down and beating her.

‘Oh, bullshit,’ said Val.

‘I was like this with Janice. Sometimes. It was what broke us up in the long run. I never could be satisfied with the level of control she was willing to give me.”

“Maia’s not Janice. As you are perfectly aware.’

Anders went on as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘And you know, most other doms seem to be happy with power that’s basically psychological. Promises, negotiations, a dominant/submissive quid pro quo. Some blow jobs and a St.

Andrew’s cross whipping on Saturday night. That feels like nothing but games to me, but is it?’

Val rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Don’t go by me, I love games.’ Evidently his question had been rhetorical. ‘Or am I missing something? Am I just lacking the – the what? The subtlety and sophistication, to appreciate dominance by force of will, hardware optional?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Thygesen. Whatever turns your crank. If you want to chain your woman to the wall, do it.’

‘Thanks, I probably will.’ Anders edged the truck around a corner onto Queen and swore again, finding himself in traffic that was at a complete standstill. He threw up his hands in resignation, folded long arms over the steering wheel and stared through the windshield for a while before he spoke again. ‘I have to admit, it’s been fun controlling Maia without restraints.

More fun than I expected. It’s challenging, seeing how far I can go that way, watching the pattern develop.’

‘Oh. So you might have a bit of class after all? Not just a simple-minded thug?’

‘Nah, I’m simple enough. Lately I keep flashing on hardware, nothing but hardware, and her in it. I play with the possibilities whenever I’m doing something routine; you know, driving, laying tiles, waiting in line to pay for something. And Home Depot’s a killer, all that stuff usable in ways it wasn’t intended for.’

Val cracked up. ‘We spend half our lives in hardware stores! You’re obviously in the right line of work.’ She laughed at him until his face fell back into its preoccupied lines, and then she stopped. ‘You’re not a stalker, you know. You’re not abusing her.”

“I know.’

‘You’ve got the girl’s consent. More than consent. She’s begging to be taken over.’

He was silent for a while. ‘You know what I used to do? Read about real abusers in the paper. Books, too. So I could watch for the edge. So I could be sure I wasn’t one of them.”

“What edge? It’s qualitatively different, not just a difference of degree.

You know that as well as I do.”

“Yes.”

“What, do you see some resemblance? That isn’t superficial, I mean.’

‘No. I understand who she really is. I have a care for her well-being. For the real Maia, not some projection of my own deficiencies.’

‘All right. So cut the crap.’

He got the truck moving again. ‘I’m just provoking myself. Over-dramatizing. Annoying myself. Something I do rather well when I’m on edge. Sorry.’

He found a clear bit of road and moved down it, no one on his front bumper for once. ‘But it’s also no use pretending that I don’t need what I need. Which is Maia, in my hands, right now. If I drop you off at the restaurant, would you supervise the cleanup? I have to get downtown.’

***

Eyes down, I left my last class and sidled through the crowds to the door. As I had all day I avoided everyone, ducking around a cluster with Po Ling in the middle of it, dodging her eagle eye. I’d already had to shake my head at her and two others who’d asked if something was wrong. I’d also had to dodge some oncoming males, including one I barely knew who accompanied me down the hall with an arm around me and pretended it was a joke. What the hell signals was I giving out? Not hard to guess.

I still could think of very little but the sensations of the day before, of Anders’ hard hands driving me up the stairs, of the pain and burn as he struck me. The endless arousal felt like a crazy and unstable weight, balanced precariously atop a freight of misery and guilt over one screw-up after another. Plus the certainty of upcoming failure. Would I fail the exam, or fail Anders? Either way, both.

I walked out the door and there he was. A vision, straight out of my needy and possibly hallucinatory brain. Propped against a truck that glowed like ruddy sunset against the thin grey day. His jacket was open over a black t-shirt, though a scalpel wind was slicing up from the lake. I crossed the sidewalk to him like a sleepwalker heading for trouble, my feverish face cooling in the wind.

He had a good look at me and put a hand on my arm. Not a mirage after all, apparently. I tried not to squirm as he opened the door to the truck and watched me get in. He went round to the driver’s seat.

‘You managed, didn’t you?’

‘Sir?’

‘You managed not to come.’

‘Yes.’ Should I tell him how close a call it had been?

‘That’s my good girl.’ He squeezed my knee, and I took a shuddering breath. ‘But you’ve had a rough day.’

‘It was – I’m sorry, sir – I was late all day – I kept messing up – ‘ He listened to the details, then ran a finger along my thigh and watched me react.

‘Have you been like this all day?’

‘All night, all day…’ I whispered.

‘And you have work to do tonight.’ He sat back. ‘All right. Although you’ve managed to keep your hand out of your cunt, you haven’t been a very good girl otherwise, have you?’

I winced, dropped my eyes. ‘No, sir.”

“So I don’t think I’ll be particularly nice about this. Buckle up.’

Apprehensive, I watched to see where we were going. North, so not to his place, nor to mine. Not a word to enlighten me. He drove only as far as mid-town off Yonge, and turned into a parking garage. The truck spiraled up several levels, then stopped in a far, mostly empty corner.

‘Okay,’ he said, turning off the ignition. ‘I saw you looking at the gear shift last night. So I cleaned it up for you. Get to it.’

I stared at him, my mind going utterly blank. He unbuckled my seatbelt.

‘Come on, girl. You’ve got – let’s see – five minutes. If you can’t do it in that time you’re out of luck. Take off your panties.’

I felt my chest and then my face start to burn, right up to the roots of my hair. I stared at the gearshift, then back at him. He meant it. Oh, god, he meant it. He really wanted me to do it. I couldn’t bear it. I could hardly wait.

I couldn’t bear it.

My brain could have stayed in that loop for hours. My body bypassed it and just did what it was told. I raised myself up a little and slid my panties off, turned myself around and stood awkwardly, butt against the dashboard, leaning over the seat. He shifted to one side and helped me position myself over the knob. I lowered myself and gasped as my cunt lips splayed over the black plastic. My legs were trembling. He raised the front of my dress so he could see, and looked at his watch.

‘You’ve only got four minutes left. Better move.’ My shaking hands were braced, one on the seat, the other on his shoulder, and I began to rock my pelvis. My wet flesh slid and pressed, and I bit my lip and shuddered.

‘Raise your head, look at me.’ He pushed the hair back from my face and I looked at him through the haze. ‘This is how bad girls get to come,’ he said. ‘When they get to come at all. Isn’t that right?’

‘Ah – ah – yes, sir –’

My cunt opened around the knob, almost big enough to take it inside of me, and I groaned and fucked myself on it gently before pulling back. Then my clit pressed itself against the plastic. I stared at him: my lover, my tormentor. I was very close; it hadn’t taken much. The hot smell of my arousal filled the cab.

His head swiveled, fast, and then back. ‘Get down, girl.’ He was laughing under his breath as he pushed me off the gearshift. Footsteps coming our way. Huddled sideways on the seat, skirt down, my breath sobbed in and out of me. Between my legs a hot, painful throbbing. So close…. Anders wrapped the long fingers of one hand round both my wrists, and squeezed. A couple passed behind us, weighed down with something large, directing each other. They loaded up a van only a few spaces away, taking their time. At last they started up and drove away. I looked up at him in agony, tears in my eyes.

‘Please…please, sir….”

“You’d like to keep going, would you?”

“Yes!’

‘All right. That interruption stopped the clock. You’ve still got a minute or so left. Make the most of it.’

I positioned myself and began again, faster this time, moving urgently, feeling the seconds ticking down, aware of him watching my lewd, humiliating performance. Terrified he’d make me stop. And then suddenly at my centre there was a flash, like a thunderstorm in fast forward, billows of it, ecstatic, extreme, agonizing. I screamed in a hard whisper, shoved my wet flesh against the knob, released and then shoved forward harder, shaking and crying.

When I began to sag he moved me gently off the gearshift and down to the truck floor, where I huddled, getting my breath.

His thumb circled under my eyes, wiping away tears. I kissed his hand, and we sat there in silence for a minute or two.

‘Well?’ he said.

What was my response supposed to be? Had I just been punished or rewarded? Evidently this was how bad girls got to come, so I was still a bad girl, though an intensely grateful one. I pressed his hand to my face. ‘Thank you, sir…I’m sorry I was bad…thank you….”

“You didn’t deserve to come, under the circumstances. I expect you to function properly in the future, horny or not.’ I swallowed some tears. ‘I’ll try, sir.’

‘But as you’re new at this I gave you a break.’ He sat back. ‘Now, look at this, girl. I can’t use the gearshift in this condition.’

I looked up at him. Then I swiped at the tears on my face, raised my head to the gearshift and began to lick it clean.

When I was done he shifted to the passenger side and opened his fly.

There was no time limit on his pleasure; he made me suck him for a long, long time. And this was right, like some piece of the natural order; as much a given as the laws of physics.

That night for some reason I thought about my first year Chaucer course, and Patient Griselda, a peasant woman married to a lord who tested her cruelly. ‘I am thine owen thing; werketh after thy will,’ she had said.

The story didn’t quite fit the bill (I could trust Anders not to become a psychopathic asshole like the Marquis), but the words rang true. I was Anders’ own thing, and whatever he wanted he could do.

***

>This sounds not a mistake at all, in fact very hot. And she seems to be shaping well. What is your difficulty?

>Too close to failure; that’s the difficulty. I pushed her out to the edge and left her to her own resources, pushed her too far. She had nothing left to function with. That can’t last. Which puts my control at risk. Which neither of us can tolerate.

>Not every woman can be controlled in this way; you are lucky.

>I’m more than lucky, but she was right on the verge. Willpower alone isn’t going to do it. I’ll have to ease back a little for now and look at more strategies to manage her. What is the word on that German guy; any good?

>Tante Margit heard from Svend finally; he is in Brighton, crewing on some friend’s sailboat.

>That figures. I haven’t heard from him since that postcard from Dublin. He told my mother he’d email from internet cafes; he didn’t tell her he’d do it once in six months. Drives her crazy.

>It’s an elder brother thing, I think.

>Bullshit my friend. You joke about Mormor, but of all her grandchildren you are the one who is cast most in that mold. The high, shall we say rigid standards, the wilful self-reliance that gives only and will not take, these are the warp and weft of her personality. Of yours, at least the weft; the warp is kink, I suppose.

>Uh huh.

>Has Ria made up her mind about Chicago?

>She will come, she says, but not until six months to finish the fisherwoman documentary. Including editing, promotion and all. I could not persuade her that Lake Michigan would stand in for the North Sea. And all her support is here and not enough money to go back and forth. When it is done she will come.

>Too bad, Karl. But better than nothing.

>Unless some slave wins her heart. We are never jealous but I can feel the danger.

>I know what you mean. Hell, I’m uneasy when my girl is five kilometres away. Though that’s a little different.

>Get a good phone plan, and definitely a webcam. You’ll share your exploits like always. I know; write your thesis on the influence of network technology on long-distance kinky relationships, using lots of personal examples. That should get you tenure.

***

The next evening Anders showed up at Maia’s door with fiddle in hand and a tape measure in his pocket. He’d promised (or threatened) a little theory lesson way back at the folk club. But first he stripped her and measured her all over, keeping notes, explaining nothing. She stood still and followed his every move, eyes wide, jumping at the flick of the tape measure between her legs, on her ass.

He was much more communicative about the characteristics of various fiddle styles. With Maia naked at his feet, he demonstrated some different kinds of bowing, and showed her ornamentation and where to place the accents for, say, Cape Breton as opposed to Québécois. She picked up rapidly on the relationships, one style emerging from another, surprising him with her quick comprehension.

‘I know some theory,’ she admitted shyly.

‘You took music?’

‘Piano lessons. Just for a year. I was hopeless at it. Theory was the only part I could do.”

“Well, you’ve got a good ear,’ he said. ‘Listen, now.’

He illustrated some more, using Acadian and Cajun, Irish and Newfoundland. Then he confused her with some rather odd Scandinavian pieces.

When he moved from phrases to full-length songs there was a tap at the door. Maia scooped up her clothes and ran for the bathroom.

The Silvas stood in the doorway with smiles on their faces, asking to come in and listen. Maia emerged, shyly arranged chairs, offered tea, and whisked the measuring tape into a drawer. Anders played a few bars of this and that, traded friendly remarks and fished around for what they might like to hear. Mr. Silva broke into an old folk song from his youth, his wife nodding vigorously and joining in on the chorus; Anders improvised an accompaniment. Then another song, and another. Mrs. Silva went downstairs and returned with wine and sweet rice pudding. In between songs they discussed the construction business and Azores cuisine.

Mrs. Silva turned to Maia and took her small wrist in a heavy, friendly grip. ‘You come downstairs tomorrow,’ she insisted; ‘I teach you sopa de couves. A very good soup, and is easy; you will see. You have to feed up this man here, yes?’ She turned to Anders for support; she’d been trying to get Maia into her kitchen for a year.

He glanced at Maia’s embarrassed face, already shaking a negative. The girl seemed to be attracting instructors today. He wouldn’t have minded a cooking lesson himself, but he was busy. If Maia hadn’t been so busy herself he would have made her do it just to tease her.

‘She has so much schoolwork, poor girl,’ he said. ‘Her professors won’t take soup instead of assignments. Maybe they should, eh? But tell me, what goes into that soup, kale? And sausage? Is it like caldo verde?’

Maia’s wrist was released as gestures became necessary. Anders continued deftly diverting the landlady’s attention to himself, and at last she seemed to accept with some puzzlement that it was he, not Maia, who was the cook. By the time he went home, Anders had been provided with half a coconut cake, the recipe for sopa de couves, and an excellent deal on floor tiles.

***

I slipped into a phone booth, dialled.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s me, sir,’ I murmured.

‘What’s up?’

‘Please, could I skip my next class? Just this once? It’s a guest speaker, I’ve heard the lecture before. I need the time to get hold of something on censorship ethics.’

Anders interrogated me on how I would use the time, and on the existence of past notes on the guest speaker’s lecture, before he would give permission.

I ran for the library. In the past I would have skipped the class and wasted the time, but now I knew I’d better have something major to show. I foraged for material with a sharpness born of necessity, cursing at the lineup for the photocopiers. Then I ran for home. I had to get the morning’s notes typed up, organize the censorship information, fix those database errors….

At six thirty I came around the corner with a basket full of clean laundry in my arms, saw the truck and froze. Froze solid, like a wicked troll caught in the sunlight. Anders was early. He got out of the truck and stood there looking at me. The sun was directly behind him; I couldn’t see his expression, but I could imagine it. I could picture myself through his eyes, as if this were a movie and they’d switched to Camera B. Me, wearing jeans and an old sweatshirt. Guilt incarnate. A gust of wind blew last year’s leaves along the ground toward me. I felt a momentary impulse to fling down the laundry and run like hell.

He waited. My feet took me over to him without my active cooperation, step by slow, inexorable step. He relieved me of my basket and nodded toward the house. Numbly I climbed the stairs, opened the door, closed it behind him.

‘On your knees. Strip.’ His voice was deep, even, and dark as a dungeon. I bared my upper body first, but had some trouble getting the jeans b

over my knees. The panties came off with them. He picked the jeans up by one belt loop and dangled them in front of me. ‘Well?’ My throat like dry leaves. ‘I’m sorry sir. I had no more clean clothes, and….’ I trailed off. We both knew I was supposed to have done my laundry on Sunday. It was now Tuesday. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

‘What were you thinking when you put these on?’ There was the accent. Oh, god…. ‘I was in a hurry and – and I wasn’t thinking at all, really.’

‘Yes, you were. You were thinking that I wouldn’t find out.’ I winced, and looked down at the floor. ‘Which you thought would make it all right.

To do what I’d told you not to do. Isn’t that right?’

I started to shake my head, but stopped when I thought of being punished for lying, on top of my other sins. I nodded.

‘How many times have you done this?’ The quiet voice was ominous.

‘I haven’t before, I haven’t, honestly, it was just because I had no clean dresses, I had to wash them, two are at the cleaners….’ I was babbling now, and starting to cry.

‘That’s enough,’ he said, sounding disgusted. ‘Crawl over there.’ I obeyed his gesture, crawling into the corner by the bathroom door, then knelt up when I was told and shuffled forward.

‘I want your knees, tits and face right up against the wall. Hands behind your back. Now think about what you’ve done.’ I pressed myself into the cold surfaces, shivering.

He walked away, rummaged under the kitchen sink, went into my bedroom. I heard drawers opening and closing. The closet door slid on its track. Hangers clanged. In a few minutes he was back, carrying something in a garbage bag; I heard it drop next to the door. He went past me into the bathroom and there was the sound of cupboard doors. Then he was moving around the living room.

I tried to think about what I had done, but his anger made me so wretched that my brain’s rational operations were simply suspended. I knelt there for ages, head down, listening. When would he let me up? I could hear my laptop starting up, the mouse clicking.

My bare ass was on display as he’d intended; flesh cringing. He was really going to hurt me this time. My only option now was obey, and try not to provoke more punishment than I already deserved. Shame and apprehension were sawing around inside me, leaving glittering particles of lust in their wake, and a small, abrasive grain of defensive resentment.

Humiliation…. My visual field was confined to a dim tunnel ending at my knees. I wanted to shift my weight, straighten my back. And it seemed to me suddenly that any normal person would straighten their back if they wanted to. Surely I could do a little thing like that? For that matter, I could get up, put my clothes on, wear what I liked. Do my chores when I felt like it. To do those things I would have to defy the man behind me. I would have to have the gall to look him in the eye, and tell him – tell him –

Tell him what? That he was mistaken; I didn’t belong to him after all? I wasn’t supposed to lie to him. Tears welled. My eyelids moved to dislodge them. The rest of me stayed where it was put.

What had I been thinking? It hadn’t seemed like any great harm, a thoughtless bit of risk. An impulse. But to my shame I knew that at some level I had felt exactly as he had said, that I could get away with being naughty as long as he never found out. What kind of stupid game was I playing?

His anger and disgust were churning around in my guts. I’d planned to lie to him, by omission at least. Something he’d told me never, ever to do.

Worse than disobedience. What the hell was the matter with me? I’d opened up yet another careless pit of doom for myself. The silence began to upset me even more than the upcoming punishment. Why didn’t he say anything?

Scold me, berate me, anything? He hadn’t laid a finger on me, handled me at all, smacked my ass as I deserved. I began to wish hard for pain, some step toward redemption. But contact of whatever kind would be a relief. Tears were slipping down my cheeks, into the tiny, cold, isolated world of my corner.

I heard the laptop shut down, then footsteps. ‘All right, bad girl. Crawl over here.’ His voice was loud against the silence. I turned my wet face and blinked into the light, crawled after his feet, looked up when he stopped. He glanced at me, gave me a tissue and motioned for me to use it. Then he handed me a dress, a clean one that had been in my laundry basket; it was the soft one that didn’t need ironing. I knelt up and put it on, all my antennae out and quivering for signs from him. His face was neutral, no clue there.

My bedside clock said seven-thirty; I’d been in the corner for almost an hour.

I got into stockings awkwardly, bringing one foot forward and then the other, and then slipped into the shoes he brought me. Still no contact. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, motioning me to get up. He turned out the lights, and picked up the bag by the door.

I prayed that the Silvas would not be in the front hall, and tried to walk so as not to let my breasts bounce, uncomfortably aware that I was not having much luck. Then we were outside in the dusk. It was warm for the time of year; still, the cooling air caressed my naked thighs as we crossed the sidewalk. He opened the door of the truck for me, but let me get in without help. As he turned onto College he said, ‘You know what’s in the bag, I take it.”

“Yes, sir. All my jeans and pants?’

‘And your panties. I was going to let you wear them to school until you finished, but not after this.’ I felt a bitter blush mount up into my face. ‘I know where everything is now in your apartment. If you add anything or move anything I’ll know. You’re not to buy another article of clothing; if I think you need something I’ll buy it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I preceded him into the grey brick house as into the Bastille.

The place seemed even more deconstructed that it had been the time before. There was a wall half down. Bathroom fixtures leaned at odd angles, wrapped in cardboard and tape. Before I’d taken two steps in the door I had to strip again and wait for him. He took his time. Each second stretched my nerves another click of the rack.

At last he took me to the back of the house and down some stairs to the basement, where the thick door of the front room closed with a soft swish and a thud. Silence. Soundproof, I thought. Oh, god! A sharp, prickly smell of sawdust. The room was small, clean, and almost empty; just a kitchen chair and a heavy table by the far wall. Something across the table. He picked the something up, and sat down. I stared at the short whip in his hand, and the shaking that was in all my limbs moved to my belly. He pointed at the floor. ‘Hands and knees now. To me.’

I dropped to the wooden floor and crawled on shaky limbs. Cowered at his feet.

‘Sit up. Look at me.’ I looked up: a contracted brows, eyes like slate.

He’d grown taller than ever, huge, towering. His voice was like the rumble of a train in the distance. ‘What else have you done that you haven’t told me?’

Involuntarily my eyes dropped, but the whip was under my chin now. ‘I said look at me. What else?’ The train getting closer.

‘I – I’m sorry, sir, I was supposed to study all of Sunday but – but I – I was on the net, just – just wasting time.’

‘Yes, I could tell from your browser. Flipping through Amazon. No wonder you didn’t get your laundry done.’ He leaned back. ‘And you didn’t tell me.’ The train going through a tunnel, quieter but about to roar into the station any minute now.

‘No, sir.’ My voice sounded shrill.

‘Since I can’t trust you to be honest, I’ve put a child minder on there. I’ll be able to tell from now what sites you’ve been on and for how long. What else?’

I set aside the humiliation of ‘child minder’ for the time being, and thought frantically about what else I might have done wrong. I had been feeling guilty about Sunday; it was almost a relief to tell him, but nothing else came to mind.

‘I – I can’t think of anything else, sir.’

He looked at me a long moment. ‘All right. Turn around.’ I felt my hands pulled behind me and quickly tied with a strap of some sort. I started to breathe very hard – fear, arousal, who knows? Real bondage at last, and I was too scared to savour it. A moment later there was a leather collar around my throat. A click, and a leash was clipped to the ring in front. The sound of my breathing and my heart’s pounding seemed to reverberate off the walls.

A yank on the leash startled me; I got up as bidden. A second later the top half of me was face down over the table, the leash stretched under my face. I craned my neck and saw him crouched down, fastening the leash somewhere out of sight. I experimented with raising my head, and found I couldn’t.

Then he was behind me. My hands twisted helplessly, and I could hear a little whimper rising in my throat.

‘Frightened, bad girl?’ came the low, accented voice from behind me.

I nodded in an attenuated way and whispered, ‘Yes, sir.’

There was a pause that went on just long enough for my fear to edge into panic. Then the sound of something slicing through the air and a crack, and pain, pain, pain. A second, and then a third. I could feel my cries against the collar at my throat.

‘Why are you being punished, girl?’

That voice! The train roaring into the station at last. I tried to get my breath, and another blow forced a wail out of me. ‘Why?’ he demanded harshly

I managed a confused enumeration of my recent sins, wailing and then sobbing away about jeans, laundry, time wasted, while the blows fell and my body writhed helplessly. ‘What else?’

He hit a spot for a second time and I screamed, and tears streamed from my eyes. I couldn’t think at all. How could I answer him when all I could think of was the pain and the next blow coming?

But the time in the corner came to my aid, all that time stewing in my pit of guilt and shame. ‘I didn’t tell you…and I thought…if you didn’t find out…’ Another blow, another. They snatched away my breath, and the whip fell twice more before I could force out, ‘I thought it wouldn’t matter! Aah!

Please, sir, please, I’m sorry!’

‘You thought it wouldn’t matter,’ he growled. A harder stripe.

‘Disobedience. Deceit, concealment. Games.’ The whip fell again, and I lost it; lost all connection to mind, past, future; there was just the eternal, dreadful now, my existence as a bad girl sealed in anguish. When at last he stopped he stroked the whip threateningly across my burning ass. ‘Well, girl?’

Please, no more! No more! Out of my mouth spilled apologies, promises, stumbling pleas for mercy. But the voice and the whip weren’t satisfied; still they threatened. What now? Be grateful, stupid girl! I choked out my thanks for the punishment. As I said the words I knew I actually meant them, and something about this made tears burst forth from me again.

Then he was there in front of me, releasing the leash, using it to turn me off the table and onto my knees between his legs. I got no chance to see if he had forgiven me, or obey my impulse to throw myself at his feet. He held the leash very short with one hand, and thrust his cock into my mouth with the other. This time he showed no patience with my mistakes. My sore ass was smacked several times, till I was sucking and sobbing simultaneously.

He led me upstairs to the kitchen after that without a word, except, ‘Into that corner, bad girl,’ and a gesture to the far wall behind the table. I limped stiffly over and paused a moment. Should I kneel? He hadn’t told me to. I pressed myself into the corner, standing, feeling my flesh cringe in case another blow was coming. Again my ass was on display, but now it throbbed and I could feel the air moving over each painful welt. I was back in the dimness, still miserably in disgrace.

***

Anders stood and let his eyes absorb every bit of light the little figure reflected. How lovely, the round swell of red buttocks, the small hands above them crossed and bound, the head sinking under its weight of penitence. Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie. But Robbie Burns’ mouse had had the freedom to run for it; not this one.

Anders set about heating up some the leftover sopa de couves for dinner. Fortunately it was thick stuff, even better reheated; he was ravenous.

Next time he’d make her wait for her punishment until he got some food into him. He set his bowl where he could watch his cowering woman and examine his handiwork. He could still feel the whip in his hand, hear her breathless pleading.

Beneath the adrenalin running through him, the wonder, the almost constant arousal, there was something more. A sense of balance, an alignment of forces. Or perhaps something like an unexpected, perfect chord. It was a harmony that had to do with the sight of her in that corner.

What was it?

Something about domesticity. It came to him that he’d never felt so at home before, not in the apartment he’d shared with Janice, not in Copenhagen as a child, not anywhere. This half finished kitchen with sawdust on the floor felt like home at this moment, because the woman who shared it did so absolutely on his terms.

Perhaps a man, too long a bachelor, just sitting down at his table after his honeymoon and gazing at his bride with delight, would feel as Anders felt at that moment. Life was the way it ought to be. This was how he was meant to live.

Did he really come across as someone who thought he had all the tools for all the renos of the world? Surely he’d got past that. World dictator, benevolent or otherwise, was not on his ambition list, his siblings’

impressions notwithstanding. What he had was a fetish for being an absolute ruler in his domestic life. All he needed to satisfy that was one woman to own, handle and control, completely and absolutely. And now it seemed he had her. His forebears with their dreary portents could march straight into the North Sea and drown.

Was he controlling his woman because he felt ineffectual elsewhere?

Taking his frustration out on her hide, as Val had snidely suggested? One of those assholes? He considered this, tore some bread, stirred his soup meditatively.

No. His need for this went too far back. Back to childhood, when the world had been a fine place, his for the taking. Maia might get it worse on a bad day, but that was just one of a slave’s functions. As long as he was always in control of himself as well as her. Something that went without saying.

Hunger satisfied, Anders took up the little Japanese maple sapling he had established in a bonsai pot, and began the gentle, painstaking process of wiring its limbs. From time to time he raised his eyes to follow the smooth curve of his woman’s hips, the dark cleft between the red cheeks, the bowed shoulders. Wire slid slowly through his fingers; he wound it round slender branches, visualizing the shape they would take as he trained and restricted and pared them back, the eventual beauty of the little living artwork that it would be. He was peripherally aware of the slight jump of the woman’s flesh at the sound of the wire cutters.

At last, setting the pot and its paraphernalia aside, Anders got up and went to the corner, stroked Maia’s back and took hold of the leash, still dangling between her breasts. She turned toward him, her eyes blinking in the light, traces of tears still on her cheeks. Her glance ran over the bonsai, returned to his face. Without speaking he led her over to his chair and had her kneel and be fed. She was still looking at him with a face full of shame and distress. ‘Punishment’s over, sweetheart,’ he said, and she laid her head in his lap. He felt rather than heard a last little sob, lifted her chin and briskly spooned more food into her mouth.

Then he released her and dressed her and drove her home through the dark streets. Contentment was meandering through him; a slow, sweet tune.

In front of her house he turned to her, asked the usual questions. She shook her drooping head, and then put her face into her hands. For a moment, the notes inside Anders went awry. Perhaps this was it – it was more than she could take after all. Ancestral fatalism vindicated.

But he didn’t believe it. Logic insisted that it could be so, especially tonight. But his hands that had handled her, his gut knew otherwise.

‘What is it, Maia?’

She looked up, her face a little desperate in the shadowy light. ‘Those questions…,’ she said, ‘I know they’re for my safety, but….’

‘But what?’

‘But they’re about me, what I need.’

‘Yes. About you.’ He smiled slightly, knowing what was coming.

‘They’re –’ She raised her hands in frustration, ‘They feel so beside the point. You need someone who –’ She turned her face away. ‘What I need –

sir, all I need is to know is – are you still angry at me?’

He reached out and took her gently by the ear. ‘No, I’m not angry any more.’ She turned her head to touch her cheek to his hand. ‘But that doesn’t mean everything goes back to the way it was. I’ve learned more about how your naughty little mind works. I’m going to move faster to restrict what you do, since I trust you less.’

She hung her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

He took her face in both hands and kissed away its distress, kissed and licked the delicate, salty skin beneath her eyes. Then he gave her some orders for the next day, and sent her inside.