Bound to You (19 page)

Jack now moved on to Sapphire’s right foot, again warming the lotion in his hand before applying it with conscientious strokes.

‘OK, Jade, your turn. I’m very reluctant to hand him over tonight. Don’t say I never do nothing for you!’ That was something I would never have dreamed of saying to Sapphire. She’d given me the means to support myself in London, and to pursue my journalistic goals. I was nothing but grateful to her.

Sapphire shifted over on the bed and patted the mattress. ‘Up you get!’ she ordered me.

I hopped up obligingly, pulling down my skirt as I did so, so as not to reveal my stocking tops. For some reason, in front of certain clients, I became strangely coy. Sapphire saw me and laughed. ‘Oh, Jade, there’s still a bit of vanilla in you yet! I’m sure someone could be troubled to beat it out of you!’

‘I’d rather not, thanks!’ We laughed and as I lay back next to Sapphire she patted my hand affectionately.

Jack smiled at the pair of us stretched out like a couple of Persian princesses and approached the foot of the bed again. I was wearing stockings. He hesitated for a moment, unsure of what he was required, or perhaps, allowed to do.

Sapphire became aware of his stiffness and lifted her head awkwardly up off the pillow. ‘Jack, just ask Mistress Jade if you want her to remove her stockings. Or better still,’ she added slyly, ‘ask her permission to remove them.’

‘Mistress Jade, what would you prefer?’ he asked me.

‘Oh, I don’t care,’ I said breezily, then thought better of it. That wasn’t very assertive. ‘Remove my stockings, Jack. But be careful not to ladder them. They’re new on.’ Sapphire and I got through stockings like most women got through tissues and chewing gum.

Jack gingerly extended his hands up to the lace tops. Then, with his fingers whispering about my thighs, he removed first one stocking and then the other. I started at his touch. Despite the well-heated bedroom, I could feel myself goose-pimpling.

Suddenly, I felt Sapphire stiffen beside me. She flicked her head over to face me. ‘What’s wrong, Jade, you’re not cold are you?’ I turned my head in her direction, but couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze. ‘A bit,’ I lied. Any other time I would have given Sapphire a knowing look or mouthed ‘HOT!’ to her. But something told me I couldn’t possibly let her know that Jack removing my stockings had turned me on.

Jack took my right foot in both hands and ran his thumbs up the centre of my sole, all the while watching my face for a pleasurable reaction. I had never had a professional foot massage, but I couldn’t imagine any masseuse surpassing his sensual strokes, his hypnotic technique. I watched as the muscles all the way along his fingers, wrists, forearms, biceps, and finally his naked chest tightened in a bid to ease my tension.

Sapphire turned her head to face the ceiling again and lay there in tranquil repose. She was trying to take a catnap. When Jack left, we literally had a five-minute turnaround before the next client turned up.

‘You have truly beautiful feet, Mistress,’ Jack murmured.

‘Not as beautiful as mine, of course!’ Sapphire tinkled, still with her eyes closed. It may have sounded like a joke to Jack, but there was an uncharacteristically snide hint of competitiveness in her remark. Sapphire was never like this with me. Had I done something to offend her without realising?

‘Well, of course, you both have exquisitely beautiful feet!’ Jack explained. ‘It’s why I love to serve the pair of you so much!’

But that wasn’t good enough for Sapphire. She sat straight up.

‘Let’s have a competition. Here, Jade, put your foot next to mine so that we can compare properly.’

She slithered down the bed and thrust her right foot forward next to mine, forcing Jack to cease his massaging. ‘Take a good look, Jack, and tell us – whose foot is sexier?’

‘Sapphire . . .’ I gave an uneasy half-laugh. I was sure that Jack was similarly uncomfortable. But if he was, he didn’t show it.

‘Mistress,’ he replied calmly. ‘You know how much I adore worshipping your feet, how beautiful I find them. You have such perfect, white soles. But Mistress Jade’s feet are just so tiny. And that instep . . .’

I may not have had Sapphire’s long, slim legs but a combination of dwarfly genes, years of childhood dance lessons and a (quite literally) overarching love of vertiginous heels had made me a foot fetishist’s wet dream. Any other time I would have welcomed compliments for an asset I didn’t even know I possessed. But right now, this asset was a threat to my friendship with Sapphire.

She rose up off the bed imperiously. Uh oh. This was just what we didn’t need. How could I pull this back? She floated towards the bedroom door, then paused, and looked contemptuously at Jack from over her shoulder.

Then Sapphire said something I had never heard her say before. ‘Well, Jack, I’m afraid that’s it for today. Your time is up.’

As soon as Jack had left, Sapphire immediately began to complain again about how much pain she was in, and how she enervated she felt by the stress of having to deal with so much admin.

‘Well, is there anything I could do to help?’ I offered. In several senses of the word, I really couldn’t afford for Sapphire to be irritated with me.

‘Maybe you could start answering some of the emails for me.’ She’d clearly already been thinking about this. ‘I could pay you a little to do admin. I mean, it’s not like you have any other work on the go, is it?’

Oh bloody hell, I still hadn’t told her about the new internship. It was going to be a set three days a week so I would no longer be available every day for domination. After everything that had happened this evening, I was even more reluctant to tell her about it. But if I didn’t tell her now I risked seeming as though I’d been hiding things from her. Something told me concealment would irritate Sapphire even more.

‘Well, actually, it looks as though I’ve just got a part-time internship. Starts at the end of next week. So I’m only going to be able to work Mondays and Tuesdays from now on, plus evenings and weekends, of course.’

Sapphire was busy at the dressing table. She had taken off her jacket while she touched up her make-up, and the black lace camisole she wore underneath exposed her trailing tattoo. I saw it so infrequently that it reminded me of the first elusive glimpse I had of it – and of Sapphire – the night we met. As I watched her apply a gloss to reawaken her crimson lipstick, I realised I was genuinely afraid of how she might respond. Sapphire may have been my boss and my co-conspirator but she had also effectively become one of my closest friends. Yet, even now, she was somehow just out of emotional reach. As I waited for her verdict, my heart felt as though it were over-beating.

The seconds hung between us like a rope bridge until finally Sapphire merely shrugged and said, ‘Nichi, it’s fine. It was always a matter of time before you got another job.’

‘But it’s not a full-time job, Sapphire, just three days a week. I’ll still be available much of the time.’

She turned round and smiled at me. It was a genuine smile, if a little stiff. ‘Well, maybe it’s time for you to start working by yourself, anyway. You can domme without me.’

Was Sapphire sacking me? Or promoting me to autonomous domme status? I couldn’t quite tell.

‘But there are loads of things I still don’t know how to do.
Shibari
, for example! I’m hopeless, I never remember the knots.’

Shibari
was the art of Japanese rope bondage, and was one of the most specialised domination skills, whereby the submissive was tied up by the dominant in elaborate, aesthetic rope holds. Sapphire had taken a couple of classes a while ago but since we rarely got asked to perform even the most basic of knots, she always hesitated about offering it.

‘Nichi, when do we ever do
shibari
? There are specialist mistresses you can go to for that. It’s actually called
kinbaku
by the way,
shibari
is what the moronic San Franciscan kink hipsters decided to call it, for some reason. Anyway, no one’s going to ask you for exquisite Japanese rope work. You’re always going to be a more sensual, vanilla domme, just by dint of your looks.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, you know, small, round face, curvy . . . you don’t exactly look like a hard bitch.’

Was Sapphire really reducing me to the role of play-domme because I looked as though I couldn’t command authority? I bristled. If anorexia had taught me one thing it was never again to become hostage to my own perceived bodily limitations or inadequacies – and certainly not hostage to anyone else’s pronouncements on them.

Sapphire continued. ‘Well, you know how it is with the clients; sure, you’re great at teasing, CBT and particularly at scathing verbal humiliation, but I’ve lost count of the number of times one of them has asked me if you switch.’ Switching meant when you let them dominate you within the course of the same session. Nowhere in any of our advertising or correspondence with the clients did we offer switching. Few serious dommes did. It wasn’t exactly wise to let a man you didn’t know go to town on you.

‘But what does it matter? It’s up to us to exert control! It’s up to me to make them believe that I have no interest in being flung across their knee just because I fit some physical caricature of a female submissive.’

The doorbell rang. Our next client already. These bloody submissives and their timing. I didn’t understand this conversation. However well Sapphire had taken my news, there was some other odd dynamic at work here. From time to time I had suspected there were some subliminal tensions between us. I had often wondered if I provoked her to tartness, as well as being caught in its crossfire. Evidently there’d been more to my suspicions than mere paranoia. Although even if this were true, I didn’t understand why.

‘Well, look, don’t worry about it now,’ she said. ‘Anyway, this next session is going to be very interesting. In all the rush tonight I forgot to tell you about it – although I know we’ve discussed it before hypothetically, and I know you want to do it.’

What was Sapphire talking about? A session with a couple, perhaps? Or was it the handsome James again, returning for me to tie him to the X-cross this time? I just wanted to get on with it. Anything to move us on from the alarming altercation we’d just found ourselves in.

‘Mistress Jade,’ she announced with mock gravity, prepare to lose your reverse virginity.

From the top of the weaponry rack she reached up for the harness with the attached dildo, the one I remembered marvelling at the first time I had ever sessioned here. I saw now that the belt was folded back on itself and extended out so that it could easily fasten around my waist. ‘Here.’ Sapphire handed me the strap-on. ‘It’s time for you to “take” your first man.’

Like Jack before him, Christopher was broad-shouldered and built like a titan, standing at least six feet three inches tall. But where Jack was boyishly buff, Christopher was rugged, with sun-bleached hair and fine furrows about his mouth and eyes that suggested a few too many debauched nights along life’s way.

As soon as Sapphire saw him, the strained mood that had prevailed in the office just seconds before evaporated, and she settled herself in the throne for once, leaving me to sit on one of the tattier armless chairs we used for spanking.

‘So, Christopher. Your email was very candid. And very brave. I haven’t had time to share it with Mistress Jade though.’ I noted I was back to being referred to as Mistress. ‘Do you think you could possible explain a little for both our sakes?’ That pearl-knife smile of hers.

Christopher exhaled world-wearily and settled himself into an available chair, legs astride in fatigue. He ran a hand through the frosted tips of his hair.

‘Well, Mistresses. Do I call you Mistresses?’

He paused.

Hadn’t this man been to a dominatrix before?

Christopher was a barrister. A rather brilliant one, or so he assured us. Somehow his arrogance was not self-mythologising but endearingly matter-of-fact. He talked about himself as though he were relating a well-worn tale about a childhood friend who exasperated him.

‘You see, all my life I’ve been kinky, but I’ve somehow kept meeting beautiful, brilliant women that just weren’t into the same things I was, and then marrying and having children with them anyway.’

‘How many times have you been married?’ Sapphire asked.

‘I’m on my third marriage. And I have four children. Don’t get me wrong, I love my children, love them to death. And I’ve loved my wives. But I’ve never been able to tell them what I want sexually. Only because I knew they’d never find it erotic. And they’d never be able to find me appealing after I’d confessed it to them.’

Sapphire stole a sideways glance at me, then looked back at him and bit her bottom lip, absent-mindedly touched her chignon. I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking, ‘Honey, why don’t you make me number four.
I’ll
understand.’

‘And what exactly is it that you require, Christopher?’ Sapphire asked him, her long slim legs tucked up underneath her at a purposeful, thigh-flashing angle. But Christopher didn’t look at her legs. He hadn’t come to us merely to be teased.

He continued. ‘I mean, what is it that women want? They want a sperm donor, a bag carrier, a walking, talking, limitless credit card. They want to be cherished and adored and loved. And they want you to be ready to ravish them at a moment’s notice.’

I was aghast at Christopher’s cynical sorrow. ‘Not all women are like that, Christopher,’ I challenged him. ‘Sapphire and I earn our own money and always would. We’ve got no interest at all in being “kept”.’

Sapphire nodded vigorously, and added, ‘We understand that some people have different sexual needs to the ones society sanctions. Especially,’ she licked her lips, ‘men like you.’

Christopher smiled with a slight reverence.

Sapphire had heard enough of the pseudo-therapy session. I could tell she wanted to get down to the business of sodomising. And I knew she was amusing herself with thoughts of five foot nothing me pressed up against six foot something him.

‘So, Christopher. You’ve come to us to get a little of what no other woman deigns to give you.’