The Slave (18 page)

They never knew that all during their day
with their daughter, her few absences were to meet with Maria in
some semi-private space so that Maria could add other delightful
torments to Robin’s day. By the time she lowered her arm from
energetic waving, she ran back to find Maria sitting on Robin’s bed
in the dorm (a single room at last). And only after some truly
abject begging would Maria consent to removing the dildo and butt
plug she had inserted earlier, and only after Robin showed some
absolutely devoted attention to Maria’s boots and then her cunt did
Maria give her the cream that would take the burning sting away
from Robin’s aching nipples. Maria had massaged them with a heavy
coating of something used to soothe aching muscles. For the final
hour with her parents, Robin’s nipples had ached so much that she
could barely keep still. The sensation faded, but it was still more
the thought which held her attention.

Maria had indeed given her something to
remember.

But now there was a new adventure to embark
on. There was the studio apartment in the city, where Maria had
brought some of her friends from WISE, who came with their tools
and a bag of hardware. In one day, they installed hooks and rings
in all sorts of places, along the baseboards and from the ceiling,
and of course in the frame of the bed that was Maria’s graduation
present to Robin. Robin barely had one week to move in before she
had to show up to work at a nice, middle range auction house and
gallery. She was an assistant to their second best appraiser and
buyer. Her hours were going to be long and sometimes erratic, but
she knew that she was already ahead of the game. Many people in her
position spent years doing other kinds of work before they could
even get such an entry level position in a good house.

And of course, now that she was on her own
and in the city, there was no question about her ability to join
other dominant and submissive pleasure seekers in their little
underground worlds. With the safety of her collar and Maria’s
company, she could finally dare to venture into the mixed
gatherings and meet some men as well as women. Maria had no
interests in that direction; she was comfortably, wonderfully gay.
But she had long ago discovered Robin’s bisexuality, and liked to
use it as a tease, asking Robin questions about who she found
attractive or not, and what she would do if Maria loaned her to one
of the dominant men.

Robin was never sure if what she felt at
that suggestion was horror or shock; either way, it made her feel
threatened and vulnerable while dampening her between the
thighs.

Together, they attended parties, held in the
basements of private homes and in empty rooms in theaters and
schools. They went to WISE meetings together in a rented room in
the Gay Communal Association’s building, where Robin sat on the
floor and leaned her head affectionately against Maria’s thigh. So
what if the meetings seemed to be one problem after another, or one
debate after another? So what if things always ended up being
issues about the patriarchy, and the overculture, and this
racist/sexist/classist/homophobic society and the need for
consensus? Robin didn’t need to pay that much attention. She knew
what kind of a world she lived in; she was aware and registered to
vote. She signed petitions and sent checks to the causes and
campaigns she supported and thought that she was generally
attentive to her local community politics. But when she was
collared and seated on the floor, in the presence of people who
would appreciate the image she was presenting, she was fully
engaged in how she behaved and appeared, so that Maria would look
like the excellent mistress that she was. Robin was always
concerned about helping to make Maria look good.

She couldn’t believe her luck, after all.
Years of anxiety and all those nagging feelings of guilt had been
blown to pieces, shattered in the moment it took to meet a woman’s
eyes in a bar and say one word.

I can’t imagine anything that
could make me happier
, Robin would think, sliding her cheek against
Maria’s leg, adoring her, adoring the place she had at her
side
. I
could live like this for the rest of my life.

* * * *

Maria finished checking the bonds before she
ran her hands lightly over Robin’s bound body. Carefully, listening
to the minute gasps of pleasure, she attached sharp little nipple
clamps, and then a row of similar clamps along Robin’s thighs and
belly. This would go on for some time before Robin’s body would
betray her, as it always did, and she would writhe and stretch, and
earnestly try not to dislodge the bondage while doing so. And when
Maria thought that Robin had had enough, perhaps she would fuck
her. Or, maybe she would climb up on the bed and let Robin’s eager
mouth go to work on her, and take her pleasure that way.

Robin struggled again and again throughout
their session, but her struggles were inside of her, and not
against the ropes that would be so easy to slip.

I love her
, Robin thought, sighing and
moaning in proper reactions to Maria’s touch.
Oh God, I love her so much my
heart could just explode of it all. But there’s something
missing.

The guilt that swept through her made it
even more poignant when Maria’s fingers lightly touched between
Robin’s spread legs, and Robin’s moan was doubly strong. This
encouraged Maria, and her fingers’ dancing was a reward that only
intensified Robin’s regret and shame. The bound woman shut out as
much thought as she could and tried desperately to concentrate on
the scene, and on Maria, and even on her own pleasure, until Maria
seemed satisfied and slipped the blindfold off and kissed Robin
sweetly, waiting for their heart-poundings to subside.

But Robin couldn’t get away from her own
private thoughts when the scene was over. She tossed and turned,
trying to get some sleep later that night.

I don’t believe how fucking
ungrateful I am
, she thought, fighting with herself.
I wait my entire life for
someone like her, and when I have her, and I have a life together
and a collar around my neck, all I can think of is what I don’t
have.

But let’s face it, what I don’t have is
pretty strong.

For over a year and a half, I’ve been made
love to by a woman who thinks I’m attractive, smart, and sexy. She
likes me as a friend, she supports me in my job, and she enjoys my
company. We’re lovers, like a million other lovers, except that she
ties me up a lot, and the kinds of things we do to get off aren’t
exactly commonplace. For most people, I guess that would be about
the best thing you could hope for in this life!

But I’m not really her slave.

And that’s the core of it all.

Oh, she likes it if I carry her bag of toys,
and I like getting her coffee in the morning, or helping her out
with shopping and things like that, but she really doesn’t use me
the way you’d think. I don’t do any real work for her, only little
token things, like the way a gentleman used to treat his date.

And even when we’re playing, there are all
those reminders that it’s just a game. The hooks instead of rings,
so all I have to do is stretch to get free. Cuffs without locks.
Even my collar doesn’t lock.

She lets me get away with
almost anything
, Robin admitted, sitting up in bed and forgetting any
thought of an easy sleep.
I don’t have to call her by any title, even at
meetings and parties. If I tell her I don’t feel like playing, we
don’t play. And isn’t that a kick in the head? I’m upset because my
lover cares about me too much.

But it’s more than just caring about me, I
know it is. And I haven’t been facing it. When we played early on,
she used to train me, tell me how to act and punish me if I did
things wrong. Now, she never does anything like that, and I know
I’m not near being a perfect slave. It’s just that she’s lost
interest in that aspect of play. Now, the only time I get punished
it when she uses it as an excuse to be a little rougher in our
sex.

I’m wearing a collar with her initial on it,
but I really don’t feel like I belong to her, at least no more than
any person belongs to their lover. All it seems to mean is that
we’re monogamous. And we’re a “couple.”

But we do have great sex! She’s so sexy, and
so sensual. All she has to do is look at me thoughtfully, the way
she does when she’s thinking about what to do, and I start to melt
inside. And she does do the things I need. I do get tied up and
beaten and tormented and pleasured in all these wonderful ways. So
what if it’s not as often as it was at first? All I need to do is
let her know I want it more and I’m sure she’ll try to accommodate
me.

But I don’t want to be
accommodated
, her inner voice screamed.
I want to be owned!

She’s the best I’m ever going
to get
,
Robin thought, hugging her knees and feeling the tears come. She
pushed that inner voice back and down, until she silenced it
again.
I
can’t fuck this up. I can’t afford it. She deserves better than to
have me whining at her. I can learn to deal with not having these
things. And maybe one day she’ll get back into being more of a
mistress and less of a lover.

And maybe I’m just drowning in all the lies.
I thought I stopped all the lies.

Imagine that you found yourself
going to hell for a week
, Robin thought. She was always composing for her
journal, even when she couldn’t add anything to it.
But then, you found
out that you liked living in hell. What would that do to your value
system? Or your self-image?

Hell might have been an exaggeration, but
not much of one. Early Sunday morning, Chris unstrapped Robin’s
bonds and physically threw her across the room to the shower.
Standing in the doorway, just like Rachel had the previous night,
he barked commands at her for her morning rituals, how she was to
wash, and to what degree of thoroughness. Then on to when and how
to present herself to him, and her chores and responsibilities.

Once she could pass his inspection for
cleanliness, and she had answered his directions with crisp
“yessirs,” she was taken back across the room, bent over the edge
of her bed, her knees against the side, her hands braced on the
coverlet, and Chris savagely caned her.

But no, savagely wasn’t the right word. Like
his other punishments, it was cold, icy cold and precise. Each
stripe felt like he had laid a line of acid across her buttocks,
and when she couldn’t hold back the screams, he gagged her, a
heavy, thick tube pushed into her mouth and held in place with a
leather strap. She could breathe through it, but the sounds she
made were muffled and distorted, and she couldn’t bring her mouth
to make any meaningful sounds. It was humiliating, but much, much
easier to take than the next few cane strikes. The strikes
themselves seemed even harder, as though they were supposed to
check the efficiency of the gag. When she fell forward, twisting
her body away from that terrible, burning pain, he pulled her back
in place, pushing her head down lower, making her thrust her ass
back and up.

No safe
words
, Robin
managed to think, fighting back the flow of tears and panting
through the air hole in the gag.
This is real! No safe words! No
mercy!

When he finally did stop, and he took the
gag out of her mouth, it was the most natural thing in the world to
kiss the cane he presented before her and then to sink to the floor
and cover his boots with kisses, thanking him again and again for
both the punishment and for stopping it.

But that was just the beginning.

Sending her scampering into the kitchen on
her hands and knees to prepare and serve breakfast was the start of
her real day. Kneeling in one corner, ass up, to show off her
stripes while Rachel and Chris chatted and drank their coffee was
the immediate follow-up.

Cleaning and polishing Rachel’s boots came
next, on her knees in the kitchen, rubbing and brushing until her
arms hurt and the boots gleamed with a mirror-like finish, and then
scrubbing her hands and arms and the spots on her thighs and her
chest which were all touched with oily, black polish.

“
That took too long,” Chris told her,
when she delivered the boots back to the bedroom. He put a pair of
nipple clamps on her again, and attached the chain connecting them
to her collar. “Try again.” This time, he gave her a pair of boots
from out of the closet. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see
that there were plenty of shoes and boots in the racks of that
closet, and she compressed her lips together to stop the moan that
threatened to come out.

The entire day was like that.

Nothing she managed to do turned out right.
And Chris was all over her, always there to spot clumsiness or
hesitation, always quick to point out a gesture missed or a display
of a forbidden emotion. Rachel acted like a guest and sat back to
watch, laughing from time to time, but mostly ignoring what was
going on. She and Chris went over some kind of business for hours,
and Robin could never figure out what they were talking about from
the snatches she heard. All Robin knew was that Rachel had become
distinctly uninterested in her.

And Robin couldn’t decide whether that was
part of her training or not. In fact, Robin was far too busy to
give it much thought, and by the time she realized that Rachel had
actually left the apartment and she was alone again with Chris,
there was only a little confused sense of gratitude and regret. One
demonic trainer was quite enough, thank you.