Agony Aunt (26 page)

‘Of course I do,’ Tom replied. ‘But you know you aren’t going to give it to me.’ He sounded resentful.

‘How do you know that?’ Harriet asked, carefully ignoring his tone of voice. In the past she would have called him down for that at once.

‘Because we’ve been over this ground so many times before. You enjoy teasing me and being admired. And you know I enjoy the game too. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here now. But I was hoping that things had . . . changed . . . after the last time. You liked that even though you tried to hide behind the mask of the offended mistress. It was the first time that you let the mask slip. I liked what I saw behind it. Besides,’ he went on, smiling now, ‘what else could I do when I walked in and found a beautiful woman tied hand and foot and me the only man in evidence?’

Harriet caught the ‘beautiful’ and was pleased. He’s said it again, she thought with relief. She waited to hear if he would say more, hoping she wouldn’t appear to be fishing too hard.

After a pause, he did. ‘You know I want you. And I want you all the more because of the times we sat here and you made me look at you without being able to touch. That’s why you wore the leather corselet. I liked you in that outfit, even though it was another barrier between us. But now you’re dressed differently. Another tease? Removing one barrier but knowing I still can’t touch you? You must know that most men wouldn’t let you get away with that.’

‘They would if they were chained as you are,’ Harriet said with an attempt at lightness. Her chest felt tight as she spoke, as if someone were squeezing the breath from her lungs. Why was she beating about the bush in this way?

With a flash of impatience, Tom said, ‘You know what I mean. Most men wouldn’t let you get them into this situation in the first place.’

‘So why do you do it?’ Harriet asked. What had begun as a rhetorical question became a serious one halfway through the asking. This was another sign of her own agitation and uncertainty about how to proceed. When in doubt about actions, talk instead. She silently willed him to go on.

‘We’ve been over this often enough,’ Tom replied. ‘We don’t need to do it again. I’m here because I like the company.’

Harriet saw that she wasn’t going to get anything further from him without asking more direct questions, which she didn’t want to do. So when talk fails, only action is left. I’m full of maxims tonight, Harriet told herself. Stooping beside Tom, Harriet unlocked his leg irons. ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ she said peremptorily. She led the way to the basement, Tom following.

In the cellar, Harriet went straight to the cabinet where she stored her collection of whips. Time to let him know who’s the boss, she thought. At the same time she was asking herself why they weren’t upstairs in bed making sweaty love. She glanced at Tom to see how he was taking all this. He was waiting calmly for her. He didn’t look worried or frightened or reluctant. Harriet chose a leather strap and motioned for Tom to move over to one of the supporting pillars. He waited for her next move. She unlocked his handcuffs and threaded them through a ring high up on the post. Without being told, Tom brought his hands up so that she could refasten them. He was now chained to the post with his hands over his head and his entire back exposed to the strap Harriet held.

Harriet moved behind him with the strap. She was about to strike when she caught sight again of the short chain between his legs. This time she stooped to examine it. To ignore it would have been even more obvious.

‘My gift to you,’ Tom answered with a glance over his shoulder. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else to get the woman who has everything.’

‘I like it,’ she said. ‘Very thoughtful. Did you and Katrina try it out?’

Tom didn’t know exactly what Katrina had told Harriet. She might well have told her everything, so it could be dangerous to lie. ‘Yes, we did. She liked it very much. She thought you would too.’ He was risking Harriet’s anger with his presumption, but he was glad he had laid out the invitation. Better so this way, when he was chained and unable to initiate sex. Now Harriet would have to make the decision, commit herself in some way.

‘Very thoughtful. Which of you chose it?’

‘She did,’ Tom replied. ‘I didn’t know what to get you, so Katya . . . Katrina suggested this. I think it was a good idea. She also sent a gift for you. It’s over there.’ Tom nodded towards the storage cupboard along the wall.

Harriet went over and picked up the small parcel but didn’t open it. This had to be the nipple rings Katrina had spoken of. ‘Do you know what’s in it?’ she asked.

Tom nodded but didn’t say anything else.

Harriet set the parcel down again and returned to stand behind Tom. She raised the strap and struck him. The first blow landed across his shoulders. Tom grunted with the pain but stood his ground while Harriet lashed his back and bottom and the backs of his legs. Soon his entire rear elevation was crisscrossed by red weals. His head was down as he fought to remain silent beneath the rain of blows. Each time one landed he let out his breath in an explosive grunt. Harriet wanted him to say something, beg her to stop, anything. She herself was panting from the exertion and her arm was getting tired, but still he said nothing. She thought she was punishing him for what he had done to her that Sunday morning, but soon realised that she was really punishing him for her own confusion. When she finally had to stop, he had said nothing and had outlasted her strength.

Harriet moved around in front of Tom. She saw at once that he was erect, standing stiff and proud. It was the first time she had known him to respond in that way merely to a beating. On former occasions, she had alternated the pain and the pleasure, stroking and fondling him between the beatings. She had been training him to respond sexually to pain, and now it looked as if the training had been effective. Pleased, Harriet reached out to touch his cock.

Tom stiffened at the touch, drawing breath in a gasp.

‘Sensitive there, are we?’ Harriet asked in a bantering tone. She stroked the underside as she spoke, enjoying the tension her touch was causing. He seemed to be on the verge of coming. She would have to be careful if she wanted to draw this out. This was the thing her male clients valued most in her, even when they pleaded with her to finish it. That was why they always came back for more. There was a familiar tightness in her stomach and throat as she held him in her hand. She wondered if she could manage sex with him in this position. It would be difficult – a matter of different heights, for one thing. But there were stools available in the cellar.

No, Harriet decided, let him sweat a bit. He hadn’t atoned sufficiently for his earlier indiscretion. The decision took a good bit of resolve and self-control on her part – more than it would have done a week ago.

But there was no reason to stop toying with Tom. In fact, he felt rather good in her hand. A bit stiffer, perhaps. He was near the edge now, Harriet knew, so she let go of his cock and stood where he couldn’t help seeing her. She was still dressed in nothing much at all. Stockings, suspenders and a sheer bra which revealed more than it concealed, as the best erotic lingerie is intended to do. She saw that she had his attention and moved away slowly, swaying her hips exaggeratedly and looking back over her shoulder at him. Tom’s eyes followed her every move. She turned and walked back to where he stood chained to the post, never taking her eyes from his face. Yes, he was definitely hooked. It was nice to be wanted that badly, Harriet told herself with an inward smile.

She went upstairs, leaving Tom hanging in several senses of the word, but she couldn’t settle. The coffee she made tasted flat, the TV was boring, and she certainly didn’t feel like doing any housework. She strode restlessly from room to room. Pausing in front of the mirror over the fireplace, Harriet studied her reflection. She saw an attractive woman of thirty-something: medium-length brown hair and a wide mouth which one of her clients had described as ‘generous’, before she had taught him the inappropriateness of the description (with a riding crop, she recalled with a smile). Her waist was not wasp-like, but her heavy rounded breasts, straining at the bra, and her widely flared hips gave it a balance. Not out of proportion, she told herself. Her thighs were sturdy, and her calves rounded (ripe, she would have said) under the sheer nylon of her stockings. You’ll do, she thought.

She paused only to dab some perfume behind her ears and into the hollows behind her knees, then she went back downstairs, her heels tapping decisively on the wooden stairs.

Tom was resting against the post with his head between his arms. He raised it when he heard Harriet enter the cellar, looking at her with interest. He was still half erect, and Harriet proceeded at once to bring him to attention. She knelt before him and took his cock in her mouth. It was gratifying to see how quickly he stiffened as her lips and tongue enfolded him. With quick, sharp little nips from her teeth, Harriet drew gasps of surprise and pleasure from him. She was feeling warm and excited herself, and wanted him to arouse her – which he wouldn’t be able to do so long as he was handcuffed to the post.

Quickly Harriet stood and unlocked the handcuffs. Tom reached for her as soon as his hands were free, but she pushed him away and led the way back upstairs. She took the handcuffs with her. In the living room Tom once more reached for her, and this time she didn’t draw back. Harriet told herself that there was such a thing as being too hard to get. And the touch of his hands on her body as he drew her closer was just what she wanted just then. The sofa materialised just behind her knees, and she collapsed gratefully on to it, drawing Tom down with her.

He knelt on the floor before her, his arms around her waist and his face just inches from her breasts. Harriet reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, letting her breasts spring free. She bent forward, offering herself to him, all her former reticence forgotten. Tom took a nipple in his mouth, nipping gently at it as it grew stiff and erect. Harriet gasped with pleasure at the touch, and at the warmth of his breath on her naked flesh. She held his head against her as if afraid he would draw away.

Harriet slid to the floor. She reached between Tom’s legs and fitted the ring around his cock. She was only just in time because he was almost fully erect. Then she lay on her back and spread her legs for him. She wanted him inside her
now.
And he was there, sliding in with a long glide, and she felt the hard ring against her clitoris at once. She raised her legs to lock her ankles behind his back, and her arms were reaching up to hold him against her, before she had time to think any further. And then there was no need for any further thought as they held on to one another and she was rocked by her orgasm, lifted out of herself and her fears and her need to dominate others.

Afterwards they sat together on the sofa, resting and talking. Harriet fitted against Tom’s side comfortably, and the feel of his arm around her made her feel warm and content. There were things to talk about now, things she had been reluctant to ask about. She wanted Tom’s reaction to Katrina, and she wanted to clarify the new and developing relationship with Tom. In particular she needed to know how he felt about continuing as her slave/assistant now that he had been promoted to the status of lover as well. The roles might not fit together. She surprised herself again by realising that she was seriously wondering – not to say worrying – about another’s feelings and desires instead of merely her own.

‘Harriet,’ Tom began.

At the same time she said, ‘I wanted to ask you . . .’ Both stopped in confusion. After a moment Tom said, ‘You first.’

She didn’t want to go first. She was feeling awkward enough about appearing jealous and would have preferred Tom to volunteer the information she wanted. She decided that the least embarrassing course was to make Tom speak before she committed herself by asking about the visit to Amsterdam or about his present state of mind. ‘No, you go first,’ she said, in what she hoped was a firm tone of voice.

‘All right, if that’s what you want. I knew you wanted to know about Katrina and me, but didn’t want to ask. And I wanted to make you dig out the information so I’d be able to enjoy your discomfort. Petty revenge, that was. Sorry. But now I’ll tell you about it.’

Harriet was not pleased to be reminded of her curiosity, but she didn’t want to say anything that would shut Tom up when he was on the verge of telling her what she wanted to know. Nevertheless, she couldn’t resist asking him what had made him change his mind now.

‘After a good fuck I can usually be made to volunteer any information,’ he said.

Harriet was pleased to learn that it had been ‘a good fuck’, but she didn’t say anything.

Tom continued. ‘Katrina met me at the central station. We went to a house she had borrowed from a friend. It was in the Oude Zijds Achterburgwall, one of those typical old Amsterdam houses – tall and narrow, on a narrow cobbled street looking out on to the canal at Gelderskade. Katrina liked the idea of being so near the red-light district. It put her in a more receptive frame of mind, she said. We had the place to ourselves.

‘She was happy with the way things were going. She said Ari had been more willing to play her kind of sex games since the visit here. She thinks you convinced him it was important to help her with her fantasies. At any rate, she said they were more solid than before. I got the impression she was thinking of leaving Ari when she was here. Did you talk to him then?’

Harriet nodded. ‘It didn’t take much to convince him,’ she said. She was pleased that Katrina and Ari were getting along better. She took it as a tribute to her powers of persuasion. At the same time she was glad that Katrina was not a danger to her own relationship with Tom.

‘Katrina still loves bondage. That hasn’t changed. She says the visit here opened her eyes to a lot of things, and she’s glad she came. She and Ari have an arrangement now. Katrina is free to have relationships with others. This usually happens when he is away on business. They don’t ask any questions of one another and it seems to work out well enough. I gathered that I’m not her only other lover, but Katrina says she’s still quite fond of me.’ Tom smiled with pride.