Master of the House (11 page)

‘Well, all right then, I won’t. We’re here to do this submissive training thing. Shouldn’t we get started?’

I sat up, and only then did I become aware of the trickle.

I drew in a sharp breath.

‘You didn’t use …’ I looked at him, eyes wide with alarm.

He sat up beside me, double-quick.

‘You mean you aren’t …?’

‘No, no, that’s OK. I have a contraceptive implant. But you – you go to weird sex clubs.’

His lips thinned and he appeared to be fighting back the urge to snap at me.

‘For one thing,’ he said, with barely-there calm. ‘I always use condoms. For another, those submissives at those parties have a perfectly clean bill of health. For another, do you seriously think I’d do something like that to you?’

‘Why not?’ I retorted, hot-cheeked. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

‘Jeez.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘You really think I’m that bad.’

‘I wish I didn’t.’

He raised his head and gave me a long look.

‘Well, I hope one day you’ll get your wish,’ he said.

‘That gives me a perfect third task,’ I said. ‘Go to the sexual health clinic and get yourself checked out. If anything nasty comes back, I’ll know I have to go too.’

‘It won’t,’ he assured me, but then he nodded. ‘OK, I’ll do it. Why not? Why not sit in a waiting room with a bunch of –’

‘Perfectly ordinary people,’ I cut in. ‘There’s no shame in it, Joss. Don’t be pathetic. Besides, I daresay you’d go private.’

‘Well, it
is
rather private, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I thought you liked to get down in public. Or so I hear.’

‘I haven’t told you anything about what I like.’

‘Yes, you have! That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

‘Broad brush strokes,’ he objected. ‘No fine detail.’ He smiled, his eyes suddenly bright again. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned brush strokes. It’s got my imagination working.’

‘Yeah, well, curb your imagination and make an appointment with the clinic.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He tried to reach out for my face, to turn it to him, but I darted away and jumped to my feet.

‘We should get on with things,’ I said, stretching my naked limbs in the sunshine. ‘I came here to train. Let’s do it.’

‘Five,’ he said instantly, and I dropped to all fours, head up in the approved manner.

He put me through my paces for much longer than I thought necessary in my slightly hazy, sun-stricken, post-coital state. After a while, my attention began to wander and I started to lose the thread.

I did all fours when he said Four, and then I forgot to put my hands behind my back for one of the others. At my third careless mistake, he called a halt to proceedings.

‘Well,’ he said. He was leaning on the mower again and his shorts were still undone. ‘This moves us nicely on into one of our next areas of training. I can combine a couple of them, in fact.’

‘I’m just hot and tired,’ I protested, but he held up his hand – the way he had done so memorably last time – and silenced me.

He waggled his fingers menacingly. ‘It’s time you met this hand, I think,’ he said. Despite the way my heart jumped into my throat, I was excited. I had been looking forward to this, even though I had a nasty feeling he might be using this opportunity to take revenge on me for not falling into his arms after sex.

‘Really?’ I said, thinking I ought to put up some kind of fight.

‘Next lesson,’ he said. ‘Verbal submission. You obey without question, and you address me from now on as “sir”. So shall we try that?’

I shrugged. Calling Joss ‘sir’ was going to stick in my craw. I tried to take the approach that it was, in fact, his legitimate title – Sir Jocelyn Montague Edward Lethbridge of Willingham Hall. It didn’t help much.

‘Go to a corner of the breakfast room,’ he ordered, ‘and wait for me there with your hands on your head.’

It was such a relief to shelter from the glaring sunlight that I didn’t think of disobeying but hurried up the steps to the patio and ran quickly across the hot slabs before they burned my feet.

The breakfast room was cooler and pleasantly shady, with soothing plain white walls. It was no hardship to put my nose in one of its corners and rest my weary body. The hands-on-head thing was a bit annoying, but not too much.

Not at first.

I heard Joss outside putting the mower away, then he came into the room. I stood straight, all my nerves on alert, waiting to be summoned.

But he simply crossed the floor and went out into the hall. I heard the creak of the stairs and tutted to myself. He was going to keep me strung up until he deigned to release my tension.

Now that I had had time to cool, my mind was free to envisage wild scenarios. What was he going to do to me? Would there be actual whips? Actual chains?

Would he make me scream in agony? Would he torture me?

I thought of all the waxwork scenes I had seen of terrible things being done to people in ages past and my knees began to tremble. How far did Joss’s tastes go? Shouldn’t I have asked him?

I was practically snivelling by the time I heard the stairs creak again. I was a fool. I could have got out of this. I could have slipped away through the patio doors and made a break into the woods – stopping en route to pick up my clothes, of course.

Instead I was waiting for a man whom I knew to have cruel and deviant tastes to come back and do something painful to me.

‘Bernstein and Woodward would be proud of you, girl,’ I muttered to myself.

‘Spine straight.’ He said it softly and was standing close.

I jumped. I hadn’t realised he was back in the room, and certainly hadn’t realised how easily he had crept up on me. The scent of his favourite aftershave wafted around me, a clue too late.

He put his hand around the back of my neck, nudging my head higher.

I wasn’t sure how to breathe for a moment.

‘Stay there,’ he said, letting go and retreating.

He was wearing proper shoes now. He let his feet fall audibly as he walked away. Every moment, I expected him to issue a command, but he dragged out the tension until I was ready to sob, ‘Get on with it!’

I heard him drag a chair a little way across the floor – one of the wooden ones from the dining table.

Surely now …?

‘Turn around,’ he said.

I kept my hands on my head, since he hadn’t said anything about removing them, and sidled the hundred and eighty degrees. When I saw him, my mouth watered. He was wearing a beautifully cut dark-grey suit, standing behind the chair with his hands gripping the back, leaning over it so his tie dangled a little.

His hair, dishevelled at our last encounter, was slicked neatly down again and he’d even trimmed his beard into pointy neatness.

He looked compelling, a bit frightening and outrageously sexy.

‘Bloody hell,’ I breathed, before I could stop myself.

‘I beg your pardon? Were you given permission to speak?’

Was I? Should I even answer that if not?

‘Er, I don’t think so. Sir.’ I had to press my lips tight so as not to laugh awkwardly.

‘No. So I think you’ve earned what’s coming to you,’ he said, then he beckoned me.

I wanted to get a video camera and record the gesture for all time.

I bit my lip, hoping to get a smile out of him, or some other reassurance, but he looked unshakeably stern, so I gave up and stepped forwards. It felt absolutely real – the kind of dread I remembered from school when I hadn’t done my homework and was about to get busted for it. I’d been such a conscientious child – even the possibility of a mild word of rebuke had had me in agonies.

This was in a different league.

I stopped at the chair. He still stood behind it, facing me.

‘Kneel,’ he said, his downward glance making it clear that he meant I should climb up on to the seat first.

I put my hands between his on the chair back and slid my knees on to the unforgiving wood.

‘Yes,’ he said, running his thumb along my jawline before moving away to the side. ‘That’s it. Spine bent, head over the back. Bottom out.’

I wanted to ask him if he was going to hurt me. I needed to know. Luckily, he answered the question before I asked it.

‘I don’t intend to hurt you,’ he said. ‘Not this time. This is more about finding your natural limits, testing your tolerance. When we reach your threshold, I’ll stop.’

I gripped the chair tighter, letting a breath of relief pass through me.

‘You’ve never been spanked before?’ he asked, patting my bottom.

‘No.’

‘So you don’t know how much you might be able to take?’

‘As long as you aren’t doing it with a bramble.’

He paused to take that in.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘How’s this?’

The first smack was light, a pleasurable tap more than anything.

I wiggled my bottom, rather keen for another.

‘Good,’ I said.

He smacked harder.

‘Good,
sir
,’ he reminded me.

‘Good, sir.’ I concentrated on the little stain of warmth. It faded quickly enough and there was no reminder that it had ever been.

‘The thing is, Lulu, our friend will expect us to be pretty old hands at the spanking side of things. We need to get into our stride as soon as we can. What he likes is to know how much a sub can take, and then make her take just that little bit more.’

‘I don’t want to take more than I can handle,’ I objected. ‘Sir.’

‘No, right. So it’s important we work out exactly how much that is. Then we can scale it down when he’s around. Pretend it’s that little bit lower.’

‘Oh, I see. Yes. That’s more like it. Thanks. Sir.’

I liked the element of conspiracy. I liked feeling that Joss was on my side. It nerved me to take some more.

‘So,’ he said, ‘are you ready to find out? I want you tell me when it starts to feel uncomfortable, OK?’

‘OK, sir.’

‘You’re getting good at the verbal side,’ he said approvingly. ‘A quick learner, not that I was in any doubt.’

I glowed. Another tick in the box for me.

‘So we start with my hand. When it gets to the point where it’s starting to hurt – not the point where you can’t take any more, mind you – then you stop me.’

I nodded and clung to the chair back harder. Everything was gritted, from teeth to toes, if you can grit your toes.

‘You don’t need to clench so hard,’ he whispered, still stroking the upthrust curves of my bare bottom. ‘It won’t help.’

But I couldn’t relax.

‘We’ll work on that,’ he promised, and then there was a loud slap, louder than it was hard, but still enough to make me yelp in surprise.

I wanted, God knows why, to prove myself able to take quite a hard spanking. It seemed a matter of pride. So I kept my lips tight together, my eyes screwed shut and my fingers curled like claws while Joss kept up a steady rain of smacks on my behind.

‘Are you sure this is OK?’ he asked, keeping up the pressure. ‘You’re getting quite red. Not that I’m complaining.’

‘Fine,’ I said, but my breath was laboured and he noticed.

‘It’s not fine, is it?’ he said disapprovingly, staying his hand. ‘This is hurting you.’

‘A bit. But I don’t mind really.’

‘Lucy,’ he said, and I could tell I was being told off. ‘It’s vital that you’re honest with me here. Vital. If you can’t tell me how you’re feeling, I can’t do this.’

‘What are you going to do about it? Spank me?’ I asked with a wheezy little laugh.

‘I know this is all a big joke or game or whatever to you, but I’m taking it seriously,’ he scolded.

‘Seriously? Yeah. It’s so serious. You know what tack the papers will take, don’t you? They’ll ridicule the lot of you.’

‘Will they, Lucy? I thought you were writing this story.’

‘I get the exclusive. It’ll be picked up by, shall we say, less sympathetic commentators. You ought to be prepared for it. You’ll get it in the neck.’

‘They won’t care about me, not with His Nibs in the picture.’ But he sounded as if he was trying to reassure himself.

‘Well, we’ll see. And yes, I admit, that was starting to burn. But I didn’t want to look like a wuss.’

He laughed. ‘I’d never accuse you of being one of those. But will you please put that fear aside and be upfront with me about how you feel? Please?’

‘All right. I’m sorry. I guess I’d been starting to really feel it for about the last twenty strokes.’

‘Good. That’s worth recording,’ he said. ‘Of course, your tolerance will probably build over the course of these sessions, but we have a starting point. Now, if I carry on, will you tell me the moment it gets really too much?’

His grave tone made me nervous and I laughed. ‘I think it should probably be obvious.’

‘Probably. But do you promise?’

‘I promise.’

He resumed spanking me, the clap-clap-clap of it sounding monotonous, while the effect on my nerve endings – and my libido – was anything but.

‘Ow, ow, please, no,’ I wailed after a couple of minutes of this. My skin felt tight and almost numb, but the tissues beneath held a deep burn that would last longer.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered, rubbing at my shoulder. ‘You see, it’s not so difficult to tell me when to stop.’

‘I feel like a failure,’ I admitted. ‘I bet those submissive girls can go on for hours.’

He laughed, his fingers still pressing into my unprotesting flesh.

‘Hardly hours,’ he said. ‘You did marvellously well, for a beginner. Your bottom colours beautifully too.’

Something about this knowledge flooded my sex, which was wet enough all ready. I was shocked at how turned on I felt. Was this what it took for me? Physical chastisement? He would see me for what I was, and I felt humiliated. And even more turned on.

‘Would you like to see it?’ he whispered.

‘Oh … I don’t know.’

But, still bent over the chair, I heard a rustle and a click then he came around and shoved his phone under my nose.

My bottom was indeed as red as the sunset over the hills. I sucked in a breath at how sore it looked, even though it was my own bottom and the pain was perfectly manageable, and fading fast.

‘Gorgeous,’ he said, with lust-laden appreciation. ‘Listen,’ he crouched lower, speaking into my ear. ‘If you like, I can … touch you.’