His Mistress’s Voice (10 page)

‘Get your trousers on. It’s time to be going along to my place,’ she repeated.

Tom buckled his belt and followed her out the door, conscious of the tie wrap constricting his scrotum and wondering (though not asking) what she intended to do next. They drove through light traffic to Harriet’s place in Chelsea. It was a three-storey terraced house with a basement. There was no front entrance to the basement, and Tom concluded that there was no separate flat there. Most of the other houses on the street had basement flats. They went up the front steps with Harriet in the lead. As she opened the front door he noticed the unusually heavy door and the strong locks. Women had to be careful if they lived alone, as Harriet apparently did, but even so the locks seemed more than adequate.

Noticing his glance, Harriet said, ‘These locks are intended to keep people in as well as out. You’ll have the run of the house for some of the time you’re here, but you won’t be able to get out short of breaking down the door. And you won’t have the tools for that. It’s difficult to break out of even ordinary houses without tools, and this is no ordinary house. All the windows are locked, and those bars aren’t just ornamental. I hope you’ll settle in quite quickly, but if you keep on trying to get out I may have to employ stronger measures. On the other hand, I eventually reward good behaviour.’

When they were inside the front hall Harriet closed and locked the door. She turned and said, ‘Come along and I’ll show you some more of the place.’ She went past the stairway that led up from the entrance hall. Apparently he wasn’t going to be shown the first floor. Harriet turned into a lounge off the hall with a window overlooking the street in which she had parked the car. The room contained a comfortable looking three-piece suite. There was the usual television and video recorder. Tom also noticed a video camcorder on the coffee table in front of the settee. The walls were papered in complementary shades of pale blue. It was a sunny room, at least in the afternoons. The plants and ornaments all seemed ordinary, but the house didn’t feel ordinary. That may have been due to the manner of the woman who lived there.

An archway led into a second room which was both an extension of the lounge and a dining area. At the far end there was a table and chairs. The kitchen to which Harriet led him opened off the dining area and occupied the back of the house. It overlooked a courtyard with a garage which could be entered from the passage that ran behind the house. She showed Tom where things were kept: pantry, fridge, pots and pans, china and cutlery. It all seemed neat enough, and he said so. But he wondered why she was going into such detail. He learned the answer when she ordered him to cook a meal for them.

‘This will be one of your responsibilities while you’re here. You have to keep things clean and tidy and prepare the meals for me. You are going to be my housekeeper. There are other things I prefer to do. But before you begin I want you to take off your clothes.’

Tom was taken aback by her calm belief that he would do anything she asked. He also found himself taking his clothes off. When he was wearing nothing but the tie wrap she had placed on his scrotum, Harriet collected his jeans, shirt and underpants and took them away – to keep them safe, she said. He didn’t ask, safe from what? She continued, ‘I’ll keep them locked up until you’re ready to leave. While you’re here I’d like you to begin feeling naked and defenceless. This is your first lesson.’

‘Do I get to look at you as well?’ he ventured.

‘Only when I want you to,’ Harriet replied. ‘And I will decide what you can see. We will both dress as I think fit.’ Changing tack, she continued, ‘Would you like to look at me?’

‘Well, yes. I find you attractive, and . . .’ he trailed off, not certain how to finish the remark.

Harriet prompted, ‘And what?’

‘Well, attractive . . . I intended it as a compliment.’

‘Then thank you. Now get on with the job while I get into something more comfortable. I think I’ll enjoy having some help around the house. And some company,’ she added as she went out bearing his clothes.

Tom opened cupboards and began to assemble things for a meal. There was enough in the fridge and pantry to see them through several days. He wondered how many days he should plan on. He decided on steak and baked potatoes with a tossed salad and, after a glance in the fridge, white wine. There were carrots and broccoli to prepare. As he was putting the potatoes into the oven Harriet returned. She was wearing the ‘something more comfortable’ she had spoken of, though Tom would have argued about the more comfortable aspect of it. He heartily approved of the effect, however, and recalled the remark another woman had made about how looking stunning and feeling comfortable were the same thing. Or had she said that when your appearance struck the observer dumb with admiration, matters of comfort receded into the middle distance? No matter.

Harriet looked stunning to him. She wore an outfit based on the one-piece swimming costume, but made of smooth black leather instead of the softer fabrics more familiar to the connoisseurs of ladies’ underwear and the swimsuit-watchers’ league. Tom thought it an improvement on the original idea. Harriet’s outfit gave the impression of having been sprayed on. It was cut high on her thighs, revealing her really nice legs to the hips on the outside, while the crotch area was framed and accentuated by the V of skintight leather that dived between her thighs. It re-emerged behind, where it ran between her buttocks in the manner of a thong, dividing those generous hemispheres from one another as decisively as the Red Sea had been parted. Though her parting was by far the more attractive, Tom thought. At the top it plunged low as well, cupping her full breasts tightly and thrusting them up and out, an enhancement they scarcely needed.
Served up on a platter
was the impression he got. But he approved of that effect as well.

In fact his approval was unmistakable. He got hard simply looking at her, and was reminded of that fact by the tightness around his balls where the tiewrap was making itself felt.

Harriet wore sheer black tights and high-heeled shoes to match. Her waist was nipped in by a wide leather belt, accentuating two other measurements that didn’t need emphasis. This was the dominatrix outfit the sex magazines and books went on about. Even though the domination looked like being exercised over him, he still liked the effect.

He had always liked women to wear things that outlined their figures. This preference doubtless came from an early fascination with adverts for ladies corsets. All of his schoolmates had lingered over them – the only pictures of semi-naked women they had been able to get in their younger days.

Harriet also carried a riding crop. ‘To teach you your manners and duties,’ she said, with a nod toward his erection. ‘I’m glad you like the outfit, but don’t touch. Tonight will be looking only.’ She produced a pair of leg-irons from nowhere, seemingly, and indicated he was to put them on. Of course she had been carrying them all the time, but he hadn’t noticed them. That was a measure of how deeply he was engrossed in her appearance.

Obediently, Tom sat and locked the irons on his ankles. Harriet nodded her approval and stooped to check them for tightness. She tightened them one more notch and then double-locked them with the key she carried on a ribbon around her neck. She tucked the key back into the top of her outfit. ‘Carry on,’ she said, turning to leave the room.

He was left alone in the kitchen to finish the meal. Shortly thereafter he heard the TV from the front room, and he guessed she was relaxing. When dinner was ready he brought the plates through to her. Harriet was seated in an armchair with her legs splayed out before her. He got hard once more when he looked at her. Tom brought the wine from the kitchen and poured a glass for each of them. Harriet nodded for him to sit down and they began to eat, Tom pausing to stare and Harriet seemingly oblivious of him.

After she had eaten a bit Harriet spoke to him. ‘There will be many evenings at home like this, so I thought you should begin to get used to the idea from the first. I want you to get used to the fact that I set the rules around here, especially about sex, but also about the daily routine. I like you to look and admire, but you mustn’t touch me without my permission, and then only as I direct you. Later on, when you finally do get to sleep with me, you’ll enjoy it much more for having waited. And I will enjoy having made you wait. So I hope it will be fun all round. In any case the discipline will do you good. I don’t like slackness in my lovers. I’m sure you understand.’ Harriet added as an afterthought, ‘You will address me as “mistress” unless we’re in the presence of strangers who might not understand how the word is meant. My name will not be used without my permission. And I’ll remember any lapses.’

Tom nodded silently. He watched Harriet as they ate, admiring the tautness of her body beneath the tight leather garment, and listening for the sibilant hiss of nylon against nylon as she crossed or un-crossed her legs. Tom thought of himself as primarily a leg man. He enjoyed ogling the legs of all the women he knew – and of many he didn’t. As he put it, there was no harm in looking. He enjoyed the way the light now shifted and played on her smooth tights. There was a tightness in his groin every time she shifted her legs. So they ate their dinner, Tom growing more aroused by the minute. Harriet contrived to ignore the evidence of his excitement. When they were done, she directed him to clear away the dishes and wash up. He did so in silence. When he was done he came back from the kitchen with a freshly brewed pot of coffee. She accepted a cup and held it while he poured for her. Then he stood near by while she tasted it. When she nodded her satisfaction, Tom sat down once more.

Harriet noticed that he was not drinking and asked him if he cared to join her.

Tom replied that he was waiting for her permission. This seemed to please Harriet, ‘You’re learning quickly. But go ahead and have some if you like. I couldn’t possibly drink all of this by myself. I wouldn’t be able to sleep for having to run to the loo. Coffee always has that effect on me.’

It was Tom’s turn to be pleased by the admission of this small detail to him. He found himself eager to learn more of her moods and habits. Harriet struck him as a woman who didn’t chatter lightly about herself. Slow to give confidences and reluctant to let out intimate details. There was a lot to learn about this stranger who had entered his life and taken charge of him. He wanted to know more, but Harriet was silent. She turned her attention to the TV, paying him no more mind than the furniture. Nettled, he drank his coffee, hoping none of this showed on his face.

When he finished his coffee, Harriet stood up and crossed the room to him. So she must have been watching me, he thought. That was gratifying. She opened a drawer in the sideboard and produced a pair of handcuffs.

‘Remember these?’ she asked. They must have been the ones Beth had used on him at their first meeting. Otherwise there would be no reason to recognise a specific pair of handcuffs. One set looked exactly like any other set of the same type. Tom wondered if Beth had borrowed them from Harriet, and how much influence Harriet might have had on him through Beth. She had never mentioned Harriet, but she had seemed to have more than just a cursory knowledge of (and interest in) B&D.

Harriet motioned him to place his hands behind his back, and when he had done so she snapped the cuffs on his wrists. Instead of returning to her chair across the room, she sat down beside Tom and let her nylon-sheathed thigh brush against his bare leg. The touch was electrifying. He felt as if his whole skin were specially sensitised and waiting for just such a contact. She settled herself more comfortably against him. Tom looked at her in pleased surprise, remembering her earlier admonition about looking but not touching. As if reading his thoughts, Harriet said, ‘Relax and let me do the work. You’re not breaking any rules. You won’t be touching me. I’ll be the one doing the touching – wherever I like, and you can’t stop me. Not that I think you’d want to stop me, unless you’re more prudish than Beth described.’

He didn’t reply, wondering again just how much Beth had told this strange and exciting woman who now sat beside him. He could feel the warmth of her body against his side, through the tight leather she wore. The smell of leather and warm flesh filled his nostrils, a heady combination. He wondered briefly if he were dreaming. This was just the sort of erotic dream he had been having lately, more so after Beth had gone. More and more he imagined himself as the prisoner of a masterful woman who would toy with him, showing him new heights of sexual experience. Beth had opened him to sexual experiments, bizarre acts he had not thought of, and then she had gone, leaving him wanting more.

Now was apparently the time for more. Harriet snuggled against him, her arm around his shoulders, holding him to her. Not that Tom intended to escape. The taut roundness of her breast pressed against his shoulder as she moulded herself to him. She leaned over and began to lick and nibble his earlobe, blowing softly into his ear at intervals. Her breath was warm on his cheek, and he could smell the aroma of the coffee she had just drunk. He felt Harriet’s lips brush the angle of his jawbone and continue down the side of his neck into the sensitive spot below his ear. She licked him gently, the saliva making cooling patches on his skin that only seemed to make him hotter. With her free hand she stroked his scrotum, teasing the crinkly flesh until it grew tight. She toyed with the tie wrap around his balls, which felt as if they could swell no more without cutting through the flesh. The plastic gripped him like a steel band as Harriet’s hands continued to arouse him slowly.

As she stroked and rubbed his balls, Harriet whispered into his ear, ‘When rape appears inevitable, relax and enjoy it. Wouldn’t you like to feel how warm and wet I am between my legs? Or are you a tit man? Would you like to get your hands on mine? Shall I take off everything for you?’