The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels

HOTEL ROOM FUCK by Maxim Jakubowski

How they first met is unimportant.

Or, at any rate, another story altogether.

A different one.

Here, they both arrive at Kennedy Airport on different flights from Europe, barely one hour and two terminals apart. Initially the flight she had suggested taking was bound for Newark and cheaper, but he had been unable to coordinate his own travel arrangements to match hers.

After retrieving his case from the luggage delivery area and verifying her flight details, he kills time wandering through the busy, rundown hallways and alleyways of the building cluttered with passengers in various forms of transit. Idly wondering what she might actually look like. Checks out the stroke magazines in the news concession. There’s a new one he’s never come across before, called Barely Legal. He nervously glances aside as he leafs through it. Time passes slowly. A double cheeseburger and fries and a large coke take up another ten minutes.

He finally makes his way toward the terminal where the Sabena flights disembark, dragging his own case behind him on its dodgy wheels. A screen announces the arrival of her plane. She must now be queuing at passport control.

He finds a seat to the right of the luggage pick-up area, from which vantage point he will see all the passengers come out of the corridor from immigration. He holds his breath one moment. Suddenly, the whole thing doesn’t sound so wise after all. What if, what if?

The Brussels flight crowd stream through the corridor. So many of them: the plane must have been quite full. They all saunter down the short flight of stairs towards the luggage carousels.

She is among the last to emerge. A dozen times already he has convinced himself she wasn’t on the plane. Had been playing a game with him all the time. Had missed the flight by barely a minute or so back in Europe. Had been discovered by her masters and held back in captivity. Had come to her senses and realized this whole New York thing was quite pointless after all.

Finally, a slip of a girl with luminous features makes her way past the security guard posted at the top of the short flight of stairs and tiptoes her way down, concertina’d almost by two burly six-footed businessmen in charcoal-coloured suits and matching attache-cases. Her dark blue skirt is short, swirls around her knees. Her T-shirt is white, its thin material clinging to her skin. Even from where he sits, he can see the outline of her nipples through it, or is it the rings?

Jesus, she is so young!

But he knew that already, didn’t he?

As she reaches the bottom of the stairs and her involuntary escorts scatter into different directions, she looks around the luggage enclosure, seeking him.

Her eyes alight on him. The sketch of a smile spreads across her lips.

He stands up. Smiles back at her.

His heart skips a beat or two or three.

She stands there motionless, as the arriving crowds mill all around her, a statue of perfection at the centre of the hurly-burly of the airport.

She slips her rucksack from her shoulders. He moves toward her, feeling all around him freeze, like a slow motion scene in a movie with the soft rock soundtrack missing and replaced by a cacophony of disruptive languages in a cocktail of voices.

Inches apart.

The heat from her body reaches toward him, a hint of spearmint on her breath.

“Hello, Thalie.”

“Bonjour.”

She leans over, kisses him on the right cheek.

He briefly imagines she’s telling herself he’s so much older than she thought, fatter, less than handsome.

“For a moment, I thought you weren’t coming,” he says as, behind her, the luggage begins to accumulate on the conveyor belt.

“I said I would come,” she answers. “Why should I not?”

“I’m just rather insecure,” he says.

“I’m a lot of things,” she smiles. “But not that.”

“So, no regrets?” he asks her.

“Not yet,” she tells him. “You asked me to come. Here I am.”

“Good,” is all he can summon as an answer. Then, “What does your case look like? We’ll look out for it.”

“I haven’t one,” she says, pointing at the rucksack at her feet. “This is all I’ve brought. Some changes of underwear. For my first time in New York, I thought it would be nice to buy some new clothes while I’m here.”

He smiles. “We can buy them together. That would be nice.”

“Sure.”

“They must have been surprised when you checked in back in Brussels, no? Travelling so light?”

“I just said I was a student.”

“I see,” he says.

She bends to retrieve her rucksack. “Shall we?” she asks.

“Yes.” He picks up his case. “Let’s go and find a cab.”

The driver must be from Haiti, he reckons. His radio is tuned to a station full of static, reggae and rap and French patois.

She sits close to him on the back seat. He tries to recognise the perfume she is wearing.

JFK Boulevard. Van Wyck Expressway. Jamaica. Queens. Past La Guardia and the mortal remains of some long past exhibition by a dirty lake. The car is held up for fifteen minutes on the approach to the Midtown Tunnel. The driver puts a hand through the partition requesting toll money. He still has a pocketful of coins from his last trip to America.

In the darkness of the tunnel, she places her hand on his. Since meeting up at the airport, they have barely spoken. Mostly about the weather: here; back in London; back in Belgium. How their respective flights had gone. Had she managed to sleep, and how he had spent the time reading. The in-flight movies and meals.

Small talk at its most banal.

They finally drive out of the tunnel into the canyons of Manhattan and he breathes a sigh of relief. In the hotel room, he knows, he will be more eloquent, less shy and tongue-tied.

The traffic in the cross streets slows them down further as they navigate the traffic lights up to midtown.

They finally reach the hotel he has booked them into. Not the usual one where most staff in reception know him already, but one close by. He pays the cab driver. A porter rushes forward to assist with the luggage. There is only his case, propped in the cab boot against a worn spare tyre. She carries her rucksack by its strap, and straightens her blue skirt as she steps out of the yellow vehicle.

He catches the porter’s glance. Feels suddenly like a guilty, dirty old man, with this young girl at his side. Twenty-five years’ age difference. I am a cliché, he thinks. Damn it, he’s not going to feel guilt now, is he?

At reception they make a big fuss of him. Ten years since he has stayed here last, according to the computer.

The elevator. The long corridor festooned by Andy Warhol prints. He inserts the electronic card key into the slot, the door flashes green and opens.

“Welcome to New York, Thalie,” he says as a wave of infinite tenderness washes over his heart.

There is little for him to unpack as she uses the bathroom to freshen up from the journey. He listens to the water splash behind the door as he hangs his shirts and jackets in the cupboard. It’s only mid-afternoon.

She emerges. Smiling sweetly. Now she looks even younger. Wonderfully slim, her loose dark hair falling over her shoulders, reaching midway down her back. Her waist looks as if he could hold it within his two outstretched hands. Her breasts jut against the thin material of her white cotton T-shirt, and his eyes can’t avert the hypnotic shapes that strain the alignment of the whiteness. He guesses at the strap of a bra over her shoulders, but the cups must be soft and barely disguise the ever-aroused state of their contents.

“Are you hungry?” he asks her.

“Not really,” she answers. “I snacked on the plane. But it wasn’t very nice, I must say.”

“It never is,” he remarks. “Because of the time difference with Europe, I always find it better to have a meal when I get here, as late as possible. Puts one’s body clock on New York time. Otherwise, we’ll end up waking in the middle of the night and we’ll feel even more tired.”

“If you wish,” Thalie says. “Is it what they call jet-lag?”

He nods. Gazes at her.

Her eyes are pale brown, a delicate colour variation he would give heaven and hell to be able to define. The knot in his stomach grows ever more painful with every passing minute. Eventually, he knows, he will have to get to grips fully with this crazy situation he has somehow engineered.

“Shall we go out? Maybe down to the Village. Have a walk. I’ll show you around. Maybe see some shops for you. Have a bite to eat.”

“Whatever.”

It’s spring. The sun is out. Everything feels unreal.

They walk. It feels like miles, but neither of them are tired. They browse. He can’t help visiting a few bookstores. She gets a top at Urban Outfitters, but will not let him pay. He introduces her to the dark chocolate with dark chocolate Häagen-Dazs bar which is not available in Europe. They have an early dinner, around seven, in a Ukrainian restaurant on 2nd Avenue, near the corner of St Mark’s Place. Night falls. They are about to catch a cab back to their hotel when a pea-coloured chenille sweater catches her attention in the dimly-lit window of a thrift store. This time, he insists on paying. As they exit the shop, she pulls her purchase out of its paper bag and slips it on.

“It’s suddenly grown colder, hasn’t it?” she remarks.

“Yes,” he agrees.

There is sea of yellow cabs cruising down the Avenue, all with their lights on. He extends his arm to hail one. The driver is from Lithuania, and insists on practising his English on them when he discovers that his passenger hails from England. He has relatives in Swindon, and is surprised to learn his passenger has never come across them.

There is a new porter on duty at the hotel door. To avoid judgment on their apparent age difference or the risk of being told he cannot bring young ladies into the hotel – a thought that has dominated his mind throughout the cab ride up from the East Village – he exaggeratedly holds his card key aloft as they walk into the hotel. Possibly guessing his embarrassment, Thalie holds his hand in hers, whether to compound his self-consciousness or reassure him, he is unsure.

Green light.

The door opens.

The room is not overly large. The sparse furniture purports to be antique, a Picasso face is spread across the left wall, the narrow double bed – by no stretch of the imagination anywhere near king-size – dominates the landscape that is going to be theirs for the next four days. Heavy brocade curtains are drawn. It’s a quiet room; he is not sure whether the window gives on to 44th Street or not.

She drops her rucksack to the floor, kicks off her flat shoes and approaches the bed. Tests its firmness with her hand and then sits on its edge as he watches her. She pulls the new sweater over her head. Looks him in the eyes.

He remains silent.

Attempting to put off the inevitable, maybe?

“So,” he finally ventures, “am I what you expected?”

The wrong age, the wrong middle-age spread, the wrong short-sighted eyes, the wrong kind of clothes, the wrong size cock, the wrong man?

“I don’t know,” she replies. “You tell me.” Then, as an afterthought, “But I do like your voice.”

“Is it the voice of a master, or the voice of a slave?” he asks her.

“Do you really want me to answer that question now?” Thalie says.

“You’re right. I don’t. Maybe you can tell me at the end of the week.”

“Exactly. I’ve agreed to come here with you, but I can only be myself, you know that already…”

“Yes,” he quickly interrupts her. “And, as we talked before, back then, I respect your nature. I shall not attempt to change it. You are what you are: I accept that fully.”

“Good. I’m not seeking to be rescued…”

“I understand.”

“I am yours for this week we shall spend together in this room. Totally. Do to me what you will. Use me. Beat me. Humiliate me. My only pleasure is in giving myself. For you, I will be no different than I have been for others, with others. My holes are yours. All I am is a body, with holes made to be filled, used…”

Hearing her say it like this hurts even more than when she had initially written it.

But he tries to show no sign of the torment spiralling across his heart.

“I understand,” he repeats.

As she rises to her feet, she utters the last words he would hear from her until the following morning, “I know there will be tenderness, but please, oh please, do not fall in love with me.” Thereafter, there were sounds. In abundance. But no more words. Only moans, sighs, cries, the whole orchestral palette of sex.

She approaches him. Closer than they have ever been.

Her lips move toward his.

They kiss.

She tastes of Ukrainian tea.

He takes her into his arms. Holds her tight as their kiss continues. Tongue. Teeth. Breath held back. His hands now linger all over her, feeling her softness, exploring her warmth, he feels her eager responsiveness as tremors of lust race through his body. He takes a step back, interrupting their feverish embrace. Recalls all she has revealed of her subservient nature.

“Undress,” he orders her.

Her eyes look up towards the light fixture.

“One item at a time,” he continues. “I want to examine your body.”

She lowers her eyes and proceeds to pull the white T-shirt off, twisting its folds over her head, mussing her long brown hair which falls back down on her shoulders. Her skin is porcelain white. His heart tightens as sudden memories of another woman with the same pale skin flood back through his mind. Small flowery patterns crisscross the flimsy flesh-coloured bra she is wearing. It has no under-wiring. Her small, pert breasts visibly don’t require any. Her hands move to her back and she unhooks the bra and her chest is fully revealed. There is a dark mole an inch or so below her left nipple. Discreet dots of pigmentation are scattered across the approach to her modest cleavage, too pale even to merit the epithet of freckles.

The golden rings hang from her nipples, catching a fleeting reflection of the light from the hotel room’s ceiling fixture and its three low-wattage bulbs. They are thin, half the diameter of a wedding ring. She watches his eyes alight on them. She straightens her back, offering her ringed breasts to him. He extends a hand, touches the metal adornments. They feel light. Carefully he twists one of the rings and observes the way the darker, puckered flesh of her nipple follows the movement of the ring between his fingers. Her gaze is unflinching. He twists further, and with a finger of his other hand begins to manipulate the other ring in similar fashion. He watches as the pierced nipples harden and lengthen imperceptibly as he continues to manipulate the gold rings and her nipples. He pulls on one of them and he sees her flinch. But she says nothing.

Finally, he lets go and allows his now free hands to roam over her shoulders, caress her back. He plunges his fingers into her loose hair, pulls her head back and kisses her again, his tongue delving as deep as he can manage toward her throat. He can feel the rhythmic beat of her heart.

Her sharp nails begin to scratch his own back.

He keeps his eyes open as he kisses her. Notices the faint pale pink scar on her upper lip. Almost shaped like the letter B. Remembers its origin: Anne-Louise B. and the male friend also called B. were drunk and had heated up a paper clip in the flame of a lighter until it glowed red and tried to brand her with their joint initial.

He pushes Thalie gently away.

“Suck me,” he tells her.

Naked to the waist, like a fragile doll in her blue, now billowing skirt, she lowers herself to her knees, face in alignment with his crotch and unclips his belt, unbuttons the top of his trousers and pulls them down to his knees. He is already partly hard and his cock is straining against his dark grey boxer shorts, an obscene bump of maleness.

She inserts a finger under the elastic and releases the cock.

He realises momentarily that he probably smells down there: the eight hours’ flight and sweat, the long afternoon walk, the sweat, the heat. He should have washed first.

Her mouth approaches. Her tongue licks his shaft, slowly, tantalizingly; a hand cups his heavy, dark balls and her lips close in on the glans as she takes him into her mouth. The heat is wonderful. She allows him all the way in, his tip bumping against the back of her throat. She doesn’t gag as she impales her mouth over him. No woman has taken him in so far without choking. She has, he knows, been mercilessly trained by previous users under dire threat of punishment or violence. His cock grows inside her mouth.

Her tongue surrounds his hardness, dancing lightly around his captured stem, teasing, licking, caressing. Her lips hold him in a soft but firm vice, slip sliding over his engorged flesh, welcoming his invasion, wordlessly inviting him to thrust ever deeper into her.

His eyes wander across the horizon of the room. The Picasso head is watching them as the young girl studiously keeps on sucking his middle-aged cock.

At this rate, he knows, he won’t last much longer. He does not wish to come so soon, inside her mouth. He retreats, withdraws from her mouth. She looks up at him, puzzled, thinking maybe she hasn’t performed well enough and is due for punishment.

He attempts a smile of kindness to reassure her.

“Undress,” he asks her. “Take the rest off now.”

She obeys.

Stands up and unzips the blue skirt. It slips to the hotel room carpet. The shape of her body is the nearest he has come to witnessing perfection, outside of no doubt doctored photographs in magazines. At the age of twenty, neither gravity nor the ravages of time have yet taken hold and begun their seditious work.

Her knickers are modest, thick white cotton, practical, sexless.

She bends over slightly to pull them down.

He knows what to expect. From what she had written.

He also knows it’s the first thing that initially attracted him to her, and convinced him he had to see her one day. A prurient curiosity that betrays the filth in him.

The bunched-up piece of white underwear now lies in a small heap on the carpet. She straightens up. His eyes move up her smooth legs. Slowly. Almost hesitantly.

It’s as he knew it would be.

His turn to move to his knees and approach his face to her genital area.

Quite hairless, both above and around her cunt. Like the crotch of a doll or a pre-pubescent girl.

Not a wisp of hair, not even a darker shadow of hairs past. The same milky white shade that characterizes her whole body.

And the rings.

Gold.

Each one a thin band, like a cheap wedding ring.

Eight of them.

Four hanging from each labia, in perfect alignment, pulling both outer lips out of the central gash, the darker, redder skin like meaty folds on a butcher’s stall, raw, almost bloody, as if the necessary piercings had only been done recently.

He gasps.

Incongruously wonders whether there is enough metal here to set off airport alarms.

Each set of labial rings is held together by a thin contraption of stainless steel, like a nurse’s large safety pin with three branches. The middle one is threaded through all the rings while the two outer ones squeeze the pin tight and the whole is kept closed by a minuscule padlock.

He approaches his fingers, gingerly touches the chastity device protecting her entrance; his hand feels the intense heat emanating from the invisible depths of her cunt.

The rings effectively seal her tight. There is not even space to insert a finger. As she had warned him. Even during her period, she is unable to use a tampon and has to rely on sanitary towels.

“It’s awesome,” he whispers in the now hushed silence of the room. “It’s… beautiful.” And barbaric, he thinks, but he is so turned on.

He can’t take his eyes off her locked cunt.

She remains quite silent.

Observing him.

Judging him?

This older man, with his thinning hair, his cock jutting out as if on military parade, his love handles, the sombre bags under his eyes, his trousers bunched around his ankles.

He finally takes off the rest of his clothes and asks Thalie to lay down on the bed, on her back and indicates she should open her legs wide.

He kneels, forces the angle between her thighs even wider and examines her like a doctor, mentally storing every detail of her adornments, her mutilation, as he gazes across the brazen display of the wonder of her jewelled portals.

He moves his face against her cunt, feels her inner warmth vibrate toward his cheeks, tries to slip his tongue between the minute gaps between the rings, but there is no access. She is utterly sealed.

Thalie extends a hand, musses his hair, sensing his obvious frustration.

He is on his knees at the foot of the bed, his head at the apex of her thighs, inhaling deeply, trying to seize the ineffable smell of her.

The sheer hardness of his cock weighs against his stomach.

He thinks of investing her mouth again, but Thalie shifts on her side and repositions herself on all fours on the bed, her rump raised toward him. A perfect, pale sphere, punctured by the darker heart of her anus; both her hands move back to either side and stretch her globes apart, inviting him. He wets his cock and thrusts himself into her arse in one swift movement. His head punctures the tight sphincter and his whole cock is quickly embedded inside her. She shifts to accommodate him better.

He digs inside her and for the next ten minutes, an eternity, he fucks her arse, watching the skin around her aperture distend with every in-and-out movement of his thick cock. He moans. She moans. He sweats. The perspiration drops from his forehead to his chin and then onto her back, where it pools slowly, a small transparent pond of humidity vibrating intensely to the accompaniment of every tremor that crosses her body as he tries to force himself ever deeper into her bowels. His lips are dry. She bites hers, out of pleasure or pain. His heart beats a light fantastic. Picasso is on the wall. The clandestine sounds of the hotel bathe them in ominous silence. Their fuck is an island of motion cut off from the rest of the world. He holds back as long as he can manage. Below the dark piston of his cock and its mechanical assault of her innards, the rings shine, wetness from above and inside her bathing them in an unmistakable sheen of lust. His frenzied eyes mirror his soul, flitting from arsehole to ring-bedecked cunt and his hardness just refuses to fade away.

Her sounds of sex are silent. Gentle cries, repressed gasps, deep breaths. She adjusts the position of her body to accommodate his movements, to accept him even deeper, her sphincter muscles tightening rhythmically around him before releasing his penis again, then tightening again, capturing every renewed attack. His tip is deep inside her bowels. Where it burns. And feels good.

Finally, he can hold out no longer. Thalie’s whole body is just made for sex, a finely-honed machine for the benefit of his pleasure. He comes. He roars. Her name. A profanity. Feels his come burst out of him and bathe her insides, like a river of sin, a torrent out of control. He rests his hands on the bed, bent over her, the beat of his breath returning to normality. Silence continues. She says nothing either. At last, he feels his hardness begin to recede and pulls back, withdrawing his still pulsating cock from her. It emerges, bathed in come and inner juices. Her hole is shockingly dilated, red raw at the edges, like a small dark bottomless crevice. Never has he witnessed a sight so pornographic and, at the same time, so shockingly beautiful. The temporary scar his raging cock has left on her.

But he also knows she did not come.

They lay down together, moist body against pale body.

“Tired?” he asks her.

He pulls the covers over their bare bodies.

She nods, her eyes half-closed.

“It’s the jet-lag catching up,” he says. It’s only ten at night in Manhattan.

He wakes at two in the morning, still nine p.m. European time, with a hard on, his mind and body in tumult. She is on her side, her back to him. He pulls her sleeping body toward him and the contact of her flesh only accentuates his desire. He pushes a finger into her arsehole. She is still dripping, leaking his earlier come. He slips his cock into her and begins fucking her again. It takes him ages to orgasm as he rages against her with every movement, angrily seeking release. At one stage, he surprises himself and finds his hands beginning to tighten around her thin neck as his thrusts take a vengeful rhythm. He quickly releases the pressure of his fingers there. He doesn’t know whether she is awake or still sleeping. But her whole body accepts him.

He awakes again; there is a thin sliver of light peering through the heavy curtains. Early morning. This time Thalie is no longer sleeping, busy sucking on his cock with greedy appetite. Her eyes stay closed, he sees, as she does this.

When he is fully erect, she squats above him, stretches her rump cheeks open and plants herself on his cock, once again taking him deep into her arse. When he finally comes, the feeling is so strong, he thinks he is going to pass out.

“So, do I please you?” she asks, her first words since the previous evening.

“Yes, Thalie, you do,” he answers.

Q & A

“How did you first meet Anne-Louise?”

“She was my gymnastics professor.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Tell me about it, her and you? How it happened?”

“I was born in a well-off, heavily Catholic family. We weren’t rich, but life was easy and I was spoilt as a child. I have a sister, but she is sixteen years older than me. I’ve always believed she was very unhappy about my arrival at such a late stage.”

“Is she aware of what you have become?”

“Yes.”

“And she did nothing about it? You must hate her.”

“No, I don’t. I love her, feel very close to her.”

“She knows Anne-Louise?”

“Yes.”

“You met through her?”

“Not quite. I was a good pupil at school, but I excelled in sports. I particularly enjoyed gymnastics; I was told I had talent. For my sixteenth birthday, I asked for private lessons in one of the city’s better clubs. My parents agreed to it, and I was signed in for lessons two evenings a week and following school on Wednesday afternoons. Anne-Louise was my professor. She was already a friend of the family, and I remembered her often mocking me when I was younger, because of my lack of feminine opulence. ‘The Plank’ when I was thirteen, later ‘No Bum’ when I reached fourteen. My body developed late.”

“She seduced you?”

“Not quite. She was very pleasant to me during the course of the early lessons. She recognized my innate talent and the suppleness of my body. Initially, I attended the lessons wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but soon she asked me to wear a dancer’s leotard so that she might be able to supervise and see how all my muscles worked. She taught me a lot, often correcting my stance or the use of the wrong muscles with a small wooden cane.”

“She beat you?”

“Lesson after lesson, her instructions became more and more difficult to follow and she would strike me harder. Surprisingly, I began to look forward to her striking me, even though it was sometimes painful. To this day, I still hanker to submit to her; she was so beautiful. So tall and blonde. And her severity struck an unusually responsive chord inside me as I took instruction. I think I had basically been submissive in spirit ever since my early childhood.”

“How come?”

“Even as a child, I recall never wishing to be a Princess when we played games with my sisters or friends. I preferred to imagine myself as a servant.”

“How did the relationship progress to you becoming, so to speak, her slave?”

“Soon, she began to realize, I think, that I was sometimes making deliberate mistakes and she began striking me for no reason at all, and noted that I did not object. One day, for the first time, she struck me badly with her long, thin cane before our lesson even began. Told me it was to encourage me. She had guessed my masochist nature. That day, following the lesson, I deliberately followed her into the shower and confessed how attractive I found her and that I was in love with her. She surprised me by replying that she had lusted after me ever since I had been younger, and her earlier taunts had just been indications of her disguised desire for me. We kissed.”

“And?”

“She warned me of her dominant character and that, in any form of relationship, I would have to submit to her will. I readily agreed. She made love with me there and then under the shower. It was heavenly. She knew every spot to touch, as if by magic.”

“Had you been with boys before?”

“Somehow, I had never been attracted to men much. I’d kissed one or two boys, even allowed one to fondle my breasts under my shirt, but I hadn’t ventured further.”

“You were still only sixteen?”

“Yes. From the next day onward, I began following Anne-Louise’s instructions. I wanted only to please her. She said I should no longer wear jeans, dress like a tomboy. I must always wear dresses or skirts, no pantyhose, only stockings. Every day after school, I would go to her house on the other side of town and wait for her to return from her lessons or the stadium where she worked on a part-time basis. She would often leave instructions for me on small pieces of paper on the kitchen table. I had to follow these most precisely. One day, she left an apron for me to wear, alongside the note. I was to become her servant.”

“What was the sex like?”

“In bed, she was brutal and authoritarian. She enjoyed ordering me around, loved to humiliate me, sometimes inflicted much pain. But I enjoyed it more than I had enjoyed anything in my life before.”

“I don’t want to sound like a dime-store psychiatrist, but had you previously felt unloved, unwanted at home?”

“Not at all. It’s just the way I am. I don’t think anything will ever change my nature.”

“How did things develop, then, with Anne-Louise?”

“After three months of living like this, rushing to her place every day straight from school, all feverish, anxious for more of her harsh love and punishment, desperately trying to get away from home over the week-ends to spend more time with her, I decided to leave school and put myself completely at Anne-Louise’s service.”

“What did your parents have to say about it?”

“There was nothing they could say. I was a lesbian and a masochist; they disinherited me. To this day, they only refer to me as ‘the young whore’.”

“So, you began living with Anne-Louise?”

“I was her maid during the day and her toy at night. She became even harder on me now, would not accept a word of disobedience, insisted on the highest standards only of housework, cleaning and cooking. Whenever I failed, or forgot an instruction, the beating was most severe. The worse it became, the happier I was.”

“Tell me how?”

“For Valentine’s day, she bought a whip and a pair of handcuffs for me. The whip was to be used on me, of course. Thereafter, most days she handcuffed me before leaving for her work. Thus constricted, she said I would have more time to think of her all day. Naturally, my work around the house suffered badly. Which gave her even more opportunities to use the whip on me. But sex with her after every whipping was better than ever. I could wish for no other fate. Very soon, she began to use the whip on my body for no other reason than arousing me further sexually. Now she no longer even needed a reason to beat me, mark me.”

“And you enjoyed this?”

“I was deliriously happy. This was what I was born to be. Later, she would take me to Brussels on special shopping trips to a store in a large Galerie that specialised in fetish and S &M apparel. She bought increasingly sophisticated devices and clothing for me. She would make me wear elaborate black leather outfits that made me look like a whore at a sadomasochists’ convention. She had me play with toys in front of the assistants in the store as she exercised her power. Would have me gagged, plugged, displayed. Force me to wear underwear she had deliberately dirtied before. Back at her home, I had to serve her completely, in every detail. It soon became my task to lick her clean after she had been to the toilet. She loved me and I loved her. I thought this bliss would last forever.”

Mid-morning in the Manhattan hotel room. He calls out for bagels from Mom’s Bagels, two streets away. For him, a garlic bialy with Nova Scotia lox and cream cheese and a plain bagel with cream cheese and jelly for her.

They devour the food in bed, close to each other. He feels comfortable with her, their bare bodies touch as they shift, neither draws back from the contact. He loves the fact that, like him, she is a creature of silences, doesn’t find it necessary to make small talk and fill every precious moment of silence with needless words. A thin dollop of red jelly drops onto her left breast. He bends over and licks her clean, his furtive tongue nibbling on her ring, stretching the tender skin beneath. A warm feeling suffuses his lower stomach. Blood is already coursing back towards his tired cock.

Aware he is probably in no condition to perform again yet, he draws back and takes the kiss to her lips.

She smiles.

They have opened the curtains. Sunlight floods the room, the bed, their uncovered bodies.

He tells her about the last time he had stayed here. For two nights in a row, a couple in the room next door had practised particularly noisy sex, the sounds of which could just not be avoided through the thin hotel wall, keeping him awake and arousing his own lust. The woman had proven especially vocal, every thrust inside her provoking further moans, gasps or profane vocabulary in her lexicon of pleasure. The man, on the other hand, appeared to copulate in silence, leaving all aural accompaniment up to his partner: but must have had incredible staying power, as the sounds of their frantic lovemaking reverberated through to his room for almost two hours. On and on the sounds of nearby sex continued and he had begun to wonder what this shrill, enthusiastic woman might actually look like. The following night, the carnival occurred again in the adjoining room. On the third day, as he was leaving his room for his morning appointments, he finally caught a glimpse of a woman closing the door to the next room. To his disappointment and amazement – by now, he had visions in his mind of Greek goddesses or hardcore stars of the pornographic screen – she was a stocky, matronly Chinese woman with an old-fashioned fur coat draped across her shoulders, wearing sensible shoes and with a chignon in her hair. Anything but his dreams.

Thalie laughs at his story.

“Well, I don’t think we bothered the neighbours much,” she remarks. “We’re both wordless fornicators, I noticed.”

He smiles back at her, preferring not to tell her his other story of a hotel room fuck. In Paris, window opening onto a sea of Latin Quarter roofs. Where the sounds of the adjoining room had in fact been more muted but still caught his attention. Aroused, he had taken a glass from the bathroom and stuck it against the separating wall, cupped his ear against it and listened to the couple frolicking a few inches away and masturbated to the sound of their fucking.

Finally, they get up.

In the light of day, he finds her more beautiful than ever. And younger. Less than half his age.

“Who gets to use the bathroom first?” he asks her.

“You go,” she answers. “I feel wonderfully lazy this morning.”

He shaves. Christ, does he look tired! The new razor blade revives his skin. He washes the foam away and cleans his teeth. He tests the heat of the water bursting from out of the shower head, finds the right balance of hot and cold and steps into the shower area. He is soaping his cock, washing away their combined juices, when he hears her knock on the bathroom door.

“Yes?”

“Can I come in?” she asks him.

“Of course,” he replies. There is no need for false modesty now.

She tiptoes in, walks across the damp tiles and sits herself on the toilet bowl. Facing him, legs wide apart and proceeds to pee as he stands under the pouring water just a few feet away. He notices the eight rings hanging loosely from her labia as the thick stream of urine jets out of her and realises the safety pin and the padlock are no longer in place. His first glance at the pinkness inside her cunt as her leaves separate, gape, to make way for the release of her warm stream.

She looks up towards him, with a wry smile on her lips.

His eyes interrogate her silently.

“You never asked,” she says, as the last drops of pee keep on dribbling out of her. “A real master always does: he orders.”

“I didn’t realize…” he mumbles.

“I was allowed to bring the padlock key with me,” she confirms.

“I see,” is all he can feebly say. Feeling as if he has failed the first test.

“Can I join you under the shower?” Thalie asks.

“Of course,” he says.

Her body shines under the pounding water. They embrace. Kiss. Separate. Their hair soaking wet now. United by the cleansing spurts of hot water. They soap each other with all the delicacy they can each muster. Kiss again. They both step out of the shower. He turns to switch the water off and, when he turns again to face her, she delicately takes his cock in her wet fingers.

“There was still some soap,” she says.

She squeezes it. Hard.

He takes her hand away.

“Stay like that,” he says.

She remains immobile, water still dripping down the expanse of her body. He takes hold of a towel and dries her, enveloping her body in its softness. He glides his finger through her hair.

“Oh, Thalie,” he says.

“Yes” she asks.

“I want to make love to you properly now,” he answers.

He bends and picks her up in his arms. She is so light, he notices; and they make their way from steamy bathroom to the bed in the hotel room now blinded with light.

He pulls a curtain half-closed. There is still enough light for him to see all of her.

He installs her on the bed. She remains inert. Her opening gapes, as if alive, breathing like an invitation to pleasure. He delicately spread-eagles her limbs in a semblance of crucifixion across the crumpled sheets and buries his face in her cunt. He opens her up at long last and spies the infinite shades of nacreous pearl of her inner walls. Parting her, rings to each side he plunges his tongue inside her and a tremor flashes through her whole body. She still tastes of soap but her juices are soon abundantly flowing, pungent, aromatic, overflowing, bathing his chin as he labours away now, playing with her engorged clit. He has reached his destination, her portals of paradise. The velvet pearl pulses strongly against the tip of his tongue. Thalie moans. Widens the angle between her legs further in acceptance of his adoration. His face retreats. He looks up at her. Her face and the whole area leading to her breasts are flushed a deep hue of pink. Her eyes are closed.

He inserts a finger, then two, inside her cunt. She is like a furnace inside. He moves his other free hand towards her rear and sticks a finger inside her arsehole, where she is still gooey from their earlier exertions. Thalie gasps as both her holes are invaded.

Through the incandescent body heat, he feels the pulse of her heart beat against his probing fingers. He bends. Withdraws the digits and takes her now protuberant clit between his teeth and nibbles away at it. He feels her close to coming, for the first time since they have been together. His mouth takes leave of her copiously flowing juices and he climbs over her and inserts his cock inside her.

A wordless sound passes her lips.

Tenderness sweeps across his heart as he begins moving inside her. The fit is exquisite. The gold rings on either side of her cunt lips slide effortlessly against his shaft, enhancing the sensations without overpowering them. As he thrusts in and out of her, the thought occurs to him that if he were her master, he would have her pierced yet again, a ring or a stud in her clitoris, just to enhance the friction against his glans as it labours and retreats against her opening time and again. Yes, a nice thought. And a big if.

He closes his eyes in turn and surrenders to their first moment of love.

Q & A

“How did things begin to change in your relationship?

“She liked to show me off to others. Demonstrate the extent of her power over me.”

“Men? Women?”

“She would invite friends to our home and play at humiliating me in front of them.”

“How?”

“By having me wear the outfits she had bought for me. Playing games she knew I was bound to lose, and then punishing me for my missteps. I would have to strip in front of her guests and have my rear caned or whipped. If there were other women, she would make me lick her sex in their presence: sometimes had me lie on the floor while they peed over me. I would have to serve food naked but for a dog collar and was forbidden to react while they pinched me, touched my intimate parts, sometimes tried to trip me to cause further punishment.”

“But were there men?”

“Initially, only one. A close friend of hers. His name was B. He’s a lawyer from the city.”

“Was he her lover?”

“No. Anne-Louise hates men, sexually. But she was close to B. She liked exposing me to him, making me bend over so that he could peer inside me, even touch, which she knew I hated. The more ill at ease I was in these situations, the more it excited her and the crueller she became with him as witness to my degradation.”

“What sort of things would she do for him?”

“She liked to demonstrate my absolute obedience. One day, I was made to lie on my back on the floor as she inserted a series of ever-larger objects inside my vagina, which I had to hold wide open for them. First a dildo, then a bottle, then a cucumber. All the time, I could see the bump inside his trousers swell as she teased him that wouldn’t he like it to be him in that nice virgin cunt.”

“You were still a virgin?”

“Technically, yes. I hadn’t yet been penetrated by a man. By Anne-Louise and objects only.”

“How did it happen, the first time?”

“With B. One morning, Anne-Louise summoned me and instructed me that I should take a taxi to his apartment and do every single thing he would ask me to do. When I protested, she whipped me badly. Said I did not understand what true love was. I argued that I did. But she owed B. some debt, and he wanted me and that was that. Anyway, she told me, it would be good for my training, I had to be broken in. I went to him. Hated every moment. Later, there were other men she loaned me to.”

“Did she ever want to watch you being fucked by them?”

“No. If she was there, she would move to another room.”

“But did she ever ask you about what happened with the men?”

“Curiously, no. Although I was avid to tell her all, to demonstrate the extent of my affection for her by describing the pain they had inflicted on me, how they had used me, violated all my holes, made me choke on their filthy penises and forced me to swallow their ejaculate, played with me, beat me too. I wanted to tell her, ‘Anne-Louise, I have accepted all this for the sake of you.’ But she never asked. And if there were marks, cuts, bruises on my body, she would whip me in response, as if it were all my fault.”

“Sounds very much like one-way traffic to me.”

“She said that the coming of my seventeenth birthday would mark a significant point in our relationship. That I had satisfied her so far and she would show me her gratitude on this occasion.”

“What did she do?”

“We drove to Brussels on a Saturday morning. I thought she would be getting me new outfits at the shop in the Galerie, but this was not the case. It was a large building in the suburbs, a doctor she knew well. I would come across him again at the special parties. He used electrolysis to depilate my pubic area. I’m told it will never grow back again. Then, he pierced my breasts and fitted the rings I still have now. I was in heaven. I was Anne-Louise’s slave, in both body and spirit.”

“What are those special parties you mentioned?”

“They occurred later. I will tell you.”

“OK.”

Their second full day in Manhattan. The spring weather is clement. They walk. Catch cabs. Shop. Snack. Battery Park. The Cloisters. Central Park, watching the squirrels hop along the scarce vegetation.

They talk.

“Are you happy?” he asks her. “It’s such fun showing you this city, all these places I have known and liked for years. I try and imagine what it feels for you to see them for the first time.”

“It’s nice,” she answers. “But you’re too soft with me. I don’t deserve this, you know. If I were in your place, I would be crueller, much harder. Somehow I think you’re too sensitive. Almost like a girl…”

His face clouds over. “If you were in charge and I was a girl, would you fuck me?” he quietly inquires.

“I would,” Thalie says. “I would stretch you, hurt you until you plead for mercy, but I wouldn’t give you any. I have been taught well. Switching is no problem.”

“I see.”

“Would you prove your devotion to me by letting me treat you like that?” Thalie asks him as they cross toward the Plaza Hotel.

He doesn’t hesitate. “I would,” he replies.

“OK,” she says.

They catch a cab which takes them to a dark side street near the Port Authority Terminal. In a sex shop manned by Pakistani assistants, they buy a strap-on dildo. Flesh-coloured, veined, awesomely realistic and life-size. And handcuffs. So that he doesn’t change his mind, she says.

He is in no hurry to return to their hotel room.

He reminds her she wanted to go to Macy’s.

She wanders indifferently through the designer label departments.

“I want to buy you something nice,” he insists.

“Why?” she queries. “How do you want me to dress? Like a whore or a princess?”

“As a young woman.”

She agrees to stockings, a silk cream-coloured see-through blouse and a flowing skirt in rainbow colours.

They arrive back at the hotel mid-afternoon. The room has been made, and the smells of sex have faded.

“Undress,” she orders him, herself stripping from the waist downwards and fitting the strap-on belt around her waist. He notices she has reattached the safety pin and the padlock.

He silently sheds his clothes, takes a step towards the bathroom, planning to wash the sweat away from his body.

“Don’t,” she forbids him. “I want you dirty. I want to smell your vileness as I fuck you.”

He knows he shouldn’t protest; his face reddens as his arse crack feels all clammy, and his feet sticky.

“On your knees. NOW!”

He gets down on all fours.

“Raise your head.”

He does. His eyes are parallel with her labial rings. He notices she is seeping there. She is excited. She thrusts the artificial cock toward his mouth.

“Suck me,” she intimates.

The rubbery material fills his mouth; the taste is unpleasant. She only lets him suck the dildo for a minute or two then withdraws it and places herself behind him. All she wanted was for him to wet it.

She places the strap-on head against the outer ring of his sphincter and begins pushing it in.

It enters him with surprising ease. Initially, there is little pain and he is almost disappointed.

The feeling doesn’t last and soon he is biting his lips to repress heartfelt sounds of anguish as Thalie goes to war on him, viciously twisting the implement of torture within his gut as she endlessly adjusts her stance to increase its depth, the angle of attack and the unremitting pressure on his protesting bowels. He knows she is enjoying this. But he reasons, beyond the valley of pain, that she deserves at least this; that this is his own particular way of experiencing some of the humiliation that has been lavished on her by so many others. He communes with her as she keeps on fucking his arse, until the skin inside and outside is raw from the friction. His heart beats wildly; bile pools at the back of his throat; he has difficulty breathing. There is no longer any pleasure in the act for him.

Then, as suddenly as she entered him, she pulls it out in one swift movement and he momentarily feels as if his whole insides are being suctioned out.

He collapses, stomach first, onto the hotel room floor.

“There,” she says. “I think you would make a better slave than a master. Very docile. You take your suffering in silence; that’s a good sign,” she remarks.

For a moment, a germ of an idea settles in his mind. An image of the two of them as slaves, collared together, made to perform for the benefit of others.

At last, he rises, as his breath returns. Thalie now sits on the bed, watching him. The strap is now detached from her; her hands shield her jewelled pubes.

“I hurt you, didn’t I?” she asks, watching him rub his hole with the back of his hand. There is some blood.

“You did,” he says.

“Then I must be punished,” she says. “That is the way.”

As he washes the traces of the fuck away some minutes later, he realizes she is now testing him. It’s scary: could he ever become her master? Keep her?

He dresses.

The crease of his boxer shorts rubs painfully against his bruised flesh as he walks back into the room. Thalie is watching a game show on the TV set.

“I’m taking you out,” he tells her, switching the programme off.

“Where to?”

“Never you mind.”

Somehow, he always knew it would come to this.

She understands.

Asks: “How should I dress?”

“Like a whore. Wear that blouse and no bra, and stockings. And your shortest skirt. No underwear.”

She nods.

Night falls as their cab rushes down Fifth toward SoHo. He instructs her. At all times, she will sit with her legs open; there is to be no false modesty. She is his property for tonight and the following day and he will brook no disobedience. She will only talk when spoken to.

She indicates her assent to his terms.

“You will take no pleasure from what is done to you, because I won’t, either…”

“A master would take pleasure in displaying me,” she interrupts him.

He slaps her cheek, as punishment for her uncalled verbal response.

“Quiet, now.”

Her cheek reddens from the blow. She lowers her eyes. The driver looks inquiringly into his rear mirror at the older man and the young woman. Even though the light outside is dimming, he clearly saw her nipples through the shimmering blouse as she entered his cab, and he tries to get a better look.

A jazz club. Grimy walls, cigarette smoke, dissonant melodies running like waves across the ceiling over the sparse audience. He has her drink vodka and orange, although he knows she dislikes the concoction. Men at the bar glance in their direction. Her skirt is hitched up to mid-thigh. He fingers her under the table. She squirms.

Her rings are wet with her secretions.

He informs her of the fact. Presents a finger to her.

“Lick me clean.”

She does, just as the waitress approaches their table, inquiring after another round.

“Touching,” the waitress mumbles, visibly disapproving and mistaking Thalie’s appetite for a gesture of love.

“Isn’t it?” he responds with a wry smile.

The tension is palpable, as he summons his courage.

She senses it and remains damningly silent and expressionless.

Finally.

“Anything?”

“Yes,” Thalie replies. “Anything: it is my nature to be a slave.”

He rises from his seat as the band on stage finish their set in a flourish of drum rolls and reverb, takes hold of her hand and they make their way to the toilets. He briefly holds his breath and then enters the men’s, followed by her. There is a harsh smell of antiseptic lingering in the air; the ceiling is low, the surroundings claustrophobic. There is no one there. Just a yellowing row of urinals, a creaking fan circling like a low-flying aircraft close to the peeling, concrete ceiling, a sink with a dripping tap, a dirty towel and, behind a wooden door painted jet-black, the lone toilet seat. He opens the cubicle and orders Thalie to sit. He pulls her blue skirt up to her waist, unveiling her rings, and opens the buttons of her blouse so that her breasts are also on display.

“Like that. Yes.”

She doesn’t answer.

“The first man to come in,” he says.

She nods silently.

They wait. Each passing second extends to eternity.

Finally, the door to the men’s toilets swings open and a tall black guy walks in, hands already unzipping his flies. He heads towards the urinal, his back to Thalie in the cubicle.

“Hi.” He recognizes the guy, who played bass in the gang, a lanky man in denim.

“Hi, man. How ya doin’?”

“Listen. I have something for you…”

The musician starts peeing. “Nah, man, I have my own supplier. Thanks anyway.”

“It’s not drugs.”

The black guy shrugs. “Yeah? What then?”

“I have a woman here. She’ll suck you dry for free. Interested?”

The man looks over his shoulder at him, weighing the seriousness of the offer. Notices the open cubicle and Thalie sitting there, splayed open, all her gold rings on display.

He catches his breath. “What’s in it for you?” he asks, turning round and zipping his jeans up. His eyes are now fixed on the obscene spectacle of the young woman, her white flesh like a beacon in the sordid surroundings. “Wow,” he whispers to himself.

“I watch. That’s all.”

“You serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’d always heard you limeys got your kicks in weird fashion,” he says, a grin spreading over his dark features.

He approaches the cubicle and its immobile prisoner. He unzips and pulls out his cock. It’s long, thick, uncut. Offers it to her, hesitantly as if all this is about to disappear in a puff of smoke and is but a crazy mirage, a drug-fuelled dream. Thalie bends her face forward to take the cock.

“Sweet gal,” says the musician as her lips first graze his stem, before she takes him all in. “Will she swallow?” he asks.

“Yes,” he answers.

And watches the spectacle.

Black against white.

Black inside white.

To the bitter end.

After it is over, he allows her to adjust her apparel and cups his hands together to allow her to drink the tap water and wash her mouth.

Relief floods over him that no other man entered the bathroom while the three of them were there. He’s not sure he could have controlled the situation any further.

Still, she says nothing.

They finish their drinks and listen to the first quarter of an hour of the band’s second set. He hails a cab and they return to the hotel.

This is the first night in Manhattan they do not make love.

Q & A

“Did things happen that you particularly disliked?”

“Many. What I still found most difficult was when she invited friends around to demonstrate her power over me and my subservience, and took great pleasure humiliating me in their presence. The sex I didn’t mind. But I did feel shame. More so, when we left the house to go to parties and she had me walk out onto the street wearing accessories and clothing which were so explicit as to provide little doubt as to my status as her personal slave. A dog collar, a skimpy maid’s outfit, sometimes even a thin metal chain that connected to the handcuffs she made me wear for the short walk to the car park.”

“You were afraid that people might recognize you?”

“Not really. I did not like the fact that my slavery might be recognized by others.”

“I’m not sure I understand. You are proud of what you are.”

“I know. The worst time was when she invited my sister along for tea to the house, one evening. I hadn’t seen her for nearly a year. I had to wear the maid’s outfit with the apron and serve them in silence. My sister’s smile nauseated me. When asked if the tea and biscuits I had baked were to her liking, my sister, no doubt previously prompted by Anne-Louise, expressed reservations and I was told the only recourse was for me to be flogged in her presence. Which Anne-Louise did with unusual ferocity. I was made to bend across a chair a few inches away from where my sister sat, my dress was pulled up above my waist and my knickers pulled down to my knees, and I still remember every blow against my bare skin, even now. When Anne-Louise had completed the punishment, she actually invited my sister to beat me likewise. Which she agreed to do, the damn traitor. I couldn’t sit for days after that beating.”

“You were going to tell me about the parties?”

“There were two sorts. Once or twice a month, Anne-Louise would have friends over: mostly other women, sometimes couples for drinks in the evening. I would be made to serve. Often I would have to give evidence of my servility and accept a flogging or the caress of the whip. The guests would seldom become involved. This was more a demonstration of Anne-Louise’s power over me. At most, I would have to display my body for their after-drinks recreation, allow them to touch and twist my breast rings, provide evidence of my absolute docility and obedience.”

“What sort of people were these friends of Anne-Louise’s?”

“Professional, middle-class, middle-aged. The women were lesbian or bisexual but she would never loan me to them. Their fun with me was restricted to the games with me on that particular evening.”

“The other parties?”

“They were more extreme. Infrequent, also. I think I only attended five. Usually took place on Saturday nights and ran through the night. Never at Anne-Louise’s place: usually at plush residences somewhere in Brussels or in nearby towns. I never knew where exactly we were, as I was blindfolded by Anne-Louise as we neared the locations.”

“Sounds frightening.”

“It was. Anne-Louise said I now had to prove that I was fully trained as a sub and these parties would be my final test. I was eager to prove her confidence in me was well placed and swore I would do everything I was told. It wasn’t easy, but then I had little choice.”

“What sort of people attended these parties?”

“People like Anne-Louise. Genuine, experienced masters. They were here to show off their slaves, male as well as female. We all wore collars and were forbidden to talk to each other as we were cuffed together awaiting our fate for the evening. Whatever happened to any of us, we were made to watch, and looking away would result in further punishment.”

“What happened to you?”

“Even now, I can’t talk about many of the things that were done to me, or I was made to do to others.”

“What can you reveal?”

“Often the masters would play games, make bets on us, pick cards for the humiliations that would be inflicted on us. A party night would seldom pass by without my not having been used in all holes by all the masters present, male as well as female. On my first such party, my anal virginity was auctioned. I was blindfolded and made to kneel and suck every cock in the room, including the male slaves who were present. Unbeknown to me, the first one who managed to make me gag would be designated to be the first to bugger me. I had successfully sucked three of the men and swallowed them when I felt another place himself ahead of my mouth and heard sniggers across the room. I knew something was wrong right there and then. A voice behind me remarked that I might require some help, and my hair was brutally pulled back and my head pushed forward onto the expectant cock. He was so heavily hung that the pressure applied to the back of my head forced me to swallow him and he was shoved all the way into my throat. I couldn’t breathe. My lips were stretched to their fullest around its thickness and no air could pass from my lungs to my mouth. I couldn’t help gagging. It had been a set-up. He was one of the young slaves and his penis had elephantine proportions. At the next party, I was told he measured twelve inches or more.”

“Jesus!”

“I had no choice. I was installed at the centre of the room as all watched and the young boy sodomized me. It hurt badly. I even fainted halfway through and had to be revived with smelling salts. They had no pity on me. When it was over and I stumbled back to the far wall, where the other slaves were grouped, I noticed Anne-Louise had not remained in the room for the ceremony. One of the other girls – she was a tall, red-haired beauty with ever such pale skin – whispered to me that she had gone through the same ordeal. They always chose the pimply young slave boy with the enormous cock for a female slave’s first experience of sodomy. Something about stretching us for further use. A master saw her talking to me, chided her and announced this was one transgression too far. Could she not manage to keep her mouth closed long enough? Next time, she would be the one to be punished. She went paler than pale and tried to refrain her tears from flowing. I saw that she was terrorized. In the meantime, the young boy who had hurt me so much was now still the centre of attraction and being made to suck his own master to hardness before he was made to kneel on all fours himself and his master buggered him in turn.”

“How could you accept such things, Thalie?”

“Because Anne-Louise ordered me to and I was in love with her.”

“The things we do for love…”

“While you were being used by others at these parties, what did Anne-Louise do?”

“She liked to whip and torture the other masters’ female slaves. I once had to watch her fist another girl. She had never, until then, done that to me. The poor kid screamed but Anne-Louise didn’t stop.”

“You must have been scared by that?”

“Yes, but not so much as the day I had to watch the tall red-haired girl being punished. She had accumulated too many faults, according to her master, and had to be made an example of. And all of us other slaves present were warned that if we even looked away one single second, a similar fate would befall us. It was awful.”

“What did they do to her?”

“She fought against them but she didn’t stand a chance. It took four masters to hold her down, while another brought it in…”

“What…?”

“They placed her in the right position, kicked her legs apart and it happened. Even now, I still have nightmares thinking of what I saw. Scratched deep lines of blood across her back once it was over.”

“God!”

“That very moment, I swore I’d commit suicide if I ever allowed something like that to happen to me.”

“I can imagine.”

“Later, as the others played with the rest of us slaves, I saw her sobbing against the wall. They had connected her collar to the dog’s leash and she sat there motionless while the come still oozed out of her. I never saw her again. She was never brought to the other parties I attended, even though her erstwhile master was present. Now, he had another woman.”

“What can I say, Thalie? And you were still only seventeen?”

“After that night, I think Anne-Louise began to sense my unease about the sexual escalation in the relationship. A couple of days later, she stuck a Polaroid next to my bedside table. She had taken it when the red-haired girl was being violated. This was clearly a warning to me not to doubt her resolve and dare any form of disobedience to her will. But we only attended two more special Saturday night parties during the course of the following six months and nothing more untoward than sex and whippings occurred, as if the group knew they had crossed a dangerous borderline. At the final party Anne-Louise took me to, I could somehow feel her distancing herself from me already, but I did not wish to acknowledge that a page was about to be turned. That night, the tall pimply young slave boy with the uncommon endowment came up for punishment and I was fitted with a strap-on and made to fuck him. I had never realized before I could switch from sub to becoming a most ferocious, vengeful dom. I plundered him with a vengeance. I eventually had to be pulled away, out of him by Anne-Louise. She had of course used a strap-on on me, on many occasions, but we had never switched; she was not into penetration.”

“You said things were changing?”

“For some time, Anne-Louise had hinted that the present she was planning for my eighteenth birthday would be unforgettable. Two months prior to the event, she took me again to the doctor in Brussels and my lips were pierced and the eight rings installed. I was told it would take some weeks to heal. Anne-Louise seldom used me in the weeks between my labial piercings, and often only returned home late with no word of explanation.”

“So what did she actually give you for your eighteenth birthday?”

“There was not even a greetings card in the morning. I slaved away in the kitchen all day and she came home around seven. She asked me to follow her to the bathroom, ordered me to undress, examined my rings and the now fully-healed piercings. I was told to close my eyes and felt her fit something across the rings. It was a special kind of safety pin which fits through both sets of four rings and closes with a miniature padlock, totally sealing the entrance to my vagina. There was a kind of beauty to it, this chastity device whose usefulness I couldn’t quite understand. Later, she explained to me that she had tired of me, wished to install a new friend in the house. By fitting me with the padlock, she would still control me from a distance. I was to leave her house the following day! I was dumbstruck. I cried for hours.”

They spend their final day in Manhattan together, as normal lovers do.

They linger in bed, have breakfast sent up, touch, kiss, caress, talk about the weather.

He plans their day. They will lunch at a small Japanese sushi bar on the corner of 13th Street and 6th. She tells him she has never eaten raw fish before.

“You’ll see,” he reassures her. “It’s nice.”

They will catch a movie at the Angelika, trawl Tower Records for the obscure country and western CDs still missing from his extensive collection, explore the quaint streets of Alphabet City and end up with a final meal in a Cajun joint close to the Flatiron Building. Oysters, gumbo and whatever main entrée catches her fancy.

“Fattening me up, eh?” Thalie remarks.

“Exactly. You’re all bones and rings, my dear…”

He’s not sure if she appreciates the joke.

“I’m off to shave.”

“OK.”

When he returns from the bathroom, her face is flushed. Her eyes shift when he looks at her; she appears guilty.

“What is it?” he asks her.

“I’ve been bad.”

“How?”

“While you were washing, I touched myself.”

“So?”

“You didn’t use me, yesterday night. I needed relief.”

“It’s not a problem, Thalie.”

“It’s wrong for a slave to seek her own pleasure, without the consent of her master. You must punish me.”

His heart sinks.

So this is the way it is.

He handcuffs her hands to the bed post and arranges her nude body in the shape of an X across the soft green bed cover. She is not wearing the safety pin. As he widens the angle between her legs, her cunt gapes.

He hangs the “Don’t Disturb” sign outside the door and leaves her in the room, captive, laid out like an offering. Although not for the maid!

He loiters around the reception area until he finds a suitable male. A German tourist, wealthy-looking but with no taste in clothes. At first, the man does not take him seriously, but he insists. They share a coffee in the breakfast room. He explains. They do the deal. He gives the German the card key to their room.

He has no wish to watch.

“You have two hours,” he says. “Be out of the room by then. She is handcuffed. I have the keys with me. She will not speak, or cry, or scream.”

“And I…?” asks the German, begging for confirmation of his wildest dreams.

“She is totally yours. Anything you want.”

They are two of the slowest hours of his life. He walks four blocks North, then five blocks South. Peruses every window without even noting their varied contents. When he finally returns, Thalie is still handcuffed to the bedpost, the taste of another man still leaking from her, dotting her stomach, her face, her breasts.

She smiles at him.

His slave.

That night, he sleeps badly, his mind in tumult.

Sunrise comes early, with a blanket of low clouds waltzing over the top of the highest skyscrapers.

He tells her about the dream.

In it, he has failed abysmally at becoming a master and the only alternative is to become a slave himself. To stay with Thalie, he sends a begging letter to Anne-Louise, offering himself in exchange for further time with her. His pitiful demeanour makes her laugh but, as a game, she accepts.

Initially, she puts him on a diet, having no need of an overweight slave. Then, when he becomes suitable, she shaves his pubic hair and brands him, a large B carved into his buttocks. He is allowed to sleep in the same room as Anne-Louise and Thalie, but on the floor, at the foot of their bed, where he is forced to listen to their lovemaking and Thalie’s severe beatings. He is beaten, too, made to wear an apron and serve their food; if ever he is caught with an erection, he is whipped until he bleeds. But he is happy now, just living under the same room as his companion of slavery. Eventually, he is allowed to attend the special parties where his role is to suck all the men to hardness before they fuck Thalie, then to lick them clean after they have withdrawn from her orifices. In turn, she is to prepare the men who bugger him. He is no longer allowed to touch her, only to watch the increasing stations of her degradation. But the punishments get worse and worse, as he finds it impossible to repress his excitement as his cock invariably reacts shamelessly every time another man penetrates her.

Finally, the circle of masters decree the ultimate punishment at the next party he is to be brought to.

Which is when he awoke.

“A companion in slavery,” Thalie remarks. “Yes, I think that would be quite appropriate for you…”

“Would I?”

“But it’s all a dream, you know. Anne-Louise hates men; she would never want you as her slave. If you had a wife to offer in exchange for time with me, maybe then she might entertain your proposal. Dream on.”

“I will,” he says.

Q & A

“What did you do when Anne-Louise threw you out?”

“I pleaded, made a fool of myself, threw myself at her feet. Even begged to be retained, if only as a servant, so that I may look after her and her new, young mistress.”

“Did you meet her, this new girl?”

“Yes, some months later. Tall, blonde: everything I wasn’t. New. Virgin territory for Anne-Louise’s cruel whims.”

“But she didn’t allow you to stay on?”

“No. I was desperate. I knew my parents would never have me back. I had given up my studies without obtaining any diplomas or qualifications. How could I find a job, somewhere to live? During the two years I had spent with Anne-Louise, I had deliberately lost the few friends I had before our encounter. I had nothing. I never even had any more normal clothes to wear. Anne-Louise had once mentioned, almost as a joke, a couple who had on two occasions visited her soirées and been witness to my servility and asked where they could find a similar maid. Maybe I could go and place myself in their service. The idea didn’t appeal to me. Become a servant to people I had already privately served as a slave. But I had no other alternative. Anne-Louise phoned them and a deal was agreed.”

“And that’s where you are now?”

“I’ve now worked here two years almost. They leave for work – they are both senior managers for a large insurance company in a nearby town – early in the morning and my duties are to keep the house clean, wash, iron, dust, prepare the food. I am not allowed any mail or telephone calls. I play on the Internet. Watch TV. They are hard on me. The woman has custody of the padlock key, but she is capricious and often declines to set the rings free, particularly when I’m having my periods. It amuses her. Most of the time, I am just their servant, but sometimes they remember my nature and my past, usually when they have drunk heavily. He fucks me while she watches, then has me lick her. Christmas last, I was seemingly too enthusiastic while he used me extensively and the next day, out of jealousy, she beat me badly.”

“Do you still hear from Anne-Louise?”

“Not often. She keeps in touch, though.”

“Do you still love her?”

“Yes, as much as ever.”

“Will she ever have you back?”

“I live in that hope, but I realise how unlikely it is. I’m realistic.”

“Are you happy?”

“Yes, in my own way. But living with my owners is boring. The house is in the middle of nowhere. The only contact I have with other human beings is when they take me on holiday with them. Spain in the summer; a house in the mountains in France near Easter. In Spain, I am allowed to wear shorts and bikinis. The padlock is taken off and I am allowed to be naughty. I fuck boys; with rubber protection, of course. They don’t mind, as long as I’m not late back at their villa to cook the meals.”

“Can you see your life remaining the same for years to come, Thalie? A leading question, I know.”

“I’m only twenty. I am a sub… But I do harbour hopes of convincing Anne-Louise of giving me to B.”

“But he’s the man who tried to brand you?”

“I know, but I think he would be a good master for me.”

“It’s your life.”

“It is.”

“And I’m no knight in shining armour, Thalie. I have no mission in life to change your nature. You touch me, though. I feel much tenderness for you.”

“Do you think you could be my new master, then?”

“I’m not sure. Willing to give it my best shot (hear my smile between these lines)…”

“If you were a true dom, you would know already. I don’t think you are, somehow.”

“I’m sadly aware of the fact. But I still want to see you. Badly. Can you find a way to get away for a few days? Meet me somewhere? Anywhere? There must be some pretext you can use, a white lie. That aunt in Paris who’s left you the deeds of the apartments she owns and rents out, for instance. You could invent a reason to go there, to sign legal papers… Please, Thalie.”

“Maybe. Let me think.”

He packs.

He had asked the day before whether they should purchase a case for the clothes they had bought together, but she declined. She came with nothing and insists she should return to her owners similarly. It would be suspicious otherwise and, unlike Anne-Louise’s, she does not appreciate their beatings. He realizes he had never even asked her what alibi, what lie she had used to justify her trip.

He watches as she stuffs the barely-worn chenille jumper, the rainbow skirt, the cream see-through blouse, the stockings and sundry knick-knacks into the hotel room’s wicker waste basket. He’s packed the cuffs and the strap-on in his own case, although he’s thinking of disposing them in a washroom at the airport. It would be too embarrassing to be searched at customs.

They take the lift in heavy silence. He settles the bill with his credit card and the doorman hails a cab.

“Newark.”

It’s early morning, ahead of the commuter traffic. The journey barely takes half an hour. Throughout, he holds her hand in his.

Way down his throat, there are a million words he wishes to say, but they break up like flotsam against the rampart of his lips. He knows he hasn’t the eloquence to change her life. Or his.

Her flight is a whole hour earlier than his.

Her thin, fragile silhouette disappears down the neon-lit corridor that leads to her departure lounge. He has checked: her plane is on time. They haven’t even said goodbye. Before the bend, she turns, smiles and blows him a kiss.

He knows he will never see her again. The letters will continue for a short time; then they will slow down and a day will come when she just disappears, the property of a new master, who will forbid all contact with her former life. And his mind will imagine the worst. Violation. Torture. Death. Because the life she has chosen is a one-way street.

And his heart doesn’t own the right passport.