He arrived. Didn’t even blink when he saw me there (later, though, he confessed that his heart just dropped twenty fathoms when he realized it actually was me).
“I’m back,” I said.
“You haven’t changed,” he said quietly.
“Yes, I’m the same,” I answered.
His hand stayed in his coat pocket, fingering his keys.
“Back for good?” he asked.
“Forever and again,” I promised.
“Good.”
We went inside and he fucked me unceremoniously on his office floor. We didn’t talk. Just did it. It was good. As it always had been. Time and time again, he got hard. And harder. Ploughed me. The phone rang on and off throughout and we blissfully ignored it. Every time, he plunged deeper into me, extending my legs over his shoulders to ensure further penetration and I knew only too well that with each successive thrust he was trying to hurt me, but I bit my tongue and let him take his revenge. I was the guilty party. The betrayer. His fingers in my rear stretched me, tore me, impaled me, but it was all right. It was fine. He had to get over his anger. And the pain he was causing also excited me like I never thought it could.
Later, I told him:
“I have done you wrong, I know.”
“Yes, oh yes, you have, my love,” he said, pensively. “Two bloody years of longing, of constant ache inside, of sleepless nights that went on and on with no end in sight. Christ, you did make me suffer. But, you see, there was also hope against hope. That one day I would get you back… That somehow the impossible would happen. I never really gave up totally, even when things were at their darkest.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Truly, I am,” I babbled.
“You hurt me so,” he said, now with tears in his eyes.
“So punish me,” I told him.
“No. Now is surely the time to bury the past, forget the whole damn mess, start things anew.”
“I insist, you must punish me,” I heard myself saying. “I deserve it all. Do to me what you will, my dark-haired lover. Anything.”
He looked at me strangely. Smiled gently.
“Are you sure?” he questioned me.
“Absolutely,” I answered.
“Fine,” he said.
So my lover took me to the castle in Milton Keynes. One hour or so up the M1, travelling with no rush in the middle lane. I couldn’t see anything. He had carefully placed a black silk scarf around my head, fastened it tight, covering my eyes. He said it was Milton Keynes. I believed him. We’d spent the right amount of time driving up the motorway. But I suppose it could as well have been Blackheath, Finchley, Hendon or even Scarborough for all I knew or cared. It didn’t matter. Castles all smell the same, I reckon.
As I stepped out of the car, I sort of thought this was all very silly, was I really ready to star in the Milton Keynes version of “The Story of O”? Why had he allowed me to retain my underwear? In the book, that hadn’t been the case. Was the feel of the leather car seat caressing my bare buttocks an experience I had ever fantasized about? Would it initially have been cold against my flesh, then gradually warmer; would the fabric stick to my skin, would I sweat, squirm? And now I wouldn’t even experience that.
I wore my grey tailored power suit, the one with the stripes, made of quality wool. A white opaque cotton blouse completed the demure display, black sheer nylon stockings, my best, and matching bra, knickers and suspender belt set, black also. But right then those particular details were my secret. My lover didn’t know; he hadn’t watched me dress. I knew how he loved it when I wore stockings the old-fashioned way. Made my long legs look even longer, he would always say.
So the castle door opened. Well-oiled, it didn’t even creak in the slightest. Just a normal English spring day, a light breeze fluttering around my ankles and neck, not even a gothic day.
He guided me in, one hand on my waist, our steps echoing around the hall.
Then, I stopped feeling his faint touch against me. Was he still there, harbouring in the silence, or had he departed the premises altogether? This was already the first sign of emotional torture: I wasn’t to know whether he was ever present while all sort of terrible things would be done to me, to my body. Something inside me wanted him around, for my mental comfort, I suppose, but on the other hand, what would he think of me, react to the spectacle of my body being defiled, would I ever be the same for him ever again, thereafter?
Not knowing, that was the worst sort of punishment.
A voice – not his – said:
“Stay where you are and spread your legs apart.”
I obeyed.
Still the faint trace of an echo, bouncing between stone floor and high ceiling.
Standing in silence, trying to guess how many pairs of eyes might be watching me, male and/or female.
Something, a cane? a whip handle? brushed against my left cheek, tracing the faint line of my scar. Cold. I shivered briefly.
Then a hand took hold of my jacket, pulled on the sleeves and manoeuvred my arms out of it. Another brief moment of silence and inaction, while I tried to listen to all the minute sounds, murmurs of nearby voices, distant chirping of birds outside, almost inaudible scraping of material against material, against flesh? Was there another woman nearby, also wearing stockings?
“Stand still,” the male voice reiterated. I was sure I hadn’t moved.
I opened my lips, ready to say so.
“Jeezus… ” A sharp, sudden smack on my rear, before any sound could even escape.
“You may not speak,” the unknown man said, severely.
It didn’t hurt, but I had been completely taken by surprise.
“Spread your legs wider apart,” another deep male voice instructed, almost angrily.
The material of the grey skirt was tight against my thighs. It was awkward to assume the desired position without moving the rest of my body, which I knew they would disapprove of.
I felt the thin object against my knees, then it moved up my right leg, grazing the fabric of the stocking, slowly, lazily upwards, reaching mid-thigh when it moved into the empty triangle below my crotch. I shivered again, expecting its next movement. It made contact with my knickers, right where my sex was. I imagined a surge of electricity bolting through my body and felt the first wetness inside my cunt, and my sex lips engorging and opening slightly, pressed as they were against the silk of my underwear.
“Good,” one of the men said. “Stay like that.”
Then, nothing happened for some time. I stood uncomfortably listening to muffled noises all around. There were some more people arriving, chairs being arranged, seemingly in a circle around me. I was about to become the main attraction. Right there, in the hall. Looked as if I didn’t even get to graduate to a traditional gothic dungeon. Like in the books. Like in the movies. I must have smiled.
Another violent whack on my buttocks. This time it hurt.
“What’s so funny, bitch?”
“Nothing,” I summarily replied.
This time it was a whip and it struck suddenly twice, once on my shoulders and then immediately again on my breasts.
“This is your last reminder, woman. You may not talk.”
I bit my lips as the pain and the adrenaline subsided quickly.
Took a deep breath.
Some were talking in low voices, but it was too indistinct for me to really hear anything. But some of the voices were definitely female. And one was certainly my lover’s.
Behind the dark piece of cloth that obscured my vision, I closed my eyes. Tried to picture him with another. Was she sitting on his lap? Where was his hand? Was she also blonde? Was his cock hard, was she holding it as she laughed at me, standing there helpless, ready and willing to be ravaged by their combined obscenities?