‘No, but you need to know your place. And your place is at the bottom, Bottom. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You get your own name back at the end of the week, anyway. Now …’
He opened the velvet banquette again, put away my necklace and brought out a stiff leather dog collar with a leash attached to its silver clip.
I held up my chin and let him fasten it round my neck. It was uncomfortable, but that made it all the more effective. Once it was buckled, he tugged firmly at the leash a couple of times and I lowered my head.
I felt owned.
It had begun.
He opened the door and called Katerina in. She sneered at me and took the proffered leash.
‘Take Bottom below stairs, Kat, and make the necessary preparations. I will be down to perform her induction in one hour.’
‘Yes, sir.’
I expected His Lordship to leave without further ado, but instead he grabbed my chin and subjected me to a passionate kiss before exiting without another word.
‘So … Bottom,’ said Kat with a scornful chuckle. ‘Nice name. Suits you. Come on.’
She yanked on the leash so that I stumbled after her into the vast outer lobby, which I saw for the first time without my blindfold. Intensely conscious of my nakedness, I darted my eyes around in search of witnesses, but the hall seemed to be empty, though I could hear voices, laughter, the clinking of cups, coming from somewhere beyond.
‘How many people are here?’ I asked Kat, but she tugged on my leash and clicked her tongue.
‘You don’t speak to me, Bottom. Only when spoken to. Understand?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
She led me through a door behind the vast staircase and down some smaller, darker steps, into a plainly decorated corridor. I resisted the temptation to muse aloud that this must be the staff quarters, and just let her take me along the passage with its thin carpet and slightly damp air until she opened a door and showed me into a room with a huge old-fashioned tin bath full of steaming water in its centre.
‘Get in and I’ll scrub you down,’ she said.
I stepped in, looking around me at the surroundings. The floor was tiled with granite and the walls plain and whitewashed, but set into them on opposite sides were two huge iron rings. Looking up, I saw a hook in the ceiling to keep them company. There was nothing else in the room but a metal cupboard – of the type usually seen in offices – in one corner. A barred window, high in the far wall, was the only source of natural light.
The water was hot and I winced as Katerina poured a jug of it over my head before setting to work with the shampoo.
‘This is the preparation room,’ she told me. ‘It’s also the punishment room. You’d better hope this is the last day you spend here. I wouldn’t like to think how many submissives have had their bad habits corrected in this room.’
Have you?I wanted to ask the question so badly, but I couldn’t. Her gnarly fingers dug into my scalp, then she poured steaming water over me again until my skin felt boiled and tight. She scrubbed me with the stiffest-bristled loofah in the world, until I worried I might bleed, but apparently she knew how to stop just short of damaging me.
‘We need to get you clean, you dirty little bitch,’ she muttered, and I wished I could ask what I’d done to make her hate me, but of course, all speech was off limits.
She swapped her loofah for a rough cloth and used it on my breasts until my nipples tingled, then she spread my bum cheeks and rubbed it in between until I squirmed. Finally, my pussy was subjected to the same unceremonious treatment.
‘We’ll need to shave you,’ she noted, making me wish to heaven that I’d had the courage to wax it myself that morning. ‘OK. You’re clean. Get out.’
She picked up the towel that was draped over one end of the bath and wrapped me in it while I stepped onto a bristly mat. My toes curled and I shifted from foot to foot, unable to find a comfortable way of standing on it, but it didn’t take long to dry myself and then I was able to put my soles on the cool, soothing tiles.
Kat wrenched the towel off me and threw it into the corner by the door. She fished a tub from her apron pocket and slathered me from neck to toe in some kind of scented, heavy lotion, probably moisturiser, until my skin gleamed, then she unclipped the leash from my collar and took it over to the cupboard.
The leash was stowed away, but she came back carrying a length of slim silvery chain and a strange contraption rather like a low stool in a triangular shape with padding at the base of each leg.
‘Come here,’ she said, placing the thing below and in front of one of the iron wall rings. ‘Kneel so your knees are on each hassock.’
I placed each knee on one of the padded bases. The two tubular metal legs tapered up between my thighs, the seat part hovering just below my pussy lips.