‘We don’t have them any more,’ I said. God, I was giving myself right away, but I felt I owed him the truth. ‘Tables and chairs.’
He stared at me and I subsided into the desk and clasped my fingers, waiting for the black cloud that had settled over us to pass.
‘Right,’ he said eventually. ‘I have here a diagram of all the different positions you will be called upon to take and maintain. You have twenty minutes in which to memorise them, and then you will be tested.’
He handed me a laminated card with twenty different positions. The one I had recently held was number twenty.
I said, ‘Thank you, sir.’
He nodded abruptly and left the room.
I contemplated leaving my desk and snooping in his drawers, but after all, twenty minutes wasn’t such a long time to learn all these poses, some of which were hellishly complicated, so I resisted temptation and applied myself to the task.
When His Lordship returned, he made me stand and demonstrate ten of the poses chosen at random. I scored six out of ten.
‘Not the worst score I’ve seen,’ he noted, ‘but not the best either. You have amassed a total of six fails. For each fail you will take ten strokes of the flogger. Now, put yourself into the fourth position.’
The fourth position was the classic touch-your-toes, with the slight variation of having to keep your feet wide apart. Grabbing of ankles was also permitted, and I decided to avail myself of this steadying tool.
The backs of my thighs already ached from the earlier practice and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep myself in position for sixty strokes, unless he decided to give them very quickly.
As it happened, he did. The flogger flew, speedy and stinging, across my bottom, a stroke landing every couple of seconds. It was an easier pain to take than some of the other implements – lighter, although it built to a substantial and steady burn after only the first ten. I was moaning and complaining within a minute, but His Lordship flogged on, ignoring my oohs and aahs.
Finally he finished and I took my hands from my ankles.
‘Ah ah ah,’ he said, indicating that I had presumed too much.
Gasping, I re-clasped, conscious of my aching calves as well as my sore bottom.
‘We have one more thing to attend to,’ he said.
The cold kiss of lubricant against my anal pucker soon gave the grand finale away. I held my breath and screwed my eyes shut, suddenly convinced that he would know Damian’s fingers had been inside that sacred orifice, but he said nothing, simply inserted a slightly larger plug than the previous night’s, twisted it for luck then stepped away with a final smack of my bum.
‘You’re to keep that in until the banquet,’ he said. ‘Kat will remove it for you before bringing you in. Now go to the bedroom – they’re waiting for you. They need to get you ready.’
I went back down to the servants’ quarters feeling strangely unenthusiastic about the evening’s prospects. Yet I had planned this with His Lordship over the preceding weeks, working with him on every detail. Why would I not want to do it?
Sex with Damian had unleashed a craving for a more immediate intimacy, I realised. The formality and coldness set out for me had its place in my needs, but those needs weren’t playing ball tonight. I just wasn’t in the mood. I wanted more monkey sex with the red-haired pervert, much more, all night long. The unlikeliness of getting it threw me into a kind of existential sulk.
Liv and the other girl – Sukie, I think – were indeed waiting for me in the maids’ bedroom.
‘Come on!’ said Liv. ‘What kept you so long?’
‘Lessons with His Lordship.’
‘Let’s see your bum then – oh, I see. I love lessons with His Lordship,’ grinned Sukie, prodding my butt-plug with a malicious fingertip.
‘What’s that, though?’ Liv frowned, crouching to peer at the love bite on my thigh.
I shrugged.
‘I didn’t think His Lordship fucked a new sub on debut day until the banquet,’ she continued. ‘But this looks fresh. Have you got a boyfriend at home?’
‘She didn’t have it this morning,’ said Sukie, who’d come round to investigate. ‘Is it a birth mark?’
‘Deffo a love bite,’ said Liv with a frown. She leant further in and sniffed my cunt, mortifyingly. ‘You smell of spunk. You’ve been fucked today. Jesus, wom
an! Was it one of those Germans? Didn’t you know you were meant to wait till tonight?’