Master of the House

I think he liked the idea of doing this in a caravan. It lent it a vaguely sordid air that perhaps it might not have had if performed on the decades-old coverlets of his bed at the Hall. He had told me to get thoroughly clean, and I had taken the hint. I hoped I’d succeeded.

Once showered and dried, I was to present myself, naked, in the bedroom.

He was waiting for me, sitting on the corner of the bed, fully dressed down to his boots.

‘Are you … going somewhere?’ I asked in confusion, trying to half-hide myself behind a cupboard door.

‘Come out and show yourself,’ he said sternly. Ah, I got it now. He was In Role.

I shut the cupboard door, but threw myself into that ineffectual concealing-of-private-parts-with-crossed-arms-and-hands pose. It looked as if the day would be warm, but I shivered all the same, mere consciousness of my naked state popping up the goose pimples.

He stood and threw the pillows to the centre of the bed.

‘Come an

d lie across these, bottom up,’ he commanded.

It was a relief to get my full-frontage out of view, and to be able to sink back into the welcoming springs of the mattress that had been made to squeak so loud and hard and often last night. The sting between my thighs was a living reminder of it and, in a way, it was something of a relief to know that Joss would be concentrating on another part of me this morning.

He knelt on the bed beside me and brushed his palm across my bottom before stopping to press his thumb into some painful spots.

‘Bruising,’ he said. ‘Nothing too bad but plainly visible. How did you get these, hmm?’

You know fine well! But he wanted me to say it.

‘With a riding crop,’ I said.

He pinched me hard.

It took a breathless, ouchy moment for me to realise that this was a prompt.

‘Sir,’ I added, trying not to sound sulky.

‘A riding crop, was it? You must have been a bad girl. What did you do to earn it?’

‘Nothing, sir. A cruel man did it for fun.’

He laughed.

‘Sensible chap,’ he said. ‘You have exactly the roundest, ripest, peachiest little behind for it. I’d take my strap to it myself, if only I didn’t have some other rather … pressing … business with this bottom of yours.’ You might have guessed that he had an action to go with the word ‘pressing’.

‘Ow, sir.’

‘Do you know what you’ve been brought to me for today, Lucy?’

What game was this? Brought to him?

‘I’m … not sure, sir.’

‘It’s my job to prepare you. To open up your last little path of resistance so your master can enjoy it.’

Oh, that was the game, was it? It struck me as having a deeper purpose to it – perhaps getting me into the mindset of being used by strangers. A knot of discomfort tightened in my stomach and I decided to tell him about it.

‘Joss,’ I said.

He took his hands off me, the game suspended.

‘Mm hmm?’