Chapter 18: Due Dates and Deadlines

We spent the balance of the day working on Sarah’s technique. Women are strange instruments; I speak from experience when I say it takes considerable time to learn to play one properly. Each is unique, and no two can be played in precisely the same way.

Jane wanted to see Sarah bound again, and to try different contraptions on her nubile body, but I reminded my partner sharply that she was here on business, not to indulge her own whims and desires. Not that Jane had reason to complain, mind. After all, we were teaching Sarah how to please another woman, and she was the woman pleased.

Often.

I did not neglect my own pleasure, mind. I fucked Sarah twice, once in her warm and wet pussy, and once in her still tight ass. I could hardly be expected, after all, to concentrate on my work with a constant erection sapping my attention.

Jane returned two days hence, and together, we worked with Sarah some more. This time, we bound Sarah, nude save for her collar, to a whipping post in the training room, and worked her captive and helpless body with violent wands, torturing and stimulating her with electricity. We made her shriek and cry, and brought her again and again to the very brink of orgasm. Then we worked on Sarah’s oral technique as she alternately pleasured one and then the other of us.

Jane returned again the following week, and I allowed Jane to bind Sarah and take her, both in the cunt and in the ass, with strap on dildos.

After the third session, Jane and I were to go to dinner to discuss the matter of our increasingly impatient client. The time of our reservation was drawing nigh, so I asked Jane to dress and wait for me upstairs. I needed to shower and dress, but I had other needs to attend to first.

I tied Sarah to a spanking bench and, after using it for its intended purpose for some several minutes, I took her from behind, savagely and with great need. We both cried out when we climaxed together. I unbound her and let her wash, groom, and dress me. I held her and kissed her deeply before I locked her in her cage with a nice selection of books to read.

I then left to fetch Jane from the living room. Jane looked at her watch, and then up at me, disapproval plain in her expression. I shrugged. To be honest, I didn’t care. She, of all people, had little enough right to complain about leaving one to wait. As we left, there was a fleeting moment, just a moment, when I’d been sure Jane had looked at me with something that might, almost, have been jealousy.

That gave me pause.

Sarah would be gone soon, as much as I hated to think of it, and I found that I did want to retire after this last commission after all. I wouldn’t need the money. I didn’t then, but I certainly wouldn’t after Sarah’s very considerable contract was paid in full. Sarah was my masterpiece. No other would ever compare to her. It was least to leave the game with at the very top.

But a gentlemen shouldn’t be alone. So if I wasn’t to be a trainer, perhaps I should consider a relationship. Was it time for the bachelor connoisseur to settle down at last? Perhaps with someone like Jane?

But no. After Sarah, I wasn’t ready to even consider other women, be they slaves or lovers. My heart wasn’t in it.

Besides, for all her dark and aristocratic beauty, Jane irritated me more than she attracted me. Usually.

Although perhaps if I could spank that urge out of her—

I let the thought go.

We ate, we talked, we planned. I drove home alone, lost in my thoughts.

The next morning after breakfast, Sarah slipped and called me Master, although of course she’d been specifically trained not to. That was a gift she was to give to one man, and one man only. The man Jane had so precisely and carefully selected for her. The man who would soon, too soon, pay handsomely for her.

As punishment, I tied her to a frame in the training room, framed like a priceless painting, and whipped her breasts with a flogger to the very limits safety permitted. Then I belted a vibrator deep in her cunt and across her clit, turn it up to full ... and forbade her to come.

I feed her lunch with the device still humming away. Sarah bit her lower lip and clenched her fists tightly, struggling to obey. Sweat drenched her nubile body. I fed her dinner in the same manner. At last I led her back to her cage.

I still had not permitted her the blessed relief of an orgasm.

The next day, I read more of Sarah’s writing. This time, her story was about a girl lost in a labyrinth. I had to read closely to recognize the mythic themes lurking beneath the surface in the story; her labyrinth wasn’t a literal structure on an ancient Greek island. Instead, it was made from the twisting alleys and tangled business and political networks of a modern city.

A monster dwelt at its heart, and who called to her with a seductive song. One who desired her, wholly and absolutely. An Ariadne’s thread could lead her out of the maze, and to a life of comfort and safety. But instead of following it, she wrapped it around herself, binding herself in an ever-tighter coil and she spun not out, but deeper in, deeper, closer to the waiting monster, the beautiful, dangerous creature she longed for with all her heart.

When she found the monster at the heart of the labyrinth at last, she was bound too tightly in her own cord to ever dream of escaping again to the emptiness of lost freedom.

When she found him, she surrendered her nude and bound body to him, wholly and forever.

The story haunted me.

I went to her after I’d finished reading, and asked her, “Who am I?”

She cast her gaze down behind the gilded bars of her cage.

“You are my trainer,” she said. Then, she added softly: “Because that is how I can serve you best.” I rewarded her by taking her tenderly, letting her first arouse me with her mouth, and then satisfy me with her cunt. We came together, me panting and her moaning like a banshee, and then we slept for a while, tangled together, and her only bonds were my own arms and legs, wrapped tightly around hers.

We rose later, and I did not chain her as she cooked and served our lunch. I even allowed her clothes. Well, sort of. I dressed her in a Renaissance costume, with flowing skirt, peasant blouse, and low-cut bodice, tightly laced. All the materials in all of the many delicately embroidered layers were translucent, and displayed her considerable charms to magnificent effect. It was like a ghost of a dress from a lost age long past. I smiled; it had been too long by far since I had dressed Sarah in a costume.

I kept her in the dress, unbound, while we ate. I cuffed and collared her afterwards, though, and she smiled with contentment. “I don’t feel right without them,” she told me. “I feel so at home in your chains, Sir. I feel ... I feel so at home.” She sighed and closed her eyes, and snuggled her not-quite nude body against me, and I could feel the tips of her breasts pressing against me through the thin white linen of my shirt.

I had an appointment scheduled for that evening; I was to meet with Jane again to discuss Sarah’s progress. I could hardly leave Sarah alone without something to occupy her time, so, after I had her kneel with her hands still bound behind her to suck me to a most satisfying orgasm (ah, but her technique continued to improve!), I took her to the training room and bound her with silver chains, nude and spreadeagled on her back, to a level platform covered with a thin mattress and silk sheets. A blindfold and a red ball harness gag completed her ensemble.