Chapter 7: Testing Times

I woke alone and still bound, but for some reason I wasn't uncomfortable. I lay relaxed and waited for my mistress to come for me, content in the knowledge that when she did I would be ready to serve her.

When she did arrive I smiled in genuine pleasure to see her and was rewarded with a blinding smile in return.

"Good morning, Slave. How do you feel?"

"Mistress, good morning. I feel great, Mistress."

As I was speaking, she undid my bonds and before she could say anything, I slipped from the bed and knelt before her. Looking up, I could see that she was pleased. I thought frantically, how could I show her how much I loved her and wanted to please her? A light went off in my mind and I bent forward and kissed her feet. The sheer sensuousness of my symbolic action made me hard again. I knelt back and looked up with some trepidation. I hoped I hadn't overstepped the mark. She smiled brilliantly and stroked my head. I wriggled in pleasure; I had pleased my Mistress!

She bade me stand and she led me away in the usual manner. We met many people, but this time I was unaffected by their stares and comments. If my Mistress was content to have them see me this way, then so was I. After she fed me my breakfast and she had eaten hers. She led me to the shower room. Once there I was delighted to be ordered into the shower to wash her and prepare her for her Master. The euphoria of my Slavery prevented the twinge of jealousy from growing into anything major. When I was done, she watched as I prepared myself for her.

The next few days followed a similar pattern to the first, with the subtle difference that I was happy to perform whatever I was asked. Even if I failed and was punished, I didn't feel resentment. As I gained competency in the tasks I was given, I was set ever-sterner tests. Each time I succeeded I could see my Mistresses eyes burning with pride. All too soon, it was time for us to leave the estate and to return home.

By the time we reached the house, it was late and very dark. Mistress Jane kept me waiting while she spoke with Sylvie. I heard them giggling like two schoolgirls. Finally she returned with my coat and draped it over my shoulders. It felt strange -- this was the first clothing I had worn in over a week. I followed her to the front door and waited while she opened it. We both shed our coats and stepped inside. Once inside, she turned and spoke to me.

"Forget for a moment that I'm the Mistress and you're the Slave, what are you thinking?"

"Mistress..."

"No! I don't want to speak to a Slave, I want to speak to David!"

I felt confused, what did she mean? Didn't she want me?

"It's seductive, isn't it?" I must have looked confused for she amplified her question. "Not having to think, only concentrating on my whims." She looked at me with concern. "But I don't want a mindless Slave who won't anticipate my needs. I need someone who thinks. I need someone with a personality."

I struggled with my thoughts. I could see, dimly, what she was getting at. But, hadn't she trained me to be the way I was now? She carried on speaking.

"It's all very intense at the beginning and it's very easy to become abject. It's a form of the Stockholm syndrome and to a certain extent, we encourage it. However; that's not the ideal we're aiming at. Come back to me, David."

I cast my mind back over the events of the last week and I realised that she was right. "It can't have been much fun for you." She smiled with relief and hugged me.

"It's okay in small doses, but after a while it's like eating a very sweet and cloying desert: too much of it makes you feel sick. Once we got through the anger and resentment... " I flushed in shame at the memory of it. She cuddled me reassuringly. "Once we were through that stage I was so proud of you. You tried so hard and when you failed, you were so stoic. But after a while, I longed for my old David."

"Well I'm here now. How do we carry on with this?"

"It's like any form of training, you're in the third stage at the moment." I looked askance at that. "There are four stages in learning something: unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent, unconsciously competent, and consciously competent. You're in stage three. You're pretty good as a slave, but you don't know why. We need to move you to stage four."

I tickled her and she giggled. "So I'm a training exercise, am I?"

"No! Stop it!"

I ignored her and continued to torment her. After a while, I picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. She was still out of breath when I started to kiss her -- and then she was out of breath for another reason. She moaned as I kissed, nibbled, and licked every part of her that was available to me.

"Oh God I've missed this."

She pulled on my ankle and I got into position with my head between her legs and my cock above her face as I resumed my attack on her pussy. Suddenly the feel of her mouth and tongue on me shattered my concentration. So it was like that, was it? I redoubled my efforts and I was rewarded by the feel of her moaning on me. Of course, this made me groan and all too soon our actions became staccato and uncoordinated as we both slid down the slippery slope to mutual satisfaction. I cried out as I came, while she convulsed and trapped my head between her legs as she crested.

"Wow! We have to be careful about doing that too often or we'll forget to eat."

I was cuddling her in the aftermath of the most shattering lovemaking I had ever experienced. I agreed with her, but I was too tired even to speak.

"Penny for them?"

I looked into her eyes and melted into them. "I was thinking how much I love you."

"I love you. Do you think it gets any better than this?"

"I hope not, I may die from an overload of pleasure if it does." She punched me on the arm. "Ow! What was that for?"

"For being a pig. Now get up and make me something to eat. Who's the Mistress around here anyway?"

"Yes, Mistress. Mistress, you are Mistress."

"Good and don't forget it!" She tried to look stern and forbidding, but failed dismally and burst out laughing. "Come on, I'm starving. Let's eat."

After the meal she lay on the rug in front of the fire and coached me in the techniques of sensual massage. All the time her comments on technique were interspersed with an ongoing discussion on what she felt about being a slave. It made me think hard about how I felt about being her slave. Eventually, the discussion turned to her feelings now that she had experienced things from the other side.

"It was far harder work than I thought it would be."

"It must be Mistress. I can see how much work it is lying there and being massaged Mistress."

I decided to defuse her response to the sarcasm by making her groan in ecstasy. She turned and pulled me to her in a hungry kiss.

"Don't think I'm letting you get away with such disrespect to your Mistress, Slave." She ruined the effect by bursting into helpless laughter at my shocked expression.

"You are so easy." She kissed me again, then stood up and grabbed my hardening erection. "Come with me, my cheeky slave boy."

She led me into the bedroom where she made me kneel on the bed with my hands on the headboard. I waited while she retrieved a towel from the bathroom and laid it over the pillow in front of me.

"Now where were we?" She asked rhetorically. "Oh yes, punishing my Slave."

With that she squeezed my cock with her left hand and started to spank me gently with her right. After a while, the tingling in my bottom grew stronger and I started to react a little as her hand connected with each cheek. Meanwhile; her left hand was playing a symphony of its own on my penis. The contrast between the pain of my rear and the pleasure of my front served to slow down my normal responses to her manipulations. And then, almost without warning, I came. I stiffened in a rictus of pleasure and emptied ropes of semen across the towel and onto the headboard. I almost collapsed, but my Mistress, my Serena was there to hold me and keep me safe.

I woke early the next morning to see Serena staring at me from about two inches away. I reached forward and kissed her nose, which she wrinkled in pleasure.

"Last night was," I struggled for a word. "Intense."

"I wanted to show you something of how it feels to me."

Our normal showering ritual was extended as we each washed the other and took our time making sure that we were well rinsed. There was a slight change, which came as I was bent forward and made to grip the edge of the bath. She placed a small butt-plug in me. It didn't hurt, but its presence was distracting. I wondered how long I would have to wear it.

"I want you a little bit off balance today. I want you to think about our situation whenever you have a moment." She tapped the flattened end of the plug. "And this should help to remind you."

We finished our ablutions in companionable silence and then collected our clothes for work. Well, I did. Serena was now travelling to work in just a coat and shoes, which she put on each morning while standing outside the front door. She took pity on me and allowed me to dress in the hallway and then gave me my customary heart attack by donning her coat in the usual fashion outside. The trip to work was uneventful and I daydreamed a little, wondering what would happen if we were involved in a minor accident and had to go to hospital for a check-up or something. I squirmed in my seat as the plug continued to make itself felt. Serena smiled wickedly at my discomfort.

"Stop wriggling. I can assure you that it doesn't help."

"Yes, Mistress."

She giggled at that and I chalked up today as a success. Any day that I made her laugh was a success in my book. Soon, but not soon enough for me, I turned into the car park. I was about to park in the usual place when she gestured to the far corner.

"Let's park over there for a change."

I sighed at the vagaries of the female mind and did as she bid. For the life of me, I couldn't think why she wanted to park this far from the building. I did admit to myself that the shade from the trees would keep the car cool later on. I waited while she collected her bag and as she started towards the building I locked the car and turned to follow her. It was early enough that the sunlight still retained that morning quality and it caused Serena's hair to glow. As she walked across the car park, her coat swung gently about her knees and I found myself lusting after her. God she was so sexy. How had I wooed and won her? It was also seriously arousing: the knowledge that beneath the coat she was nude. Of course there was jealousy. She was nude at someone else's bidding. I vowed to do whatever it took to change this state of affairs; though last night's conversation had shown me that unquestioning obedience was not what was required. It was all very confusing as Pooh used to say, or was that Alice? I gave myself a mental shake and drank in the sight of my fiancée walking in the sunlight.

Apart from the initial disorientation that one always gets on returning from a holiday, it was a day like any other. Serena was right though. Whenever I wasn't concentrating on work, the presence of the plug intruded -- reminding me to contemplate her and our current situation. I did my best to analyse what was happening to me. She had been right about the seductiveness of abject slavery. I considered the thought that Serena had put into the training regime. Even allowing for the fact that much of it had been the result of previous experience, I realised that she must have had to work very hard indeed to anticipate my likely reactions and have a response ready. My respect for her guts and intelligence, already high, went up even further as I contemplated this.

Apart from a certain respectful air, I refused the temptation to embarrass Serena with any exaggerated subservience when we met as part of our normal work. At lunchtime, she barely gave me time to collect myself before she was dragging me off to the park. We made our way to a favourite haunt of ours and she tackled me to the ground.

"You are so damned cute when you're being good, you know that?"

"I aim to please, Mistress." Oops. I forgot to say 'Mistress' first. Serena must have noticed me flinch.

"Oh, sod it! I forgot. Consider that rule modified." She sighed, "Yet another thing I forgot. It's a good thing I don't want to be a full-time dominant."

"Don't beat yourself up, Mistress. I did as you asked and thought about everything and I think you've done astoundingly well. I couldn't have hoped for a better Mistress, Mistress." She kissed me then, with tears in her eyes. The rest of the time we lay in each other's arms and just contemplated the clouds; content just to be together. Occasionally the butt-plug would make itself known to me and I squirmed a bit. This caused Serena to giggle and me to kiss her, because she is just so cute when she giggles. Kissing her would take my mind off the plug and then we'd stop to get our breath back and the whole cycle would start again.

"Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so." I quoted as I looked at my watch. "Mistress."

"For a slave, you're a bit uppity!"

"Well this uppity slave suggests that we had better get back to the office before they start sending out search parties, Mistress."

We picked up sandwiches on the way back, to eat our desks. I steeled myself for the inevitable ribald comments that I would get after returning from lunch with a beautiful girl and then eating sandwiches at my desk. What the hell, let 'em. They're only jealous anyway. I realised as I sat down that for the first time in a long time I wasn't planning my future. I was content to live in the moment and just enjoy my life and the experiences in it. I said a silent thank you to Serena and resolved to do it properly that night.

She met me in the foyer and we walked to the car. It was in the shade and I blessed Serena's foresight. Had we parked where I normally do, it would still be in direct sunlight and like an oven inside. Plus, I got to admire her on the walk to the car, a win-win situation. Serena glanced all round and then smiled at me devilishly.

"Strip!"

My eyes widened. I stared at her for a long moment and then I noticed the adoration in her eyes. She wouldn't hurt me or allow me to come to harm so I made my decision and started to undress.

"Yes, Mistress!"

I could see the approval and the love in her expression and I knew that I had a similarly doting look on my face. Once I was undressed, she held my hardening penis in her hand and spoke to me in tones of lust and love.

"Well done, David. I love you so much. Thank you. Get in and let's go home."

Once in the car I was thankful yet again for the car being in the shade. Had it not, the hot leather on my naked skin would have been excruciating. I shuddered to think how embarrassing it would have been to undress at the spot where we usually parked. Apart from being naked, the journey home was uneventful. Before we got out of the car, Serena draped my coat over my shoulders.

"Let's not scare the horses shall we?"

I laughed and couldn't resist a comeback. "It's not that big, Mistress."

This made her laugh as well and we entered the house giggling like a couple of teenagers.

Most of our days were like this; we had fun. I came to understand the way Serena felt about being a pleasure slave. But, I realised that seductive as it was, this was not how I wished to spend my life. I said as much to Serena, who seemed inordinately pleased by this. It took me a while to realise why. Hey, I never said that I was any kind of genius did I?

Some aspects of it were highly embarrassing, such as when she 'phoned in our 'progress reports'. This was not just because I was the subject of much of it. More often than not, she was commanded to cum in front of me. Unlike the first time that she had done this, I was naked and unable to hide my arousal. Even though I could see some light at the end of the tunnel, the feeling that I had to gain permission to have any sort of sex with my fiancée was galling to me. Serena being instructed to masturbate in front of me just made it worse.