Maddeningly, my body refused to express my brain’s displeasure, responding to him with all the starved enthusiasm of the last woman on Earth presented with the last man. Rather than kicking him off, I hooked a leg around his knees to keep him close, and when I had the chance to tell him this was wrong, I used it to start kissing his neck instead.
He had put a spell on me, and there was no antidote to hand.
In the end, it was he who saved us from exposure, removing his hand from underneath my satin dressing gown and ordering me upstairs with a snarl. I managed to get out from under him before he could deliver the threatened smack to my bottom and ran, as quietly as I could, up the stairs.
‘They must have heard us,’ I moaned, once we were safely in the bedroom. ‘You idiot.’
‘What did you just call me?’
He threw off his coat and let it lie in a heap on the floor, then folded his arms and glowered at me.
‘Didn’t you get my text? They’re in the living room! Awake!’
‘Get that dressing gown off,’ he said, apparently deaf to my concerns.
‘Tom…’
‘Now.’
His implacable air of command worked its magic. Sulkily, I took off the gown and flung it to the floor, leaving only my underwear, complete with the infamous stockings and suspenders, to cover me.
‘What if they’d heard?’ I whined, less sure of myself now I was semi-naked. Funny how undressing could strip you of more than your clothes.
‘Get on the bed,’ he said. ‘All fours, bottom up.’
‘We can’t make any noise,’ I said, panicking slightly, but obeying all the same.
From the corner of my eye, I watched him roll up his shirtsleeves and look around the room for God knows what. I tucked my elbows and knees under my body and hugged myself to try and calm my jitters. What was he looking for?
Finally, after opening and closing most of my drawers, he found what he was after – a spare laptop charging cable. I began to uncurl from my foetally submissive position, but he shook his head, ordering me back down with his eyes.
He unwrapped the cable, then doubled and tripled it over in his fist until it was a loose bundle of loops. Oh. Now I saw what he was doing.
‘Will it make a noise?’ I asked, though this possibility was not the only reason for my mounting trepidation.
‘It won’t. You might,’ he said. ‘But we can deal with that.’
He knelt beside me on the bed. The flump of the mattress and bedding was falsely comforting, but the squeak of a spring put me back on my guard.
He reached towards my face and covered my mouth with the palm of a hand. Was this going to be enough?
‘Keep it down,’ he said caressingly, trailing the cold plastic-coated loops over the bare part of my thighs, creating instant goosebumps. ‘If you can’t take any more, bang the duvet three times with your foot, OK? No words, not even safewords. But I can’t have you calling me an idiot and getting away with it. Do you understand?’
I nodded, my heart bumping, but more regularly now. I found it strangely reassuring to know that he took this dom thing so seriously. If he’d let it go, I’d probably have carried on with my anxious sniping at him until we both lost our tempers. It was better this way, much as my bum might disagree.
He kept his palm firmly over my lower face and pulled my knickers tight until they were bunched in the crease of my bottom, leaving my cheeks vulnerable. He paused only to arr
ange my spine in the best possible posture for a spanking before letting the loops fall hard on to my backside.
He was right; they were almost silent. Silent but deadly. The sting lit up my taut skin and I almost reared up in surprise, but Tom had me back in my position before it was truly broken. All that remained to me was an angry muffled protest into his hand.
I learned to keep my voice back by chewing my tongue and the inside of my cheeks while he struck sparks all over my bottom and thighs with the looped cord. At times it became almost unendurable and I grunted and fussed against his fingers, but I wanted to hold out. I didn’t want to stop him by banging my foot. I kept my bottom up as high as I could, even when I could feel my skin blazing and tightening, both my cheeks and the stretch of thigh above my stocking tops. He was covering every inch of my skin and I was beginning to fall into the feeling.
I dived in a headlong spiral, embracing the sting and the humiliation and the darkness in both of us that brought me to it. I was glowing and throbbing, outside and in.
When I breathed sharply in and banged the duvet with my foot, it wasn’t because I’d had enough.
It was because something outside us intruded into my blissful subspace, returning me to my previous panic.