‘She isn’t joining anyone’s stable,’ said Joss shortly. ‘She’s mine.’
O put down her combs and hairpins and sprayed my new style all over.
‘Such a pity,’ she said. ‘But at least some of us will get a nice show. There. Now let’s make you up.’
She left me with red-stained lips and perfectly creamy skin. She advised me, before leaving, to put some rouge on my nipples. No perfume was allowed, because the dominants liked to smell the natural scent of arousal.
This thought made my heart bump again and my throat dry out. Would people be sniffing around me, literally?
‘I’ll leave the more intimate preparations to your lordship,’ she said to Joss, standing in the doorway. ‘Unless you’d like
me …?’
‘No, thank you, O, I will see to it myself.’
She bowed her head.
‘Then I’ll see you at the ball. Or rather, I won’t see your faces. But I imagine I’ll know you by the way you are together. One grows to recognise the signs.’
She left.
‘Do you think that’s true?’ I asked, standing up and swishing about in front of the full-length mirror. If Gainsborough had painted whores, this would be the result.
‘What?’ He lay on his side, watching me. I watched him back, in the glass.
‘That she could tell us from our, I dunno, body language?’
‘Yes, I think it’s true. When you’ve been on the scene as long as she has, you develop a certain sixth sense.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Forties, I think.’
‘She doesn’t look it.’
‘Submission keeps you young,’ he said with a crafty smile. ‘Another incentive for you.’
‘Does domination have the same effect?’
‘I don’t know. You were very good down there, Lulu. I was … I don’t know … almost a bit choked up. You were so good. It’s a privilege for me, you know. I don’t take it lightly.’
‘I know.’ I looked over my shoulder at him. Utter earnestness radiated from his anxious brow.
‘So thank you,’ he said softly. ‘You were far more than I deserve.’
‘It was weird,’ I said, making faces at myself in the mirror. ‘I’d never have thought I could do that … you know … let you do things like that … in front of another person. But actually, it wasn’t that hard. It was … I mean … it was pretty hot, actually.’
‘God, wasn’t it?’ he said with a heartfelt sigh. ‘Darling, if you let me do things to you in front of the other guests tonight, I will be your complete and permanent slave for ever.’
I laughed. ‘That’s not how it’s supposed to work, is it?’
‘Well, they never say so. But actually it is. We doms are your slaves. We do everything for you, cater for your every need. And we have to do all the work, when it comes down to it.’
I pondered this. It was a good point. Far easier and more comfortable to be done to than to do. Submission was, in a way, rather a lazy practice, notwithstanding all the physical rigour it entailed.
I was inclined to throw my normal caution to the wind and put myself completely in his hands tonight. But I needed a little forewarning first.
‘If you tell me,’ I said, ‘what you have in mind, I will do it. I just don’t like surprises.’