I crouch down, clutching my props and awaiting the next instruction. “You need to lubricate the tip of the plug, and also the area around your anal rosette.”
Anal rosette? I cringe at the term, but as if in a dream I unscrew the cap of the lubricant and smear it across the rubbery bulb. Reaching around to massage it into my arsehole is trickier; the way my arm has to stretch is not comfortable and by the time I am finished the limb is shaking. I swallow.
“Good. Very good. You applied just the right amount. Now I want you to take that plug and press it against your backside. Push it, slowly and gently, inside. It will help if you use your sphincter muscles to try and expel it as you push it in. It sounds illogical, but it does make it easier.”
I pick up the plug and look at it critically. “I don’t think I can do it,” I say.
“You can do it,” he says, hypnosis-inducingly calm and level. “Just do as I tell you…relax your muscles…allow it inside.”
“No, I mean I don’t want to do it. I don’t like the idea of it.”
“If you do it, you will please me. If you don’t, you will disappoint me.”
Chills. I don’t want to disappoint him. That’s not what I want. I will give it a shot.
It feels too tight; the barrier is too impenetrable. “I could do it if you were putting it in,” I gasp, scarlet-faced with effort, embarrassment, fear of failure, the lot. “But I don’t think I can do it myself.”
“Keep trying,” he says, and I try again, but my sphincter clenches and tightens at the invasive pressure. “You aren’t trying,” he admonishes, and suddenly I am so angry with him, so fucking angry with him.
“I AM fucking trying!” I hiss, losing it but still mindful of keeping the noise down. “I’m trying really hard! But I can’t. Do. It.”
“I will not tolerate being spoken to like that,” he says, and in a second of pure fury, I fling the butt plug at the webcam with all my strength, and the glass lens cracks, and it falls off the top of the screen.
My hand flies to my mouth, suppressing the hysterical giggle that has risen to the surface. I have just thrown a butt plug in Sinclair’s face. Do you think I’ll be in much trouble?
My shaking hands shut down the computer, then I grab my mobile and switch it off. I really can’t talk to him right now. I need time. Time to think. Time to really think.
*
Grainy, scratchy eyes squint at the TV screen, which is showing Jeremy Kyle with the volume off. 5:13, says my clock.
What should I do?
One unanswerable question, blocking my head, seeping out to poison my bloodstream, tattooing along with my heartbeat. What should I do, what should I do, what should I do, a train of thought speeding down an unending track.
I love Sinclair but he cannot keep pushing me like this. It is as if he has me constantly against the ropes, testing them for tensile strength, but if he does not want to test me to destruction, he will have to step back, let me up, listen to me. But will he listen to me? Or will he deliver a sucker punch and throw me out of the ring? Losing him would be close to unbearable, but if the alternative is losing myself…oh, I don’t know. Can’t think. Need to sleep.
I stare at two ill-looking teenagers squaring up to each other while Kyle attempts to smarm them back down. I love Sinclair. But now it looks as if I love myself as well. When did that happen?
*
An emergency summit is required, I decide as the dawn of Good Friday breaks over my sleepy seaside town.
I leave the computer and the mobile off and praise the Lord that I did not give Sinclair my parents’ landline number. I am incommunicado. I am having a day off being submissive and sexual; a BDSM Bank Holiday.
Later on, I call Caitlin and tell her, “I demand to have some booze!”
She laughs and declaims, “We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here and we want them now!”
“Damn right. Are you up for a few down at the Arms later? It’s Good Friday and I feel a confessional coming on.”
“Oooh, really? Is sex involved?”
“Sex is always involved, Caitlin, as you well know,” I say darkly.
“Meet you there in an hour then,” she says.
*