Under My Thumb

Chapter One-2

In bed he was kissing her breasts, sucking the n*****s, hard as hazel nuts.

“Bite me,” she said. “Just a little.”

Gingerly he put his teeth around a n****e and squeezed them together.

She grunted. “More.”

He wanted to. It excited him to think of causing her pain, if only slightly, making her submit to it. But he was afraid he might cause damage. Tentatively he tried again.

“Yes,” she said. “Please, oh please.”

He pulled his head away and drove his c**k into her, f*****g her relentlessly, so hard she came with him inside her, the first time she’d done that.

“Jesus,” she said when her body was still.

“You really liked that? Biting?” He found it hard to believe.

“Mmm. Do you think I’m a pervert?”

“Oh, I thought that from the start,” he joked. Afterwards, he wondered if he’d really meant it.

The next time he went to meet her at her office he could see she was stressed.

“There’s a bit of a panic,” she said. “A problem with the auditors, some money missing. I’ll have to stay till it’s sorted.”

“Is it serious?”

“I don’t know. It might just be a book-keeping error.”

They were due to dine at a down-town restaurant.

“Look,” she said. “Go back to my place and wait, will you? I’ll join you when I’m finished.”

He wasn’t used to women whose work came before his pleasures. But he took the keys she proffered with good grace. He let himself into her apartment and made himself a drink. Then he did what he always did in other people’s homes. Meticulously he inspected the bookshelves. You could tell so much about people from the books they read. Or the books they had on their shelves for show. Assuming they had books.

Elizabeth had plenty. There were the usual glossy art books, though none on his own favorite, Matisse. He’d have to do some educating. There were books on gardening and cookery; even though she doesn’t have a garden, he thought, looking out of her tenth floor apartment window. And there were novels, dozens of them, mostly paperbacks. She seemed to have a taste for heavyweight contemporary stuff. Philip Roth, Martin Amis, Don DeLillo, J G Ballard. At the end of one shelf was a collection of s*x books: Best American Erotica 2002, Best Fetish Erotica, and The s****l Life of Catherine M. One book caught his eye. It had a black cover with the title in white: The Story of O. When he took it down from the shelf the pages fell open at a bookmark. In the margin was a pencil line and a series of exclamation marks. He read the annotated passage:

“She was forced down upon her knees again, but this time a hassock was placed as a support under her chest; her hands were still fixed behind her back, her haunches were higher than her torso. One of the men gripped her buttocks and sank himself into her womb. When he was done, he ceded his place to a second. The third wanted to drive his way into the narrower passage and, pushing hard, violently, wrung a scream from her lips. When at last he let go of her, moaning and tears streaming down under her blindfold, she slipped sideways to the floor only to discover by the pressure of two knees against her face that her mouth was not to be spared either. Finally, finished with her, they moved off, leaving her, a captive in her finery, huddled, collapsed, on the carpet before the fire....

Her blindfold was suddenly snatched away…Her hands were still pinioned behind her back. She was shown the riding crop, black, long and slender, made of fine bamboo sheathed in leather, an article such as one finds in the display windows of expensive saddle-makers’ shops; the leather whip … was long, with six lashes ending in a knot; there was a third whip whose numerous light cords were several times knotted and stiff, quite as if soaked in water… O was informed that when, as soon they would, they unfastened her hands, it would only be to attach them to this whipping post by means of those bracelets on her wrists and this steel chain. With the exception of her hands, which would be immobilized a little above her head, she would be able to move, to turn, to face around and see the strokes coming, they told her; by and large, they’d confine the whipping to her buttocks and thighs, to the space, that is to say, between her waist and her knees....

Proud, she steeled herself to resist; she gritted her teeth; but not for long. They soon heard her beg to be let loose, beg them to stop, stop for a second, for just one second. So frantically did she twist and wheel to dodge the biting lashes that she almost spun in circles. The chain, though unyielding, for, after all, it was a chain, was nevertheless slack enough to allow her leeway. Owing to her excessive writhing, her belly and the front of her thighs received almost as heavy a share as her rear. They left off for a moment, deeming it better to tie her flat up against the post by means of a rope passed around her waist; the rope being cinched tight, her head necessarily angled to one side of the post and her flanks jutted to the other, thereby placing her rump in a prominent position. From then on, every deliberately aimed blow struck home...

Meanwhile, the man who liked women only for what they had in common with men, seduced by the sight of that proffered behind straining out from under the taut rope and made all the more tempting by its wriggling to escape, requested an intermission in order to take advantage of it; he spread apart the two burning halves and penetrated but not without difficulty, which brought him to remark that they’d have to contrive to make this thoroughfare easier of access. That thing could be done, they agreed, and decided that the proper measures would be taken.”

Matt flicked through the rest of the book, finding other passages marked; descriptions of further whippings, of forcible subjection, of humiliations. It seemed to him to record a journey into hell; imprisonment, beatings, rape, mutilation, and even at the end a branding. When at last he put the book down he felt nauseous. How could anyone read such a work for pleasure? All his life he’d tried to treat women well, and yet here was a book, apparently written by a woman, which treated women only as the objects of depraved lust. He felt resentment at Elizabeth, with her airs and graces, her assertiveness that seemed to challenge him. He’d not found it easy to retain his male confidence in the face of her success, her money, her beauty and her open, free and easy sexuality. But he’d kept his cool, tolerated her provocations. And now after all that to find that her secret fantasies were of submission and punishment. He felt cheated, made foolish. Yet even as his animosity festered within him, he was aware of other feelings, buried deep, feelings he didn’t want to think about. Why was it that despite the repulsion he felt, his c**k was hard? He forced such questions from his mind. He wanted only to feel a righteous anger.

He sat on while outside it grew dark. At last Elizabeth came back. She called out his name, then turned on the lights to find him in his chair.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It took ages. But it’s sorted now.”

He said nothing. She looked at him, sensing his mood.

“What’s the matter? Should I have called to say how late I’d be?”

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s this.”

He held up the book. She smiled. “Oh, that. A very naughty book, isn’t it?”

“Is this what you want?” he demanded. His voice was hard and cold.

“Well,” she said, “it’s a fantasy.”

“I can’t believe you would read such things. I thought you were a liberated woman. You seem so confident, so strong. How can you want to be treated that way?”

“I am liberated,” she said slowly. “That’s why I can be free to be myself. In the office I’m in control. In the bedroom I have other needs. You should let me explain, then you’ll understand.”

“I don’t want to understand,” he said. “You’d better find someone else for that.”

He brushed past her and went out, slamming the door.

For the next week he heard nothing from her. He expected her to call, but there was only silence. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and about the book. Images kept coming unbidden into his mind: a woman bound and kneeling; a skirt lifted over a woman’s naked bottom, the white skin marked by the whip; a woman naked in a room full of men, using her… The images disturbed him. In a part of his mind they excited him, but he refused to acknowledge it. s*x was beautiful, clean and good, not dark and dangerous.

One evening he heard a car come to a skidding stop outside his house. He heard her heels clicking up the steps, then the bell rang. He opened the door. She flung herself into his arms.

“Don’t desert me,” she said. “Don’t desert me.”

He allowed her to kiss him, her mouth open, her tongue pushing between his lips.

“I’ll be whatever you want me to be,” she whispered.

He took her into the bedroom.

“Take your clothes off,” he said.

He watched her as she removed the expensive grey woolen dress, unhooked the ivory satin bra. She stood in the matching satin briefs. Her legs were bare. She pulled the briefs down and stood naked, waiting.

“Lie on the bed,” he said.

She laid, her hands by her sides, her legs together. He sat down beside her. He stroked her belly, slowly, softly. He ran his fingers lightly through the short, cropped pubic hair.

“Open your legs,” he said.

She wanted to be controlled. Well, then, he’d control her. See how she liked it. He took her labia between his finger and thumb, squeezing them lightly together. She sighed with pleasure. He increased the pressure. Then he let go and slid his middle finger in between the labia. He pressed against her opening, not entering yet. He could feel her warm and moist, not yet slippery. He moved his finger upwards till it rested lightly on her c******s. He pressed against it lightly, feeling the little bud firm under his touch. She was breathing deeply now. He began to move his finger slowly in a circle. She made a little grunting sound in the back of her throat.

He took his hand away.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered.

He stroked her belly again. With his other hand he caressed her left breast, letting his fingers trail over the n****e. It stood up to meet him. He pinched it lightly between finger and thumb, then harder. He saw her clench her teeth. He pinched her harder still, digging his nail into the swollen n****e.

“Oh,” she said.

He took his hand away from her breast, but kept stroking her belly. She opened her legs wider, inviting him in. Still fully dressed, he lay across her thighs and pressed his thumbs against the outside of her labia. He pushed them together; under the soft folds of flesh he could feel her c******s stiffen. He kept his thumbs motionless for a while. After a time she tried to move against him, seeking more stimulation. He took his hands away.

“You’re teasing me,” she protested.

“Am I?”

He put his thumbs back on either side of her labia and spread them wide, opening her up. Slowly he leaned down and licked between them, starting at the bottom, moving upwards with slow deliberation over the slippery folds of flesh. When his tongue had almost reached the apex, he took it away.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t be cruel.”

“Isn’t that what you want, cruelty?”

“Please?” she said in her little girl voice.

He bent and kissed the lips of her s*x. He pushed his tongue between them, as far as it would go, tasting the sharp flavor. He breathed in, inhaling the musky odor, such a richly evocative smell, suggestive of ineffable delights. This time he licked up the outside of her labia, all the way round the top and down the other side, taking care to avoid the c******s, now emerged from its fold of skin, straining for satisfaction.