Читать книгу Master of the House - Justine Elyot - Страница 8

The scaffolders were still at work on the east wing when we entered the Hall through the back-kitchen door.

‘Don’t want Fran to know I’m back,’ muttered Joss, leading the way through the hanging copper pots and pans and wooden worktops. ‘She’ll waylay me with a VAT registration form or something. I’m taking the afternoon off, as far as she’s concerned.’

‘Fran Woolley?’

‘You know her?’

‘Willingham isn’t exactly the metropolis, Joss, people do tend to know everyone in the village.’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’

‘Nearly thirty and still clueless about real life, aren’t you?’

He looked over his shoulder at me, frowning.

‘Are you saying that my life isn’t real?’ he said.

‘No. But, for God’s sake, don’t ever check your privilege. You’d never get to the end of it.’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you do. Look, I’m only joking. I’m nervous.’

I was pretty close to vomiting, actually, and after all the pickles I’d consumed this wasn’t an appealing prospect.

The back stairs were like old friends with whom I’d been unexpectedly reunited and, in just the same way, they brought a lot of memories to the fore as I climbed them behind Joss.

Chief among them was that first time, treading cautiously on the creaking boards, feeling that I was being allowed inside a sacred inner sanctum. And knowing that, by the time I came down, I would no longer be a virgin.

Joss had been holding my hand that day, looking down at me from time to time with ardent eyes. Oh, how I missed those ardent eyes.

He’d asked me at the bedroom door if I was sure. I wasn’t, but I said I was.

Certainty came when we fell together on the bed, all wrapped up in each other’s heat and scent, kissing as if we’d never get the chance again.

He was so sweet with me, so gentle and kind. He wasn’t the same person who’d whipped my legs with a bramble, he just couldn’t be.

I was so stupid, but at least I’d had the excuse of youth.

What excuse did I have now?

The upstairs landing was just as I remembered it, but shabbier. Everything had a faded, regretful look. Outside Joss’s bedroom door was a recycling box full of bottles.

‘Nice touch,’ I said. ‘Classy.’

‘Fuck off,’ he said, quite reflexively and without real malice, then he spun around to face me and said, ‘God, sorry. I don’t mean that. Don’t fuck off. Please.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, with a little grin. ‘I’ll make you pay for it.’

He smiled back, but nervously.

‘I’m sure you will. Anyway – enter the palace of delights.’

The palace of delights, also known as Joss’s bedroom, had seen better days. The four-poster bed was still splendid and glamorous, but the duvet was on the floor and the antique bedside table overflowed with clutter.

I picked my way over a discarded dressing gown and slippers, aiming for the window.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said, snatching them up as I negotiated my path. ‘I would have cleared up if I’d thought … well, I wasn’t expecting us to end up here. Not yet.’

‘Does he use this room?’ I asked, looking out over the park. ‘You know – your Mystery Man.’

‘No. He uses the east wing. Had it all done up to his tastes when he signed the lease.’

‘I’d like to take a look.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’

He was embarrassed. He was smiling too much.

‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s had a security door put in and, to tell you the truth, I don’t have a key.’

‘He’s locked you out of your own house?’

Joss shrugged.

‘It’s only the east wing. I didn’t use it much anyway.’

‘No wonder you want him out.’

Joss said nothing but stood behind me at the window, so that I felt his shadow falling over me. He was close enough for me to smell his aftershave. Too close.

‘What if it works, Joss?’ I said. In the distance, a deer streaked through trees.

‘What?’

‘Your hare-brained scheme. What if it works and I get my scoop and he abandons this place and releases you from the contract? You’re back to square one. You can’t afford this house. You’ll end up at Wragg’s Caravan Park.’

‘There are other ways,’ he said. ‘Tourism. Opening up the grounds. There has to be a better way than this. I didn’t realise when I signed up for it quite how –’ he swallowed, ‘– humiliating, yes, humiliating, this was going to be.’

‘How are the mighty fallen,’ I said.

‘I haven’t reached rock bottom yet,’ he said. He put his fingers very lightly on my arm, just a whisper of a touch but it made me quiver like a bowstring.

‘Speaking of bottoms,’ I said, pulling away from him and stepping back, unable to resist an evil smile. ‘Wasn’t there something we were going to do?’

There was a slightly manic quality to his answering tightening of the lips.

‘Let me show you my box of tricks,’ he said, crouching down to pull something out from under the bed.

It was a battered old suitcase.

‘Of course,’ he said, fiddling with the snap locks, ‘my collection has nothing on his. He has everything, the most expensive, the best, the latest. Mine is a bit of a ragbag in comparison. But …’

He opened it. It didn’t look like a ragbag, it really didn’t.

My skin prickled and I clamped my thighs together, noticing how my pussy tightened in response.

He looked up at me and his face crumpled in sympathy.

‘Oh, darling,’ he said. ‘You’re pale. Don’t be scared.’

He put out a hand. I took it and knelt down beside him.

‘I’m not scared,’ I lied. Whips and chains were all very good in principle, pretty sexy in the imagination, but when you saw them up close and full-sized it was somehow extremely intimidating.

‘Think of them as toys,’ he said, picking up a cat-o’-nine-tails-type affair with a red leather handle. ‘It’s all they are, really. Feel the strands – they’re soft as anything.’

‘You’re trying to tell me this wouldn’t hurt?’ I said, running my fingers through them. It was rather pleasurable and they felt lighter than air.

‘It depends on how it’s used,’ he said. ‘It can stroke you like a lover or it can sting. A bit of both is usually best, I find.’

‘When did you get into all this? You weren’t when …’

‘Oh, I was. But I wouldn’t have touched you, Lulu. You were far too sweet and innocent.’

‘Is that what you thought? Is that why you ended it? Is it?’

‘Perhaps it had a little to do with it.’

‘You twat. You had no idea who or what I was. I was just some kind of archetype to you – the naïve little village girl who would adore and worship you.’

He stared at me.

‘You’re still very angry about all that, aren’t you?’

‘Damn right I am.’ I took a breath. I was trembling. ‘You had no idea,’ I repeated, working hard to get myself back under control. ‘No fucking idea at all.’

‘I know. It’s OK. I know that.’

‘Because I would have … for you. For me, too. I would have done all of this, and more. You say you couldn’t have touched me – what you did to me was far worse. Infinitely more painful.’

He put the flogger into my hand and curled my fingers around the handle.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Take it out on me.’

Suddenly I really wanted to kiss him. I wanted to offer to forget everything that had gone before and just push him down on the carpet and get him inside me. He reached a part of me nobody else ever had and I knew I would never be free of him. Why not just acknowledge it and throw my pride and all my fears to the wind?

Just as my grip loosened on the whip handle, preparatory to putting my fingertips to his cheek, he broke our eye contact and replaced it with a nervous chuckle.

‘So, how do you want me?’

‘I don’t follow. I don’t know the form – you do. You’re going to have to help me out here.’

‘The point is, Lulu, you tell me what to do.’

‘Yes, but I don’t know how to do it.’

He sighed.

‘Think of me, think of what I was like when I was nine. Be like that.’

I really wasn’t sure I could do it, then all my memories of that time came rushing in at once and I knew I could. I owed it to that shivering, scared seven-year-old girl to make her bully understand the effect he’d had on her.

‘Get on your knees,’ I said, and he dropped at my feet before I’d even finished speaking. I looked down at the crown of his head, at his luxuriant dark hair. He wouldn’t be thinning any time soon. ‘I’m going to hurt you.’

He said nothing, but bowed his head a little in acquiescence.

‘I’m going to do it,’ I continued, letting the strands drape over his shoulder before dragging them up his cheek, ‘but first I want to hear you beg me for mercy. Really beg me, even though it won’t have the slightest effect on what I do to you. I just want to hear it. No, don’t look at me,’ I said hurriedly, for he had raised his eyes to mine. ‘I can’t do this if you look at me. Keep your eyes on the floor.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, then he cleared his throat. ‘Erm. Please spare me, ma’am,’ he said. But he wasn’t taking it seriously enough, his manner overly theatrical.

‘That won’t do,’ I told him. ‘Plead.’

‘OK.’ He seemed to steady himself, furrowing his brow in thought. ‘What about … I beg you not to hurt me. I promise I’ll be good now. I’ll behave myself. I’ll do anything you want, anything you say.’

‘You’re not feeling it yet,’ I said. ‘You’ve forgotten, I suppose, how I used to cry and beg you to let me go. Have you?’

‘No. Of course I haven’t.’

His voice was whisper-quiet.

‘So?’

‘So perhaps that place is too dark for me to go back to,’ he said.

I gasped.

‘Too … are you serious? Too dark for you to go back to? Did you actually say that? Too dark for you?’

‘OK,’ he said, standing up. ‘I’m sorry. This wasn’t a good idea. There’s too much –’

‘Shut up,’ I said, lashing out to grab him by the wrist. ‘Shut up and bend over the bed. Now.’

He thought he could get away with this, but he was dead wrong. I was going to calm my troubled spirit by thrashing his gorgeous arse until he begged me properly. I deserved this. I owed it to myself – and to him.

He obeyed straightaway, kneeling at the foot of the bed with his upper torso pressed against the mattress. The cream linen trousers strained a little over a backside slightly more generous than I remembered, but still splendidly peachy and firm.

‘I want those trousers down,’ I said.

He said nothing but his breathing was hectic as he fumbled with the fastening then lowered the trousers over his bottom.

‘Boxers too.’

‘Lulu,’ he said, and I could tell by the quiver in his voice that he hadn’t realised until now what he had let himself in for.

‘Don’t you dare call me that,’ I shouted. I brought the flogger down with a swish on his perfect buttocks and he sucked in a breath. ‘Don’t you ever!’ I lashed again. ‘Call me.’ Again. ‘By that name.’ Again. ‘Again.’ And again.

A pink glow was spreading across his skin. Men’s bottoms were too hairy for this, I thought, trying to picture mine in the same condition. It gave me a weak, dizzy feeling to imagine our roles reversed; Joss with the whip, me bent over for chastisement.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ he said, sounding so subdued that my whip hand wavered.

‘You don’t flinch,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you flinch?’

‘It doesn’t really hurt,’ he said. ‘Not as much as you might think.’

This was at once both disappointing and satisfying.

‘What would I have to do to really hurt you? Use a cane or something?’

‘Yeah, the cane would hurt, but I don’t … I can’t really explain it, Lu–, sorry, ma’am, but I don’t really …’

‘What?’

‘I’m good at cutting myself off from pain,’ he said. ‘I’m good at not letting anything touch me.’

I wound a leather thong round and round my finger, taking this in.

‘That’s weird,’ I said. ‘How the hell do you do it? I wish I could.’

‘No, you don’t.’ He was still bent over the bed, talking to the pillows at its head. ‘It’s an overrated skill. But you’d have to pretty much kill me to get a real reaction from me.’

Why did this make me want to run over and hold him in my arms, why? After everything he had done, he could still wrap me round his little finger.

‘Do you have any kind of explanation for that?’ I asked, coming to sit on the side of the bed, so I could see his face. I put the flogger down. This clearly wasn’t going anywhere.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But you said you didn’t want to get involved. So it wouldn’t be fair to tell you.’

‘You’re a bastard,’ I said, outmanoeuvred again. He had made me do what I had vowed not to. He had made me care about him again.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Don’t you want to hit me some more?’

‘No. There’s no point.’

‘But you’re still up for the collaring plan?’

‘Yes. About that … oh, for God’s sake, get up, pull your pants up. I feel like bloody Cruella de Vil.’

‘I’d never confuse the two of you.’ He hitched up his trousers and the little trace of blush on his cheeks was enchanting.

‘Great hair, though,’ I remarked.

‘I prefer yours.’

‘Shut up.’ That interval of eye contact had gone on far too long and needed a rude interruption of some kind.

‘So, anyway,’ he said, throwing himself into an armchair and inviting me to do the same in its opposite number. ‘What did you want to say to me? About the collaring?’

I took a breath.

‘I want to make sure you’re clear about what’s on the table,’ I said.

He looked over at his dressing table, as if that was what I was talking about. He had a great collection of after-shaves and colognes scattered across it, plus a not-so-impressive collection of miniature spirits bottles.

‘Not that table,’ I said, rolling my eyes.

‘Maybe the long table in the great hall?’ he suggested. ‘You can get a hell of a lot on that.’

‘No, not that one either,’ I said severely. ‘It’s a metaphorical table and it’s really rather small. More of an occasional table – the one at the bottom of the nest that you can fit maybe a cup of coffee and a small side plate on.’

‘What’s on the side plate?’

‘A scone. I don’t know. Stop it. I don’t want you making me laugh right now.’

‘Sorry. You’re making my mouth water, though. Strawberry jam and clotted cream. Could we discuss this over a cream tea?’

‘No.’

I was becoming a little agitated at his derailing of my serious conversation and he could see it. He looked down at his crossed legs then shot me a contrite look from beneath lowered lashes.

‘Sorry. You should have whipped me harder. Go on, then. The floor’s yours. And the table.’ His humble apology was spoiled somewhat by the little snort of mirth that accompanied his final words, but I chose to ignore it.

‘I want to make it crystal clear that I don’t expect us to have sex.’

That wiped the grin off his face.

‘What? But I don’t know how that’s …?’

‘Possible? Of course it is.’

‘But if we’re going to convince His Nibs that we have a true bond …’

‘Orgasm denial? Chastity devices? You must have heard of them. Tell him that’s what we practise.’

Momentarily lost for words, he merely stared at me. I began to feel intimidated.

‘No,’ he said, his senses at last catching up with his shock. ‘No, that wouldn’t work. The sub can be denied orgasms – but not the dom. Orgasm denial is a challenge – you still have to have sex with me, you just don’t get to come.’

‘How dull. Still, it takes all sorts, I suppose. Chastity belts, then?’

‘You really want to go there?’

‘No, I don’t really want to, but I don’t think you deserve to get your grubby little mitts on me and so …’

‘OK.’ He swallowed. ‘I understand why … I really do. I just don’t think this can work without sex … look, Lu, I’ve no right to ask this of you but …’

He broke off. I had a bad feeling, and I was bracing myself to shout ‘No’ over the howling gale of ‘Yes, yes, take me, yes’ that would be howling in my head.

‘Can I try and prove myself worthy of you?’

It was not what I’d expected and I sat up, a strange swoony feeling in my head.

‘Prove yourself worthy of me? How? What do you mean?’

‘Like, I don’t know, a quest. Something my mediaeval descendants might have known all about. If only I could get advice from them. But I get the feeling I’ll need to do more than slay dragons or triumph at the joust to win your favours.’

‘You’re insane,’ I said, after a pause for consideration, but I couldn’t let him see the melting core of me so I made my voice as hard as I could.

‘No, I think it would restore my sanity, actually,’ he said eagerly. ‘For example, you’ve already demanded that I deal with my drinking. That’s a hell of a quest on its own. I wouldn’t do it for anybody – but I’m prepared to do it for you.’

‘You should do it for you,’ I muttered, but this was all taking me a long way past my ability to be tough and uncompromising. It was a stretch trying to find any response that wasn’t a dreamy sigh of ‘Oh, Joss’.

‘Doing it for you is doing it for me.’ He pursued the point with bright eyes, a puppy dog jumping up at me for some positive attention. ‘You have something I want. I’ll climb mountains and cross rivers to get it. It’s pretty simple, really.’

‘You’ll … let me think about what you’re saying. You want something from me – the means to get this unwanted lodger off your back.’

‘More than that,’ he said, but I shushed him.

‘And you’re prepared to do whatever it takes to keep me.’

‘Yes.’ His nod was impatient, as if he had spent hours explaining a simple maths concept to me.

‘But then it’ll all be over. Once I get my story, I walk away. So this seems a bit over the top for such a temporary arrangement. Do you see why I’m a little … confused?’

He chewed on his lip and looked out of the window for a while.

‘Perhaps I’m hoping,’ he said with a cough, ‘for too much.’

I tried to be gentle. ‘It sounds like it.’ Inside, I screamed, No, you aren’t. You can have it.

‘But look,’ he said, driven and persuasive once more, making my every resolve bend into a dangerous shape by sheer power of eye contact. ‘Let’s take things a step at a time. I need to be convincing as your dom. Therefore I need you to commit to a bit more than a chastity belt. We can take it as slowly as you like, but we have to make progress.’

‘The trust issue,’ I faltered.

‘Yes, yes.’ He took this up enthusiastically. He had an answer for me. He wasn’t going to let me get away. I felt like a target, marked out. My defeat at his hands was inevitable. ‘That’s what all this is about. You give me tasks, I complete them, your confidence in me is raised. Little by little, perhaps, but ultimately …’

‘You think you can make me trust you?’

‘I think I can try. I think I have to try. Please, Lulu. Will you let me try?’