At Your Mercy: Tales of Domination. Various

him off. He’d have a big cock, so big it stretched my mouth, and you’d encourage him to thrust hard down my throat, so he was fucking my face, and he wouldn’t stop till he’d shot every drop of his spunk and I’d had to swallow it all down.’

      You’re standing behind me, so I can’t see your face – or your cock, though I’m sure it’s hard in your tight-fitting jodhpurs. I’ve never yet been punished in front of an audience, but you keep telling me one day it will happen, and now I barely have a fantasy where there isn’t some third party, male or female, watching and joining in my subjugation. Just thinking about it now has my juices flooding from me, wetting the tops of my thighs.

      ‘Interesting,’ you say at length. ‘Well, that’s made up my mind for me. I’d been torn between using three implements – the crop, the flogger and the rubber paddle. That little confession has convinced me I don’t need to choose. You’re getting ten strokes of each.’

      That sounds bearable. Then you decide to raise the stakes a little higher.

      ‘You’re deciding the order in which I use them. Give me the numbers one to three, in any order.’

      Without thinking about it, I reply, ‘Two, three, one.’

      ‘Very good. You’ve chosen the paddle first, then the crop, then the flogger.’

      I should have known you’d rank them from lightest to most severe. As it is, I’ll have to endure ten with the paddle. It’s not the most painful thing you could use, but repeated blows build a sustained, dull ache, impossible to ignore. Follow that with the sharp sting of the crop and – well, I’ll deal with that when it happens.

      ‘Are you ready, girl?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      That’s the last word you speak before my punishment begins. You don’t ask me to count the strokes, or thank you between them; that part of the ritual has never appealed. My gasps and cries are more than enough acknowledgement that your blows are having the desired effect.

      A light tap on each cheek with the paddle gives me a moment to get used to its weight, to anticipate how it will feel when it slams down hard. My mouth dries; even the slow, measured breathing that calmed me on the way up to your apartment is ineffective now.

      You space the ten strokes out, letting me almost but not quite recover from each before dishing out the next. At first, I bear the pain almost in silence, but, as the brutal, bruising blows continue to fall, that becomes impossible. By eight, I’m whimpering and, by ten, I’m responding with a full-throated yell.

      ‘Very good, girl.’

      Your hand smoothes over my arse, which already feels hot and swollen, and we’re barely a third of the way through. The pillory, like all the other pieces of furniture in the room, is positioned so I’m staring at the rack of punishment implements. It gives me the perfect view as you replace the paddle and take down the crop.

      This is your signature implement, the one you wield with the greatest relish. It slashes down against my exposed flanks, leaving a burning stripe of pain in its wake, and I give in to my urge to shriek and stamp my feet, begging you to stop. But you show me no mercy, and once the crop has done its wicked work there’s still the flogger to come.

      Now your truly sadistic side comes to the fore. The ten lashes of the flogger are directed at the soft, delicate flesh of my inner thighs. The soft suede tails flail in unison, moving closer to my pussy lips, and I fear you’ll actually aim the last strokes at my most tender places, striking my clit. You spare me that torment but, by the time you finish, my face is as blotchy as my backside, streaked with tears, and I know I’ve been on the receiving end of a thorough beating.

      ‘Well done, girl,’ you croon, as you free me from the pillory, taking me in your arms and cradling me so you can brush the wet strands of hair from my face and rain soft kisses on my cheeks.

      Your finger pushes its way between my legs, parting the soft folds of my sex and burrowing into my core. As I cling to you, thanking you for punishing me so beautifully, you circle my clit, teasing caresses that have my thighs lolling apart, offering you easier access. After the pain you’ve inflicted, the pleasure of your touch is all the sweeter, and I close my eyes, giving in to the orgasm that pulses through me.

      I could take more of this treatment, letting peak rise on peak till I’m spent, but there’ll be time for that later. Now, you urge me down to my knees, letting your cock free from the constricting embrace of your jodhpurs.

      My tongue flicks over the smooth, salty crown, striking the cold metal of your Prince Albert piercing. This is how I love to thank you for punishing me, and I gradually take more of you in my mouth.

      ‘So, now you know what happens when you’re late, girl,’ you say, grunting with the satisfaction of being lodged securely in my throat, ‘I trust you’ll be punctual in future?’

      In all honesty, it’s not a promise I can give; after all, I thought I’d be on time today and the transport system conspired to prevent that happening. All I can tell you is that I’ll try, and if I happen to be late again – well, I’ll trust you to deal with me in the stern, authoritarian, loving way only you can.

      Life Begins at Forty

      Primula Bond

      I’m forty today. I’ve come home as usual to an empty house. No one to show off my new dress to. No one greeting me at the door with a cake, some new perfume or tickets to a show. Oh, I’ll be going out at the weekend. My friend Lucy has arranged some kind of get-together, but not even she knows my exact age because to me it only marks forty years of making stupid mistakes.

      I dump my shopping bags full of comfort treats on my sparkling new breakfast bar. Bottles of sauvignon blanc, ready-made coronation chicken, raspberries and cream, and a vast bar of Belgian chocolate. I run the bath and fill it with oils and bubbles while I take off my clothes in front of the mirror to take a good look. Three stone less of me since I hit thirty-nine. Nice, straight white teeth. Nose a little neater. A new woman, really.

      It may all sound a bit solitary and sad but there’s no need to feel too sorry for me. This is bliss compared with this time last year, a birthday which was far more traumatic than this one. Mooching peacefully round my lovely flat tonight, a few irons in the fire for the weekend, food, drink, a great DVD to watch later, believe me, it’s all good.

      The night of my last birthday was the night my fiancé chose to leave me. Gave no clue, no reason for his betrayal. Just fell out of love, I guess, though Lucy and the others all reckon there must have been another woman. Either way, I came home that night and he had literally vanished without trace.

      Maybe what he saw back then was the old, fat me who’d let herself go and took him for granted. But the irony is there’s nothing like sheer misery for losing weight, which leads to an unintentional make-over. So what he was missing was my new body, wardrobe full of size 10s, a different hairstyle, all topped off with a touch of Botox here and there. Basically he was missing the new me.

      But the worst thing was I never knew what frustration felt like until he left. Does anyone know how many calories you burn stroking yourself to a frenzy night after night?

      I’ve been celibate since he left, unless you count my Rampant Rabbit. I rejected the idea of internet dating, though I did try a speed-dating night once. But I was still fat then. Lucy came with me, just for a dare, and she pulled some bloke, but I didn’t.

      I even took the plunge and went for an interview at an older women’s escort agency, though I never told Lucy this. They were very enthusiastic about taking me on, actually. Loved my curves, they said. My big mournful eyes and juicy lips. The extra weight was attractive to many men, they said. And they were so keen that they sent me then and there on a date with a very large, very rich businessman called Colin who had a moustache and spent dinner ogling my cleavage, then pawing at my breasts in his hotel room, then when I undid my blouse for him he nuzzled into my bosom and started sucking my nipples – to fulfil