Chapter 1

 

I am writing my story down as a form of catharsis, to try and reach an understanding of what I have become in just a few short months.

Even now it is hard to get my mind round it. As I write she is here beneath the desk. She is naked - she has not been allowed the luxury of clothing for many weeks - and her bondage is simple but effective. She is kneeling with her hands behind her back, thumbs and big toes bound together with a single leather bootlace. The height of the desk compels her to keep her head bowed and, in the next half an hour, the cramps will become quite severe; but she knows only too well the consequences of making any noise out of turn.

The screen of my PC tells me that it is only 9.03 a.m. but I am already sorely tempted to unfasten my jeans. She would need no further bidding, such is the degree of her conditioning, but I must concentrate if I am to get all this down.

Where should I start?

I suppose it began with my birthday last year. I reached twenty-five and you could say that I was not altogether happy with my lot in life. I was a qualified fitness instructor and for two years had been the assistant manager of the local authority leisure centre. I was going nowhere fast and when the lease on the shop beneath my flat became available I took the plunge. I borrowed heavily from the bank, gave the premises a lick of paint, and installed some state-of-the-art fitness equipment. I wanted to get into personal fitness training and reckoned that, if I could keep the job at the leisure centre going for another two years, I could build up a client base and clear most of the borrowing.

It was two days after the "Fitness Studio" was fitted out that I received a summons from Linda, my boss at the leisure centre. In truth, she and I had never got along. I guess I resented her position. She was the same age as me but had no formal qualifications in physical education. In my view she had been promoted on the strength of a minimal competence in business administration and a stunning pair of legs.

That morning she told me that the local council was selling the centre to a private contractor. None of the existing staff were to be retained and, in terms of redundancy pay, everyone would receive the statutory minimum.

 

She is very fidgety this morning, but I suppose she has an excuse. Last night she spent almost two hours suspended from the trapeze bar. I have replaced the usual eighteen-inch bar with a new one measuring twenty-four inches. The shackles are set at the extremes of the bar such that her wrists are fastened just a little higher than her ankles. In this way she is almost folded in two with her ass forming the lowest point. This position makes it a little more awkward to wield the leather strop, I have to strike underarm, but I have found that it allows the blood to pool in her buttocks; not only does this make the flesh more taut it seems, somehow, to make the nerve-endings more sensitive.

Last night she received twenty-four strokes, none of them particularly hard, but each producing a more meaty crack than those given when she is positioned over the horse. As always I delivered them at irregular intervals, sometimes two or three in quick succession, others with a gap of up to ten minutes. This morning the distinctness of the weals has been lost but her ass looks as though it has a bad case of sunburn.

 

After receiving the news from Linda I went back to my own cubby-hole of an office and tried to think it through. Jobs in the industry were at a premium. The two neighbouring authorities had already privatised their leisure facilities and in both cases jobs had been advertised and then given to younger, less skilled, and, most importantly, cheaper staff. It had been this development which had spurred our own internal shake-up and I thought we were doing well. We were keeping within our budget and getting more people through the doors.

I picked up the phone and spoke to an old school friend who worked for the council. He told me that a team of management consultants had gone through the annual spending plan and made their recommendations. I asked him if there was any chance of seeing the review of the leisure centre and, against his better judgement, he faxed me the relevant pages. What I read astounded me - staff demotivated, customer complaints, budget overruns. It bore no relation to the truth as I perceived it. I decided that I would confront Linda. I went along to her office, held my breath outside her door for a count of three, and then went right in.

The scene, as I entered the room, told me everything I needed to know. On Linda's desk there was an open bottle of Bollinger and sitting in the visitor's seat was Karen Tervett. Tervett was a director of Team Spirit, the company that was winning leisure centre franchises up and down the country. To professionals in the fitness industry she was a pariah. I stormed out of the room without a word, collected my jacket from my office, and crossed the road into the park.

 

Her restlessness is getting quite irritating. She will be made to pay later on but a little lesson right now would seem appropriate. I push the chair away from the desk and she looks up at me with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. In some ways it is hard to believe that she is the same woman. The expensively coiffured hair, of which she was once so proud, is long gone. In its place is a simple crop. Her make-up is heavy and exaggerated, particularly her mouth where I insist that she uses a post-box red gloss. Does this sound clichéd? Like wish fulfilment on my part? Far from it. I insist upon it because it undermines what is left of the foundations of her self-esteem. I have recreated her own image of "cheap", of all those other women on whom she looked down for so long.

It must be said that, in spite of everything, she still has a beauty that cannot be denied but somehow that only seems to make my dominion over her so much the sweeter. I drop my eyes to her breasts and her body jerks as the instinct to cover herself is frustrated by her bondage. Her nipples appear larger than when they were first revealed to me, this, no doubt, due to the nature of her piercings and the long hours being subjected to the weights. I find I like them this way and I have to resist the urge to reach out and pinch them to life.

The breasts themselves are modest, but nicely shaped, and I take a perverse delight in threatening her with enhancement surgery. I ask her how she would like breasts twice as big, or even larger and I watch her face blanch at the thought.

She senses now that she has displeased me and she averts her eyes even though she is desperate to know the nature of my displeasure and what it augurs for her.

"Put out your tongue."

For a second or two it is as though she has not heard but then the realisation of what I intend to do sinks in. She begins to shake her head almost imperceptibly.

"Please ... not that!"

My scowl is enough to tell her that she has spoken out of turn but the nature of the punishment is such that she dares to make another entreaty.

"... let me please you ..."

Her mouth turns up but her fear makes the smile become a parody.

"I won't tell you again. Put out your tongue."

Her shoulders quiver very slightly, as though she feels a chill, but then, finally she puts out her tongue. I reach into the drawer and take out the jewellery box. The lid bears the name "Helen Geitter - Vienna". Geitter has become a world-renowned jeweller and has exhibited widely but much of her work still has its roots in the fetish community where she first made her name.

This particular trinket is nearly three inches long and looks like a pair of dumbbells joined end to end. I carefully take them apart to reveal a thin gold post and she winces as I insert it carefully through the piercing in her tongue. I then join both parts back together so that she has one dumbbell above her tongue and one beneath.

Geitter's studs come with a petite triangular-headed tool with which they can be locked and I carefully give the upper dumbbell a half turn to secure it. There is no way now for her to retract her tongue. This particular piece is marketed as a latter-day scold's bridle but there is a commonly held belief that, if worn for long enough, the tongue becomes stretched and made more agile. The cost? Damned expensive, but nowadays money is no longer a worry.

 

In the park I did a lot of thinking. It was clear that Linda had been feathering her own nest but I could think of damn all to do about it. Her actions were unethical, even immoral, but I doubted if they were illegal. I went home and, after a sleepless night, phoned in sick the following day. I went to the library and did some research on Team Spirit but could not find any inspiration. I returned to work still wondering what to do. The redundancy money would come to nothing at all. I could probably survive for about six weeks, assuming that I defaulted on a month's loan repayment, but things were not looking good.

At the leisure centre news had spread and I was getting filthy looks from everyone. The staff obviously believed that, as one of the management team, I was privy to everything that was going on. I walked to my office in a foul mood and it was a second or two after entering the room that I realised that something was wrong. The desk was completely clear, no phone, no computer and none of my personal belongings. I stood there dumbly for a moment or two and then turned on my heel and headed to Linda's room.

I knocked and, without waiting for an answer, I entered. Linda did not seem surprised to see me.

"Come in. I've been expecting you. Now, before you say anything I'd like to introduce Donald Threbaut, the Council's head of legal services."

The introduction took me by surprise simply by its formality. It was well known that Linda and Donald were an item. I held my hand out and he shook it limply. Linda picked up an envelope and handed it to me.

"Please read this and then, if you wish, you can arrange for your own legal representation."

I opened the unmarked envelope and scanned the first page. My heart began to hammer in my chest but I tried to keep control. I turned to the second sheet and was tempted to laugh out loud but the seriousness of the situation prevented me. I finished reading, drew a deep breath and, looking her straight in the eye, spoke quietly.

"You bitch!"

Threbaut moved, as if to come between us. "Look, let's stay professional about this ..."

I turned to him and he could see the menace implicit in my look.

"Take one more step and I'll punch you into the middle of next week!"

I turned and left the room, not trusting myself to stay a second longer. I went straight to the cafeteria and asked for Chloe, only to be told that she was on compassionate leave. That was no surprise. I helped myself to a cup of black coffee, took a seat and read the letter once again. I had been suspended on full pay pending allegations of sexual misconduct. The accompanying sheet was a clinical statement by Chloe, one of the cafeteria staff, suggesting inappropriate behaviour on my part culminating in an attempt to fondle her breasts.

Linda was clearly trying to get her retaliation in first and she had chosen well. Chloe was an eighteen-year-old with a very chequered employment history. We had thought long and hard about employing her but Linda finally decided that we should give her the benefit of the doubt. I had my first run-in with her within the first few days. She was arriving for work inappropriately dressed, short skirts and blouses without the benefit of a bra, it was distracting for the other members of staff and was causing aggravation with the customers. I had no problem with it per se but her terms of reference insisted upon a canteen overall and cap and hers were always "in the wash". I took her to one side and made my point. She, for her part, played the tease. Didn't I like what she wore? Didn't I find her attractive? I made it absolutely clear that our relationship was going to be totally professional and. as such, she would be sacked if it happened again.

I wondered what Linda had promised her in return for her totally fabricated version of events. However you looked at it, I was in deep trouble. It did not matter whether or not the allegations were refuted, the mere taint of something like that was the kiss of death in the employment market. The only straw I could clutch at was the suspicion that, if Linda had gone to these lengths, she genuinely had something to hide.

 

Reliving those first few minutes makes me angry even now but catharsis is close at hand. I take a pair of scissors from the drawer and bend to cut through the lace that binds her.

"Get up!"

She rises to unsteady feet and rubs at the back of her thighs. I can see that she is sorely tempted to adjust her bridle but, without the proper tool, it cannot be unfastened and there is already fear in her eyes as she senses my mood.

"Get over the horse."

She desperately wants to beg but the bridle renders any attempt at speech into a series of strangled incoherencies. I turn away from her and cross to the cupboard. The last thing in the world that she wants to do is to prostrate herself across the buckskin surface of the horse but the consequences of not being in place by the time I turn back again are too dire for her to contemplate.

I open the doors of the cupboard and survey my ever-growing collection of "toys" and other paraphernalia. In the early days I made the mistake of buying equipment by mail order from a number of dubious sources but most of it had no more than novelty value. I had better luck surfing the net and found two very good suppliers in Germany. In more recent months, with the increasing upturn in my good fortune, I have been able to purchase some bespoke commissions from Gilliberti & Sons in Genoa.

This morning I am in the mood for something a little more spiteful than the strop I used yesterday evening and so I reach for one of my newest acquisitions. I turn around to find that she has taken her place across the horse. She is looking away from me, fearful of what may lie in store, but she will find out soon enough.

Her arms are stretched down along the horse's front legs in the prescribed manner and I kneel to buckle her wrists into the leather cuffs. I can hear her breathing, shallow, irregular, almost at the edge of panic. Next, the larger belt across the small of her back. I put my knee against the horse as I brace myself and pull it tighter so that I can engage the final notch. Her legs are trembling slightly as she waits for me to bind them to the horse and complete her bondage but I have something else in mind.

I take a leather strap and wrap it around her leg just above the knee. I now draw her leg upwards until I can thread the strap through the belt that cinches her midriff. Once the tongue goes through the buckle I can pull tightly so that her knee comes up into the side of her ribcage. I repeat the operation on the other side and now I have her nicely trussed.

I walk around in front of her and her eyes open a little wider as she catches sight of what I am holding in my hand.

"It's a Zulu stock whip." I open my hand to show her the elegant scrimshaw work on the handle. "They are handed down from father to son and each generation carves their name into the hilt." I toss it casually into the air and catch it as it falls, its single black plait catching the light. "The business end is made of rhino hide but how they cure it is a secret known only to the tribes." I snap it through the air and she winces. "Used one way it makes a fine cattle goad, used another ..." I snap it a second time, this time more loudly. "... and it can strip the flesh from a hyena."

She is whimpering now and a silvery trail of spittle falls from the tip of her imprisoned tongue.

I walk behind her, out of her sight, and crack the whip once again. Stock whips are rare artefacts nowadays and fetch a great deal of money. This one is a good imitation, but she is not to know that, brought back to England by a relative who served in the Boer War but it is sufficient for my purposes.

I take my stance, draw back my arm, and let fly.