Chapter 08: Release and Revelations
Within this volume there are many scarlet leaves. I have preserved memories of the harshest imaginable punishments, a course of "treatments" designed to at once incite and discipline my wayward body. But among the scarlet, there is one golden leaf. It is a memory still shot through with force: once again, I was held down, hurt, and brought to the highest possible degree of sensation by the Doctor's treatment. But here, for the first time, I admitted that I wanted it, wholeheartedly and without reservation. I wanted him to use me for his pleasure. I begged him for it. And he, who had restrained himself for so long in the name of teaching me restraint, unleashed his fullest power over me.
"Walk out before me, Hannah," he said, that night in his office after my service in bondage. He handed me my patient's shift to cover my nakedness. He donned his silken dressing robe, too hard to attempt his breeches. Then he motioned me out into the night-stilled corridors. No lamps burned, nor moon shone down on us on this night of late summer rains. It was like walking into a curtain of clinging black velvet. I reached out to get my bearings, but my fingertips met empty air.
"But where shall I—?"
"Ssst." He hushed me with a hand across my lips from behind. Then, he compelled me forward by pressing his palm to the flat of my back. He walked me forward, until I began to walk myself.
So it was that I found my way through the night hospital by feel. Whenever we came to a ghostly corner or dim staircase, he guided me by laying his hands on my body. A firm touch at my left waist turned me left; a hot hand lifting my buttocks encouraged me up the stair. Like a horse guided by the touch of the reins, I moved at his will. When I hesitated, he spurred me on with a light slap or a pinch.
"Mm!" I gasped as he struck my bottom hard enough to sting.
"Ssst!" He hissed again, and pressed his body to mine as he silenced me. I could feel his hot, stiff member through my thin linen shift.
"Mmmm..." I let the softest possible vibration into my breath, and continued.
A moment later we reached a door which the Doctor unlocked with a key strung at his throat. A fire smouldered low in the room's hearth, too low to see his chamber's features until he stirred the blaze to life with impatient thrusts of a poker. At that, furniture loomed and flickered around me like heat-born illusions in the dull red light: a smallish four-post bed with the linens all in disarray, a writing-desk strewn with pages and quills, and, to my joy, walls all lined with books of every size. His bedchamber was also his library –or his library a bedchamber. I turned to him in exaltation, but he was not looking at me. He was looking at something he held in his hand. The "capote."
Or, so I guessed. In fact, I had never seen such a thing. The chambermaids whispered in salacious tones about things made of silk or India-rubber or intestine which would keep a man's seed from entering a woman, but it was all a rumour to me, and a distasteful one. I had not the slightest idea how it might function, whether it was to be placed in myself or onto him. I had also heard it said that using the capote was sinful, like the sin of Onan, who spilled his seed on the ground. To my horror and delight, I found I did not much care if it were sin or virtue. It was something I had not seen before, and I wanted to know about it.
"You have not seen one of these in life." The Doctor said, voicing my thoughts aloud so that I jumped.
"No, sir." I whispered.
"You have much to learn, then. Come."
I went to him in my inmate's garb. He had thrown off his robe, and his body caught the fire-light all slim and taut, each limb bespeaking a wiry strength. He pressed me down so that my face was level with his cock, all limned with a line of red light glistening orange and gold at the tip. Without thinking I moved to take him in my mouth, but he tilted my chin and held the capote before my eyes.
"Lesson number one: preparation. Use your hands to press this down. I am quite ready for it now."
I took the capote. It was made of a thin, warm, stretchy material, animal or plant-matter I could not say. It was long and narrow, and I could see how it might fit his form. Taking a deep breath, I worked its mouth over the tip of his cock and then smoothed it down with my fingers. He shuddered and drew a sharp breath, struggling to control himself. I had never seen him struggle so visibly to master his own body. It intrigued me. In my curiousity, I clasped my hands around his sheathed member and gave it a squeeze.
"No!" the Doctor gasped suddenly. He seized me by the arm and cast me to the floor. "You will take no liberties with me!"
"But I want to know you!" I replied, my blood stirred.
"Oh, you will know me. I will make you know."
He took me up again only to drive me by force to the bed. He stripped me of my robe, tearing it into strips like a methodical madman. He straddled my waist and held my body down with his own as he tied my wrists and ankles by long bonds to the posts of the bed. He rose to fetch something, then returned to survey his handiwork: my long smooth figure stretched prone before him, completely helpless.
I struggled and cried out. And yet, I could not help but feel myself caught up in some dramatic performance. I played the role of my submission with a new consciousness. When I heard him approaching, the warning slap of leather against his palm, I let my back arch hysterically and bared myself to him with such purpose that he must have seen my resistance for the desiring play it was.
With a sharp snap, he struck me with a belt across my bared breasts. The sting warmed me, wetted me, made me cry out shamelessly for more.
"I know, I know you like it this way," my night-voice called, "You like to hurt me, I deserve to be hurt by you, oh, do it again! I want it!"
"Lesson number two: confession. Full score. Brace yourself for your reward." He said wryly.
Then he flogged me again with the belt across my breast, moving down to my belly, my flanks, my thighs. My body thrashed in elation, straining freely against its bonds. He struck me until I cried again,
"I know you need more, you need to do more to me than this! Oh pierce me, release me in restraint, now!"
"Lesson number three: submission. Repeat it, Hannah. Beg."
He climbed on top of me, pinning my shoulders down with his clenched hands. I swore I could smell ginger on him. It drove me mad.
"Do it," I panted "No, don't, oh do it to me! I can't stand it, I need it, do it to me, I beg you!"
At that, he thrust with jarring force into my aching sex, unable to tease any longer. Despite his treatments I was still to my mind a virgin, and small and narrow as I was his first thrust made me scream in pain, then gasp in amazement that my body could take so much. He half-withdrew, so that for a moment I feared he would pull out again, but instead he only thrust himself back in even deeper than before. Like the pounding of the hot summer rain outside he pushed into me again, again, again.
Only then, once I was pierced through by his cock, did he deliver the coup de grace. Opening his clenched fist, he revealed a slip of ginger, a carved wedge he must have fetched with the belt. In one swift movement he lodged it between our bodies, between my lips, directly over my clitoris. The frictive heat between us kindled it with fire, and as he pounded into my tight, throbbing hole, he burned me and kissed me with biting passion. Bound, penetrated, and inflamed with the scent of ginger, the taste of iron, I pressed my arching body to his, threw my head back wildly and keened as the height of suspension took us and held us weightless together, convulsing for an eternal moment as one ecstatic pleasure doubled.
***
My release, it seemed to me, went on and on. I lost track of time, of my climaxes, of my senses. Dazed and overcome, I must have subsided from pleasure into sleep eventually. But I don't recall the end of it. When I next became aware of myself, the fire had died to embers and a haze of pale light below the drawn curtains bespoke a cloudy dawn.
I only gradually realized that I was still lying in the Doctor's –in Theo's– bed, my limbs entangled with his. The ginger had fallen from me some time ago, and I was no longer bound. My muscles ached in strange, yet not unpleasant, ways. I was curled with my back pressed warm to his chest. His hand lay on me as if he had been stroking or soothing me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw him still asleep, breath deep and even, dark curly hair in his eyes. Even asleep he had a little furrow between his brows, a remnant of his harshness. But his mouth was soft, open just a little, almost vulnerable. I smiled and snuggled down again.
