To call the private studio of the Dominatrix a dungeon would, for the fortunate, earn only her contempt. Eschewing the contrivances of male sadomasochistic fantasies, the walls were painted a passionless shade of gray-green, the oak floor polished to the luster of ancient gold, and the sole window decorated with an embroidered ivory curtain, now closed. The eclectic wood furnishings, a large bed, wardrobe, and Edwardian writing desk and chair, reinforced without crowding the space.
On this evening the studio air, richly tinctured with body heat and lather, worked the chest like an August night in Mississippi. A childhood memory that Hell would smell of brimstone brought a smile to the Dominatrix as she pinched the candle flame beneath a small blackened crucible. She thought Lucifer in choosing brimstone had cheated the imagination because the deepest hells are woven from the slimmest of threads. White paraffin dregs lingered impotent in the crucible, but sweet notes from the beeswax candle beneath it coiled around the imagination like a honey-eyed viper. A puff of breath snuffed the flame.
A small noise restored the Dominatrix's attention to the bed that stood like Gibraltar in the center of the studio. She orbited the fortress, her left hand sliding around each timber post just above the iron fittings, experienced eyes checking the wrist or leg sheathed in tooled leather. Is the cuff binding? Is the lock secure? Is the chain sufficiently slack? Is the limb poise relaxed and natural? All was well.
The Dominatrix dimmed the sconces, leaving the brass desk lamp to cast a tepid glow across the studio. She tugged down the zipper of her dress, stepped out, and hung it in the wardrobe. Perspiration molded a fine yellow silk slip to her body. The circumstances of the evening did not proscribe nudity, but the Dominatrix stopped with the slip peeled to her waist. She'd felt the nudge again, a subtle wrinkle at the boundary between the subconscious and the conscious. She was trying to tell herself something. Common sense judged the something immaterial to a layer of silk, but it reminded the Dominatrix to question whether her motive to be nude extended beyond simple comfort. She smoothed the slip into place and closed the wardrobe door.
On the bed a young woman lay splayed between its four posts. She sweated naked save for a coarse leather blindfold that reached to the tip of her nose and a thick braided bit cinched cruelly tight. Both devices were harsh to use on one so inexperienced, but the woman, strong in mind, spirit, and body, had tickled the dragon's tail. You must stimulate the mind, ignite the spirit, and control the body, a mentor had once coached the Dominatrix. Another had been more prosaic: never saddle a thoroughbred with a pony harness.
"My beautiful girl," whispered the Dominatrix, though the object of her attention was only a few years junior.
And now this girl, having bathed in the dragon's breath, rolled like a restless sea after a midnight tempest. Her belly pumped a deep and disciplined rhythm, breathing through her nose, expanding her diaphragm to fill her lungs to capacity, exhaling, and ending the cycle with a kittenish mewl. The Dominatrix again paused to watch the girl breathe; so few understood how to do it well.
Her caress startled the girl. Such daring, thought the Dominatrix as she traced an angry inverted chevron that scarred the girl's shin midway between the knee and ankle. The memento from some crazy adventure had proved sensitive both to touch and to vanity. The Dominatrix scraped off an errant droplet of wax, then reversed the direction of her caress, crossing the knee to the thigh, leisurely climbing to the pale skin demarcating the girl's bikini line.
The perceived target of the Dominatrix's attention provoked the girl to grimaces that exposed white teeth gnawing at the leather bit. She'd fought the device—not its emplacement but rather its effect. Speech is a manifestation of control, and its absence nulls pretense and conceit: there are lies you want to tell and there are truths you must speak. In time frustration had yielded to a language in which each naked, tongueless vocalization conveyed an importunate emotion. The Dominatrix had patiently prodded the girl to learn the new grammar, to taste the new words, to learn to speak. Then she had taught the girl to sing.
The mewls intensified.
"Shh," the Dominatrix said. "Just breathe. That's my good girl."
The Dominatrix shifted her weight onto the bed and strummed her fingertips through the wiry curls on the girl's mound. She'd forbidden herself to do this again, having stimulated the girl's clitoris far beyond any sensation remotely pleasurable, but ... maybe one more time. The mewls grew to shrieks as the girl, to the great amusement of the clinking and creaking iron and leather, battled to close her legs. The Dominatrix patiently strummed until the girl's belly convulsed, expelling visceral groans around the bit as the spasm—less an orgasm than a shock wave of inverted agony—rampaged through her body like an animal flinging itself at the bars of a cage. The wave collapsed, slamming the girl to the bed.
"That's the last time." The Dominatrix touched the girl's burning cheek. "I won't do it again, I promise. No more pain. No more pleasure. Do you understand?"
A whimpering, disbelieving nod.
Like a mother attending a feverish child, the Dominatrix stroked the girl's forehead and arranged dark matted locks behind her ear.
"I will remove the gag," the Dominatrix said after the girl had calmed, "but you must not speak. Can you do that for me?"
A single, compelling nod.
The clasp securing the bit popped open with a metallic ping. Red furrows marred the girl's cheeks where the straps had dug in. The Dominatrix lifted out the sodden bit and wiped away spittle as the girl flexed her jaw and practiced swallowing without encumbrance. Darting this way and that wetting her lips, the girl's pink tongue bumped against the Dominatrix's fingers.
The tiny collisions reverberated throughout the Dominatrix's body.
"May I kiss you?" she said.
The girl's tongue fled behind her lips.
It was a seemingly incongruous request, given the girl's predicament, but some treasures the Dominatrix had no power to take. Impulse did not prompt the question; in one form or another it had grown gravid through the evening. The Dominatrix's occupation defined her, and she never concealed this truth from prospective lovers. Intrigued to the point of infatuation, the Dominatrix had returned the girl's at once flirtatious and intellectual overtures as a direct sexual advance rather than a desire to dominate. It was the girl who, coy about the former and audacious about the latter, had, wittingly or not, chosen the evening's wine, and it was the Dominatrix's pleasure to raise the cup to the girl's lips.
"May I kiss you?" the Dominatrix repeated.
A wisp of a nod.
Kneeling astride the girl, the Dominatrix slowly kissed her breasts, her throat, and finally her mouth. Contrasting tastes baptized the Dominatrix's tongue: the sour milk of stress, the earthy musk of orgasm, the masculine salt of sweat-soaked leather. She closed her eyes against the blood rush in her nipples and deepened the kiss, but the girl's teeth remained locked. It was only a kiss, and not their first. The unanticipated defiance stoked a predatory growl deep in the Dominatrix's chest and loosed a hot, quickening flood between her legs. Did the girl feel nothing? Was she teasing? Provoking? Would she dare? Violence infiltrated the kiss as the Dominatrix honed a torture to persuade those stubborn lips to yield—something this minx would never forget.
No.
The growl spilled out of the abandoned kiss.
"You are so brave," the Dominatrix said, seizing the girl's face in her hands. "You are so incredibly brave and strong, you take my breath away. You are exceptional beyond words." She put her mouth to the girl's ear. "It's almost over, but now rest. I will be close."
