Submission

‘I propose to add a new round to the competition. We’ve seen how the competitors interact with a handler. Now let’s see how they interact with each other.’

I see Phoebe’s eyes flash with mischief but before she can act, I do what I’ve been wanting to do all day: I pounce on her, knocking her flat on her back. She yelps in surprise but quickly recovers, rolling on to her front and preparing for the counterattack. I retreat a few steps and she launches herself at me, pinning me down and licking my face. I struggle beneath her, not with any real effort, and she eventually lets me up so we can trade places.

As we tussle my imagination goes wild and I fantasise that we’re outside in the garden, frolicking in the grass, in the sprinkler, in the mud, getting filthy. We wouldn’t be allowed back in the house then. Not without a bath. I can see us sitting together in a big metal tub on the patio, splashing in the soapsuds and the spray from the garden hose before being roughly towelled dry by our masters.

Someone tosses a foam toy into the ring and I grab it first, scampering away with Phoebe in hot pursuit. When she catches me she wrestles me to the floor and we tug it back and forth with our teeth, quickly reducing it to a scattering of fluff. I have never felt so free. By the time I finally capitulate and let her win, it’s no longer about the game. Or the show.

I’m too exhausted to resist when Phoebe finally pushes me down, breathing hard from more than just the physical exertion. She fixes me with her beautiful gaze and caresses my face, drawing her hands lightly down my throat and over my breasts. I tremble and urge her on with a look. She hesitates only a moment before obliging. My sex is begging for her touch.

Phoebe strokes my silky wetness and bends down, covering my mouth with hers. Her kisses taste like ginger. As we surrender to our mutual attraction, I hear her tag jingle against her collar like a bell.

I arch my back and see my master standing nearby, watching us, smiling. I know I’ve made him proud even though I didn’t win. But I imagine he has some more rigorous training in mind for his little pet. At least I hope so. For now I’m more than happy to let the winner have the spoils.

The Usual Dress Code

Elizabeth Coldwell

The e-mail arrives in her inbox without warning. ‘Meet me at the Windsor Club for lunch tomorrow. One o’clock sharp. Be sure to observe the usual dress code.’

Even that simple message is enough to have her juices flowing as she reads and rereads it. So the lecture tour’s over and he’s back in the country, is he? So like him, she thinks, to arrive with no prior notice and expect her to fall back into their usual routine. But he knows she’ll be there. She doesn’t have plans for tomorrow lunchtime and, even if she did, she’d cancel them to be with him.

Though the work is stacked high on her desk, data needing to be inputted from a pile of forms, it’s hard to concentrate on anything now she knows she’s going to be seeing him again. Thoughts of him, and what he’ll require her to do, push everything else to the back of her mind.

‘The usual dress code.’ Those four words contain the essential truth of their relationship: that he gives the orders and she willingly obeys them. From the day they met, he recognised the submissive heart of her, the part she’d never revealed to anyone for fear of being misunderstood. Even now, she still dreads the reaction from some friends and colleagues if they were ever to find out about the things he makes her do. To them, submissive means weak, easily trampled on, a personality lost and submerged beneath another’s. She knows the truth: submitting makes her stronger, allows her to explore desires that would otherwise go unfulfilled. And the rules of the game are simple. If she says ‘stop’, they stop.

He’ll love the outfit she bought in his absence, she thinks, giving up any pretence of work for the afternoon. His dress code is weirdly specific. If pressed, she’d define it as ‘slutty 1950s secretary’, fantasy fodder for the older, highly educated gentleman. Underwear that nips in her waist and thrusts out her breasts, giving her an exaggerated hourglass figure she suspects no real woman has ever possessed. Tight pencil skirts that give a wiggle to her walk, blouses with a fussy pussy bow at the neck, and gorgeous but impractical stockings. He likes them so sheer as to be practically invisible, with a fully fashioned heel and a seam running arrow-straight up the back of her legs. The straightness of the seam is very important – she’s learned that over the years – and leaving them crooked is the quickest way to earn a couple of hard swats to her barely clad backside. If feminine intuition isn’t a myth, it must have compelled her to spend time browsing her favourite vintage lingerie site, snapping up a couple of pairs of stockings in her size in preparation for his return. The parcel sits in her top desk drawer, delivered to her this morning by the office post-boy, who doesn’t have a clue about her secret life but would probably nurse his erection for the rest of the day if he knew she was planning to truss herself up in seamed nylons and a six-strap suspender belt for the delight of a man who loves to see her wearing nothing else.

Every minute will drag till she’s in his company once more. Her pussy is already wet and swollen with need but, from the time she receives his written instructions to the time she meets him, playing with herself is forbidden. He’s very insistent about that. Once, he made her wait from Monday till Friday, four whole days spent stewing with frustration so acute she could barely stand it. She’d never be able to properly explain why she obeys him to the letter in this regard. All she can say is that if she disobeyed him, he’d know. He always knows.

The Windsor Club belongs to a bygone world. It is set on a quiet side street just off Piccadilly, a place where men can eat and doze and chat, away from any kind of female influence. Although the staff who fetch drinks on silver salvers and serve generous portions of nursery food at tables covered with crisp white cloths are all pretty young waitresses, she can’t help but notice.

Arriving a couple of minutes before one, she announces herself at the front desk. The black-jacketed flunky looks her up and down, regarding her from tight blonde chignon to dizzying four-inch heels. Clearly not the usual choice of dining companion for the club’s members, but he responds with a polite ‘Ah, yes, Miss Culver. Professor Matlow is expecting you. Please come through.’

The club’s main room is almost soporific in its warmth, after the February chill of the West End. He’s sitting in a wing-backed leather armchair, reading this morning’s copy of The Times. All she can see is the top of his head, dark curls shot through with more grey than she remembers, and his long legs in faded olive corduroys, crossed at the ankles. Just that glimpse causes her heart to lurch and a thin trickle of juice to seep into her black silk French knickers.

Robert Matlow, professor of English at one of the country’s most respected universities and a world-renowned authority on the work of John Donne. Not that she ever addresses him by his given name. To her, he is never anything other than ‘Sir’.

Hearing her approach, he folds his paper and lays it on the table in front of him, next to the inevitable glass of twelve-year-old single malt. She wonders whether his instructions to the waitress as to how it should be served are as precise as the ones he always gives her. Two ice cubes. No more, no less. He requires his whisky to be chilled, not watered down. Nothing should impair its subtle, peaty taste, as he so often tells her. Perhaps one day he’ll realise she’s sometimes careless with the number of cubes simply to earn herself an extra stroke on her final punishment. Perhaps he already knows, and indulges her. Though she doubts that. From her experience, he is very seldom indulgent.

‘Matilda. Punctual as ever, I see.’ For the second time in a minute, she is scrutinised from head to toe. Where the door flunky looked at her with politely concealed lechery, this is a very different kind of inspection. His deep-set blue eyes check that she has, as he requested, observed the dress code – at least as far as he can tell from the outer layers of her clothing. They seek out any imperfections in her appearance: smudged lipstick; a stain on the sleeve of her cream jacket; a slight deviation in the straight lines of her stocking seams. He appears almost disappointed to find none.

‘Do sit down,’ he urges her, before beckoning the waitress over. ‘Could you fetch the young lady a glass of white Burgundy?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

And so it begins. He hasn’t asked her what she might like, and by taking the choice away from her he has subtly reinforced his dominance within their relationship. She can’t explain quite why this show of control turns her on so much; all she knows is that it’s suddenly hard to focus on anything but the pulse beating insistently in her pussy.

‘So, how are you, Matilda?’

With those words, he gives her permission to enter into conversation. He could just as easily have returned to his perusal of the obituaries, making her wait till he was ready to speak to her, but even though he’d never admit it to her face, she knows he’s missed their regular chats.

‘I’m fine, thank you, sir. Work’s as boring as ever. How was America?’

The waitress returns and places a glass in front of her. He motions with his eyes for her to take a sip. She does, savouring the complex, buttery taste of the wine. It’s an excellent choice, but she wouldn’t have expected anything less. He’s taught her so much in the time they’ve been together, not only in the bedroom. Before him, she existed on microwaved ready meals and supermarket plonk and never read anything more challenging than the weekly gossip magazines. He has refined her palate, given her a thirst to learn more about the world and fill the many gaps in her education.

He grins, the lines around his eyes deepening, one of the few reminders that he’s almost fifteen years older than her. With his boundless vitality and body he keeps honed with an exercise regime bordering on the obsessive, it’s sometimes hard to believe they aren’t the same age. ‘Oh, it’s always nice to have a new audience for my one-liners.’

At his urging, she once sat in on one of his lectures, hidden away at the back of the darkened theatre. His dissection of love metaphors in metaphysical poetry went completely over her head, though some poem of Donne’s in which he complained about how long it took for his lover to undress for bed still stuck in her mind, thanks to the outrageous manner in which he had acted it out, a neat pantomime of impatient male and coy female. He had the knack of keeping his students hanging on every word, enthralled by his obvious personal magnetism and unfettered sexuality. She’d overheard a couple of girls talking on the way out, describing all the deliciously filthy things they’d like to do to Professor Matlow if they got him alone. If only you knew, she thought.

Taking a sip of his whisky, he continues, ‘Seriously, it was very productive. I’ve made some useful academic contacts, and one of the senior editors at the Harvard University Press is very keen to read the manuscript of my Donne biography, but four months on your own in hotel bedrooms grows a little wearying by the end.’

She’s about to ask him more, happy to bask in the reflected glow of his success, but they’re interrupted by the arrival of a man she doesn’t recognise. He’s around her own age, and it wouldn’t surprise her if he was another academic; he has the same dishevelled dress sense and distracted air, as though he’s not properly connected to the world around him. He pushes a stray lock of blond hair out of his eyes, before thrusting out his hand.

‘Robert, great to see you.’ The man’s grin is broad, revealing slightly crooked teeth. He smells vaguely of vetiver and shag tobacco, a combination she can’t help finding strangely alluring. If she hadn’t already found her master, she’d be curious to learn whether he was single.

‘Dan. Glad you could make it. Matilda, this is Daniel Morison. We used to work together in the English department at Leicester. He’s faculty head there now. Dan, this is Matilda.’

Nothing more in the way of introduction, which surprises her. The stranger now shaking her hand can’t possibly know she is his friend’s submissive; this side of their relationship has always been kept a sworn secret between them.

‘Do sit down, Dan.’

Daniel accepts the invitation, making himself comfortable in the one available armchair. She wondered why her master had settled himself among a group of three chairs; it’s becoming clear this is not going to be the cosy tête-à-tête she’d envisaged when she received his e-mail.

‘So, how are things?’ Daniel asks. ‘I bumped into Maurice a couple of weeks ago and he said you were in Boston …’

The two men launch into a conversation peppered with names and references to past incidents that mean nothing to her but seem to amuse the pair of them greatly. They only break off when the waitress arrives to take Daniel’s order for a glass of Merlot, before returning to the anecdote they’re sharing. All the while, she sits patiently, sipping her wine. He hasn’t given her permission to join in and, even if he had, there’s nothing at all she could add.

At last, he seems to remember she’s there. ‘So, Matilda. I believe that before Dan arrived you were just about to show me whether you’d complied with the dress code.’

He’d implied nothing of the sort. It’s another part of their ritual with which she’s becoming very familiar over the years – the raising of her skirt to reveal the tops of the stockings he loves so much, proof she’s followed his instructions to the letter – but it’s always been conducted in private. She’d make a strong objection, if it wasn’t for the fact that the thought of submitting to him in front of an invited audience is making her even wetter.

‘Didn’t realise they had a dress code for women here,’ Daniel interjects. He smiles at Matilda in conspiratorial fashion. ‘Though you wouldn’t be the first person they’d caught out, believe me. This isn’t my tie; they found it for me because I didn’t have one on when I arrived.’ He waggles the end of the tie at her. It’s a sober, black and grey striped affair that doesn’t go with anything else he’s wearing. Which makes it no different to the rest of his outfit.

Her master shakes his head. ‘I don’t think the club knows anything about this, and, if they did, they’d probably make it compulsory for all their female staff. You see, Matilda’s dress code applies to her underwear as much as to anything else.’

Daniel’s eyes widen. He grasps the implications with lightning speed, if the way he’s shifting in his seat as though his baggy trousers have grown a size too small for him is any indication.

‘So, Matilda, are you ready for your inspection?’

Her eyes can’t help but dart round the room. Fortunately, the only man she can see is some old duffer reclining on the brown leather chesterfield close to the fire, snoring gently, a crumpled copy of the Telegraph clutched to his blazer-clad chest. Everyone else must have retired to the dining room for plates of steak and kidney pudding and spotted dick.

Satisfied her little display won’t be seen by prying eyes, she replies, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very good.’ As she begins to rise to her feet, he adds, ‘Don’t stand up, girl, there’s no need.’

She should find his use of the term ‘girl’ patronising and unnecessary, but it simply causes her pussy to cream more strongly. And he isn’t being kind to her by telling to remain seated. Hiking up her tight skirt the required distance is difficult enough when she’s standing; doing so sitting down is next to impossible, involving a wriggling manoeuvre that slows the process to a humiliating crawl.

Not a word is spoken, two pairs of eyes riveted to her legs as her stockinged thighs appear, inch by agonising inch. She’s all too aware of the wetness between her legs, causing the damp and clinging crotch of her knickers to slip between her lips as her backside writhes against the seat of her chair.