Unraveled by Him (22 page)

So that’s why Robert is so strong and confident, I think, so imaginative, so self-controlled, so passionate yet masterful. He has oceans of experience . . . and practice has clearly made perfect.

He lights another cigarette and I concentrate again on his story.

“However, there came a time when I knew that I had to put the brakes on my dominance, as my anger at not finding Tamara, and thus Pamela, was having an adverse effect on my sexuality. You see, Miranda, a dominant should never punish a submissive out of anger, and I felt that I was on the verge of doing that.

“So I decided to do something I never dreamed that I’d ever do: set a date on which I would give up the search. Forget forever about finding Tamara and, through her, Pamela, the woman of my dreams.

“Before that date, though, I allowed myself one last and final attempt to find Tamara, one last flight to LA to do the rounds of the S&M fantasy parlors there again, for the very last time.

“So it was that I visited a Sunset Plaza Drive S&M fantasy parlor, high in the Hollywood Hills overlooking Los Angeles, and had a session there with a submissive, during which I told her my story. Told her about Tamara. Showed her my picture of her. Money changed hands between us. A great deal of it.

“And when I returned to Sunset Plaza Drive the next evening, Tamara was there, waiting for me.

“And on the little finger of her left hand, she wore Pamela’s gold signet ring.

“When I examined the crest closely, I knew immediately that it was worth every penny of the twenty thousand dollars I was paying her for it.

“Because from it I knew I could discover learned Pamela’s true identity, and finally find her, at last.”

The tension is killing me. I hope to hell that Robert never found her. I won’t be able to bear it if he did.

“Are you all right, Miranda?” Robert asks, his eyes soft with concern.

“Of course, Robert. I can’t wait to hear what happens next,” I say, not in the least bit truthfully.

Anything not to know, anything to stall him, anything to delay the unthinkable . . .

“It took me less than a day to discover that the crest on Pamela’s ring was the ancient crest of the Lacely family, the distinguished aristocrats who date back to the time of William the Conqueror.

“The Lacelys, as I learned, were a proud and noble dynasty composed of brave soldiers and spectacularly beautiful women, a dynasty blessed by every conceivable genetic advantage until, over the centuries, through wars, pestilence, and the curse of interbreeding, the entire dynasty died out.

“Except for one family member: Lady Georgiana Lacely.

“Or rather, Pamela, the submissive whom I met and dominated in a brothel.”

I’m dumbstruck. This can’t be real. Did Robert just tell me that Lady Georgiana, the saintly, the beautiful, the incomparable Lady Georgiana, worked in an S&M brothel?

“This can’t be true, Robert! I refuse to believe it! I can’t,” I manage to get out after a few minutes.

“Miranda, I had no idea that this—”

“That this means the end of everything between us!” I burst out.

“But Miranda, this isn’t about us. This is about Georgiana,” he says, his face ashen.

“Georgiana, Georgiana, the sacred Georgiana! Georgiana, your dream girl! Georgiana, the perfect sub! Georgiana, the woman who was a better sub than I’ll ever be,” I say, shaking from head to foot with a combination of shock and anger.

“Georgiana a better sub than you?” he says slowly.

“Yes, and that’s why you are really putting me through all these tests. Trying to discover whether I could ever be half as good as Georgiana was,” I say.

He looks at me with the hardest look he has ever given me.

“I promise you, Miranda, that you are not and never will be the submissive that Georgiana was,” he says.

And I feel as if he has sliced open my chest, ripped out my heart, and stomped on it.

Seeing my stricken expression, he says, “Miranda, this is not about Georgiana. This is about you and me.”

You and me?

The words I cherish.

Careful, Miranda, careful, don’t sail away on that magic carpet just yet . . . you know how easily it can all turn to ashes.

“But only if I pass your last two tests, Robert?” I say, my heart in my mouth.

“Just two more tests, Miranda, just two more. Pass those, and then you will have convinced me that you are what you have always claimed you are: a born submissive, for whom submission is her true vocation. And if you are that, you will be the woman for whom I’ve been searching my entire life.”

“But surely Georgiana . . . ?”

He holds up his hand to stop me in midsentence.

“This isn’t about her, Miranda. This is about our future together.”

Our future? Together? How can he be thinking about a future when he’s still testing me?

“But what about the fourth and fifth tests, Robert?” I say.

“The fourth will be challenging. But the fifth will be far worse. The harshest, the most humiliating, the most severe of which I could conceive. But you still have your safe word, should you choose to use it,” he says darkly.

“And if I do?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Your prerogative,” he says, and then adds, “But if you do, you will have disappointed me.”

“So if I use my safe word, I’ll fail the fourth and fifth tests and the three other tests I’ve passed won’t mean a damn thing to you?” I say, my temper rising.

“If you fail the fourth and fifth tests, Miranda, you will still have passed the rest, and with flying colors. But, as I said, you will have disappointed me.”

“Then bring it on, Robert—bring it on.”

Chapter Thirteen

The next morning I’m still trying to digest Robert’s shocking revelation. I have tons of questions I’m dying to ask him about Georgiana. But he’s been at the gym, then playing squash, so I haven’t yet had the chance.

Instead, I find a note from him at breakfast:
I shall expect you to present yourself to me in Dungeon 4 at 11:30 precisely. Wear what you wish. And be on time. I shall be waiting. Robert.

Dungeon 4—a dark, forbidding place with all manner of medieval contraptions hanging from the wall: a whipping bench, a rack of whips, canes, crops, and paddles. And in the middle of it all, a vast water bed.

I am standing in front of Robert, naked and afraid.

He towers over me, brandishing a cane. “Miranda, this fourth test is specifically designed to test your capacity for enduring pain.”

I hear his words, but potent as they are, they are totally eclipsed by the sight of him holding the long, thin rattan cane by its crooked handle in his strong and masterful hands. Even though the cane terrifies me, I can’t help thinking that he looks as if he was born to wield it, and the thought makes me hot with desire.

“Six of the best for you, Miranda, and a trip down memory lane for me,” he says, and I remember the story of how he was caned at school in England and how much he hated it.

Six strokes doesn’t seem like a lot, but there is something about the cane, the authority it represents, that manages to scare me and turn me on all at the same time.

He points to a desk in the corner of the dungeon and orders me to bend over it.

“Begin by saying the words, ‘I am ready to receive my well-deserved punishment, Master.’ Then, in a humble and restrained voice, ask for the first stroke: ‘Please Master, give me one.’ Count each stroke in that manner, Miranda. And however painful each stroke may be, take it in silence. And thank me in sincere and accepting terms afterward,” he says. “Begin, Miranda.”

In a voice that, to me, sounds as if it belongs to someone else, I recite the words. “I’m ready to receive my well-deserved punishment, Master.”

As I lean over the hard desk, my breasts press into it, and it hurts.

“Present your bottom, Miranda,” he orders, next.

I stick it out and wait.

To my surprise, Robert doesn’t administer the first stroke but walks around to the front so that I can see him. He raises his arm high and slashes the cane down on the desk. I jump but hastily resume my position across the desk.

“Just a practice stroke,” he says, with a dangerous smile.

Then he strides behind me, while I try hard to stay in position.

“Well, Miranda?” he says.

“Please, Master, give me one.”

I feel the air split; the cane cuts into me, and my knees buckle.

I manage to steady myself and, just in time, remember.

“Thank you, Master.”

“Present your bottom, Miranda!” he barks.

I do, then ask for the second stroke.

He administers it, and I bite into my arm to stop myself from screaming at the pain.

My ass is on fire, and I don’t know how I can make it to six.

But I grit my teeth and take three more strokes of the cane, three cuts that are so powerful that it takes all my will not to cry out in agony.

But I’ve done it, I’ve had five. Only one more to go!

“How many strokes have you had, Miranda?” Robert asks suddenly.

“Five strokes, Master.”

“No, you haven’t, Miranda, you’ve only had two,” he says.

I’m about to protest, then realize what Robert is doing and say nothing.

“How many strokes have you had, Miranda?” he demands again.

“I’ve had two, Master,” I say.

“I’m very pleased with you, Miranda,” he says, then gives me four more strokes in rapid succession. And hearing his praise somehow dulls the acute pain I’m feeling.

After the last stroke he helps me stand, and rocks me in his strong and powerful arms. I long to look up into his eyes, but don’t.

“You’ve done well, Miranda, but it isn’t over yet,” he says, then looks at me appraisingly. “Unless, of course, this is all too much for you and you want to stop.”

“In your dreams, Robert,” I blaze at him, and break the protocol by staring right at him, just so he knows I mean it.

He laughs his king-of-the-world Robert Hartwell laugh.

“That’s my girl!” he says.

I sip some water and watch as he goes over to the water bed and attaches restraints to the eyelets coming out of it.

And beckons me over.

As he ties me to the water bed, facedown, I can’t help admiring his expertise at tying knots.

But as he places a large ticking clock on the black marble table next to me, for the first time since he started subjecting me to these tests of my submission, I worry that I won’t be able to withstand what he has decided to do to me.

The thought of disappointing him is devastating. With every fiber of my being, I want to pass Robert’s tests, and pass them well, because I now know that he is my Master, the only man in the universe who is capable of satisfying all my sexual desires, of mastering every single part of me and that he is my destiny.

I hear him walk away, but although my instinct is to turn my head and watch where he is going, what he is doing, I know that he expects me not to move. So I stay motionless on the water bed, with no alternative except to listen to the ticking of the clock.

The ticking is so loud that as the minutes go by, it begins to feel as if it comes from deep inside my head.

I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that I’ve now been tied like this for the last half hour. Without intending to, I drift off to sleep.

Only to be awoken by the shrill bell of the alarm clock.

And the sound of Robert, striding purposefully toward the bed.

Then the vicious crack of his riding crop across my defenseless ass.

I let out a yell of agony.

“Thirty-nine strokes to go. Enjoy waiting for them,” he says, then picks up the clock, resets the alarm, and strides away from me again.

I can’t see the clock, of course. Not seeing the time at which he has set the alarm clock means that I won’t know exactly how long it will be before the bell rings. I just have to wait.

He has turned it away from me because he understands only too well that if I can see the time to which he has set the alarm, I will know when I’m due to get the next stroke and will be able to psych myself up for it so it won’t hurt so much.

But now I’m forced to lie here, tied down, with nothing to do but listen to the ticking of the clock, each tick bringing me closer to the next vicious cut of the crop. I can only wait, and suffer.

Exactly as my Master wishes.

After the thirtieth stroke, he turns me over and ties me to the bed on my back, so that my thighs, my stomach, my breasts are offered up to his crop for punishment.

How will I bear it without screaming the dungeon down?

My question is answered when he produces a rubber ball gag, inserts it in my mouth, then fastens the strap around my head tightly, but not so tightly that I am uncomfortable.

I’ve never been gagged before, and I quickly discover that I hate how my mouth dries up because of it. Even more, I hate the idea that the next time the alarm bell rings, the next time the crop cuts into my naked body viciously and I scream, as I have each time, my screams will be muffled, distorted, animalistic.

But that’s obviously Robert’s intention.

Not just to punish me, but also to humiliate me. I close my eyes and wait, only to hear the earsplitting ring of the alarm clock, louder and closer to me than ever.

Robert looms over me, and I cringe as he raises his right arm high above his head.

I close my eyes and grit my teeth.

“Look at me, Miranda,” he commands.

I do, and petrified as I am that he will strike my breasts, my nipples, the passion in his eyes as he brings the crop down hard across my stomach turns my insides liquid with arousal.

My legs are spread and tied wide apart, and I am hot with desire.

As he comes close to me I flinch, expecting him to slap my face punishingly. Instead, he removes the ball gag and gently, so gently that I can hardly bear it, kisses me with so much passion that I can feel myself start to swoon.

Then he pulls away from me and rubs his eyes, almost as if he has seen a ghost.

“Miranda, you are so beautiful tied up like this. So helpless, so afraid, yet dripping with arousal. You take my breath away,” he says.

Then he puts the ball gag into my mouth again, ties it tightly and leaves me alone to wait for the alarm clock to ring once more.

It’s over.

He removes the ball gag from my mouth.

I am relieved, as the last thing I want is for the majestic, the elegant, the godlike Robert Hartwell to see me with drool all over my face.

Then I look down at my body.

Six crop marks placed all over it.

Two across each breast individually.

Two across both breasts simultaneously.

All six strokes making me scream harder into the gag than I ever dreamed I could.

And I remember how he paused before each stroke, took careful aim, and brought the crop down right across my nipple.

Compared to that, the strokes across my stomach and my thighs were virtually painless.

Unlike the endless minutes of waiting for the next stroke.

But I didn’t beg him to release me. I didn’t use my safe word. I submitted, just as I knew I would, however difficult, however demeaning, however painful.

And, to my shame, the tell-tale flush, signifying how sexually aroused I am, says that despite everything, what Robert did to me excited me beyond my wildest dreams.

He kneels next to the bed and slowly starts to lick my body, inch by inch, tenderly, lovingly, until I feel I’ll die from all the pleasure he is granting me.

But I still can’t allow myself to experience the ultimate pleasure. For however many contractions I have, however much I writhe and moan, at the very peak of it all I hold back, just a fraction.

And all I can do is hope that he doesn’t notice.

Gently, he unties me, then leads me through a door in the mirror into a massive pink and black marble bathroom where he has run a bubble bath for me.

But while I’m grateful, I’m not sure I can manage to climb into the tub.

I am drained, exhausted.

He cradles me in his arms, and the warmth of his body immediately makes me feel safe again.

“Is it over? Isn’t this enough?” I say, hoping against hope that he will relent and let me off the fifth and final test.

He lets go of me, and a chill tears through me.

“I’m afraid not, my darling. If you shirk the fifth test, you will have failed. You will have proved nothing.”

How much more do I have to take? How much more do I have to suffer before he finally trusts me?

“I am so close, so very close, Miranda, to believing in you completely, to taking you into my heart, my life, forever,” he says, with his uncanny ability to read my thoughts.

He helps me into the tub and sits on the edge while I soak in the warm and comforting water.

As I do, he strokes my sweat-matted hair.