Chapter 154: Planning Session
Julia’s house always smelled of lemon polish and beeswax, a deceptive facade of country cosiness. The dungeon, accessed through a disguised door in the panelled study, was another universe. Rupert stood just inside, the blue leather hood feeling tighter, more isolating than ever in his own home. Here, it was uniform.
The room was warm, lit by sconces that cast deep shadows across burgundy velvet drapes and the hard, polished steel of restraint points. The scent here was different: sandalwood, leather, a hint of ozone from the quartz heating lamp pointed at a padded bench.
Julia stood by a stainless-steel trolley, her back to him. She wore a tailored black trousersuit, her silver hair in a severe bun. She looked like a headmistress or a surgeon.
“On the bench, Slave Blue. Prone.”
Her voice brooked no hesitation. Rupert moved to the bench, the warm leather comforting against his bare chest. He heard the click of latches opening.
“The device,” she said.
His hands trembled as he reached between his legs, found the small padlock on the plastic cage. He fumbled with the key on the chain around his neck, his breath loud in the hood. The lock clicked open. He peeled the cage away, his flaccid penis emerging, sensitive and pale. He placed the cage on the trolley.
“Good.” Julia turned, holding a small remote. “You will achieve and maintain an erection. You will not come. The moment I sense you are nearing climax, I will stop. You understand the consequence of failure?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She clicked the remote. A low, resonant hum filled the room. From a shelf, a motorised fuck-machine, its silicone shaft lubricated and glistening, began a slow, piston-like motion in mid-air. Julia moved the quartz lamp, focusing its heat on him.
“Watch.”
It was a brutal form of edging. The machine’s rhythm was relentless, impersonal. The heat from the lamp warmed his skin, a mockery of intimacy. He grew hard, achingly so, under the dual assault of visual stimulus and radiating heat. Julia observed him with a clinical detachment, checking a timer.
“Adequate,” she pronounced, switching off the machine and lamp. “Now, remain perfectly still.”
She approached with a tray containing a large, shallow bowl of off-white, viscous liquid, and several long, flexible strips of cloth. Alginate, he realized. For moulding.
With efficient, impersonal touches, she slathered the cool gel over his erect shaft and testicles. The shock of temperature made him twitch.
“I said still.”
He forced himself rigid. She wrapped the cloth strips around the coated erection, creating a shell. He watched, through the eyeholes of the hood, as his own trapped, urgent flesh was encased. It set quickly, hardening. After a few minutes, she scored it with a scalpel and peeled the mould away in two halves.
His erection, slick with residue, stood defiant. A trophy of his enforced denial.
Julia carried the mould halves to a workbench. “Recage yourself. Now.”
His hands were clumsy, his skin sticky. Getting the plastic tube back over his rigidness was a struggle of pinches and frustrating slips. He finally managed to click the lock shut, his trapped dick throbbing in painful protest.
“Kneel.”
He knelt on the hard floor before her. She unbuttoned her trousers, stepped out of them, and sat on the edge of the bench, leaning back on her elbows. She wore no underwear. Her sex, neatly trimmed, was exposed.
“Service me, slave. Use your mouth. And do not touch yourself.”
He leaned forward, the scent of her – clean, musky, entirely dominant – filling his nostrils. He began to lick, tentatively at first, then with a desperate focus born of weeks of deprivation. This was a transaction, a humiliation, but it was also a form of contact, of purpose. He lapped at her, finding a rhythm, listening for her breath. He felt her folds swell under his tongue. The tiny bell on Margot’s piercing, a world away, seemed to mock him in his memory.
Julia’s hand came to rest on his hooded head, not a caress, but a steer. “There. Apply pressure.”
He obeyed, delving deeper with his tongue, circling her clitoris. A gasp escaped her, a crack in her composure. It fueled him. He ate her with a desperate earnestness, wanting to succeed, to please, to lose himself in this one allowed act.
Her hips rose from the bench. Her thighs tightened around his ears. With a sharp, stifled cry, her body tensed and then shuddered. He felt the pulse of her orgasm against his tongue and kept licking, gently, until her hand pushed his head away.
She slid off the bench, retrieved her trousers, and dressed with methodical calm. He remained kneeling, his jaw wet, his caged cock a furious, trapped animal.
“Stand.”
He stood. She walked to a small, ornate table where a single, large ten-sided die sat on a velvet cloth.
“Roll this.”
He picked up the heavy acrylic die, its facets numbered one through ten. He shook it in his cupped hands and let it tumble onto the cloth.
It bounced, settled.
Nine.
Julia peered at it, a slow smile spreading across her lips. It was the first truly personal expression he’d seen from her all night, and it chilled him.
“Interesting,” she murmured. She picked up her phone, dialled, and put it on speaker.
It rang twice.
“Julia?” Margot’s voice, bright and curious, filled the dungeon’s quiet.
“It’s done. He rolled a nine.”
A beat of silence on the line. Then Margot’s laugh, rich and knowing. “A nine. Oh, poor Slave Blue. He really has no idea, does he?”
“None,” Julia confirmed, her eyes on Rupert’s hooded face.
“Excellent. Thank you, Julia. I’ll settle up. Send him home.”
The call ended. Julia placed the phone down. She walked over to Rupert, cupped his locked cage in her hand, and gave it a cruel, small squeeze. He winced.
“Your wife is a visionary, you know. A nine.” She shook her head, almost with pity. “Put your clothes on. Your driver is outside.”
The ride home was a silent, hollow tunnel. The hood was off, folded in his lap. The cage was a constant, aching reminder. The number nine echoed in his skull, a riddle with no answer. He knew, with a dread that curled cold in his stomach, that it was a countdown. To what, he couldn’t fathom.
He let himself into the dark house. The smell of Margot’s perfume hung in the hall, mixed with a faint, unfamiliar trace of cigar smoke. A relic of her night.
Upstairs, under the weak light of the ensuite, he examined himself in the mirror. His mouth was raw. His eyes were hollow. He opened the small jewellery box on the shelf, the one that held his cufflinks. Nestled inside, beside the pearl studs, was a simple, polished silver key.
The key to his cage.
He stared at it. It was the easiest thing in the world. To unlock himself, to find a fleeting, shameful relief. He had been edged, used, made a fool of. He deserved it.
His hand hovered.
From their bedroom, Margot’s voice, thick with sleep, drifted through the door. “Rupert? You’re back.”
He snatched his hand back, closed the box. The key remained inside. The cage remained locked.
He turned off the light and went to lie beside his wife, the phantom weight of a die, showing nine, pressing down on his chest.