The Thanks You Get
Simon Sheppard
“Never make a neurotic your footslave.” He pulls the rope tighter around my balls.
“Ouch!” I yelp. “That hurts!”
“It’s supposed to hurt,” Sir growls.
“Not like that. You pinched my skin.” I try—and I think succeed—to maintain a tone of respect.
“So I took the guy to this play party.” Sir is fiddling with my scrotum. “All around, guys were fisting, whipping, moaning, barking orders like they were in some Falcon video.”
“Saying stuff like ‘Suck that dick’?”
“Yeah, ‘Suck that dick.’ ” He readjusts the rope, like the nice guy he is. To look at him—at the photo of himself he sent over the Internet, scowling in full leathers, brandishing a pair of handcuffs—you’d never guess he worked as a dresser at the opera. Really, you wouldn’t.
I sigh, the way happy bottoms do. “Mmm. That feels better.” A pleasant, familiar ache spreads through the base of my belly.
“And he was just lying there in hog heaven, with my sneaker over his face,” he continues. “Not my boot, see, but my old black leather hightop. Because he just loved to sniff dirty sneakers.”
“And because you’re a very good Sir, Sir.”
He smiles. “And even when I was standing on his chest and spitting on him, the scene seemed so damn low-key. Other guys were walking by, guys in straitjackets, guys with needles through their flesh, and they were looking at us like we’re perverts. Which we were, of course. But not in the generally approved SM way.”
I smile back, in a way that I hope conveys that I’m laughing with him, not at him. He has my dick pretty well tied up now, balls stretched and separated, cock confined so the head is darkish purple and bulging. He reaches over and fumbles in his toy bag for a second, in that slightly incompetent way I find so charming. When his gloved hand emerges, it brings with it his favorite set of titclamps.
“And he was enjoying himself?” I gasp as one of the clamps chomps into my almost-pencil-eraser nipple.
“I sure guess he did. He sighed and moaned. His dick never did get fully hard—he had a cute one with a P.A.—but soft dicks are not necessarily a bad sign.”
“Gotcha.” Clearly, foot worship scenes are not precisely about dicks, in any case.
“Now raise your hands above your head.”
“Yes, Sir.” He snaps the restraints around my wrists onto a chain hanging from a ceiling beam. I’m gratifyingly stretched out and vulnerable.
“Could I possibly have been any nicer to him?”
“No, Sir.” Not unless you beat the shit out of him, I think.
“He wasn’t into pain at all,” Sir says, as though he can read my mind. “Unfortunately.” The back of his leather-clad right hand smacks my pec. My cock throbs against the rope that tightly encircles it. Like any submissive worth his salt, I figure I know how to get what I want.
“Thank you, Sir.” Another slap, coming from the other direction. My body tenses, then relaxes.
“I mean, we’d only played once before. I took him to the play party, introduced him around....” His handsome brow furrows.
“Was he good-looking, Sir?” As good-looking as me?
“Yeah, very nice face. Good body, not gym-toned, but trim. Just my type. Like you.” His chest-slapping has become rhythmic. Like a waltz. One-two-three-pause. One-two-three-pause. Positively Viennese. Or maybe like Musetta’s Waltz from Act 2 of La Bohème. But I digress….
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Only he had self-image problems, see? Good-looking boy like him didn’t deserve to have self-image problems. Made me want to….”
“To slap him, Sir?” I offer helpfully.
“Yeah, only he wasn’t into it, so I couldn’t. Goddamn ‘safe, sane, and consensual.’ ”
“Well, some of us are into it. Sir. Being slapped, I mean.”
I mean it as a compliment, but maybe he hears it as a demand—sometimes tops can be so touchy. He scowls, stops working my now-fiery chest, and reaches down to my well-tied balls.
“Aaagghh!”
He pulls harder.
“AAAGGHH! THANK YOU, SIR!”
“Only problem is, between the blindfold and the sneaker over his face, sometimes I wasn’t sure that he wasn’t getting bored.”
“That shouldn’t matter, Sir. You’re the top.”
He doesn’t say anything, just stares deep into my eyes. Through me.
“Then this very cute boy I’d seen around came over, while I was standing on my slave. The boy looked in my eyes for permission, then went down on my dick.”
“Did you have trouble keeping your balance, Sir?” Which is cheeky, I know. If we hadn’t already played together so often, I never would say it. I swear. He puts his hands on my hips and spins me around, facing away from him.
“This cute new boy seemed like he’d be a lot of fun, but like I said, the footslave was real insecure. When we’d first negotiated, he’d told me he didn’t enjoy parties because he was always afraid he’d be left for someone else. So after a minute, I pulled the boy off my dick and whispered to him, ‘Not now. I’ll get to you later.’ Boy smiled—and oh God, he was cute—and said, ‘I’ll be here.’ ”
All this stuff about how cute the other boy looked is starting to make me feel insecure. “Please, Sir…” I begin.
Sir’s gloved hand comes down on my butt. Not too hard, but hard enough to smart.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“So the next time I checked in with the footslave, he said he thought he’d had enough. I had him kiss and suck my feet a little while longer, then we got dressed and left. On the way out of the dungeon, the cute boy and I winked at each other.” Sir’s starting to really spank me now, each practiced blow of his hand sending waves of peculiar pleasure coursing through my body.
“I’d decided to walk the footslave to the streetcar line, so he wouldn’t think I didn’t like him or something. On the way, he was talking nonstop about his therapist. His therapist! How he didn’t think of himself as attractive. Meanwhile, I was thinking how good he looked with my toes stuffed in his pretty mouth. I was wishing they were still in there.”
I’ll bet, I think. But the spanking is making thinking a chore. Fuck, Sir’s blows are beginning to hurt.
“At the streetcar stop, we arranged to have coffee. Not the next day, but the day after that. Monday. Just to talk things over.”
“To debrief?”
“Debrief, yeah. Plus, I wanted to see him again, neuroses and all.” Suddenly, I’m wondering what he really thinks of me. I mean, does he talk to other bottomboys about me?
He reaches around me to take his best flogger from the hook on the wall.
“By the time I got back to the party, the cute boy was gone. Didn’t wait around, after all.” In my mind’s eye, I can see Sir standing behind me, flogger in one leather-gloved hand, the other hand stroking the thick bullhide tails.
“So I called the footslave at work Monday morning, as arranged. He wasn’t at his desk. I left a voicemail.” The flogger whizzes through the air and lands with a thud on my shoulder. It feels great. I start wallowing in that familiar, dark place that Sir takes me to so well. It’s that feeling, and not the comp tickets to the opera’s dress rehearsals, that keeps me coming back to him. And this opera season has been lousy, anyway.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“But he didn’t get back to me. Finally, at four-thirty, I called him again, just to find out what’s what. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s been real busy here at work.’ Which I could understand.” The blows to my shoulders are harder and more frequent now. I do wish Sir would stop talking. “But then he told me about this date he’d had the night before. Some Latin bear he met at a bar. How wonderful the sex was. How great the guy was.” I’m trying to pay attention. Please shut up, Sir, I think, something I daren’t ever say. But he doesn’t. Shut up. “I mean, I’d only known this footslave for, what, five days?” I try to concentrate, because this is Sir talking and what’s important to him is supposed to be important to me. Is. It is important to me. Still…. “So wasn’t that sort of emotional confidence a bit premature? I mean, thanks for sharing. I knew he had self-esteem problems, but I’m not without….”
I’ve done it. I’ve managed to sneak off to my own little bottom space. For a while, phrases float through my brain: “…didn’t show up…stood me up…ungrateful…I’m not going to compete…to compete….” And then Sir’s voice becomes white noise, comforting white noise. Ahhh.
Finally, some timeless span of time later, the flogging stops. I struggle back to the surface as Sir undoes my shackles, holds me in his arms, strokes my face. My back hurts, a raw, wonderful pain. He smiles at me. My Sir—handsome, bearded, beaming. He knows he’s done a good job; the sight of me confirms it. I’m sure that I’m glowing. “Hey, I’m sorry for going on about that footslave. Sorry to vent. It’s just that….”
Never make a neurotic your footslave? I think. Well, how about “Never make a neurotic….”
But I don’t finish the thought. I don’t let myself say it, not even to myself. I wouldn’t dare. I just smile right back. And when there’s an appropriate pause, I say, “Thank you, Sir.”