PRICKLES
One day, I’ll learn my lesson. I’ll be mindful that when my Master gives me an instruction, he expects it to be carried out promptly, and if he makes a choice then I must be respectful of it.
This extends to our domestic arrangements, too, for David isn’t just my Master: he’s also my husband of eighteen months. Not that I’m any kind of downtrodden doormat, trapped in a marriage that’s all about getting what he wants—far from it. It’s just that, sometimes, getting what I want means directly disobeying his wishes.
And that’s how I find myself in the position I’m in right now—waiting in the guest bedroom, naked, for David to arrive and give me the punishment I’ve earned. On the face of it, I only made the smallest of mistakes. When packing his lunch for work this morning, instead of slotting in his usual muesli bar alongside the flask of homemade turkey soup and a crisp Brae-burn apple, I added a slice of Christmas cake, wrapped in foil. Nothing wrong with that, you might think, given we still have almost half the cake that graced the dining table on Christmas night, when my parents and his came over for supper. The newspapers encourage us to be thrifty at this time of year, after all the spending and excesses of the holiday season, so using up the leftovers in David’s lunches makes perfect sense. Except that he hates Christmas cake, always has, and sending a piece to work with him can only be viewed as a small but deliberate act of provocation.
He’ll have spent the remainder of the afternoon contemplating his response. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’d left that piece of cake unwrapped on his desk, so every time he looked up from his paperwork it would be there in his sight line, a constant reminder of how I’ve disappointed him. As for me, I’ve carried out the housework in a state of squirming anticipation, wondering just what he’ll have planned for me on his return.
I won’t have to wait much longer to find out; I can hear his tread on the stairs, firm and steady. Every step seems to convey the strength of his purpose, his determination not to be swayed by any pleading or apology on my part. Just the way I love it.
He didn’t mention the lunchbox incident, as I’ve come to think of it, over dinner. We briefly discussed the details of our respective days: his gentle sinking back into the office routine after a week spent at home, my need to get a repairman in to look at our misbehaving washing machine. Beneath this mundane conversation simmered the prospect of the punishment to come: unspoken but undeniable.
At last, when I rose to clear the plates and stack the dishwasher, David said, “Those can wait, Julianne. Go to the guest room, strip and assume the position. I want you ready for me by the time I get up there.”
He never has to raise his voice, or bark out an order. The fact that he makes everything seem like a perfectly reasonable request always adds an extra frisson to his words. Even before I’ve left the dining room, my pussy has begun to clench with lust and a damp heat suffuses my underwear. I swear that David could make me come with his voice alone, though I’ve never dared to propose the challenge.
The sheets on the guest bed are clean—I changed them this afternoon—and the room smells faintly of spring-fresh fabric conditioner. David’s parents slept here for a couple of nights over Christmas; I’m sure they could have no idea of the games David and I enjoy in here, the domination and submission scenes we act out.
With trembling fingers, I undress, laying my clothes in a neat pile on the bed. When I peel down my panties, there’s a telltale wetness in the crotch, betraying just how much I want this. We’ve spent the last few days presenting a sweet, vanilla façade to our families, and now the dark, secret side of us is more than ready to come out and play.
I’ve no idea how long David will make me wait, naked and facing the wall, my hands linked together at the back of my head. It’s a position designed to reinforce my vulnerability, to emphasize what a naughty girl I’ve been, and yet a fierce excitement pulses through me. I need David to see me like this, to admire my willingness to obey, and every moment that passes before he walks through the door only adds to my frustration and growing need.
At last, I hear the door click open and my master enters. His footsteps are muffled by the thick carpet, but I know he is close. Gooseflesh rises on my skin, and I swallow against the sudden obstruction in my throat. He’ll be watching me, glancing from my body to the bed to check that I’ve followed all his instructions, silently counting off any infractions in his head. I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong apart from messing up his lunch, but if he’s in the mood, he can always dredge something up to add a little extra to my punishment.
“Turn round,” he says, and I do as he asks. Though I try to keep gazing forward, I can’t help but drop my eyes to the level of his crotch for a moment, just to gauge the size of the bulge that presses against the front of his dark suit trousers. He hasn’t changed out of his office clothes, merely left his jacket hanging over the back of his chair at the dining table, and he looks so gorgeously masculine, with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to reveal his solid, lightly haired forearms.
He lets out a little sigh, as if it pains him to be here. “We both know what you’ve done, Julianne, and exactly why you’ve done it. You clearly delight in creating little aggravations for me…”
How I love that turn of phrase: it sums up what I’ve done so beautifully. But then it’s no wonder David has a way with words; he’s one of the finest editors at his publishing house, after all. It’s yet another of the reasons why I’m quite so proud of him. What I love even more is the fact he saves his most cunning acts of creativity for this room, and I’m the only one who gets to experience them.
“I’m sorry, David,” I tell him. He’s never requested that I call him “Master” or “Sir;” using his first name keeps that quiet tone of domestic discipline on which we both thrive. “I promise I won’t make that mistake again.”
He regards me for a moment, then shakes his head. “No, you’ll just make a different one, won’t you? Sometimes it seems there’s no limit to the number of simple little things you can get wrong.”
His point made, David will now go to fetch tonight’s punishment implement from the toy box he keeps hidden in the bottom of the wardrobe. I’m always amazed that no one who’s ever stayed here has decided to have a nose around—an impulse that always afflicts me when I’m staying in a strange bedroom—and discovered our secret stash. Maybe the fact that they’re stored in a cardboard box that originally contained a pair of calf-length leather boots of mine is why they’ve gone unnoticed for so long.
Ever since I came upstairs, I’ve been wondering which of David’s selection of whips, paddles, plugs and gags he’s intending to use on me. They’re all toys he collected over the years before he met me, and he’s used them in previous relationships, at play parties and fetish club nights. Sometimes, I think it should bother me that in all the time we’ve been together he’s never bought a new toy especially for me, but it doesn’t. Most of his equipment is of the finest quality, the craftsmanship evident in the stitching and the suppleness of the leather. It’s all far too nice to be given away or left to rot unused, and I couldn’t bear for him not to brandish that cute paddle with the heart-shaped cutouts against my bare bottom. But sometimes I think it would be nice to be surprised for once, for him to reach into that box and withdraw something I’ve never seen before.
Instead, he surprises me by keeping the door to the wardrobe firmly shut, and keeps on regarding me with that same, faintly disappointed expression. For the first time since I’ve stepped into the room—indeed, for the first time in longer than I can remember—I have the sense that he’s somehow wrong-footed me. Even as my stomach lurches queasily at the thought of David departing from our unwritten script, I can’t deny that I like the feeling.
“In the past, I’ve tried remedying your behavior with all the traditional methods—and none of them have worked.” David shakes his head slowly, sadly. “Bare-bottomed spankings, a good old-fashioned six of the best—somehow, Julianne, you remain immune to their corrective effects. So I’ve decided I will have to try a different tack. And to that end, I’d like you to meet Prickles.”
He extends the fist he’s kept closed throughout this speech, spreading his fingers to reveal what sits on his palm. I almost want to laugh aloud. He’s holding a pink plastic nailbrush in the shape of a hippo. It’s one of the toys that fell out of the crackers we pulled at Christmas dinner, and when I’d tidied the table I’d left it on the kitchen windowsill, intending to use it the next time I needed to clean my nails. It seems David has earmarked it for some other purpose.
“I realized,” he continues as he steps closer, “that it was high time I introduced you to the concept of sensation play. And Prickles here is going to help you in your initial steps. I’m very interested to see how much of his attention you can take before you beg me to stop—or beg me for more. Your choice.”
He smiles, but there’s a cruel glitter in his dark eyes. David loves to discipline me, but I can’t quite see what he hopes to achieve with the aid of something quite as innocuous as a nailbrush. How on earth could that be any kind of instrument of torment? If he’d brought home one of those pitiless vampire gloves, with the metal points embedded in every finger, points designed to prick and pierce, then I’d have been worried. But David knows my limits, and would never use anything on me that has the capacity to draw blood. So withstanding whatever he thinks he’s going to do to me with this silly little brush will be a breeze.
“Ready?” he asks.
My reply is defiant. “Bring it on.”
He strokes the brush lightly up my arm, its myriad soft plastic bristles tickling as they go. The sensation is not unpleasant, and I relax into it. I’m so used to being bent over the bed to receive a spanking or a paddling when I’ve been bad that this feels more like pampering than punishment.
I revise that opinion a little when David begins to concentrate his attentions on my armpit. I’m not exceptionally ticklish, but I can’t suppress the shudder that goes through me as he runs the brush back and forth over the delicate skin there. Spotting my reaction, he begins to move Prickles, as he’s christened his new toy, in concentrated circles.
I swallow down the whimper that is trying to escape from my lips.
“Had enough yet?” David asks, and I shake my head, determined not to give him the satisfaction of letting him know how much this is already getting to me. “Very well, then…”
He pulls Prickles out of my armpit, and I’ve barely recovered from its onslaught before he’s applying the damned thing to my breast. Again, he moves it in slow circles at first, the bristles caressing me deliciously, like a thousand tiny fingertips. Now, this I could get to like.
David is watching the play of emotions on my face, gauging the exact moment when switching the focus of his strokes to my nipple will have the maximum impact. The little bud has been hard and desperate to be touched almost since the moment David ordered me to go upstairs and undress, and when he begins to flick at it with the nailbrush I can’t hold back my response any longer.
“Oh god…” I moan, as the soft to-and-fro motion changes to more of a heavy scrubbing and what started as pure pleasure quickly begins to verge on pain. David has always loved to torment my tits, taking my nipple in his fingers and squeezing until the feeling is almost more than I can stand, and now he’s realized he can cause exactly the same reaction with this stupid nailbrush.
“Want me to stop?” he asks. “Because if I do, that’s it. Punishment over. You put your clothes back on, we go downstairs and spend the evening watching TV like none of this ever happened.”
That might be an enticing prospect, except I know what he really means by “that’s it.” I don’t get to come, and even though my breasts are mottled red and my nipples swollen and aching from the treatment they’ve received, my need for orgasm is growing. So, aware that whatever I reply, he’ll have the upper hand, I tell him, “No, David, please don’t stop.”
“Good girl.” Those words always cause something to come unglued within me, with their affirmation that my behavior is pleasing him—that I am pleasing him. I want to sag against the wall for support, but instead I hold myself upright, staring straight ahead as he draws Prickles over each of my nipples in turn before running the toy down the valley between my breasts.
The brush continues on its downward path, prickling and tickling the skin of my chest and belly. There’s only one place its journey can logically end, and already I’m dreading and anticipating that moment in equal measures. I bite my lip as it continues on its inexorable path. Lower…lower…
“Look at me,” David orders.
I can’t. If our eyes meet, he will be able to see into my soul, and know exactly what he’s reduced me to. And yet I have to.
As he sweeps Prickles over my hair-free, sensitive mound, I raise my gaze slightly, to lock with his. There’s amusement in his eyes, but admiration, too. Whatever he decides to give me, I will take, however much of an effort it costs me, and he loves me for that.
The brush skims the insides of my thighs, and now its touch is too light. I need more contact, more friction to help the orgasm that’s building within me.
“Please…” He said I’d be begging him to stop, or begging him for more. The word stop is a million miles from my lips, even though I don’t know what I’ll do if he actually presses that wicked, maddening brush between my legs.
The strain of holding my position, fingers linked behind my head, legs wide enough apart to offer him easy access, is beginning to tell. I can feel my thigh muscles burning, and my shoulders ache with the strain of remaining still. But I can ignore these discomforts. All that matters is receiving the pleasure I crave.
David’s gaze still bores into mine. I can’t hide anything from him. All I can do is whimper helplessly as he skims Prickles over the place where I am wettest and hottest and neediest. Those soft bristles make the barest of contact with my clit, and that’s all it takes. Using everything from featherlight touches to harsh rubs, mixing up the sensations until I’m not sure where pleasure ends and pain begins, David has brought me to the point where I’m coming, calling out his name and threatening to topple over, so strong are the waves crashing through me.
He wraps me in his arms and I cling to him: my Master, my rock, my everything.
“Let’s go downstairs,” he says. I’m aware that he hasn’t had his own pleasure yet; the insistent press of his cock against my belly as we cuddle is all the reminder I need of that. We’ll be spending the rest of the evening in front of the TV, just as he said, but my head will be in his lap and my mouth will be full of his cock. At this moment, I can’t think of any better way to spend my time.
One day I’ll learn my lesson. But if a session with Prickles is the consequence of my bad behavior, that day will be a while off yet.