Madame’s Neck

By

Joe Simpson-Walker

(from Strange Desires)

Seated before the mirror, Madame Pamela touched the right side of her throat. With the half-consciousness of habit, her fingertips tested the folds and stretches of her skin. The joints of her fingers were encircled above and below with deep wrinkles, but that seemed to her a minor defect, compared to the condition of her neck. Once it had been smooth and flawless; now it was a perpetual reminder that she’d ceased to be young.

She remained an attractive woman, and one who in some respects defied time. Her figure was perfect, and she moved with an innate grace and poise; she sat at her dressing-table on a square stool with no back, effortlessly erect. Her evening dress was black velvet, and clung to her slim waist and slender arms in a way that was entirely flattering.

But her ash-blonde hair would have been grey, if not for chemicals. Her eyes, dark in colour and sparkling in their expression, were beautiful in themselves, but crinkly little ruts had crept around their perimeters and sprouted from their corners. Something similar had happened to her mouth: large, wide and full-lipped, it could part and lift into a delicious smile, but her laugh lines had come to stay. And a stranger’s casual glance at her bare throat could sting Madame Pamela deeply, confirming her own belief in its unsightliness. Madame’s neck was her weakness: it was ‘a dead giveaway’, as people say.

‘Here. Let me.’

As the words were said, a man’s white evening shirt appeared in the mirror, behind her. A hand reached past her shoulder and picked up from the dressing-table a long scarf, a broad band of black semi-transparent chiffon.

He wrapped the scarf loosely around her, making three or four circuits of her head, winding it outwards from her throat down to her collarbone. When he was done, her neck was completely hidden, and her small, firm chin rested in a soft cloud of black.

Bending over her from behind, he placed his hands upon her shoulders. They were large and smooth: their weight, and the sense of strength contained within them, made Madame shudder with pleasure. She turned and looked up into her companion’s face. Powerfully built, tall and handsome, he was only just twenty years old.

Parted, with the edges of white teeth just visible, his lips were descending to meet her. Madame smiled, but tilted her head away.

‘Philip, we haven’t the time.’

‘I’m in the mood,’ Philip said.

‘I know,’ Madame said, ‘but - ‘

She broke off. His mouth had pursued her. She’d turned her head as far away as she could, her chin sliding smoothly over the chiffon, but he held her pinned and her capture was inevitable. Pressing close, his teeth slid up on to the lobe of her left ear. They closed upon the sliver of flesh, pierced but ringless, deliciously sensitive to touch. Madame melted in his grasp.

‘Philip!’ she said faintly. ‘We’ll be late.’

‘I don’t feel like waiting. Spending two or three hours looking at you, not able to lay a finger on you. Not able to take my eyes off your neck. I want you now.’

‘You’ll enjoy it so much more if we wait, Philip. Be patient. Be good.’

‘Be quiet.’

The more she appealed to him to stop, the limper and more pliant she became, and the more ruthlessly he handled her. He let go one shoulder, but only to take hold of her breasts, clutching each breast in turn and squeezing it into the shape of a cone. And he continued to subject her earlobes to sensual gnawing, changing from right ear to left and back again at irregular intervals.

‘Philip... oh, Philip, please!’

‘Be quiet.’

‘Be kind to me!’

‘Shut up,’ Philip said.

Letting go a breast, he reached again to the dressing-table. Its top drawer was a few inches open. He reached in, and without searching brought out another scarf. It was a headsquare of black satin, embroidered with fine threads of gold. Spread out flat, it would have measured about thirty inches by thirty; but it was kept folded into a thick strip, four or five inches at its widest.

Disengaging from Madame’s ear, he brought the strip of satin hard against her mouth and swiftly tied it around her face, knotting it at the back of her head. From the nose downwards, her features disappeared. Wide and full of helplessness, her eyes looked out of the mirror.

Deprived of speech, she tried to protest, even to struggle, to reach up and pull the gag away. Silent in his turn, he caught her hands by the wrists. Drawing them down behind her, he forced them together, then opened one hand to clasp both. She was restrained with complete efficiency, while he was free to reach for the drawer.

Dropping a knee to the floor, he let fall two white scarves, long bands of some thin lacy material. He kept hold of a third scarf, of the same kind, and drew Madame’s hands to one side of the stool while making a loop around the nearer of her wrists. He pulled the loop tight, leaving two long ends. Then he drew that wrist close up against the rear leg of the stool, and made a loop around the leg, another round Madame’s wrist, another encircling both, back and forth, till the length of white cloth was used up, leaving only enough material to make a firm knot. Despite working with a single hand, he bound her deftly and without a slip; and before the binding was complete, Madame’s other wrist could be let go briefly, and would hang limp, waiting its turn to be tied to the leg opposite.

The last white scarf was passed under her arms and drawn tight behind her back, pulling her arms close to her sides, forcing her bosom to jut forward. Kneeling behind the stool, Philip hugged her, cupping her breasts in his palms and fingering flesh through velvet.

Madame sank back upon him. Her head dropped on to his shoulder and their faces nuzzled together. The sound of their breathing became intermingled: his, heavy and low; hers, soft and constrained, unable to find exit by way of her mouth. With her ears half hidden under the satin gag, her lobes were inaccessible; instead he buried his chin in her neck, burrowing his jaw into its black wrappings.

The evening’s engagement was forgotten. Gagged and tied, her eyes cast to the ceiling, Madame Pamela submitted to her young lover’s will, with silent thanks for chiffon, satin and lace.

Syra has already contributed two novels to Silver Moon and is working on her third currently.