‘Oh, it’s you! What have you done with me? You’d better let me go or …’
‘Sh. Come over to me.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Come over here or I’ll make you. It wouldn’t be difficult. And I have food.’
My stomach was empty, it was true. After a moment’s hesitation, I capitulated and moved in the direction of his voice.
‘Why are you doing this?’ My nipples reached the bars first, brushing the cold steel, which did nothing to reduce their size.
‘You’ll understand, in time.’
‘I want to understand now.’
‘Patience,’ he said.
I heard a spoon scrape against china, then the tip of the metal touched my lower lip. I smelled porridge, milky with perhaps a sprinkling of sugar. I opened my mouth, irritated by my own obedience, but wanting to taste and swallow and banish the nagging emptiness from my stomach.
He pushed the spoon inside my mouth and waited for me to lick off the last remnants of porridge before removing it.
‘That’s it,’ he said softly. ‘It’s good for you. Eat it up.’
He continued to feed me until I felt enough strength to resist him and I stopped opening my mouth.
‘No, finish it,’ he reproved, trying to force the curved metal between my teeth.
I shook my head, turned my face away.
‘Oh, Phoebe, you will make me come in there. You don’t want that.’
Actually, I did want that, and I supposed he knew it, but I was enjoying the pleasurable tension too much to break it just yet.
‘What’s it to you if I leave some porridge?’
‘It’s a great deal to me. For one thing, I need you in good health. For another, you must learn to be obedient or this is going to be very hard for you.’
‘What is? What is this?’
‘You only need to know that you are here for your own safety and protection. More than that, I probably shouldn’t say.’
‘You certainly should. It’s my life! I deserve an explanation.’
‘Eat your porridge and perhaps I’ll give you one.’
I sighed and let him feed me once more.
‘Well?’ I said, once the final morsel was dispatched.
‘I only said perhaps.’
‘Fuck you!’
He heaved a sigh.
‘I’m going to have to come in there, aren’t I?’
I shuffled back rapidly, but he reached through the bars and held my face by the chin, halting me.
‘Wait there,’ he said. ‘Don’t try anything.’
There wasn’t much I could try, cuffed and unseeing, but I tried to follow the direction of his footsteps and drag myself over to where I thought the gate must be, once he started clanking it.
‘I said wait there,’ he warned. ‘Tut tut, somebody is really asking for trouble, isn’t she?’
The gate was open. I tried to hurl myself at it, but found myself hard up against his body, caught in his grip immediately. He held my arm tightly while he locked us both in. I tried to work out what he did with the key, but I couldn’t.
‘Now then, Phoebe,’ he said. He held both of my arms. The material of his clothes brushed against my nipples, reinforcing the power dynamic. He got to wear things. I didn’t. ‘What is this nonsense?’
‘That’s my question!’ I cried. ‘You can’t keep me prisoner.’
‘It’s not my fault,’ he said. ‘You were in danger. I knew you wouldn’t come with me if I asked you to. I had to take you.’
‘What sort of danger?’
‘Never mind what sort of danger.’
‘But I do mind! Of course I mind.’
He silenced me with a kiss, which I tried at first to resist, to all the more appreciate the sweetness of surrender when it came, as it inevitably did. His kisses were nourishment to me, much more than any food or drink. I would take them where I found them.
Once I was quiet and docile, he held me to him and said, ‘You understand that you’re where you need to be?’
‘I don’t understand anything.’
‘But you’ll behave yourself? Or do I need to show you what happens when you don’t?’
My pussy clenched, clit bursting into full bloom.
I had always liked his consequences for bad behaviour.
‘Why don’t you take off these handcuffs?’ I asked. ‘And the blindfold?’
‘I can’t trust you yet. You’ll try something.’
‘What the hell can I try stuck inside a cage?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll think of something. Perhaps we really do need that lesson in what happens if you do.’