Before

On the things I do, when I'm waiting for BDSM to start. Part 1 of a 3 day, 3 part series!

I’ve been biting my cuticles again, and they’re bleeding. I’m sitting on pink fur at the table in my conservatory, with a Turkish lamp spilling its yellow glow across the tiled floor as the evening darkens around me, and all is tranquil. All should be tranquil, anyway. I wish I could say I was doing the sort of thing that a submissive lady in a novel might do, the evening before an encounter with her dominant, after six long weeks apart. Yoga, maybe. Meditation. Having my pubic hair waxed off, or my fingernails painted. Instead, I’ve been anxiously picking at those fingernails — I instantly destroy any manicure I’ve ever had, because when I’m nervous, something in me is compelled to shed my own blood. This unfortunate trait of mine would never be ascribed to a main character in a novel, but I am inconveniently non-fictional.

It’s impossible, wanting to be perfect in less than twenty four hours’ time. Or eighteen hours, to be more precise. I’d like to believe that I’ll spend at least eight of those hours asleep, but if I can’t even stop biting my nails, I certainly can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to do anything so sensible as actually going to bed and falling asleep tonight. My cuticles will be bloody tomorrow, and I might well be a little sleep deprived too.

My hair will be clean and shiny, since that, at least, is a thing I can control. It’s spent the last two days in a cocoa butter hair masque, twisted on top of my head, taking in moisture and recovering from my last, demanding modelling tour which involved brutally repetitious episodes of hurried heat styling. I washed the masque out an hour ago, and once it gets dark, I’ll go upstairs and carefully blow-dry my hair before putting it in rollers overnight. This won’t do anything to increase my chances of sleeping properly of course, but I do so want him to enjoy my bouncy, clean hair tomorrow. It will last for thirty minutes at the absolute maximum, once we’re back together. My hair always gets wrecked far before my body begins to bruise — it’ll be sweaty and tangled and stuck to my face whether he fucks me first, or begins by letting me fondly reacquaint my mouth with his cock. And even if he spanks me before anything else, as he sometimes does, before we even really have a conversation, my hair and makeup will be destroyed just as surely. Because after an absence like this, spanking cannot exist for long without fucking, just as fucking leads inevitably to spanking, around and around like a wonderful carousel made up of my favourite activities.

Really, I should prepare for seeing him by braiding my hair, or at least put it in a tight ponytail to get it out of the way. But I cannot bear to do that — even if it can only be perfect for the few moments after his arrival, it’s worth the attempt. And anyway, if my hair isn’t loose, how can he take it in his hands, and control my head that way? I’d hate to miss that — in the fantasies of him I enjoy in the times between, he never fails to take advantage of my handfuls of hair.

Outside, in the garden, it’s begun to rain heavily, with large drops bouncing violently off the leaves of my potted rhubarb plants. I’d hoped the weather forecast had been unduly pessimistic, and I’m disappointed. My bag is already packed, and it’s full of summer clothes. There’s a silk dressing gown he’s not seen before, a sheer croquet frock, a strapless pleated sundress in pale blue with denim-coloured lace panties to go with it. I consider switching some of these items for sweaters and tweed. But I’ve already spent days imagining what he might do with me while I’m wearing each of these outfits. Putting them back in my wardrobe would feel like a betrayal of the memories I was waiting for us to make in them. Perhaps I needn’t take warm clothes. I doubt we’ll be outdoors much, over the next three days.

The implements are already in the boot of my car. Four canes, one of which is just beginning to show signs of wear, after five years of being carried around Europe in my luggage, and applied with enthusiastic regularity, by him, to my ass. Silk bondage ties, an antique tawse, a sharp-tailed martinet and a soft suede flogger that he almost never uses. Why bother to use an implement that hardly hurts and never bruises, when you have a submissive with an insatiable desire for you to hurt her?

Tomorrow, I will wake before my alarm, moisturise my skin lavishly after my shower, rush through my morning’s work and spend three anxious hours driving north in a car that I’ve already refuelled, in determination that nothing must delay me. I’ll arrive before him, shower again, hurriedly unpack, and dress in the finest lingerie I own — a set that he hasn’t seen before, under a dress chosen for its ease of removal. I have new stockings in every colour, all sprayed with my perfume before being packed.

I’ll put glasses of water by the bed, boil the kettle in case of the remote possibility that he might want tea before making me his again. I’ll lay out his implements, some in the bedroom, some in the living room. And then I’ll wait to be claimed. Hopefully, not for long. The wait, on these occasions, is almost intolerable. What if he comes to harm on his journey to me? What if he is taken suddenly ill? What if I’ve imagined the whole relationship?

It has been six weeks of waiting, and my hope has grown frightening.

To be continued…