Page 51 of Pierced

In her gloved hand she holds a shiny silver riding crop.

Simply, she looks like what I imagine Marie Antoinette might have looked like beneath her courtly palace attire. Stripped clean of the artifice of propriety, underneath, a body perfectly built for punishment. She is a portrait in contradiction. Pleasure and pain. Hardness and softness. Abuse and mercy.

I gasp in a breath because I’ve completely forgotten to breathe since I laid eyes on her.

Out of instinct, I move toward her and in a flash, she has stepped to me first and raps my stomach with her riding crop.

“Ow! Fuck!”

“You may not enter until you have been given permission to enter,” she says.

OK. Here we go. “Yeah, all right, fine. May I enter, please?”

“You may not.”

“What? What’re you talking about? Why not?”

She walks over to the chest and picks up a what looks like a studded dog collar with a chain attached. No, check that. It doesn’t look like one. It is one. Yep. That’s what it is all right.

“Here,” she says, handing it to me as she steps back over.

“And I’m supposed to…?”

“Put it on.”

“What?”

“Now that the dungeon is in its properly appointed state, a slave may only enter once they have made themselves bare and given themselves to me. Entering bare is a sign of your willingness to submit. The collar is the mark of my ownership. Now put it on.”

“So… get butt-ass naked and put on a dog collar. This is what this is? I mean—”

She lowers her head. I can’t expression from behind the mask, but when she lifts her head again, there is a resolve in her eyes.

“Pierce,” she whispers, “if you make me count to three again I will blow out all the candles and you will be dismissed. Decide now. Because after this moment I will not tolerate insubordination. It will be an insult to my authority and a sign that you think me a joke.”

I look around the space. I think of the time it took her to put all this together. I look at her. This is not an incidental thing. This isn’t something she just threw together. This is who she is. This is a part of her. This is the kind of thing that we used to joke about and kid around over, but here, in this moment, I realize that this is a genuine part of what makes Myrtle Myrtle. A part of her that I always thought was kind of something to take the piss about, but that is, in fact, a mighty measure of her as a woman.

We’ve been kind of dipping our toes in this ocean the last few days. Feeling each other out. Playing cat and mouse, in a way. But she’s right. Either we’re doing this thing or we aren’t. Either I’m giving over to Myrtle or I’m not.

This started out as one thing. For me this started as a way to give Myrtle what she wants. Then it became another thing. A game that we were kind of playing. Then another. A sensation—an experience I’d never had—and it kind of turned me on.

Now it’s suddenly something else.

It’s real.

It’s real life. It’s something that matters and that, if I’m going to enter into, I shouldn’t do so lightly.

And so…

I stand, naked, and face her. It’s still hard to read her, but I can see her eyes drift down to look at me. All of me. Her boss. Here. Exposed. In front of her.

I take the dog collar and clasp it around my neck. And then, because in for a penny, in for a pound, I kneel down and land on all fours on the floor just behind the rope.

I look up at her and say, “Yeah. We’re doing this.”

She stares at me, silently, and after a few long moments, I ask for the permission I must.

“So… may I enter, please? Mistress?”