Confession - Masked for the Unknown

The stranger's mouth was back enveloping my own, before I could acknowledge his compliment. His hand continue to fondle my breast, assessing its firmness, stroking my nipple stub, sending delicious shivers through it. It felt incredible, to have someone else play my body so intensely, softly strumming the stub with his thumb, to the point that I was almost whimpering with pleasure, even while he tongued my proffered mouth.

I was only too aware, of course, that my husband was still watching this. At least, unlike those times that I had let those other strangers fuck me, this time I did not need to feel the guilt of betrayal, of broken vows, of going behind my husband's back, deceiving him. Peter had arranged this. The club. My nakedness. The mask. My being on the dance-floor. The stranger, to whom all he had had to do was nod. No need for guilt on my part. Sluttish behaviour, yes, but no remorse nor shame nor conscience riven self-reproach.

The hand left my nipple, smoothing its way to my side, then downwards, back to my pelvis, then inwards and further down, between my stomach and his own body, to the apex of my legs. With next to no hesitation, he slid two fingers into me, curling them within, the pads of one skimming my clit.

I shuddered. My body tensed. He started to withdraw, just fractionally, enough to let the same finger slide across my clit some more, sending exquisite pulses through it, through my entire body.

He paused, then did the same again, probing just that inch further, then withdrawing, his fingers in my cunt causing gentle waves of bliss, while the single finger sliding over my clit sent thrills of ecstasy through me, almost overshadowing the penetrative pleasuring.

My head told me that I should break this off. I should use my hands to gently push him from me, or rather ease myself away from him, but the elation was too great. In spite of knowing that not just my husband would be watching, but those around me on the dance floor, those standing at the bar, and others sitting, people watching, I let him finger fuck me, right in front of them.

Looking back, it was the mask that gave me the courage to give in to him. Had I had to meet Peter's eyes as he watched, I could not have let it happen. Had I been able to see the audience watching, my shame and embarrassment would have been complete. Unseeing, I was in my own world, a world of Scottish, soft, lilting compliments that had been whispered in my ears, of hands and fingers intimately exploring, delving, arousing, awakening desire, playing my strings, a practised instrumentalist of female sexuality.

His hand behind my back supported me throughout the orgasm that ensued. His mouth on mine ensured that it was almost silent, noiseless, nothing more than gasps and whimpers. The shivers that wracked through my body were constrained by the need to stay, somehow, on my feet, my toes, since I was wearing heels. It was the insistence of his fingering my cunt and clit that brought me off, but once my orgasm had exploded, I ground my cunt onto his hand, writhing on it, grateful for Scottish biceps and the strength of Edinburgh forearms, that kept me from collapsing to the floor.

I would have thought that we deserved applause. Perhaps the stranger, more than me, for he had brought me to that point. Instead of clapping from our audience, all I heard was murmuring, audible above the level of the pumping music, but quiet, comments made one person to another, not for the audience together, nor for me.

Once I had regained the strength and composure to stand without support, I felt him slowly release me from his hold. He took my hand and led me from the dance floor. My sense of direction was no more, but when I felt my husband's hand and heard his voice I knew that I had been returned to him. Most Scots are gentlemen.

No husband has ever held his wife more lovingly. I raised my arms around his neck, and felt the familiar strands of hair against my wrists. He kissed my cheek, not just once, but several times, beginning right beside my mouth and ending at my ear.

"That was pretty sexy to watch," he said. "But you do know what's coming next, don't you?"

I knew. He did not have to tell me. A shiver of apprehension ran up my spine. He was still holding me, which made me wonder if he had felt that shiver too. My nervousness. A sense of trepidation, different from the anticipatory excitement that I always felt at home. Home was security. Safety. Here, I was at sea, blindly dependent on my husband, who I trusted, but after what had just happened with the Scottish stranger, I no longer knew just how far the man I loved might take me.

Just minutes later, Peter told me to put out both hands, palms down. He had guided me out of the main space, telling me that we were in a corridor passing play-spaces with large vinyl mattressed beds, where guests were playing, and from which I could hear the grunts and groans, male and female, evidence that swingers genuinely swing, that the club was not just for exhibitionists, but for full fledged fucking.

He had told me when he reached the dungeon. He had said that he had had a change of plan. He was not going to use the horse that I had seen online. Not yet, at least. Instead, when I had done as he had asked, and put out my hands, I had felt an inch thick rod of cold metal placed for me to hold, and then felt straps fastened around my wrists.

"What happens, now," he said, "is that I can raise the rod, which is suspended from the ceiling. You can keep hold of it, to keep you steady, while you stand with feet apart, and wait."

I stared blindly at the inside of my mask, light still dimly filtering around the edges, but revealing nothing, no clue about the dungeon space that we were in, or who was there already, who had followed us, how the rod that I was holding would be raised, or anything. But just as he predicted, the rod began to rise.

It passed the level of my chin, lifting my hands as it rose. Had I let go, the straps would have kept my hands high, but I held onto it, sensing that I might need it. It rose above my head, then higher, until my arms were stretched, not quite to the point where it would lift my body totally, and leave me suspended by my arms, but stopping just before.

I felt the stretch at my sides, muscles unused to being pulled. Then I felt a hand gripping one ankle, drawing it to the side, fastening a strap around it. Then the other ankle. My feet were still on the floor. My three inch stilettos, that is, not my own heels which were already raised. They were still taking my weight, as long as I retained my balance. I could so easily fall forwards, or fall backwards, only the rod that I held onto ensuring that this would not happen. Gripping it, I could keep myself from falling, or at least regain my footing, should I need to.

At home my husband always used a paddle. Wooden, something like a table tennis bat, but thicker, uncushioned wood, the handle stronger. No space in his pockets for an implement like that. I wondered once again if he might find something suitable provided by the club. Perhaps there was a row of whips and paddles hanging from hooks along a wall. But the mask that I was wearing meant I could see nothing. They might be there, or might be only in my head.

I waited, blindly staring into nothingness, only then noticing that now the music that surrounded me from speakers mounted somewhere high, as not the disco music of the first room we had been in. The vibe was very different here. The music classical. Deep, dark, ethereal. Then I realised it was Wagner. Germanic strength and power, profound, intense, exactly as it should be.

Science tells us that light will travel faster than any sound. We see lightning in the distance several seconds in advance of hearing the accompanying thunderclap. How fast the nervous system in the human body transmits pain from the flesh where it has been inflicted to the brain, compared with the sound that travels from that same smack against soft flesh up to the ear, and for the ar to signal to the brain what it has heard, I do not know.

I do know that the pain came first. That it was all consuming. That I barely registered the smacking sound of leather on flesh, because already I was writhing. I felt it on both buttocks. Simultaneously. One crack, one shock of stinging pain, my hips reacting, arcing my body, instinctively removing my buttocks from another thwack of leather against skin, taking me off balance, so that for a moment all I could do was hold tightly to the bar, and swing, and then scrabble with my feet to find stability again, as the stinging turned to deeper throbbing pain.

Then nothing.

No second blow. Just the raw ache left by that first. My brain frantically processing what had just taken place. Not a whip. Not so narrow a line as that. Not a paddle either. Not so wide and all encompassing. Both buttock cheeks at once, so either administered so accurately that it struck both sides in that same split second, or something flexible.

My husband wears a belt. He always wears a belt. Not out of need. A fashion statement. His is slim, and the waist bands of his trousers always fit so well that they do not need support, but he wears a belt because to him it just completes the look. Black, leather, thirty-four and whatever overlap of inches of thick but flexible leather. An inch and a half wide. That was all my husband had with him to use.

I braced myself and waited for the second.

I knew how many there would be. Six. Always six. Six, as they say, of the best. Or of the worst. A cricketer, Peter would be thinking of six balls in every over, the bowler's count before he lets another bowler take his turn. Six at a time. Six blows of the paddle. Six swipes with a belt. Then, and only then, would it be over.

I waited. Then I felt it. Not another thwack of leather on my rump, but a hand, between my legs, fingers sliding into the wetness of my cunt.

"She's loving it."

A woman's voice. A woman's hand? The same woman, fingering my cunt and commenting?

Another hand. At my breast. Cupping, but not caressing. Fingering my teat. Not stroking, nor strumming, but squeezing. Finger and thumb together. Twisting. Another form of pleasure-pain. Then released. Relief.

"She's good!"

The same voice. The way she said it, it was not that I was alright, but that she was impressed. Presumably, impressed that I could take the pain. Which meant that it was this same woman who had just twisted my nipple stub to see how far she could go, how much pain she could inflict, how much I could take.

Maybe, for some women, it would not matter, but to me, to have a woman finger me, then test me that that kind of nipple play, was nothing other than humiliating.

Submitting to Peter, a man, the man I love, was almost second nature to me now. Submitting to other men, and I had allowed those two strangers both to fuck me, now more than a year ago, taking me, each time, from behind, that submission, to those men, gave only pleasure. It did not humiliate. Men had the right to dominate. To lead in the bedroom. To call the shots. My submission was my own decision, but it was also what seemed natural, the expected hierarchy, sexually at least.

In contrast, women were my equal. Never would I have willingly submitted to another of my sex. Yet with my hands and ankles strapped, and my need to hold onto that rod to keep my balance in that dungeon play room, I had no say, no choice. She could do anything to me. My cunt was hers to finger as she wished. My breasts, hers too, to play with, tease, torment, whatever.

"He gave me a nod," the Scottish stranger had said, before he fingered me to orgasm on the dance-floor.

Peter must have given her the nod, the woman. Offered me to her. He had made a gift of me, to someone who I could not see, to be her plaything. To chasten and humiliate. His power play, the woman just a pawn. If I could give myself to other men, then he was showing me that he could let a random woman play with me, for no other reason that that she just happened to be at the club and in the dungeon play room when the time was right.

Her hand was no longer at my cunt, but as I thought how much I hated knowing that it was a woman playing with me as she wished, I felt her at my mouth.

"Open!" she told me.

I could have refused. That would have told both her and Peter that to let her put her fingers in my mouth was too degrading. Instead I did exactly as she asked. I knew what she required of me. I sucked her clean, tasting the juices from my saturated cunt as I lapped my tongue around the invasive and unwelcome, probing fingers, swallowing saliva mixed with vaginal secretions, while swallowing my pride.

"Good girl!" the woman said.

The intonation that she used was patronising. She might have been speaking to a Labrador who had obediently sat patiently when told to by its owner.

"Sit!.., good dog,... good girl,..."

Even more keenly than with the woman who had spoken to me at the bar, I felt the gross imbalance in our respective situations. I knew almost nothing about this woman who had just fingered me, twisted my nipple, and who had made me lick her fingers clean.

Her voice. Nothing more than that. Essex woman, I thought, from the way that she pronounced her vowels. Fake tan, fake boobs perhaps, lip enhancement, botox, garish stick on finger-nails. New money. A footballer's wife, or market dealer. But I could not see her to confirm my thoughts. I could not tell if she was blonde or brunette, stunning or nothing special, twenty something or fifty something else. Clubbing dress or semi naked. None of it.

Yet she could see me. Could see my body. A woman's body, a woman who had borne two children, who had mostly kept her figure, but who was just that bit more rounded, breasts fractionally lower, chewed upon nipple stubs a little thicker, pubis laser smooth, labia trying to protrude, face masked, and only partially visible, but lip glossed mouth still natural, with no injected filler, and so available.

She could not just see my body, but see into my soul as well. She could see my submissive nature, for only a submissive would allow herself to be suspended so insecurely, mid-way between dangling by my wrists and teetering in high heels on the precarious floor. Only a submissive would accept without protest a leather strap, a belt, played against bare buttocks. Only a submissive would lick the fingers of a stranger who had fingered her. Only a submissive would allow herself to be so exposed and vulnerable.

Then there were the mask itself, and my tattoo. The "Fuck Me" and the "SLUT". I had allowed both. The permanent ink, painfully needled into my flesh, the price my husband had demanded for continuing our marriage after my betrayal, the simple truth expressed succinctly, never to be removed. The mask, an open statement that I was undiscriminating. My cunt was anyone's. My husband's to decide, and not my own.

I could see nothing of this woman, while she could see my all. I knew nothing of her. She knew what I truly was. Not just this woman. Anyone who saw me there, they knew me too. A slut, submitting to her husband's whims, his plaything. My independence, self-determination, sexual autonomy, free will, all of them relinquished.

The realisation of just how exposed and vulnerable I had become, sent a riven shudder down my spine. I sensed a trembling in my legs, a tightening in my chest, a churning lower down, my stomach, a wetness exuding from within my cunt.

I heard a murmuring of voices, the woman's voice, and Peter's, and another man's. Discussing. Negotiating. Agreeing. Then there was a silence. Then a searing pain. The belt. Lashed against my buttocks for a second time. The shock sending me off balance yet again. Swinging as I held the rod. My ankles pulled backwards by the ties that served to keep my feet, my legs, apart.

I had not regained my balance before I felt another. More swinging. More holding tight to the steel rod suspended above my head. My shoulders straining. My feet scrabbling to help support my weight. And then another.

Until that point, I had accepted Peter's punishment in muted silence. That last was harder, more painful, shocking, forcing the air from my chest, an involuntary, high pitched shriek emerging from my throat.

Pain takes on different forms. It can be sharp and sudden, as it was each time the leather caressed my tender butt flesh. It be throbbing, intense but lasting, as it became just moments after each of those practiced smacks had landed. The throbbing pain was something I could deal with. The sudden, agonising pain that came each time the belt was whipped against me was something I now feared.

A bowler's over ends at six. Two more to come.

I braced myself. Then felt the next. This time it was more grunt that scream. Not a sound a woman would be proud of making, but even a woman can be guttural and a female larynx can react instinctively.

Nothing mattered any more. My self control had gone. Dissipated. Defeated by leather landing on my flesh. Any strength of will or character that I might have retained, by keeping silent while I received my punishment, was no longer there.

There was one more stroke to come, and I allowed my vocal chords to vent all the repressed smarting, stinging, agonising pain that Peter had inflicted until then. I let go a primal scream as I felt the belt strike my butt again, every muscle in my torso, arms and legs straining against the ties around my wrists and ankles, then untensing, slackening, in relief that it was over. I hung by the rod that I was holding onto, my body arcing forwards, not bothering, not able, not yet, to find my feet again.

Six strokes, accepted, endured, complete. With that sense of accomplishment, I felt a rising pride. Not, this time, silently absorbed, but at no point had I asked for it to end. I could deal with it. Even with that harsher punishment. Even with its being public, in front of others. My butt still throbbed, my body still was fallen forwards, swinging from my hand grip on the suspended rod, but I relaxed, relief that it was over coursing through my veins.

Then I squirmed in agonising, stinging pain again.

Later, I understood. A bowler's over is six. Change bowler and you start the count again. I understood when I felt her fingers feel my cunt a second time.

"That was fun!" she whispered, just loud enough for just the two of us to hear.

It had not been Peter. I had just been butt-whipped by a stranger. He had given her his belt, and she had counted up to six, the last of the six landing when I least expected it. Making me scream a second time, in both pain, and genuine surprise.

I said nothing in reply. My one remaining power over her. Not to acknowledge her. Not to respond. Not even to her fingers.

The next several minutes is something of a whirl of movement in my memory. My butt was throbbing. Later, at our hotel, I would see the lines of red the belt had welded on my flesh. Now, still in the dungeon, Peter was beside me, kissing my cheek, bending, untying, freeing my ankles, undoing the wrist straps, lowering my arms, then guiding me, just four short steps from where I had just hung, overwhelmed and shattered.

He made be bend, and then my torso's weight was taken by my stomach and my lower rib-cage, resting on the softly padded, rounded leather, of the horse. My breasts were hanging free, beneath me. My knees were strapped to leather pads on either side, as were my ankles. Another strap was round my waist. My arms were bent, my elbows on padded leather, wrists forwards, like a sphinx, secured as well.

I knew exactly what this was. I had seen the model in the web-site photo, mounted on the self-same leather horse, her butt so beautifully accessible, her cunt so fuckable, even her mouth available, were she to raise her head. I was that model, not so slender, but just as well secured, just as exposed and naked, my cunt as wet and ready to be fucked as hers had been.