“Hello, Ana.” 

“Wow, Jaime. Just wow.” 

“Have you been talking to Sa’afia?” I used the voice of a probation officer who was busy, and not in the mood.

“Huh? No, why?” 

“Oh. Well then, nothing.” I felt vaguely ashamed of myself. “Why are you calling? And what’s wow, just wow?”

“Curfew. Greg Curnow, you know, that pig?”

“Yeah, he’s a cop. But I know him. As a man he’s a pig, you’re right.” Curnow was a racist, and he was probably corrupt, though he hadn’t been caught yet. He knew exactly how far he could push people so that they’d use obscene language, run off or take a swing at him, without anyone being able to prove he’d been engaged in harrassment. About half of Ana’s criminal record was owed to Curnow,  

“Jaime, he came round to work, so my boss would see. With two other cops. I don’t know who they were. And when we were out the back and there was no-one around he said he’s going to fuck me. And his mates are going to fuck me too. They said they’ll put drugs on me, and if I don’t fuck all of them, they’ll…”

She stopped. She wasn’t in tears. But she couldn’t go on talking. I said, “Ana, he’s not going to fuck you. Nor his mates. Ana, I’m not going to tell you things are okay till they are. I don’t want to lie to you. But he’s not going to fuck you, because I will stop that.”

I wasn’t sure how I was going to make certain of that. But in the meantime I was ready to make the commitment. “And he’s not going to plant drugs on you.”

“But you can’t know that.” And then Ana cried. She’d said her thing, and I’d said mine, for what it was worth, and now she bawled like a baby, a baby who was badly hurt and scared, without restraint.

I looked at my watch. My meeting with the cops was in four hours’ time. This had to have something to do with that meeting. I said, “Ana, where are you? I mean, right now, where are you?” 

I had to ask three times before she could answer. 

I got to the office, wet-haired, about half an hour late. It turned out I’d been missed. Last night a client I haven’t mentioned, Dwane James, had kicked a man almost to death outside a bar. He – I mean Dwane – always wore steel-capped boots, though he’d never actually had a job. He just liked the steel-capped look.

He must have thought his victim’s blood suited him too, because when he was arrested an hour or so later, walking home as if nothing had happened, he’d still had the blood all over the boots, and the bottoms of his Lakers tracksuit. He didn’t play basketball, either.  

He’d be going back to jail for many years. I had no problem with that, except in the sense that jails weren’t going to make him any safer to be around, when he got out again. But I couldn’t change that.

It was my job now to find out what had sparked Dwane into violence last night. The judge wasn’t going to care, beyond mild curiosity, but it had to be done. And it would be my job to recommend “a significant custodial sentence”, though Dwane was going to jail whether I recommended it or not.

So I called the cops to say I was ready to see Dwane, and they brought him round, with a couple of officers guarding him. Interviews were done at our place, mostly, not theirs.

Dwane had no explanation of what had happened last night, but he managed some tears for himself and the future he’d trashed. I told him he was lucky the guy he’d attacked wasn’t going to die. Dwane didn’t care about “that asshole”. I tried explaining why he should care, but he wasn’t taking in information. That could be his lawyer’s job, when the drugs wore off.

The cop who took Dwane away asked if we were going to have a fight about Dwane. He knew I was coming to see their Chief that afternoon, and he wanted to read my mood. And he hoped I might say something the cops could use against me, something unbalanced or anti-police.

I said Dwane was a fucking idiot, which wasn’t giving away any professional confidences, and that we weren’t likely to be disagreeing about his case. Then I said, “unless you guys want to send him home to his mom; we might be disagreeing then.” So the cop laughed, and said that the next time Dwane saw his mom, it’d be through wire-reinforced glass. He left with Dwane, and with nothing for his Chief to bring up at this afternoon’s meeting.

So I went to the office of my permanently unimpressed boss, Jock, to tell him how things were. He listened in silence, then let me stand there like a schoolboy for four minutes. Then he nodded and said it was often a good idea to turn up at work on time. And that I’d see him that afternoon.

I went back to my office, thinking that this job is a minefield. It was a game of snakes and ladders. With land mines. I sat down, with things to think about. The phone rang. And sure enough, it was Ana.

[Welcome to E[lust] readers. This post collects four scenes from a night in the bedroom of a woman called Sa’afia.] 

1

 Sa’afia lay long and strong across my knee. She wasn’t being spanked. She expected to be, since she’d asked so sweetly to be punished. I couldn’t remember what it was that I was supposed to be punishing her for. It didn’t matter because I knew Sa’afia didn’t remember either, and she wasn’t going to ask me. Anyway, if she asked I’d make something up and punish her for forgetting.

Sa’afia wasn’t a remotely silly or gullible person, but in that moment she believed that I knew everything important about what was happening. I was in charge, and all was well in the world because I cared for her and I was just. 

She could feel that way because it was a sexy thing to think, and because she could rationally know that I’d do nothing to shatter that faith.

Her ass was raised a little, not to invite the spanking she expected but because I had the lips of her cunt held firmly between my right thumb and forefinger. I had to hold and squeeze very hard, because she was very wet. She was getting wetter, demanding a tighter grip. Her buttocks trembled slightly, with the effort she put into being still.

She’d drawn in her breath and was still holding it because a few seconds ago I had twisted her lips hard to the right, as if they were a key, before relaxing back to vertical. She was expecting me to twist her again. She was not wrong. 

2

Sa’afia had put her wrists together behind her back. I’d told her to. She liked obeying very easy orders. I’d wrapped two old silk ties – nice fabric but an unfashionable cut, so they were only good for low-budget bondage – round both wrists, then round each wrist, with a non-slip knot. I took the long ends and slipped them down between her buttocks, then between her thighs, pulling them tight against her cunt.

Sa’afia had pressed and rubbed the silk, breathing hard, until the ties disappeared between plump lips. I’d smacked her bottom as a kind of reward, and told her to get her ass up. While she complied, making a rounded tripod of her chest and her parted knees, with her ass at the apex, I’d run the ties under her.

I knotted the two ties just below the nub of her clitoris, so she could press against that nice hard gathering of silk. The knot allowed me to separate the two ties, so each came back up a different hip. Then I tied the ends to her wrists. Her movement wasn’t much restricted, apart from her arms and hands, but she could turn any move of her ass or any micro-movement of her wrists to pleasure. 

The moment at which this memory  is centred, like a still from a movie, is when her fingers felt for mine while I tied the silken ends together.

The silk, where it re-appeared below her cunt, was already wet. She smelled of arousal, and cocoanut oil and soap and spices. Our fingers touched. She had turned her head so her eyes were on me. I amused her, I think, just then, but she didn’t smile. 

3

Sa’afia lay on her belly, hands still tied, cunt still stressed, just inside her lips, by two tight strips of soaked silk. I had three fingers in that silk-lined and sensitive cunt, while with my other hand I spanked her, quite hard, in time with the movement of her hips. Her bottom rose to meet my hand, and fell again, freshly stung, to stretch the silk and press herself onto that glistening knot just below her clitoris.

She was working on her orgasm, and we both knew that she was one movement, or at most three or four, from going over. Her breathing was fierce and fast.

But the instant I remember is just before she came. She looked up at me, washed in sweat, and there was terror in her eyes. The orgasm she was building was too big. It was like surfing and finding, just as the wave was going to break, that it was as high as an office block.  

When I saw her fear I’d said to her something like, “I’m holding you, love. You’ll be fine.”

After I’d spoken, Sa’afia screamed and came. Not because of what I’d said. But she screamed again, and her contractions felt like they were going to break my fingers.

But the vivid memory isn’t her orgasm. it’s that look of fear and amazement at her own sensations, and her nervousness about letting go as hard as she wanted to.

4 

Sa’afia  lay across her bed, her arms and legs spreadeagled. I’d tied her wrists and ankles to the legs. I don’t think she’d been thinking about bondage, when she’d bought her bed. Perhaps she’d thought about it since, alone in the dark sometimes. Now it was happening.

When I’m introducing someone to submission, I don’t usually have a plan beforehand. I pretend there’s an agenda, but mostly I just have a few ideas to fall back on if I lose the flow. I try a direction and see what she responds to, and watch the responses. Submissive responses are sexy and beautiful in their own right, and they show where I should go next.

The rod was one of our fixed points. I’d promised Sa’afia she’d get a thrashing with that polished wooden stick she’d shown me, and it had to happen. She could tell herself, amazed, that she was being bound and flogged, and that afterwards she’d have to suck the cock of the man who’d flogged her, while her ass still throbbed. I’d tied her more to let her feel the ropes on her body than to keep her in place. She didn’t need to be tied, but it made her wet.   

I striped her buttocks and upper thighs with the rod, hard enough to hurt her, but  taking my time, until we’d not only lost count of the number of strokes but also the number of minutes. Sa’afia made her little noises of pain and concentration. Her ass was already well striped, with some of the red lines raised a little into welts. Her skin was hot to the touch. I’d been flogging her thighs, and it was time to re-visit those lines across her buttocks.

I raised the rod, admiring her ass, and raised the ante. It was time to go harder. Sa’afia was comfortable, and we were going to go a little further.

I knew she’d moan at the next stroke, and that a second after the rod had landed across her bottom the pain would turn to something floaty and sexual. As a dom, I’ll only ever know that state of mind by imagination. I watched her, reading her sensations. I couldn’t go to that place myself, but it felt good to take her there. 

That’s the memory: my certainty that Sa’afia was flying. We were in tune together.

[If you’re interested in the rest of this story – it’s very long, and not over yet – click on the category “The Probation Officer’s Tale” and all the relevant posts will appear.]