Scent of Ginger Ch. 08

Chapter 08: Release and Revelations

Within this volume there are many scarlet leaves. I have preserved memories of the harshest imaginable punishments, a course of "treatments" designed to at once incite and discipline my wayward body. But among the scarlet, there is one golden leaf. It is a memory still shot through with force: once again, I was held down, hurt, and brought to the highest possible degree of sensation by the Doctor's treatment. But here, for the first time, I admitted that I wanted it, wholeheartedly and without reservation. I wanted him to use me for his pleasure. I begged him for it. And he, who had restrained himself for so long in the name of teaching me restraint, unleashed his fullest power over me.

"Walk out before me, Hannah," he said, that night in his office after my service in bondage. He handed me my patient's shift to cover my nakedness. He donned his silken dressing robe, too hard to attempt his breeches. Then he motioned me out into the night-stilled corridors. No lamps burned, nor moon shone down on us on this night of late summer rains. It was like walking into a curtain of clinging black velvet. I reached out to get my bearings, but my fingertips met empty air.

"But where shall I—?"

"Ssst." He hushed me with a hand across my lips from behind. Then, he compelled me forward by pressing his palm to the flat of my back. He walked me forward, until I began to walk myself.

So it was that I found my way through the night hospital by feel. Whenever we came to a ghostly corner or dim staircase, he guided me by laying his hands on my body. A firm touch at my left waist turned me left; a hot hand lifting my buttocks encouraged me up the stair. Like a horse guided by the touch of the reins, I moved at his will. When I hesitated, he spurred me on with a light slap or a pinch.

"Mm!" I gasped as he struck my bottom hard enough to sting.

"Ssst!" He hissed again, and pressed his body to mine as he silenced me. I could feel his hot, stiff member through my thin linen shift.

"Mmmm..." I let the softest possible vibration into my breath, and continued.

A moment later we reached a door which the Doctor unlocked with a key strung at his throat. A fire smouldered low in the room's hearth, too low to see his chamber's features until he stirred the blaze to life with impatient thrusts of a poker. At that, furniture loomed and flickered around me like heat-born illusions in the dull red light: a smallish four-post bed with the linens all in disarray, a writing-desk strewn with pages and quills, and, to my joy, walls all lined with books of every size. His bedchamber was also his library –or his library a bedchamber. I turned to him in exaltation, but he was not looking at me. He was looking at something he held in his hand. The "capote."

Or, so I guessed. In fact, I had never seen such a thing. The chambermaids whispered in salacious tones about things made of silk or India-rubber or intestine which would keep a man's seed from entering a woman, but it was all a rumour to me, and a distasteful one. I had not the slightest idea how it might function, whether it was to be placed in myself or onto him. I had also heard it said that using the capote was sinful, like the sin of Onan, who spilled his seed on the ground. To my horror and delight, I found I did not much care if it were sin or virtue. It was something I had not seen before, and I wanted to know about it.

"You have not seen one of these in life." The Doctor said, voicing my thoughts aloud so that I jumped.

"No, sir." I whispered.

"You have much to learn, then. Come."

I went to him in my inmate's garb. He had thrown off his robe, and his body caught the fire-light all slim and taut, each limb bespeaking a wiry strength. He pressed me down so that my face was level with his cock, all limned with a line of red light glistening orange and gold at the tip. Without thinking I moved to take him in my mouth, but he tilted my chin and held the capote before my eyes.

"Lesson number one: preparation. Use your hands to press this down. I am quite ready for it now."

I took the capote. It was made of a thin, warm, stretchy material, animal or plant-matter I could not say. It was long and narrow, and I could see how it might fit his form. Taking a deep breath, I worked its mouth over the tip of his cock and then smoothed it down with my fingers. He shuddered and drew a sharp breath, struggling to control himself. I had never seen him struggle so visibly to master his own body. It intrigued me. In my curiousity, I clasped my hands around his sheathed member and gave it a squeeze.

"No!" the Doctor gasped suddenly. He seized me by the arm and cast me to the floor. "You will take no liberties with me!"

"But I want to know you!" I replied, my blood stirred.

"Oh, you will know me. I will make you know."

He took me up again only to drive me by force to the bed. He stripped me of my robe, tearing it into strips like a methodical madman. He straddled my waist and held my body down with his own as he tied my wrists and ankles by long bonds to the posts of the bed. He rose to fetch something, then returned to survey his handiwork: my long smooth figure stretched prone before him, completely helpless.

I struggled and cried out. And yet, I could not help but feel myself caught up in some dramatic performance. I played the role of my submission with a new consciousness. When I heard him approaching, the warning slap of leather against his palm, I let my back arch hysterically and bared myself to him with such purpose that he must have seen my resistance for the desiring play it was.

With a sharp snap, he struck me with a belt across my bared breasts. The sting warmed me, wetted me, made me cry out shamelessly for more.

"I know, I know you like it this way," my night-voice called, "You like to hurt me, I deserve to be hurt by you, oh, do it again! I want it!"

"Lesson number two: confession. Full score. Brace yourself for your reward." He said wryly.

Then he flogged me again with the belt across my breast, moving down to my belly, my flanks, my thighs. My body thrashed in elation, straining freely against its bonds. He struck me until I cried again,

"I know you need more, you need to do more to me than this! Oh pierce me, release me in restraint, now!"

"Lesson number three: submission. Repeat it, Hannah. Beg."

He climbed on top of me, pinning my shoulders down with his clenched hands. I swore I could smell ginger on him. It drove me mad.

"Do it," I panted "No, don't, oh do it to me! I can't stand it, I need it, do it to me, I beg you!"

At that, he thrust with jarring force into my aching sex, unable to tease any longer. Despite his treatments I was still to my mind a virgin, and small and narrow as I was his first thrust made me scream in pain, then gasp in amazement that my body could take so much. He half-withdrew, so that for a moment I feared he would pull out again, but instead he only thrust himself back in even deeper than before. Like the pounding of the hot summer rain outside he pushed into me again, again, again.

Only then, once I was pierced through by his cock, did he deliver the coup de grace. Opening his clenched fist, he revealed a slip of ginger, a carved wedge he must have fetched with the belt. In one swift movement he lodged it between our bodies, between my lips, directly over my clitoris. The frictive heat between us kindled it with fire, and as he pounded into my tight, throbbing hole, he burned me and kissed me with biting passion. Bound, penetrated, and inflamed with the scent of ginger, the taste of iron, I pressed my arching body to his, threw my head back wildly and keened as the height of suspension took us and held us weightless together, convulsing for an eternal moment as one ecstatic pleasure doubled.

***

My release, it seemed to me, went on and on. I lost track of time, of my climaxes, of my senses. Dazed and overcome, I must have subsided from pleasure into sleep eventually. But I don't recall the end of it. When I next became aware of myself, the fire had died to embers and a haze of pale light below the drawn curtains bespoke a cloudy dawn.

I only gradually realized that I was still lying in the Doctor's –in Theo's– bed, my limbs entangled with his. The ginger had fallen from me some time ago, and I was no longer bound. My muscles ached in strange, yet not unpleasant, ways. I was curled with my back pressed warm to his chest. His hand lay on me as if he had been stroking or soothing me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw him still asleep, breath deep and even, dark curly hair in his eyes. Even asleep he had a little furrow between his brows, a remnant of his harshness. But his mouth was soft, open just a little, almost vulnerable. I smiled and snuggled down again.

Still, such is my constitution that once I am awake of a morning, I cannot sleep again. I didn't want to wake my bedmate, so I lay still and let my eyes wander about the room. So many books! Indeed, on the bedside table was a volume he had apparently been reading of late. It was bound in blue-grey buckram, with the title in gold on the spine: 'Venus in Furs.'

Quietly I reached out my hand to pull it into bed with me. Cradling the volume, I opened it to the flyleaf and saw there a nameplate written in the Doctor's hand.

It read: Theophilus Ravenscourt.

Ravenscourt? No!

"Yes."

His voice was soft yet piercing behind me. I had not even known I spoke aloud. I twisted around in shock, dropping the volume so that it clattered off the side of the bed to the floor.

The Doctor's eyes were wide open, staring directly into mine.

"My name is Ravenscourt. My family has long taken the name of the manor as our surname, as well you know. I am the only son of Lord Ravenscourt."

"Lord Ravenscourt has no son," I breathed. "There was only Clara."

"I am the son of Lord Ravenscourt, but not of the late Lady Ravenscourt."

"You, a ba—"

"Say the word and you will suffer in ways I promise you will not enjoy."

He raised himself up onto his elbow and I was suddenly very aware of my soft, naked body prone before him. I hushed to let him speak.

"You wished to know me," he said, "and this is my tale. I am the illegitimate son of the Lord Ravenscourt and a mistress he kept in London. Like you, I was abandoned by my mother at Ravenscourt at the age of four or five, some years before Clara's birth and your own arrival there. My father wanted nothing to do with me. I was raised by my uncle Godfrey, the current Lord's youngest brother and a man of, shall we say, lesser reputation. He claimed me as his adopted son and raised me along with his own, Goderic. I was, however, too old by that time to be kept from the truth. I knew my heritage. My vengeful mother told it to me. When I came of age, I demanded my birthright. The reply was—".

Here he broke off for a long time, gaze distant. Finally, he asked me,

"Did it never occur to you that this clinic is on Ravenscourt land? It is my consolation for not inheriting the manor. I take in strays from the neighbouring members of Society and keep them from scandal, as I hide the scandal of my own existence. A neat arrangement."

"The Countess of C—'s daughter." I murmured. I covered my mouth fast, realizing I had let slip that I knew more than I should. He, however, took no notice.

"Oh, I am forever hounded by maidens in love with one another. Or by their mothers, rather. It does no good to meddle with them. Either the girls grow out of it or grow old with it. I would not have such problems on the Continent."

"The Continent?"

"Yes. Germany, perhaps, or France. A clinic to rival the Salpêtrière. If I could only shed these provincial shackles, this petty worn heritage! I won't be under his thumb forever. Not the Lord Ravenscourt nor his brother, nor any man will rule me. Never again!"

He was nearly shaking with passion now, but his dark eyes were bright as with tears. I saw more anguish than anger in him. I placed one hand gently on his arm. His gaze refocused into the present, onto me. He sighed.

"Ah, Hannah. You are my crowning achievement here. Your obedience, your docility. I have not eradicated the perversion in you, but I have made you fit and able to both restrain and release your energies. I have taught you discipline. This is the true work of psychiatry. The world should know it."

I bowed my head, unable in that moment to answer in agreement or disagreement. He stroked my cheek, then looked at me again more narrowly. He pulled the covers from my breast, then my belly, as if to examine my every feature. I shifted uncomfortably at his intrusive inspection but did not withdraw from his hands.

"Yes. The world will know it. You performed well last night, Hannah, and you should have the chance to perform again your symptom and your cure."

"How do you mean, sir?" I asked.

"A formal demonstration. It is common in France. Charcot's demonstrations of hypnosis using hysterical patients, for instance. Yes, yes," he sprang up muttering names and dates to leaf through papers on his desk.

"But, what can you mean?" I asked, pulling the sheets up to cover myself.

"I mean, Hannah, that you have learned your lessons well, and now it is time for you to pass your public examination. We will show the world just what you are capable of, and seeking funds for my cause at this event, I will move my clinic to the Continent, away from Ravenscourt where my independent work will be appreciated. Brilliant!"

"You wish me to do before others what I did for you last night?"

"I do not wish it. I require it."

Already, my head was shaking, my body balking. How could I reveal myself so?

"No. No, I shan't do it!"

"You wished me to test you, did you not? In return for the chance to read and write as you will? This is the final test. Will you submit to taking it, or commit yourself to incurability?"

I trembled all over at the thought of allowing him to hurt and pleasure me before the eyes of others. My skin burned already with the humiliation of it. And yet, I could not tell whether it was the flaring of distress or desire that shook me so. And so I could not tell whether it was myself or my night-voice which spoke next.

"Yes, sir. I shall do whatever you say. Command me. I am yours."