Scent of Ginger Ch. 10

Ch. 10: Hannah's Choice

Maybe it was a lingering effect of the drug the Doctor forced me to inhale as he exhibited me before his congress of scientists. Maybe my thoughts were addled with the intensity of my physical and emotional sensations. But as I lay strapped to the tiny ward bed, I became convinced that time, like my still-damp body, was a coursing fluid. In moments of passion, time evaporates into the immanence of pleasure like steam into the air. But as passions cool, it slows and congeals, becoming an amber trap for fragile bodies.

I almost lost myself in the amber trap of time that night. Always, when he used me harshly without tending to my needs afterwards, I would grow sad and still. This time, I withdrew so deeply from the pain and longing that I began to believe I would never feel again, never open myself again. He must have known how I trusted him in exposing my most private needs for his benefit. He asked me to trust him. But in the end, he sent me away without a word, except a cold command through a servant to "calm myself." If I was meant to calm myself, I thought, then so be it. I would become so calm that I could never again be roused. I would close myself off, catatonic. This would be my last submission: one order obeyed to its absolute extent.

I might have lost myself, frozen in that drop of time. Only, as I was freezing over, something happened to shiver the crystal and break the silence. It was the sound of a single word in a familiar voice:

"Stop."

The Doctor was standing over me, looking upon my bound body.

"Stop, Hannah." He repeated quietly. "Stop crying this instant. I won't have it."

Was I crying? Yes. A cool breeze chilled my face, and I realized my cheeks were streaked with tears. At the realization that I could still feel the hurt he'd caused me, a sob broke from my throat.

"Have you lost your capacity for obedience so quickly?" he persisted.

Choking on the words, I gasped out, "You broke it. I obeyed. But you didn't even. You didn't even look at me."

I closed my own eyes, refusing to look at him. I heard his voice in the darkness.

"How could I? If I had looked at you, Hannah, they all would have seen plainly how much I wanted you. I wouldn't have been able –I would have lost control of myself. Don't you realize? I would have ravished you then and there, professionalism be damned."

He gripped the iron rung of the bedstead hard enough to shake it. The vibration coursed through me. My hot eyes flashed open.

"You are using me. Using my body for your own gratification."

"Why, yes." His tone held mild surprise. "And you are taking pleasure in your service. At least, that was my understanding. What would you rather? That I marry you and father your children and settle you down in a cottage in the Lake District?"

"No!" I exclaimed instinctively. Then, through all my tears, I smiled. It was true: the treacly closing scenes of marriage and motherhood so common in sentimental literature have always felt more restrictive than a strait-jacket to me.

"No, my Doctor. You've diagnosed me well. My 'dark and repugnant heart,' as you called it, won't be tamed that way."

"I thought not. You don't love that way. But you do love what I do to you. You love it when I whip you with my crop and pierce you with ginger. You love it when I pleasure you almost against your will. You loved it when I brought you to orgasm on the table tonight, even through all your resistance. I could see it. I could read the conflict and elation in every line of your taut, ecstatic body."

A little moan of assent escaped me despite my anger. Hearing him describe my desire so intimately, his voice so velvet-soft and dangerous, stirred a slippery, spreading warmth between my legs.

"There is one more thing you love, though. And that is a gentle touch after a hard slap."

He caressed the damp red locks from my brow and kissed it.

"Yes," I breathed. Evaporation.

"You need me, now, more than ever. You are completely dependent on me. Completely vulnerable to me."

"Yes, oh, yes."

He leaned over close to whisper to me,

"And I need to do this to you. Now."

With his words still lingering as warm, damp steam on my cheek, he reached up under my shift and hooked his long middle finger in between my smaller lips. He pulled up slowly but firmly, pressing me just inside where I curve. That spot. Unable to help myself, I cried out,

"Ahh, yes!"

"Hush now. The guests."

I stared at him in questioning wonder, asking with my eyes: "Guests?".

"What is that face you're making? It has barely been a half-hour since the display. I'm wanted at the reception. And yet—"

"And yet you need me, too." I finished, radiant. "Take me then, just as I am."

He pressed down on the leather strap that ran across my breasts. My voice caught in my throat with a little hiccupping gasp at the pressure.

"Mmm, I see. This is good. Just one minor adjustment." At that he got up and unbound the strap that held my ankles together.

"Spread your legs." He commanded.

Flushing hot at his masterful tone, I did so. He re-bound them, one foot at each corner of the bed so that I was held open. Then he came back to my side.

"I will let you make a choice. Hard or soft, Hannah?"

"Hard. Do it to me hard."

"As I suspected."

In one fluid movement, he was on the bed, on top of me, gripping my hair to pull my head back. His lips burned on my throat, seeking the sensitive space just below my ear, then my lobe, where he bit me so sharp it made me yelp. He had already freed his cock from the top of his tight dress-trousers. I could feel the hot oils of his first arousal streaking my thighs where he rubbed against them.

"The capote—" I began.

"I haven't one here. Will you risk it?"

"Yes, oh, just take me!"

He had never entered me bare before. It was strange to feel his skin brushing mine, his full heat, the coursing of his pulse and his fluid. He was breathing heavily in moments, but he had an incredible ability as always to hold himself back while hurting me, using my pain and his restraint simultaneously to build our pleasure.

As he pressed the tip of his cock just against my flushed wet opening, he leaned forward with both his hands on either side of the strap that held me down at the chest. I was pressed down into the bed, my tender breasts cut across and my chest constricted. He held and held the posture. My head began to rush. My mouth opened soundlessly. My legs contracted—

Just then, he let up for a moment so that I could catch my breath. In the pause, as if struck by inspiration, he tore the pyramid-cut jet cufflinks from his wrists and flattened them out. Reaching under the leather strap, in through the collar of my shift, he placed them with their points down, one on each of my nipples. The pointed stone felt chill as ice resting against my hot skin, so that my nipples pricked up erect instantaneously.

"Oh no, oh yes," I gasped in anticipation.

After a delicious, deliberate wait, he pressed down on the strap again, driving the sharp jet brutally against my budding tips. The sensation lanced through me as if my nipples were being pierced through with twin needles so cold they burned. My sex blossomed wide at the intense pain of it. Feeling my reaction, he thrust his naked cock in hard. My hips pressed up to meet his, my back arching in the way that caused him such satisfaction. My wordless voice soared like a bird's, and he growled his tiger-cat's growl of pleasure.

"That's my Hannah. That's how she does it. Her beautiful soul, in such a perverse little body."

He began to thrust fast and deep into me, then, pressing and lifting and pressing my bonds in time to his strokes, so that I had to gasp my breaths in with his own. The scent of ginger was still on his hands from the demonstration, and with each draught of air I could taste it, I could feel its heat infusing my entire body. As I gulped it down stroke by stroke I began to cry, each high, sweet burst of sound a word in my own new-found language.

Yes.

Now.

Hurt me!

Theo!

"Theo! Theo, my God!"

It was not my voice. Some voice, some other man's voice, was calling from the doorway. Unable to help myself, I convulsed in a terror that became runaway pleasure. My sex flowed liquid, vibrant, and alive, so much so that I did not even care who was watching. The Doctor too jerked back and cried out as he came hot and messy across my belly, my back still arched so high that his cock was pressed between us though he had pulled out.

"Aahh!" I cried

"Go!" He shouted.

But the man in the doorway did not go.

"Theo, lad, what are you doing with a, a madwoman? I suspected from your demonstration, but I never—! Well—!"

The Doctor struggled off of me while covering himself and stood proud with affronted dignity as if he were the one offended.

"Goderic, go. You must leave us, and breathe not a word of this to my father."

"Theo. He knows. He is in the corridor. He heard everything."

"Blast. Bugger and blast it!"

The Doctor began to stalk out, but then he turned back to where I lay still bound and panting in afterglow. He stroked my hair gently again as he murmured,

"I will come back for you, Hannah. I will tell the intern to take you to your room and clean you up, and then I will come for you again. Have no fear, darling. And no shame. Never be ashamed. Not in front of him."

I wondered even then whether he was speaking to me, or steeling himself for the confrontation.

***

It was several days before I saw the Doctor again. As he promised, the intern, the kind-faced country boy, came and took me to my own little room. He brought me hot water to clean my sticky flesh, and took my stained shift away in tactful silence. Overall he said little, beyond that his name was Thames, "after the river." But in his quiet, undemanding presence he helped me to recover from the series of shocks I had experienced.

When I finally saw the Doctor again in his office, he would have seemed to any outside eye the same cool, severe authority I had met upon my first arrival at the clinic. He greeted me with the same cordial words and routine inquiries about my health as always. However, I had known him long enough to see the new lines of care on his brow, the dark shadows under his eyes that betokened a lack of sleep. His office was in unusual disarray, with many books and files missing.

"Hannah," he finally said, "it is the end of the Ravenscourt clinic. My father will no longer permit me to carry out my 'sinful' work on his land."

I bowed my head, speechless under the weight of an overwhelming distress and guilt.

"I have long wanted to be free of this place. Only, not quite in such an abrupt manner. I haven't the funds to move to the Continent yet. As you might imagine, I could not meet much success at raising capital during the reception I did not attend."

"It is my fault!" I burst out. "You have lost it all because of me."

"On the contrary. I have gained what I did gain because of you. Several of the esteemed medical practitioners who saw you were impressed by your performance. I have been offered another position closer to London, in a larger hospital. It will not be my own, but I will have charge of the wing dedicated to women in delicate conditions."

"Women—?"

"Such as yourself, Hannah. So now I will give you another choice."

He took a deep breath.

"Will you come with me? Or will you stay behind, to live on your own?"

I searched his face carefully for any sign of what he wanted. But for once he exerted no will over me. He truly wished me to decide on my own, for my own happiness and well-being. It was a gift. I took my time and care in unwrapping the answer.

"My Doctor. My Theo. You know my inclinations. I love to be your patient. But I fear it will not be the same in London. You will have many more cases to attend to. And I will not be what I am now forever. I am still...becoming."

"Ah, yes. Your famous 'becoming otherwise.' I believe that we are both becoming other than what we were, now."

"Yes. I do not want to be without you. I still need your treatments. But I won't compromise you in your new job as I have done here. And I won't live my life in an institution forever, no matter what you do to me."

I thought a little more, then continued.

"Perhaps I could be...an out-patient. Perhaps you could take up your new position, and return when you are able, to treat me privately. I know you must have many clients among the nobility who require your services on their own estates. I could be a side-trip among those."

He nodded slowly throughout my tentative effort to parse the future.

"Yes. Many doctors still call upon country patients in their homes. And I will certainly maintain some connections in this area. It is a clever plan."

At the thought of what we could do truly in private, my spirits began to lift.

"Write to me when you are coming. I will write to you when I need you. Oh," I smiled "I will write so many things for you to read!"

The Doctor gave one of his wicked, sardonic grins.

"I have no doubt that you will. And I believe that now, you can handle your own care. I will see to some private accommodations for you, and perhaps a small charitable stipend for a recovering madwoman. You must also find work to do, perhaps connected to your writing."

I nodded eagerly.

"I know just what to do. There is a great market for confessionals of late. I will confess all that has happened to me in this past year in a novel. I will disguise it all, of course. But when you read it, you will know that it was I who wrote it."

"Then it is settled. We will both fly Ravenscourt. But our lines will cross again."

"Yes, they will cross, on the page and in the flesh. The lines I write lead back to you, and they will lead you back to me. Always."

***

Now it is time to lay down the quill. That is all my story from Ravenscourt clinic. It has been almost a full year since these last events I record. I live alone in a few small rooms now, but I am content to write my tales and take my pleasures as I see fit between my Doctor's visits. If at night my voice cries aloud in ecstasy, I feel no shame, and indeed I hope I can make something beautiful out of that nightingale voice one day. I am not there yet. But I feel I am on my way.

Finally, my dearest Reader, I address the last lines to you. For you who are still seeking a new becoming, I hope that these lines may open the way for your flight, whomever or wherever you fly to.

Words fade. Writing remains. And so I remain,

Your most obedient servant,

Hannah

~The end~