You ask me how I became the sex slave of a much older woman? Honestly, I think you’re asking the wrong question, if you don’t mind me saying. What you should be asking me is how it took so long.
Because, some things are more of an inevitability than a random occurrence. Like water flowing downhill or a meteorite falling to earth, the path that I found myself walking during that endless, warm summer was one that had only one destination, only one outcome. I knew it as soon as I started down that road, and I wanted nothing more than to get there. And, if there was coercion, it was surely mutual. Just because a relationship is imbalanced, doesn't mean it is not equally sought.
Why it began is less important than how it began, perhaps. Some half-forgotten crisis, a young woman's tragedy, a doomed romance-gone-bad with a faceless guy who played so little role in this story as to allow him to remain nameless. But the hurt of that clichéd heartbreak was very real to a twenty-year-old, the pain almost tangible.
Enter my savior, my eventual goddess, the woman that I would come to worship and serve in equal measure. An older woman, a half-acquaintance, friend of the family, and eternal subject of town gossip: Ms. Rebecca Sharp.
Ms. Sharp lived alone in the big house down the block. A writer by trade, but what she wrote, no one knew. She was glamorous and self-assured, impeccably attired and quick-witted, charming to the men of the neighborhood, disconcerting to the middle-aged women who accompanied them.
She was also there when I needed her, finding me sobbing on the street on the day of The Crisis and inviting me into her home for an iced-tea and reassurance. She knew just what to say, just what to do, just how much sympathy to offer and wisdom to suggest. She doted on me, telling me what I needed to hear, and more besides…
“He was never right for you,” she’d say, “not if he could do that.”
I’d nod, knowing she was right, but not daring to let go of the exquisite comfort of pain. My pain defined me, or so I thought, my heartbreak was the chalk outline of my suffering.
So, she held me, hugging me close to her chest, touching her warm hand to my leg, offering me silence when everyone else kept talking in meaningless platitudes and dismissive impatience.
Inevitably then, through that intimate closeness, my pain gradually became replaced by something else. Something new. Something scary. I began to crave her touch, that sense of mothering closeness, that feeling of my skin on hers. I became a junkie for the perfumed aroma of her clothes, the soft texture of her nylon stockings against my leg, the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she held me close, her whispered words.
I began to make excuses to visit her, prolonging the outward appearance of agony long after the memory of why I was hurting in the first place had faded. I offered to do yard work for her, to clean her house, to iron her clothes. Anything to be close to the older woman who beguiled me so. I never stopped to think how wrong it was, how inappropriate. I never stopped to think what my mom would say or the chuntering chorus of the town’s moral choir. I just had to be there.
And then, one day, everything changed.
She was in her study. It was a gloriously brilliant August afternoon, I remember that much. I found her there, at her desk, typing on the laptop computer as she did most days. I’d never asked her what she wrote before, it hadn’t seemed relevant. But now the detail seemed curiously important in the complex tapestry of my nascent love.
“What are you writing, Ms. Sharp?” I asked, tiptoeing around beside her.
She turned to me and regarded me with that cool self-assurance that thrilled and terrified me in equal measure.
“I’m writing a story about an older woman.”
“Oh,” I said, wanting to know more, wanting to know everything. “Like a romance?”
“Steamier than that,” she purred, turning her chair to face me. “It’s a sex story.”
I sighed and chewed on my lower lip. “A s-sex story?”
“Yes. In this story, an older woman becomes friends with a younger girl, outwardly offering to help the younger girl through a painful breakup.”
She paused and leaned her head to the side, studying my reaction.
I felt a sudden dizzying wave washing over me, as if the ground was coming up to meet me. “Really?” I managed to say.
“Yes. But the older woman has other ideas. She secretly lusts after the younger girl, she wants the younger girl for her own, she wants to possess her.”
“P-possess her?” I heard myself say, but my mind felt as if was a long way away.
Ms. Sharp pushed herself up from her seat and stepped over to where I was standing. Without warning, she curved her slender fingers around my cheek.
“Yes. The older woman wants to own the younger girl. She wants to dominate her sexually. To have her do things that she knows to be wrong, but she can’t resist. And the younger girl lets her, because the younger girl is blinded by infatuation.”
“Wh-what happens to them?”
Ms. Sharp took a step forward and pushed me back against the wall, pinning me there with her body, placing her bare arm to the left of my head. I could feel the warmth of her, the swell of her full breasts against mine. I felt tiny and insignificant, powerless and mesmerized.
“They begin a torrid affair, a secret relationship of sexual asymmetry. The girl becomes the woman’s live-in lover, her servant… her slave.”
“S-slave…” I repeated, my eyes locked on Ms. Sharp’s eyes. My heart was hammering, my skin felt like hot lava.
“Yes. Because, sometimes, women can be slaves to other women. They can exist for the sole reason of bringing their mistresses pleasure, they can live for their approval, and crave the sweet sting of their punishment.”
“Yes,” I breathed, understanding what she was saying though I’d never heard the words before, had never thought those thoughts.
Ms. Sharp trailed a single long finger down the side of my face and I closed my eyes, breathing deeply.
“In a moment, honey, I’m going to go and sit on the sofa, right over there.” She glanced to the side. “And you’re going to take your clothes off. Slowly, I want to enjoy watching you.”
“Yes, Ms. Sharp,” I breathed. How could I not?
“Then, when you’re perfectly naked, you’re going to come to me and kneel down on the floor. And as you’re kneeling there, naked as the day you were born, you’re going to look up at me and you’re going to ask me a question. It will be a question that you will ask me many times in the future, a question that you will love to ask me, a question that will define your existence from now on.”
Her face was inches from mine as she spoke the words, as she delivered the soliloquy that would become the template for my new life. I could feel her breath on my lips, I could smell the intoxicating aroma of her perfume. I relished the way her warmth scalded me and made my desire pulse like a drumbeat between my legs.
“A-a question?”
“Yes, honey,” she purred, playfully brushing her lips over mine and making my whole body sing out with demands that I knew I must not voice. “You will ask me, simply, ‘How may I serve you, Mistress?’ and then you will wait for me to tell you. Do you understand?”
I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath, tried to calm the galloping stampede of my heart, tried to harness the fireball that burned in my sex. “Of course I understand,” I wanted to shout, “of course I’ll do that!”
Because my fate was sealed the moment I first felt her touch or heard her melodic voice, the moment I first craved her presence. And, as I reached the end of my path and embraced my sordid fate, there was only one thing left to say.
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Good girl,” she purred, and took a step back.
A rush of warm satisfaction filled my body, provoked into life by that singular validation. I watched her move, mesmerized by her, following her as she stepped over to the sofa, marvelling at the fluidity of her motion. She turned and sat down, seeming to flicker from position to position without the wasteful need for interstitial steps. One moment she was standing, the next she was sitting, her long legs crossed, hands cradled around the black-nylon-clad curve of her knee. She peered at me with wide green eyes and licked her lips. I’d never been looked at like that before, I’d never felt so wanted, so desired. Her expression alone might have sent me running for the hills, had I not fallen under her spell.
But, with tiny steps, I moved forward, dizzy and unsure of myself, knowing only the destination I needed to get to and nothing of what I would do to get there.
“Take off your clothes,” purred the older woman, reclining back into the corner of the sofa as if settling in for a night of Netflix.
“Yes, Mistress,” I whispered, knowing it was the right thing to say.
With halting movements, I began to strip, kicking off my sneakers first, then rolling my vest top over my head. My skirt came next, pushed down my legs, and kicked aside like an afterthought.
“Everything,” said Ms. Sharp, her eyes trailing down my body, lingering on my bra and panties.
“Yes, Mistress,” I nodded. I reached behind myself to unclasp my bra. For the longest time, I fumbled with the fastener, feeling it slip through my trembling, sweaty fingers. Finally, it gave way, and my bra slid down my arms to the floor and into irrelevance. I felt the cool lick of the air-conditioned room on my aching nipples and closed my eyes, trying to control the borderline panic that my near-nakedness had provoked. Then, with a sigh, I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my panties and pushed them down my legs.