The Dream List ch.4

Chapter 4.  The night before the morning after.

 

             Dinner at the Bishops’ was always a little piece of tragic theatre in some ways. Maureen knew them well and she and rachel had spent a few nights there just as informal friends, although rachel and carol still ended up tending to the needs of the others as if they were hired help. As she began to get sick of kneeling on her pink blanket, rachel knew very well that what was about to happen was no casual barbeque. Tonight was a big, formal, D/s occasion. This was going to be interesting.

             It was interesting, but not for the reasons she’d anticipated. rachel and the other subs were treated like royalty. Aaron had outsourced catering for the evening. A four course meal starring several ocean creatures and dessert to kill for was washed down with champagne and conversation. Aaron never actually charged for these weekends, but somehow an unwritten convention of donating a hundred dollars each had become cast in stone. Nobody ever doubted they’d get their money’s worth: if nothing else, Aaron was a great host.

             At 10:30pm sharp, the subs were led to bed without warning. The hoods were placed on again and rachel had been quietly maneuvered to the basement, which was usually reserved as a play center but on this occasion looked more like a dorm. Double beds were lining the walls, each one dressed in those same pink blankets. This was obviously the subs’ quarters for the weekend. The subs were taken down three or four at a time and wordlessly stripped. Then their pink yokes were removed and replaced by simple smooth velvet collars, also in pink. The collars were extremely light to wear after the yoke, and had a single ring slung from a vertical inch-long extension at the front. This was all that the subs wore to bed. rachel found the whole treatment delicious. The dinner and conversation had succeeded in putting her fears about the rest of the weekend to the very back of her mind, and now, being carefully put to bed by a Dom was the perfect finishing touch. Most evocative of all was the Dom’s very last action; he reached up to a beam in the ceiling and grabbed a string rachel hadn’t noticed. Pulling it downwards it unraveled from what looked like a fishing reel of sorts. As His hand got closer rachel realized it wasn’t string at all but a very fine chain, as delicate as a thin silver necklace. The Dom gently clipped it onto the ring of her collar and the lightly spring-loaded reel took up the slack. The meaning was clear: it was obvious that rachel could break the chain or indeed simply undo the clip, but she was expected to leave it exactly as it had been placed. It was not her place to touch it and there should be no need for anything stronger to keep her in her bed all night.

             Apart from a few getting to know you chats, the conversation at dinner had covered almost everything except D/s. Whilst rachel found that surprising, it did give her the chance to get to know the people she hadn’t met before. Maybe that was the reason for the equal treatment of the subs at dinner.

            rachel had ended up sitting between two of the strangers. On her left had been tim. tim was the alpha sub of the Mistress whose face was familiar to rachel in the lounge. Her name was Elanor and she had been a professional Dominatrix in the past, had made a small fortune at it, and had semi-retired at 36. She had owned tim for about 2 years and he described his position in her life as that of an admired manservant. He lived with her now, and still worked part time at a nursery, but his main income was from Elanor, who paid him for his services.

            Her other neighbour at the table was hiroko, a Japanese girl who rachel guessed was in her mid twenties. hiroko was an assistant at a souvenir store in Surfers’ <place w:st="on">Paradise</place> that was geared to relieve Japanese tourists of as many Yen as possible. she had won this sought after position after following the usual female corporate pathway in <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Japan</country-region></place>: finish school, get a low paying subservient job, spend years being more immaculate and tolerant than your colleagues and humour all the right elderly bosses. she was seeking residency in <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Australia</country-region></place> now that she was here, but doing so with as much discretion as possible since such a move would be seriously frowned upon by her company. hiroko had been a sub since her early teens, and related a story to rachel about the day one of her teachers raped her in school as if it was the best day of her life. Although rachel saw a few of megan’s personality traits in her, she couldn’t help but like hiroko.

            Now rachel lay in her warm bed watching the final three subs – megan, tim and vanessa – silently being stripped, bedded and chained. Footsteps rose back up the stairs and then the lights were out. Darkness followed until her eyes adjusted to the dull infusion of moonlight from the ventilation windows. she listened to the faint sound of footsteps and conversation from upstairs. she thought she could make out a couple of voices but there was no way she’d pick up what anyone was saying.

            she’d picked up plenty earlier though, and now found her thoughts filled with two people. Maureen had sat between carol and Zoe, and seemed to spend almost all of her time speaking with Zoe in hushed tones. rachel felt totally ignored by the woman who had convinced her to be here and then turned up as well. she still didn’t know what Maureen’s presence, or the secrecy of her plans to be here, actually signified. she’d been relieved to see Maureen on the couch in the lounge but now, three hours later, Maureen was still yet to even talk to her. rachel’s eyes had repeatedly drifted to Maureen and watched her and Zoe apparently engrossed with each other. Why? Zoe was a loud, butch, brash, tomboy of a lesbian Dominatrix, literally the exact opposite of the feminine, demure flower that Maureen had always described rachel as. rachel did manage to catch Maureen’s eye once late in the evening, and the reaction was anything but reassuring. Maureen had averted her eyes in record time, as if she’d noticed an annoying ex-friend and didn’t want to be spotted.

            Rather than continue to depress herself with her current lack of connectedness with Maureen, rachel turned her thoughts to a far more rewarding subject; Dermott. Dermott was the only person here that she knew nothing about. she’d at least heard of everyone else before this night. Dermott looked to be in His early forties. He was of slight build and had hairstyle that was probably just a little too young for His face, but He wore it with confidence. rachel was seated close enough to him to hear his conversation with Aaron and Elanor often, and rachel and hiroko had done more than their fair share of communal eavesdropping. Dermott managed a museum and was also a minor art dealer, with a small shop in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Melbourne</place></city> and another one in Sanctuary Cove. He and Aaron spoke easily with each other, and at times it even seemed as if Aaron was happy to be corrected on some things by Dermott, and Aaron was not normally that gracious with his ego. He had an amusing turn of phrase, just an entertaining way of putting things, and rachel wished she could walk around the table and introduce herself, but knew better tonight.

            Then bedtime came and it was Dermott who took her to the basement, although she didn’t realize it until they were beside her bed and the hood was removed. He said nothing but she had been extremely aroused as he removed her clothes with gentle, methodical hands. He didn’t overtly grope her but didn’t overtly avoid her either. It was obvious that He

felt every right to do anything He pleased with her… but He didn’t do much. He smoothed her hair down after removing the hood, silently undid the buttons on her dress, lowered it to the floor and silently guided her feet as they stepped out of it. He then gently placed her hands together in front of her, then hung the dress over the coat stand at the foot of her bed, came back and removed her bra and panties. The pink yoke came off last, and not before Dermott stood back and ran a critical eye over rachel’s body. The look on His face was as if He was appraising a new sculpture. rachel felt like an object, but an appreciated object, and it warmed her to realize that His gaze was one of approval. He gently removed the yoke, and pulled a pink collar out of His pocket, and fitted it to her like a jeweler trying to tailor-fit a necklace. His hands were light and slow against her neck, and He took the time to ensure her hair didn’t catch, and that the collar sat evenly on her neck. she was lowered into the bed, tucked in, and then the chain was attached. It was delicious, and He had the demeanor of a nobleman. Now she lay on her back listening to the muffled far away voices and concentrated on the lingering warmth of His hands and the softness of the bedsheets.

“Hey is anyone else drooling over Elanor’s corset?”

megan’s voice slammed into the silence of the large room, breaking the instruction of going to ... in silence. rachel’s dreamy world vanished, replaced with an untimely reminder of megan’s presence. 9 subs considered breaking the instruction with her. 9 subs waited in silence.

“you’re not all asleep are you?”

The door opened and Aaron Himself walked down the stairs. Without a word he took megan’s hand and firmly lead her up the stairs with Him. The door closed and silence prevailed, but the mood had been broken for rachel. Another half hour of silence failed to help her calm her nerves that had been re-activated by megan’s outburst and Aaron’s response to it, and she finally drifted off to ....