Seven a.m., the alarm, and my fingers on the edge of the cage

The alarm was set for seven, and I woke at ten to, the way I almost always do. He was asleep on his back, the blanket had slipped to his hips, and what lay below the blanket I knew by touch better than my own cup: steel warmed overnight to the temperature of his belly, and a padlock whose key hung between my breasts on its chain. Those ten minutes before the alarm used to go on my phone. For three years now they have gone on him.

The edge of the cage

I laid my palm on his stomach, below the navel. He didn’t wake, only pulled his stomach in. I walked my fingers lower, down the line of hair, to where skin ends and the ring begins, and then along the ring, round and round, with a nail. The metal was smooth and warm, and underneath it, I knew, things had already started: in the morning the body wakes before the head.

He woke the way he always wakes from this. First the breathing changed. Then the stomach jerked under my palm. Then his eyes opened, and he didn’t turn his head — he stared at the ceiling and understood where my hand was, what it was doing, and that nothing could be done about it.

I was watching his face, not my hand. The way his jaw clenched when his body pushed into the steel and hit it. Our cage is a short one, I chose it myself, and in the mornings it presses just enough for him to remember it every second. He let his breath out through his nose, long. I ran a nail across the bars, one at a time, like keys on a piano. The steel rang faintly against the padlock, and at that sound his eyelids twitched.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning, Mistress.”

His voice had dropped, and I could hear a question in it. There are no questions in the morning; that rule is older than the cage, and he knows it. I put my finger back on the ring and went round once more, slower.

Lie still

In the fourth minute his hips lifted towards my palm. Not much — a centimetre, maybe less. I took my hand away.

“Lie still.”

He froze. I watched him try to lower his hips back into the mattress in a way that wouldn’t look like moving. I gave him half a minute lying there without my hand, staring at the ceiling, and only then put my fingers back in the same place, on the ring. He didn’t move again. He only breathed through his mouth, and I could hear him counting the breaths; that is what he does when he is holding on.

I laughed into his shoulder, quietly. He went red, his neck came out in blotches. My laughing is harder on him than my fingers; I have known that for a long time, and in the mornings I laugh more often than I touch.

By then I was wet between my legs, and I decided not to wait for the evening. I pulled off my panties, swung a leg over and sat on his face: knees on either side of his head, one hand on the headboard. He didn’t ask permission, and rightly so: I was already sitting. He opened his mouth before I had lowered myself. His tongue does better work than anything else he has, and we both know it — five years of practice, nothing else allowed.

I came fast, in three minutes or so, and not quietly. Underneath me I could feel him breathing through his nose into my mound, and the whole of him below push into the steel again, with nowhere to go. I climbed off, wiped his chin with the edge of the sheet and looked at the clock: two minutes to seven.

“Turn the alarm off. Coffee.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Coffee and the lock

He sets the coffee up the night before, in the machine with the timer; in the morning there is no time. He brought the cup, put it on the nightstand on my side, and stood by the bed, hands behind his back, the way he stands every morning. I sat and drank and looked up at him, and then I took the cage in my hand — differently now, businesslike, the way you pick keys up off a table.

Padlock, pull: locked. Ring, two fingers under it: tight, but nothing pinched. Skin dry and clean, except under the ring on the left, where it was warm and red — that is where he had been pushing for the last ten minutes. I pressed a finger to it.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s bearable, Mistress.”

“I didn’t ask if it was bearable.”

“It hurts.”

“Good. It will be gone by evening.”

I was touching him the same way I had ten minutes earlier, with the same fingers, only now not for him but for the inspection. That difference made him shake harder than he had on the bed: I could see it in the empty cup, which he had taken from me and was holding in both hands.

“About the hips.”

He lowered his eyes.

“Tomorrow there will be no hand. You wake up on your own, to the alarm. We’ll see which is worse for you.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

The lift

After that, the usual. Shower, shirt, car keys off the hook. I was leaving first; he came out to see me off. In the doorway I looked back. He stood in the hall already in trousers and a belt, from the outside an ordinary man off to work. Under the belt he had a red mark from the ring and ten minutes that he would carry on him until evening. I knew that, and he stood there and waited while I knew it.

“Have a good day.”

“Thank you, Mistress.”

At eleven I texted him one word: “How?” The answer came at once: “Tight.” I put the phone in my bag and for the rest of the day thought about what he had under the table in his meeting, and how he was sitting: on days like that he sits very straight, I once saw it from across a room. I didn’t unlock him that evening: the mark under the ring was still pink, and the punishment for the hips hadn’t started yet.

The next morning I woke at ten to seven, as always, put my hands under the pillow and lay like that. He woke to the alarm, alone, and the first thing he did was look at my hands. Then at me. I didn’t smile.

“Which is worse?”

“This, Mistress.”

I had never doubted it.

• Wake up ten minutes before him. The body in the cage is already awake; all you have to do is put your hand there.
• Trace the ring with a nail, not your palm. He needs very little, and you need to see his face.
• If he moves towards you, take your hand away at once and say nothing. Half a minute without you teaches him more than words.
• Take your own pleasure right there, on his face. He is locked and you are not; let that difference be a morning thing.
• Inspection afterwards, businesslike. Same fingers, different meaning: that difference is what makes him shake most.