He shivered upon the floor, but it was from anticipation of his Mistress’ arrival rather than from cold. Even though the full ferocity of winter was raging outside, the bitterness of the elements was banished by ample heating within their home.

The two-storey maisonette was lifted far from the ground in a fifteen-storey block. It was a veritable fortress in the clouds and it overlooked the squat suburban lands arrayed far below them. Its elevation also served well in providing ample privacy. No one could simply pass their windows and spy what was occurring in the sanctity of their home.

Since they had moved here they had never even seen their neighbours, and thus the strange noises of punishment and suffering that might spill through the walls went unchallenged. Should they ever mix or speak with such people, sly innuendo or sniggers might ensue. However, paranoia and isolationism was rife in the area and so it seemed that the home was the only inhabited one in the entire concrete bastion.

Kneeling on the floor, he was clad only in latex briefs. His hands were tied behind his back, with the wrists and elbows entangled in a mesh of woven rope. A leash had been anchored to a fitting in the wall and this kept him restricted to a small area of movement as it stretched silver links to his collar.

The stout leather band was firmly closed about his throat and it had been padlocked shut to irrevocably prop his head up on its rigid walls. A hoop of delicate chain links at the front held an identity tag of the type one might find on a pet. One side of the etched metallic disc read Property of Mistress Despoiler, while the other simply stated Porcupine. The reason for this christening was immediately apparent because of his new latex countenance.

The rubber hood that was such a regular part of his attire smothered both his head and much of his neck. The heavy, thick sheath was armed with short stubby spines across the whole outer surface. It offered him a small mouth slit, and meagre punctures at his nostrils and eyes to access the outside world.

The Mistress had further impeded the senses of her Porcupine by forcing a bright pink ball gag into his maw before the donning of the mask. Gagged by the orb, he was thus left wheezing softly through the vents under his nose. Underwear had of course preceded the gag. The intimate garment had been wrapped upon the ball and was now sodden with his saliva. Another divine cruelty had been the placing of another set around the hood. The spines helped keep the thong in place and held the crotch over his nose to make him drink of the aroma with every restricted breath.

What was transpiring outside the hood was virtually unknown to him because the sheathtended to muffle sound. This trait caused added punishment on occasion when he misheard or failed to detect her commands during the intensity of their sessions.

He had been serving her for some time now, exploiting the times when they were alone. The problem was that they shared their domain with a friend and did not wish to reveal their diversions to her. Lynn had expressed an intention to save for a home of her own and his partner had invited her to stay after broaching the topic with him and gaining his acceptance. So while their friend worked during the day, or spent weekends away with others, they converted much of their home to suit their secret lifestyle.

Mistress Despoiler had become a consummate dominatrix and had enslaved him totally. Her genuine relish in her role was a thing that filled his heart with joy.

Regarding the room around him, he felt the change of atmosphere that the new additions had cultivated with their emergence.

Windows spanned one deep blue wall and the curtains were open. Their double bed lay against the opposite wall and was neatly made with black quilts covering it. It had been pushed into the right hand corner, away from the door that occupied the left. A black wardrobe and long cabinet followed the right wall, while opposite them, rows of hooks had been introduced in neat waves. These supported clothes on average days, but when their sessions were being conducted, rows of weapons and implements dangled from them. A shelf on either side helped hold items such as dildos and other esoteric implements, all of them ready for use with a mere snatch.

It was easy to recall the source of every instrument and object. He could freely tell where they had bought it, or made it, what history it had with them, and the things she had done to him with the toys, weapons, and devices that had been amassed. Such a sense of record made the arsenal an even more personal cache. Each piece was a segment of memorabilia rather than just a disposable and replaceable trinket.

This was not an indulgence of domination fantasy for them. They lived it as their reality to gain a wondrous sense of fulfilment and purpose from this dark aspect of their relationship. He could not believe his fortune in finding a mate who would so readily take on such a duty.

Others they knew in the cities alternative scene often joked and played with the imagery, pretending to have leanings into such an art while bragging and crassly making rude displays of their supposed fetishes. When they heard or saw such things, the two of them always simply kept quiet and smiled privately to themselves, smug in the secret knowledge that they had travelled further into perversity than any of the novices and pretenders about them. Together they had gone deeper into decadent hedonism than any they knew. While not extremists in acts, the full adoption of their parts more than paled the brutish excesses of the hard-core dabblers.

The soft grey ambience of the winter’s day drooled in through the windows and granted a dull light to a bedroom that had been swiftly converted into a dungeon. It felt a little like the lair of a comic book hero, because at the touch of a metaphorical button, everything revolved and revealed a covert existence.