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His voice alternated between being gentle and authoritarian. Maria obeyed, and a wave of heat swept up her body; that order was familiar, she felt more secure.
"It's theater. I've got to get involved in the play."
It was nice being ordered around. She didn't have to think, just obey. She asked for more champagne, and he brought vodka; it went to one's head more quickly, loosened one up, and went better with the caviar.
He opened the bottle; Maria was more or less drinking alone, while she listened to the thunder and lightning outside. Everything was conspiring to make the moment perfect, as if the energies of the skies and the earth were also showing their violent side.
After a while, Terence took a small suitcase out of the wardrobe and placed it on the bed.
"Don't move."
Maria sat motionless. He opened the suitcase and took out two pairs of chrome metal handcuffs.
"Sit with your legs apart."
She obeyed--impotent out of choice, submissive because she wanted to be. She saw him looking between her legs, he could see her black panties, her long stockings, her thighs, he could imagine her pubic hair, her sex.
"Stand up!"
She leaped up from her chair. She found it hard to stand straight and realized that she was drunker than she thought.
"Don't look at me. Lower your head, respect your master!"
Before she could lower her head, she saw a slender whip being removed from the suitcase, then cracking through the air, as if it had a life of its own.
"Drink. Keep your head down, but drink."
She drank another one, two, three glasses of vodka. This wasn't just theater now, it was reality: control was out of her hands. She felt like an object, a mere instrument, and incredible though it may seem, that feeling of submission gave her a sense of complete freedom. She was no longer the teacher, the one who instructs, consoles, listens to confessions, the one who excites; before the awesome power of this man, she was just a girl from the interior of Brazil.
"Take off your clothes."
The order was delivered abruptly, without a flicker of desire, and yet, nothing could have been more erotic. Keeping her head down as a sign of reverence, Maria unbuttoned her dress and let it slip to the floor.
"You're not behaving yourself, you know."
Again the whip cracked through the air.
"You need to be punished. How dare a girl your age contradict me? You should be on your knees before me!"
Maria made as if to kneel down, but the whip brought her up short; for the first time it touched her flesh--her buttocks. It stung, but seemed to leave no mark.
"Did I tell you to kneel down?"
"No."
The whip again flicked across her buttocks.
"Say, 'No, sir!'"
Another stinging whiplash. For a fraction of a second, it occurred to her that she could either stop this right now or else choose to go through with it, not for the money, but because of what he had said the first time--that you only know yourself when you go beyond your limits.
And this was new, it was an Adventure, and she could decide later on if she wanted to continue, but at that moment, she had ceased to be the girl with just three aims in life, who earned her living with her body, who had met a man who had an open fire and interesting stories to tell. Here, she was no one, and being no one meant that she could be everything she had ever dreamed of.
"Take the rest of your clothes off. And walk up and down so that I can see you."
Once more she obeyed, keeping her head down, saying not a word. The man who was watching her, still fully dressed and utterly impassive, was not the same person who had chatted to her on their way here from the club--he was a Ulysses who had travelled from London, a Theseus come down from the heavens, a kidnapper invading the safest city in the world, and who had the coldest heart on earth. She removed her panties and her bra, feeling at once defenseless and protected. The whip cracked again, this time without touching her body.
"Keep your head down! You're here to be humiliated, to submit to my every desire, do you understand?"
