my punishment (retro redo)

As I’ve been reviewing my older blogs, I ran into an anomaly in one of my entries. It was posted on April 4, 2019, in my early days with Amanda and Kevin. My post detailed how Amanda punished me for an attitude indiscretion. That original post is titled “My Punishment” and you can find it here.

I do all my writing in a program, Scrivener, then paste it into WordPress. I never compose my posts within WordPress originally, although once pasted in, I proofread and sometimes add a few things. The point is, I have copies of everything I post.

I happened to compare what I posted that day to what I had originally written in Scrivener. My Scrivener entry had additional sections that didn’t make it into the final WordPress post. These extra parts highlighted the lead-up to my punishment that morning as well as another person who entered into my humiliation at the end.

I’m not sure why I left out those parts of my experience. But now I’ve decided to restore those lost sections in a redo of that post. I’ll leave the original where it is, but repost this here for a fresh read.

The original post was in fact a trilogy of three: “yet more slave training,” “my punishment,” and “lessons learned” — here, here, and here. I’ll also place all of these posts under a new menu collection.

By the way, my cause for my punishment is detailed in “yet more slave training.” In short, I had been in a very bad mood and was transferring that onto Amanda. I gave Amanda a boatload of attitude one day, culminating in a defiant glare, a look of disdain. I seriously crossed a line. This was early in my submission to her (and Kevin), and it was, I think, my first failure under her. She had every right to punish me.

---

Last night Mistress told me to be in this position, naked and kneeling here at 6:45 am.

I am early. I cannot afford to be late after the mess I made yesterday. I wait for my punishment.

She walks in at 6:50 with her briefcase. She’s wearing a business outfit: black slacks, a black scoop neck top, and a red blazer. She sits on the sofa, checks her phone for her schedule. “Get me some coffee,” she says harshly without looking up.

I get up and disappear into the kitchen, returning shortly with a mug of hot black coffee on a tray. She takes it. I set the tray beside her on the couch, then return to my place on the floor, reassuming my kneeling position.

Mistress ignores me. She hasn’t even looked at me yet. She continues checking her phone, then pulls out papers from her briefcase. She buries herself in those for the next twenty minutes. I don’t like that she is being cold to me. It hurts that she has suddenly put up walls.

I know this is already part of my punishment, that I have to endure it. But whatever the purpose, intention, or context, this experience of Amanda walling herself off feels devastating. I am so sorry for what I did yesterday, but I cannot undo it. I cannot bring us back to the strange and exquisite relationship we have been finding. I fear I have damaged it forever.

Every minute, waiting feels like an hour. In my slave position, my back and thighs and ankles are aching. I decide to harbor my ache as part of my payment for my transgression against her.

At best, it will take one long forever to heal this. I want to beg her to give me to Master K for a night in the bondage room, for him to beat me within an inch of my life — if it will somehow be my atonement with her.

I know she has to get to work, and I pray — I literally pray — that she won’t leave before something is resolved. I cannot bear this all day, or week. Month? God. Or however long I have to be separated from her.

More time, more cycles of the clock.

Finally: “I have a spot on my shoe,” she says, her voice piercing through the silence.

I don’t know what to say. It’s not an order. I just nod eagerly, crazy for her words, whatever they make me do.

“My shoes are dirty,” she says.

---

The symbolism is not lost on me: my relationship with her, still forming, is so often expressed in the intimacies of bathing and cleaning our bodies together. I bathe her in the vintage tub, gently soaping her breasts and back, and sponging her legs and thighs. She watches me bathe myself in the same tub or sometimes observes me in the shower, and her look of possession and domme delight become what I live for. Whatever I am to her — handmaiden, lover, slave — it is often defined in these rituals of cleanliness.

In breaking her trust, I am now relegated to a pair of dirty shoes. Of course, it’s her cold demeanor toward me and her emotional distance that make my heart ache. But she is making me wallow in dirt, the dirt of my transgression. In this I am ugly to her. I am dirty too.

---

And so, I am cleaning Mistress Amanda’s shoes with my tongue.

I’m nude, on my knees, hands clasped behind my back, my thighs spread into a wide V. I lean forward horizontally, my ass in the air, my face inches from the ground. My tongue wipes across her black leather. I taste the veneer of dust.

She sits, ignoring me, checking her phone and reading a document she pulled out of her briefcase.

I lick across the front of her shoe. There’s a bump, perhaps a crumble of dirt, that I work over. It finally dislodges. I take the dirt crumble into my mouth because I am not worthy of spitting it out. I serve even her dirt and dust, caring for it by taking it into my body.

I lean farther forward, my left breast pressing into the floor. I attend to the sides of her shoe. There are streaks of mud buried in the crevices between the leather and the sole. I dig into it with my tongue. As my wet tongue gathers up the grunge, it turns into mud. My hair falls forward around my face, covering my humiliation like a floor mop.

She scolds me for my hair falling, and I take one hand from behind my back, pull my tresses away from my face and around to one side, so she can watch my disgrace. Normally, she loves my hair, loves seeing it flow and fall over my shoulders. She is now dispassionate with me.

My tongue liquefies another clod of dirt between her sole and heel. It thickens in my mouth. I swallow and almost choke on the thick mud-paste. I have to take a moment to replenish my saliva, get my mouth halfway clean again before resuming my shoe-shining.

I decide to go over her left shoe again before starting the right. I fear I am leaving streaks, and I need to mop up a second time over. I cannot bear to think of what would happen if I don’t do a perfect job.

As I lick the dirt, I think about how I am a former businesswoman now tongue-bathing the high heels of another woman. How I as a woman who has reduced herself to the lowly status of a slave somehow warranted this further demotion. How Amanda will take this episode to work and share it with her colleagues, people I have met and worked alongside — and will work alongside again all too soon. How I will sometime endure the humiliation of facing them about what I am doing now.

Mistress once said that it would be easy to punish me if that time ever came. “You think about everything so much, Shae. You torture yourself. I wouldn’t really have to.”

This, as she knows, is my real punishment.

Mistress tosses me a handkerchief. “Polish.” It shakes me out of my mental flagellation, my self-torture, if for only a moment.

I use the handkerchief to buff her left shoe to a light shine. There’s yet a spot. A normal person would spit on it and buff it out, a spit-shine, but I catch myself, knowing that spitting is the last thing I can afford to do right now, however well intended. I flatten my tongue against the spot, lick it away, then buff the area to get to a smooth appearance.

And now I start to bathe her right high heel with my tongue.

---

“Stop,” she says. “Look up at me.”

I raise my head toward her, my eyes catching hers. It’s for me a touch of hope, but I cannot trust it.

“I can make you clean my shoes every morning for the rest of your life. That is not your punishment. That is your duty as my slave if I choose. This right now is a mere symbol of your place in my life right now. This right now is the only use I have for your lips and tongue. I don’t know if that now will ever change.”

Tears come to my eyes. In the moment, I believe what she’s saying, that my insolence could be a cause for eternal separation for her, and I cannot bear the thought.

---

I finish the final rinse and buff her right high heel into a smooth shine. My tongue hurts, being rasped by the rough edges of the dirt and her soles. I have the taste of mud in my mouth. I know I have wet dirt smeared on my face.

I look up at Mistress. She has now put aside her work and looks down at me. She just looks at me sternly for a long time.

“Permission to speak?” I ask, daring to break this awful silence. My words tumble out thickly.

Mistress nods.

“I am so, so sorry for my attitude, my behavior, the way I stared at you. I was terribly wrong.”

“Yes, you were. You disappointed me, Shae. You really disappointed me. And frankly, I don’t know how to feel about you right now.”

The front doorbell rings.

“That’s Dayna,” Mistress says. “She’s dropping me off at the office.”

She reaches into her briefcase, pulls out a leash, leans over to me, and attaches it to my O-ring. She hands me the end of the leash.

Dayna is one of Mistress’s lifestyle friends. They go way back, and I have met her before. She’s domme herself and has always been icy toward me. She thinks Amanda is too easy on me. Maybe that changes now.

“Answer the door,” Mistress says, “hand her the leash.”

I have a flash moment when I realize I’m going to be seen nude, collared, and leashed by this woman I’ve met just a few times. However, I resist the urge to think twice at what Mistress is ordering me to do. I cannot afford any hesitation or questioning look. Just do what she says, I’m telling myself.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

The doorbell rings again. I stand and walk briskly through the house, my breasts bouncing, making my way through the drawing room, dining room, and long hallway to the front atrium. I breathe deeply, then turn the knob and open the door. Dayna stands there, looks at me up and down. She laughs.

I say nothing but, per my instruction, hand her the lead end of my leash.

She takes it without question, and then I know for sure she is part of my punishment. This was scripted.

“Dayna,” Mistress Amanda calls out, “back here.”

Dayna starts walking through the house with me in tow. She’s been here before. She knows the floor plan. Soon we are at the front of the sun room, where Mistress Amanda is sitting.

“Look what I found,” Dayna says. She hands Mistress my leash.

“No,” Mistress says. “Keep it. I want nothing to do with her.”

“She’s been a bitch, I hear.”

“Yes. Was doing so well, then yesterday a total meltdown.”

I know this is a script they’ve worked out, yet it is utterly humiliating. I am still standing. Dayna sits in the love seat opposite Mistress on the couch. Dayna still holds my leash.

Mistress addresses me: “Kneel before Dayna.”

I do so, finding the floor again, assuming the position, hands behind my back, my thighs spread. Dayna looks me up and down, staring at me for the longest time. “She looks like she’s been eating shit.”

“Probably has.”

“But I see you have very clean shoes,” Dayna says.