About the Book

You’ll want to scream, but you’ll be gagged.

You’ll want to cry, but you’ll be blindfolded.

You’ll want to run away, but you’ll be tied up.

You’ll have no way of begging me, I’ll do what I want with you.

Sexual obsession, domination and extreme lust – Submission is the story of a young married Parisian lawyer who is drawn into a sado-masochistic relationship. A handsome stranger she meets in the courts issues her with a series of instructions which she finds herself compelled to follow. As the violence of their encounters escalates, it becomes a dangerous addiction that she can’t break. But how far can she go and how much of her life will she risk in the process?

Based on the author’s own experiences, this astonishing book sent shockwaves through the French establishment.

Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

About the Author

Copyright

For B.V.

I

I’M OUTSIDE THE carriage entrance and my life is passing before me. There’s a knot in my stomach and my legs sway on my heels. I can’t go on.

All of a sudden, I feel very cold, or very hot, I’m not sure which. I think about my baby, my darling boy, my reason for living. I see again the look in his eyes when I left him in the arms of a babysitter he doesn’t know very well.

Where am I? What am I doing here, shaved and scented, teetering on black stilettos with pointed toes and three-and-a-half-inch heels, and wearing an uncomfortable suspender belt and a G-string that cuts into my skin?

My stomach hurts. I think of leaving, running back to my wonderful son and hugging him and telling him how much I love him, how I’ll never leave him, how I’ll dedicate my life to him.

I see again the day he was born, the tears of joy when he came out, the emotion on his daddy’s face, the vows we made, the loving kisses, the osmosis that binds the three of us.

And I punch in the entry code for the building.

He’s here in front of me. He was waiting for me. He doesn’t say hello, just kisses me on my right cheek and puts an arm round my shoulders and pulls me inside.

I’m shaking under my leather coat. I try to control it but can’t. I can’t speak either. All I can do is smile weakly. What’s about to happen is going to change my life. I don’t want to cheat on my husband, but I already know that in a little while, when I leave here, when I leave Him, I’ll be a different person. I remember the night of my eighteenth birthday, my first boyfriend trying to explain what love is.

He doesn’t say a word.

He just looks at me, keeps looking at me, staring at me.

His eyes are grey. I know He’s unstoppable. But the last thing I want is for Him to stop.

Very slowly, He unbuttons my coat. The leather squeaks beneath His fingers.

I haven’t moved an inch. The coat falling to the floor makes me jump.

He takes my hands in His, and for the first time our skins touch. He squeezes my fingers and I go dizzy with excitement.

I’d like to kiss Him. I don’t dare.

I’d like Him to kiss me. He doesn’t.

He just looks at me.

He still hasn’t said a word.

Slowly, He squeezes my hands and pushes me towards the sofa.

Once on the sofa, I sit up very straight, with my knees together.

His eyes move over my body. I lower my head. The small of my back feels stiff because of the way I’m sitting.

My mouth is dry.

I see a bottle of water on the coffee table and reach out my hand.

He stops me.

‘No.’

It’s the first word He’s uttered, and His voice carries me away.

I forget my thirst.

No sound comes from my throat. I can’t take my eyes off His hands, or my mind. My body is already waiting for their touch. I say nothing. I savour the waiting, the waiting for Him.

His grey eyes again.

He reaches out His hand to the back of my neck.

I think He’s going to take me in His arms, but He doesn’t.

His forefinger touches my skin, moves down my throat and lightly over my breast through the silk that’s covering it and along the curve of my hip and down to my legs. With infinite slowness, He lifts the material and uncovers my black stockings, my white thighs.

My heart is pounding. I suck in air, hardly able to breathe. I lower my eyes.

I listen to the silence.

A heavy, penetrating, all-pervasive silence, like the silence of a desert abandoned by every living thing. I’m a carcass of flesh at the mercy of a mad demon who’s going to take me away on his red horse.

I watch Him as he lifts my dress above my stockings, as if I were no longer me. I no longer feel as if I’m me. I’ve lost possession of my strength, my will power, my consciousness. I’m no longer me.

I’m still sitting with my knees together.

I hear His breathing, faster now as the sight of my white skin excites Him.

I’m afraid, and tortured with desire.

Nobody has ever looked at me like Him.

He’s lifted the front of my dress as far as my hips.

He lets go of the material and takes a step back. I feel His eyes on me, focused between my legs, like an incision.

I savour those burning eyes on me, penetrating me.

I want Him. I’m His. From now on, I’m His and nobody else’s.

I want Him to kiss me but He doesn’t.

My body screams soundlessly for His hands but He doesn’t touch me.

*

‘Open.’

I jump.

‘Open your legs.’ His voice has got harder.

My knees are still stuck together.

‘Obey now. Open your legs.’

Nobody has ever spoken to me like Him.

This time, my knees knock together and I can’t stop the shaking.

‘Open them! Open them or leave! I want to see you.’

The threat of being thrown out is like a jolt to my brain, and finally I obey.

He stares at me for a while, then at last walks up to me and reaches out his hand to touch the black material over my swelling cunt.

He strokes the fabric with precise fingers.

I hear my heart.

I hear His breathing.

He’s knelt in front of the sofa, between my spread legs, to touch me better.

I’d like Him to kiss me but He doesn’t.

I’d like to feel His fingers on my skin but He doesn’t touch me.

*

He stands, pulling me up with Him.

The dress slides back down my legs.

I look at Him.

He isn’t looking into my eyes, but much lower.

Again very slowly, He slides the silk up over my legs, my hips, my waist, my back, my shoulders. I lift my arms and the dress falls to the ground.

I stay where I am, teetering on my stiletto heels, in my suspender belt and G-string and bra, all the same matt black colour, and feel more and more lost and more and more His. I don’t like my body. It’s too full, too round.

His eyes linger on my skin, unsettling me and arousing me.

I hear His breathing.

‘You’re gorgeous.’

I smile.

He takes my right hand in His and circles my waist with his other hand and turns me round, as if in a slow waltz.

I know He’s giving me the once-over.

I know how beautiful His wife is, how tall and skinny … I saw her once at the Brasserie Lipp, but He doesn’t know that. I lower my eyes.

Silence. Not a word from Him. I can’t even hear His breathing any more.

Instinctively, I arch my back.

‘Good,’ He says.

*

I’m shaking.

He sits down and looks at me in silence.

Finally I see Him undo His tie. A black tie, thin and silky.

I take this to mean that He’s going to undress. It’s like a return to reality. I imagine His skin, how dark and soft and smooth it must be.

But He doesn’t undress. He plays with His tie, sliding it between His fingers. He smiles at me. At last, He speaks.

‘Nobody has ever treated you as I’m going to treat you.’

He moves His hands up towards my face. I wait for Him to stroke me. Instead, the tie goes over my eyes. I hear the silk rustle as He knots it behind my neck.

I’m shaking.

I’d like Him to kiss me but He doesn’t.

I can’t see a thing and I’m shaking.

I hear Him step back.

I’m lost, alone in this room I don’t know, blind.

I’m shaking. He doesn’t say a word.

I don’t hear Him moving.

I don’t know where He is now.

But I feel His eyes staring at my body.

I try to imagine what He’s seeing, what He’s thinking.

I see again my arched back above my excessively high, excessively pointed stilettos, reflected in the mirror of the lingerie shop near my office, where I rushed a few hours ago, anxious to follow His instructions: ‘Go home and prepare your body for me. Oil yourself. All over. Dress in black, with stockings and high-heeled shoes.’

I’m shaking. The blindness makes my senses ten times sharper. I feel a mixture of fear and desire.

He’s moving! I hear Him moving. I really think He’s coming closer to me.

I stretch out my right hand to where I think He is.

His voice stops me.

‘No.’

My hand freezes in mid-air.

‘Hands behind your back.’

I put my palms together against the small of my back, twisting and untwisting my fingers.

I’ve obeyed at once, without thinking.

‘That’s good. You’re beautiful like that.’

At last, I feel His hand on me, brushing against the back of my neck, stroking it, moving down again to my breasts, which are barely held within my plunging bra.

He moves the material aside and takes my left breast in his open hand and pulls it out. Then he does the same with my right breast.

I’m conscious of my breasts rising towards Him, my nipples lifted towards His face, straining, demanding His fingers.

Now He lets go of me again and I feel lost.

I have a fierce desire to feel Him against me but I don’t dare move.

*

When I hear His steps moving away, I feel as if I’m going to faint.

My whole body aches for His presence. There’s a knot of pain in my stomach. I arch my back, as if that could grab His attention.

I hear Him breathing. He’s much taller than me. I feel His breath on my forehead.

‘Show me your tongue.’

I don’t understand. Timidly, I stick my tongue out a little, holding it tight between my teeth.

What must I look like? I promise myself to check – as soon as I can.

‘A bit more.’

I do as I’m told. I’m shaking.

Desire floods through me.

His tongue touches my tongue and He takes it into His mouth and His arms go round my shoulders and I abandon myself and kiss Him and suck His saliva and gorge myself on His mouth and kiss Him and kiss Him and kiss Him and my head explodes and I stagger, my legs buckling under the intensity of the desire going through my body.

I’m not shaking any more, my hands are responding, I hug Him as hard as I can and stroke His face, guessing at the contours, I cling to Him with all the passion I have in me, as if my body could be absorbed by His.

But already His mouth is leaving my mouth, His body rejecting my body.

I stay where I am, struggling against the spasms which shudder through me. I can’t bear not being able to see Him, not having Him near me, my mouth and belly and back are aching for His hands, screaming their sense of abandonment, demanding His touch, His voice, His smell. But I don’t make a sound.

He doesn’t speak to me, doesn’t approach me, doesn’t touch me.

After what seems an infinite length of time, I finally feel His hands on my shoulders. He grips them and pushes me backwards, until I feel a table behind my thighs.

I grip the edge of the table, which seems to be of polished wood.

He rearranges the position of my breasts, pulling back the cups of the bra as far as they will go.

I feel His fingers on my nipples, then His mouth biting them, His fingers pinching them with increasing strength, His tongue licking them, His lips exploring them and sucking on them, I feel His teeth squeezing and biting me more and more greedily. I’m shaking more than ever, heat rises in the small of my back. I arch my back even more. My belly is on fire, too.

His teeth and tongue and fingers work away, sometimes gently, sometimes painfully. My head is exploding.

All I want is to be fucked by this man I know nothing about, this man who’s treating me as nobody has ever treated me.

*

He lets go of me. I support myself on the table.

‘Nobody will ever treat you as I’m going to treat you.’ A grim omen.

‘Turn.’

I turn.

‘Arch your back.’

I arch my back.

‘Spread your buttocks.’

I stop moving.

I feel His hands on my hands, which are still clamped on the table.

With infinite gentleness this time, His fingers intertwine with mine.

With my hands still in His, He places them on my buttocks, one on each side of my arse.

He spreads my buttocks and I feel His sinuous tongue licking me, cutting a path deep inside me.

I want to turn and suck Him, but I know it’s not the right moment.

The shaking starts again.

He kneels and puts His face against my buttocks, His thumb takes over from His tongue, then another finger, then His tongue again. His breathing is laboured and spasmodic.

The phone rings, making me jump.

He stops, and I hear His steps in the room.

The soles of His shoes click on the parquet floor – a clear indication that He’s still dressed.

‘Helen? My meeting hasn’t finished yet. I’ll meet you as soon as I’m done.

‘Arch your back.’

I realize He’s talking to me. Did she hear? I arch my back.

‘See you soon, darling.’ (Will He call me darling one day?)

I hear His steps in the room, a drawer opening and closing. He’s behind me again, parting my hair at the back. I tremble when he runs His nails over the nape of my neck.

‘Concentrate on what I’m going to do to you. I’m going to drive you crazy. You’ll never again be able to do without it. You’ll wait for me to call you, you’ll pray for me to send for you, you’ll come straight away and do everything I ask. You’ll learn to enjoy waiting for me, needing me. You’ll never again have an orgasm without thinking of me. You’ll never again have an orgasm without thinking of this.’

I’m overcome with emotion.

The tie is coming loose and about to slide from my eyes. He tightens the knot.

Again, He searches in my arse with his fingers. ‘Masturbate.’ I find my clitoris with my middle finger, while He continues His exploration, right and left, up and down. I’m shaking, my orgasm is mounting. I’m going to come, but He lets go of my hand and turns me to face Him and puts His fingers on my lips.

‘Lick them, suck them, think about what I’m going to do to you.’

One by one, I lick and suck the fingers He’s just taken out of my arse.

‘Carry on, that’s good, you’re very submissive. I like that.’

My tongue penetrates every fold of His skin, I take His thumb into my mouth, and I can’t stop thinking about His cock, I’d like to feel it inside me, no matter where, no matter how, as long as it’s right now. After I’ve cleaned every nook and cranny of His skin with my tongue, He turns me round again to face the table, presses my face on to the wood, my nose squashed against the lacquer. I hear the noise of a tube emptying into my anus.

I realize He’s going to sodomize me and I wait for His cock.

Anticipating His orders, I arch my back.

‘Get ready. Open wide.’

I obey. Something hard and pointed forces its way through my sphincter and plunges into me.

It can’t be His cock. It doesn’t hurt.

The unidentified object moves backwards and forwards, impaling me.

The thing is very long, and I feel as if it’s going to pierce my intestines.

A pencil? No, it’s much thicker than a pencil. A paperknife, a stick? I don’t know, I’ll never know.

Whatever it is, He takes it out and again I feel a thick finger going in. Is it His thumb? He turns it a little in my dampened arse.

Then nothing.

The top half of my body is still flat across the table and my hands twist beneath my face. I bite my fingers in order not to cry out.

‘Don’t move.’

He didn’t need to say it. I wouldn’t have moved. I’d never have dared to move.

This time, something much wider forces its way into my arse, and by now, I have to admit, there isn’t much resistance.

I think it’s His cock and arch my back even more. I close my eyes and hold my breath to savour the feel of Him at last inside me.

My senses have deceived me. No sooner has my arse been filled than He lifts the top part of my body and turns me to face Him again. The thing is still inside me. I can’t get over it. I’m torn in two but I know He’s in front of me.

‘You’re a bit narrow. I need to make you wider.’

He puts His mouth on mine and bites my lips. His kisses make me dizzy.

I’m totally submissive, abandoned, malleable. I already know He could do anything He wants to me, I’d follow Him anywhere, I’d go with Him to a cloister and devote myself to serving Him, giving Him pleasure, obeying Him. All I can think about is the thing inside me.

I’m on my feet again now, so why hasn’t it slipped out? What is it? It doesn’t really hurt, it’s just there. I can’t work out its shape or what it’s made of. But I’d rather die than ask Him.

Now He grabs my hips with His hands and lifts me up till I’m sitting on the table. Of course I don’t dare put my weight on my anus and what’s in it. Instead, I try to support myself on my thighs.

I hear the sound of furniture being moved. ‘Open your legs.’

‘Put your feet on the chairs,’ and, at the same time, He places one of my legs on a chair to the right of my body, then the other the same way, on the other side.

With my thighs as far apart as they can go, I’m forced to shift my weight backwards.

The thing sinks into me.

I can’t see how it’s possible, and I’ve no idea how He plans to get it out. The prospect overwhelms me. Again, I’m shaking all over.

‘That’s good, you needed widening. Lean on it. Bugger yourself.’

I clutch the edge of the table on either side of my legs and try to shift a little of my weight on to my hands.

‘Hands behind your back.’

I fear the worst, but I don’t dare disobey Him. I join my hands behind my back, still trying to lean on them.

‘You’re making fun of me!’

He grabs a mass of hair behind my neck and pulls it down. My weight shifts completely on to my coccyx and the thing goes even further in.

Something brushes against my hip. It feels like a rather thick cloth. He grabs my hands and ties my wrists with the cloth and pulls the knot very tight.

I lower my head. I’m shaking.

The blindfold has come a bit loose. Between my thighs, I can see His hips in His black suit. My arse hurts. I think about torture by impalement. God knows how this is going to end.

I feel as if my tissues are tearing. All my weight now is on the thing, which seems more and more enormous.

I watch Him through my restricted field of vision. I want to cry. The thing is completely inside me now. I want Him to untie me and turn me round and at least reassure me that He’ll be able to take it out. I want His cock. I want to make Him come.

There’s total silence. I can’t see His face but I sense that He’s looking at me. I breathe faster.

His black suit reappears in the crack. His jacket is open and I notice He’s wearing a belt with a silver buckle. His shirt is white, with what look like very thin blue stripes – I can see hardly anything. The belt disappears. I see nothing but white, then His face, then His hair.

He moves aside my panties and lightly touches my cunt and sticks His forefinger inside, then takes it out and raises it to my mouth. ‘You’re soaking wet.’ I suck His damp finger.

All I can see now is His dark, stiff hair, brushed back.

And I feel His tongue in me and His nose burrows into my pubis and His lips suck on my clitoris, His tongue is tender and rough, it edges its way in, burrows into my body, and His fingers are in there too, moving with increasing force, and with small and then bigger flicks of His tongue. He climbs and sucks and teases and stops and starts again, with the precision of a bullet reaching its target.

My arse hurts. The bonds cut into my wrists. My cunt reaches the point of ecstasy and explodes. Convulsions shake my body and I bite my lips so as not to cry out.

I’m drowning in the ocean, lights flash before my eyes. I’m dying. The orgasm is incredible, overwhelming, the spasms go on and on.

I haven’t touched Him. My hands are tied. I can’t even hug Him.

Long seconds pass. He’s still between my legs. He’s put His hand on my erupting cunt and His cheek against my left thigh.

He stands up and kisses me. I drink my own juice greedily, putting into my kiss all the gratitude I feel for this unfamiliar power.

He lifts me off the table and takes the thing out of me (I’ll never know how) and unties me and kisses me again and takes off the blindfold.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ He says as He walks me to the door. ‘Don’t call me. I’ll send for you when I want to see you again.’ And that’s it.

Now I’m back in the street, walking beside the railings of the Luxembourg, my head full of Him, already waiting for His call.

II

EVERY DAY THAT passes is like a blade plunging that bit further into my body, that bit closer to my heart.

I keep my mobile with me all the time, avidly check the log of the calls that come in to my office, tremble every time a private number flashes up.

But it isn’t Him. It’s never Him.

In the meantime, I’ve resumed a strict diet based on appetite suppressants. The needle on my scales veering ever further to the left is a great consolation.

Whenever I’m alone, in my car, on my horse, in church, I recall His skin, and try to remember the tone of His voice, His words, His hands on me.

I can’t get to sleep at night without imagining His fingers on my skin and His cock and His whispered orders. With every day that passes, the memory of His voice fades a little more.

Every morning, I get ready, hoping He’ll send for me today. I wear only skirts or dresses now, with stockings. I’ve hidden my high-heeled shoes behind a pile of files in a cupboard in my office.

But He doesn’t call me.

Every day my desire to see Him grows stronger, but so does the likelihood that He’s forgotten me. The pain of it is unbearable.

I have a terrible sense of waste, of something unfinished. So much to experience, so much to give, if only He knew … I need to see Him again, to show Him I can be worthy of him, to pay tribute to him, make Him proud of me, devote myself to His pleasure. He can do what He wants with me, with my body and my soul, I can rise to His demands, all I’m waiting for are His orders, all I need is one word from Him …

Why doesn’t He call?

He doesn’t even know me. He wouldn’t recognize my voice, maybe just my arched back, which is waiting for him, begging for Him to do what He will with me.

I’d like to be able to tell Him that I expect nothing of Him, that all I want is to be a steamy episode in His unavoidable routine.

The torture of waiting.

I can’t get over it. Waiting for Him to want me one day, I’ll be so good to Him, I’ll give Him a hard-on. He didn’t give me time, I couldn’t show Him, I didn’t know how. If only He knew what I’m capable of, how racked with desire I am, how submissive I’ll be, defying all the rules and conventions, giving myself to Him totally.

I can’t sleep now without thinking about Him, I can’t come without thinking about what He did to me. I think about it all the time. Although I lead a wonderful life, surrounded by a family and friends I can count on, and lucky to handle fascinating briefs which bring me money and gratitude from my clients, I feel His absence, all I think about is starting again and this time going further, setting out across the desert, satisfying desires I didn’t know I had, opening the gates to cities of depravity I already know I can’t do without.

How did He know I’d come when He called?

Why has He abandoned me after giving me a taste of His smell and His tongue and His skin … I want to know His cock, support Him in His perversions, feast on bitter fruit, anticipate His desires, go further than He’s even dreamed of.

Time passes and the pain of the memory gets worse. I don’t even dare talk about it to Bérénice, my best friend and closest confidante. I feel alone, more alone than I’ve ever been. I watch my son playing, and avoid the glances my husband throws me.

I met my husband when I was very young, it was he who moulded me, made me the woman I am. He’s so often put his arms around me and assured me of his support and convinced me he was the man, the only man for me. I’ve never cheated on him, never needed to lie to him …

And now, as if suddenly caught in an unexpected storm, I forget even my own name, all I do is wait and wait for a sign from someone else, a man who didn’t even fuck me, didn’t even possess me, I’m haunted by a fleeting pleasure, an unforgettable, unequalled pleasure, His breath on my skin, His words against my forehead. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I could go back in time and wipe it out and become an ideal wife and mother again. How can a few hours reverse the meaning of a whole lifetime? I know I’ll never again be the same as I was before, and that if I had to do it again, I would … I hug my husband, who’s back from the bloody Far East, and whisper that I love him, that I’m his, and I wish I believed it, I wish I still believed it, I wish I could remove the knife I have inside me, the knife that is killing my innocence, but he doesn’t know that and I can’t tell him, can’t ask him to look after me, not this time, he wouldn’t understand, nobody would understand, I’m standing alone on the edge of a precipice waiting for the devil to push me into the abyss, wanting nothing but to start again, even if it means the destruction of all the things I hold dear.

I wish I could go to bed and sleep and get up and dress and go to work and not think about it, I wish I could laugh about the whole thing, store the episode away in a cupboard of memories like my first boyfriend’s letters … I wish I could forget the strange pleasure of pain and submission, the spasms, my hungry cunt crying out to be filled