The Mistress of the Vines – Part 2: Barrel Room

She began with the stillness. She made him stand with his face to the wall while she examined each of his faults aloud, calmly, in the long measured sentences of a woman who had managed a vineyard for twenty years, and each fault was absurd and trivial and delivered with total gravity. She walked behind him. She tapped the cellar keys on the barrel beside his ear. She put a finger under his chin, turned his face to the lamp, and studied him.

"Kneel."

He knelt on the cold flags. She sat on a barrel above him and made him recite, one by one, the rules of the estate until he stumbled and had to begin again. She corrected him with two cool fingers on his shoulder, a tilt of his head, a single quiet word. The discipline was exact, ceremonial, and entirely without cruelty, and in the silence of the cellar it seemed to him that the whole world had narrowed to her voice.

Every half hour: "Do you wish to continue?" "Yes, Madame." "Say it clearly." "I do, Madame. Thank you."

Past midnight, the lamp guttered.

"Vintage," said Claudine, softly.

She set down the keys. The coat came off and was draped over his shoulders. She uncorked a dusty bottle, poured two glasses and sat beside him on the bench, her shoulder against his.

"How are you?"

"Empty," said Henri, with a slow smile. "In the best way. Like a good tank after the rack."

"You were magnificent." She kissed his forehead. "That is the first of the year's reserve."

They drank it on the cellar steps, with the stars out over the vines and the press ticking as it cooled.

"Next harvest?" said Henri.

"I am already making a list," said Claudine, "of your offences."

More consensual femdom stories: Velvet Contract · Silk and Steel · Gentle Hands, Gentle Femdom