KINKY
Justine Elyot

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

More about Mischief

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

There’s a place further down the street where I work that I can’t figure out at all. From the outside, it looks like your standard Shoreditch warehouse converted into an ‘art space’, the Victorian brickwork decorated in multicoloured swirls and curls, but so many people come in and go out of its heavily fortified black entrance that I think there must be more to it than that.

And there seems to be some kind of door policy too. For every half-dozen people who are admitted, another four or five are turned away. From my desk at the ad agency, I watch the ebb and flow.

‘I reckon it’s a brothel,’ says Anton, breaking from Angry Birds for a moment to look out of the window with me.

‘But there are just as many women visiting as men.’

‘A bisexual brothel, then.’

‘I don’t think it’s a brothel,’ I say, but I’m not so sure he’s wrong. Although the visitors vary wildly in age, sex and appearance, rather a lot of them seem to be dressed to impress. I’ve seen a woman in full rubber body stocking and spike heels go in there with a man in a Savile Row suit. Another time, a man was actually carrying a bullwhip. One gorgeous young guy crawled along the pavement from the corner with a collar and leash attached to his neck. The woman ‘walking’ him looked like a retired librarian. It’s odd and fascinating. My money’s on a private sex club, but it seems to open all hours rather than late at night, and most of the people who enter look no different from the average collection of Joes on my morning commute.

Anton’s attention reverts to his smartphone. ‘Get in,’ he says. ‘Just got a text from Riley – she’s got free tickets to a secret DJ Mentallist gig at the Fish Bowl. You up for it?’

‘Ohhh.’ I half-rise from my seat and then plonk myself back down, glumness personified. ‘Can’t. Really got to finish this campaign. Looks like I’m going to be pulling a late one. Sorry.’

Anton shrugs. ‘No biggie, blood.’

He likes to try and sound like a mockney version of someone out of The Wire, but Anton is actually the privately educated son of a brigadier.

I wave at his retreating figure and gaze down at my chaotic notepad. If I don’t come up with a slogan for this bastard air freshener by the end of the evening, I’m sunk. Maybe ‘This will freshen your bastard air’. It’s better than the crap I’m coming up with at the moment, at least. ‘Give your nose a break’. Ugh.

I hunker down and try to clear my mind, not an easy task when your mental clutter could fill a mental landfill site.

Some time around eight, I happen to look up from the catchphrase nightmare and notice something different about the Building of Enigma.

I hurry over to the window and squint through the blinds. Running along the bottom of the wall, barely above pavement level, are a series of narrow barred windows, slim rectangles with their long sides parallel to the ground. I’ve often tried to peer into them in passing but found them blacked out and impenetrable.

Tonight, one of them glows with light.

Abandoning the bastard air freshener, I grab my bag and head for the lifts, my feet hardly touching the ground.

Outside, the darkened street is deserted – or so I think. Before I can cross to the object of my curiosity, a hand touches my shoulder and I swing around, irritated and slightly nervous. This isn’t the safest area of town, the classic price you pay for being edgy and hip.

‘Scuse me, you have a light?’

The voice is foreign, the speaker dressed in a way that places him somewhere between art student and gypsy, all leather bracelets and ripped jeans. The thing that really captures my attention, though, is his amazing moustache. You don’t see facial hair like that except in yellowed photographs of Victorian military men. I’m so struck by it that I forget to answer for a moment, until he makes a flourish with his hand, drawing my eye to his unlit cigarette.

‘No?’ he says.

‘Um, no, sorry,’ I say, wanting him to go away so I can spy in peace. I feel awkward going over to the building and blatantly rubbernecking in front of a stranger.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘You know where is a bar?’

‘God, there are hundreds round here. Just walk in any direction.’

I turn to cross the street, tense with the idea that somebody might put the blackout blind back down at any moment. Sod this random tourist. I’m going to get my answer to the mystery that has plagued me since I joined Cre8iv back in the spring.

‘Why you are unfriendly to me?’

Oh God, just go away! He is following me across the street, his voice plaintive, his belts jangling. How many does a man need anyway?

‘All English girls are like this?’

I reach my target and crouch on the pavement, getting myself into optimum peeking position.

‘Please stop harassing me,’ I snap, then I take a huge lungful of toxic London air and fail to find any more words until a heartfelt ‘Oh my God!’ escapes my lips.

‘You are OK?’

The tourist guy kneels down next to me. I try to flap him away with my shaking hand, but he is having none of it. He leans forwards, wanting to see what it is that has shocked me so.

‘Wow,’ he says, sounding impressed. ‘This is typical London bar?’ He chuckles. ‘The English vice, right?’

‘Uh-huh.’ I can’t speak, I’m too engrossed in what I’m witnessing.

We are looking down into a plain, cell-like basement room. The exposed brickwork is painted white and bare of decoration. A bank of four old-fashioned school desks take up the central space, while facing us at the end is a chalkboard with some Latin verb conjugations written on it. The verb of the day appears to be Flagello – to flagellate. Very apposite, given that the stern-looking middle-aged man standing beside the board is wielding a crook-handled cane of the type that was banned in schools when I was a wee girl.

At three of the four desks, their backs to us, sit two overgrown schoolboys and an overgrown schoolgirl. I had no idea you could get school uniforms in adult sizes but obviously there’s a niche market out there.

At the front, beside the ‘teacher’, a woman of about thirty, pigtailed and mini-kilted, stands on a chair with her hands on her head. She is trembling a little, her face is flushed, but it’s unclear whether fear or excitement predominates in her emotions. I suppose it must be excitement, given that the sight of her in her humiliating predicament is making my stomach squirm a little and my knickers dampen. I try to attune myself to what might be going through her mind and find myself surprisingly keen to experience it at firsthand.

I hold my breath, then let it out when the teacher lifts the hem of her skirt with the tip of his cane, revealing the kind of navy-blue gym knickers that went out in about 1975. She is made to hold the skirt up and turn around, giving the class an eyeful of her full, rounded bum.

The teacher says something, swishing his cane through the air, and she steps off the chair, carefully, hands still on head, then she bends and places her palms flat on the seat, sticking out that arse so that the gym knickers stretch and outline it in pitiless detail.

The teacher addresses his pupils, punctuating his words by smacking the hand that isn’t holding the cane down on the disgraced girl’s bottom repeatedly. Her flesh quivers but she keeps her position. How painful is it? I wish I could hear through the heavy glazing. I want to know what that sounds like.

He stops and says something to the girl, who stands and then peels down her knickers to her knees. My breathing is ragged as the freshly spanked pink globes are revealed to shameful view. God, what must she be thinking and feeling? If she’s anything like me, she’ll be soaking wet around the crotch. I’ve had this kind of fantasy for years, but never expected to see it in action.

She reassumes the position, sticking her arse out at the teacher’s injunction and spreading her legs wide enough for me to be able to see, even at this distance, that she is aroused. Doesn’t it bother her that everyone can see?

I want to put my hand down my skirt, but the inconvenient presence of tourist guy thwarts me. For his part, his eyes are on stalks, his long nose almost butting the bars in his eagerness to get the best view. What a voyeur. Yes, I’m a hypocrite.

The teacher flexes his cane then positions himself at a suitable distance from his victim’s well-presented derrière and draws back his weapon.

He holds it there for so long that my chest begins to ache with expectant tension. Then he flicks his wrist, the cane blurs through the air and makes contact with her bottom. I flinch, and so does she.

‘Ouch,’ says tourist guy.

A line of white appears on her skin, then it turns redder and redder until she has a magnificent scarlet welt across the broad centre of her arse. It looks wildly painful. I want to know how wildly painful it is. And I want tourist guy to fuck off so I can masturbate whilst contemplating this. But that’s going to have to wait until I’m in my bed, I suppose.

The teacher lays six strokes in total, and the girl somehow miraculously stays in position, though she flexes her feet and bobs up and down after each cruel blow. She is made to kiss the rod while I admire the gorgeous pattern of red stripes she bears on her bum for all to see.

Teacher tucks her skirt into her waistband so she can’t hide her punished condition and makes her stand back on the chair, while he turns back to the board and the conjugation of Latin verbs.

Then, disastrously, he looks up, directly at us, and freezes in horror before opening a door and bellowing something out of it.

‘Shit!’

In my haste to back away, I fall on my behind on the pavement. The massive black door is opening, the security staff on their way out.

Tourist guy yanks me up by the elbow. ‘Come on,’ he urges, taking to his heels and running with me to the end of the street and into the council estate beyond, dodging around the blocks at breakneck speed. He has long legs and apparently superhuman stamina, and my heart is banging fit to explode from my chest by the time we hit the nearest pub and take refuge inside, me wheezing, him laughing.

‘What’s funny?’ I pant, sinking on to a banquette, staring at him.

He has a crazy laugh. He looks crazy all round. What the hell I’m doing in a pub with him after watching a live sex show I just don’t know.

‘This is funny! I am in London three hours and I love it already. Is it like this always?’

‘Not really.’ I regain some rhythm to my breathing. ‘Well, a bit, maybe. Shit, do you think they saw our faces? I work in the building opposite. I don’t want to be recognised.’

‘Don’t worry. What do you drink?’

‘I could murder a stiff vodka and tonic.’

‘Ah, vodka. I like you. Right, stay there, I buy.’

I watch him go to the bar. He has this swagger about him, and he obviously charms the pants off the barmaid, who giggles and blushes her way through the transaction. At one point he leans forwards to let her touch his moustache. What a tart. Why am I even in this pub with him? I should just go home, but I feel the need to deconstruct what just happened, and nobody else would understand, so I stay.

He comes back with two tumblers of vodka and one bottle of tonic, setting them down with a flourish. He seats himself opposite me and flashes me a crooked smile.

‘This is great,’ he says. ‘This morning I am in shitty apartment in Moscow and now I am in London pub with a nice girl. Thank you to my good luck.’

‘You’re Russian,’ I say, finding it a little odd that I’m making small talk with a man I just watched a kinky schoolroom scene alongside. Should we not maybe mention it?

He thrusts out an arm. ‘Dimitri,’ he says. He offers a hand to shake, or so I think. When I put mine in his, he raises it to his lips and kisses it. I am so undone by this that I forget to tell him my name until he prompts me.

‘Rosie,’ I tell him, somewhat reluctantly.

‘English Rosie,’ he says with a charming smile. When you look at him properly, he’s actually quite cute even if his style suggests his life is one long Glastonbury Festival. His eyes are an amazing steely blue and the moustache deflects attention away from cheekbones you could cut yourself on. Plus there’s something endearing about his enthusiasm and confidence. He has the air of a man who loves life and is determined to live it. That’s not so common in a city full of achingly self-conscious hipsters. It’s attractive.

I eye him over the rim of my vodka glass, wondering where the evening will go. It slipped out of my grasp long ago and now I feel that all I can do is let it take its own course.

‘So,’ I say, unable to avoid the topic any longer, ‘this is turning out to be quite an, er, interesting evening.’

‘Interesting, yes. I have questions. Many questions. First – what happens next?’

‘Next?’ I don’t quite understand what he means. ‘We drink our vodka?’

‘No, with those people. That man beats that girl. What are they doing now?’

‘I’ve no idea! I guess he repeats the experience with the other three.’

‘You don’t know? Don’t you watch them before?’

‘No! I’ve never seen it. It’s the first time they’ve left the blind up. That’s why I wanted to watch – because I wanted to know what was going on in there.’

‘Really? So it’s not because you are a pervert?’

I spill my vodka. ‘No!’

‘Hey, hey, calm, relax. I don’t want to insult you. I think you enjoyed the show, that’s all.’

My face flares into fiery heat. Was it that obvious? I can’t look at his sly grin, and I can’t think of an answer.

‘It’s OK,’ he says, after a few seconds of silence. ‘I enjoyed it too. Why not? It’s just a bit of sexy fun, right? Oh, now you are embarrassed. I don’t mean to embarrass you.’

One slender finger touches my cheek, brushing it tenderly. A high-voltage shot of desire streaks down to my groin. Fuck. I think I fancy this freak show of a dude.

‘This is just too weird,’ I mutter. ‘I don’t know what I think.’

‘You don’t have to be shame,’ he says. ‘Everyone has their little different what’s the word?’

‘Quirks? Kinks?’

‘Kinks. Right. You like this spanking kink, no shame.’

‘I think shame is kind of the whole point.’

‘Oh, OK! You like to be shame! I get it.’

‘Why am I discussing my sexual preferences with you?’

‘Because you like me. Anyway, what happens next in there? You think they all are spanked. Do you think it becomes sexual? Does he fuck them?’

‘What, all four of them? I doubt it.’

‘True, four in a row is hard. But possible.’

He winks at me and I slap the air in front of his face. What a cheeky bastard this man is. What a sexy cheeky bastard.

‘Maybe they all have an orgy on the desks. I haven’t got a clue.’

‘You think they pay him? Or he pays them?’

‘Oh, perhaps. Or they could just be like-minded friends who get together and play ye olde boarding schools every third Wednesday of the month. I guess that happens.’

‘Hmm.’ Dimitri’s eyes cloud over for a few moments and I watch him lose himself in thought. I start to wonder about him. Who the hell is he and what is his purpose in coming to London? Is he as mad, bad and dangerous to know as the vibe he emits suggests? ‘You see, Rosie, I need work. I need money. I think I could beat some asses for a living. Easy, no problem. And I will enjoy it too. Better than working in some kitchen, right?’

‘I’m not sure the market for that kind of thing is exactly huge,’ I demur, and then I break off and hide my face with the food menu because the ‘teacher’ and his four pupils have just walked through the door.

‘Hey, great, I can ask him!’ exclaims Dimitri, ignoring my wail of ‘Fuck, no!’ He springs out of his seat to confront our new acquaintances.

I follow him, trying to stop him, but I am too late. I hide my face in my hands and utter desperate prayers while he accosts the teacher.

‘Excuse me, I am new in town and I have a question.’

‘Oh, really?’ The teacher sounds wary, but he doesn’t seem to recognise us, which is some scant comfort.

‘Where is good fetish club in London?’

Silence.

‘Oh my God,’ I mutter into my hands.

‘Is this some kind of joke?’

‘No joke, I promise. I like to spank girls back home in Russia and I am requiring this service in London, is possible you can help me?’

I really think I might die of cringing.

‘Shall we drink elsewhere tonight?’ The teacher addresses his flock. ‘I can’t cope with lunatics just now.’ He turns stiffly and leads his pupils out of the pub.

‘Great. Nice work,’ I snipe. ‘What the actual fuck are you on?’

‘Hey, you like shame, I give you shame. What’s wrong with that?’

I am seriously contemplating calling an emergency taxi when the door of the pub opens again and the girl who was caned, pigtails still bobbing, slips in and tiptoes up to us.

‘Sorry about him,’ she says, cheeks pink. ‘But if you want to know the best place in London for BDSM and fetish, it’s actually just around the corner from here.’

‘Oh yes?’ Dimitri leans towards her and she seems to quiver like an aspen. Oh God. He obviously has this effect on all women.

‘It’s called Kinky Cupcake, but you can’t just go in. You have to know the password. It’s members only.’

‘How you get to be a member?’

‘You make friends with another member. I’ll be your friend if you like.’

‘I will like that a lot.’ His voice is all low and seductive, bloody man-whore that he is.

She giggles. ‘OK, tell the doorman that Trixietots sent you. The password is Lacoste.’

‘Trixietots. Lacoste. Right.’

‘Have fun. Maybe I’ll see you in there sometime. I really ought to go now, or Mr Strict will wonder where I am. And I don’t want to make him angry, believe me.’

She giggles again, flutters her eyelashes and flees.

‘Does this happen to you a lot?’ I ask, curling my lip. ‘Random women throwing themselves at you?’

‘You are jealous?’

‘No! But you love it, don’t you? You’re a man-whore.’

‘Man-whore? A gigolo? I could do that. I am very good at the sex.’

I give up. This man’s relationship with shame is utterly opposite to my own.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ he urges and drains his vodka.

‘Go?’

‘Yes, to this place, of course. Kinky Cupcake. You want to see inside, don’t you?’

Of course I do. Of course.

But now? And with him?

‘They won’t let us in. Or they might let you in, but probably not me. You’re the one old Trixietots there was interested in.’

‘Stop make excuses. What are you afraid of?’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘Yes you are. I know why you’re afraid. You may have to be honest about your, what was it, your kinks. You’re scared of your kinks, right?’

‘Wrong.’

He shakes his head, giving me a look of disapproval that makes me see exactly how good he’d be as a stern teacher type. Very good. Blinding.

My legs buckle. Suddenly I just want him so badly I could …

‘You want this,’ he says, bending down to speak the words into my ear. ‘Here is your chance to get what you want. Take it.’

‘Don’t leave me in there,’ I whisper. ‘Stay with me.’

‘I’ll stay with you, I promise.’

He takes my hand and walks with me back across the estate and into the street where I work. The office lights are all out now, but it’s too late to panic about the air-freshener campaign. I have a new campaign on my mind.

I hold on tight as he knocks on that oft-regarded door.

It opens a fraction.

‘Password,’ demands a disembodied voice.

‘Lacoste,’ says Dimitri.

The door opens.

‘Sign the members’ book,’ says a black-suited man, but as he looks at us he frowns. ‘Are you new?’

‘Trixietots recommended us,’ I tell him.

‘Both of you?’

I nod, hoping upon hope that this will be accepted.

‘Which of you is the dom and which the sub?’

I blink, understanding neither of these terms.

‘Or are you switches?’

Switches?

‘She likes for me to whip her,’ says Dimitri helpfully, and I kick him rather violently in the ankle, though he seems not to register. ‘Don’t you, Rosie?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Tell them,’ he insists. ‘Say the words.’

Oh God, you bastard!

The doorman laughs. ‘I get the picture.’ He hands a blue badge to Dimitri. ‘You’re the dom.’ My badge is red. ‘You’re the sub. Now hold on there a minute and I’ll call up Mal and O. They’re the owners – they’ll want to vet you.’

‘Vet us?’

He nods, the phone already at his ear while he waits for the other end to pick up. ‘Yeah, Mal, I’ve got a couple of newbies here. You got a minute to come and do the necessary? Great. I’ll show them up.’

We follow him up some narrow stairs and through a door that leads to a little waiting room. It would almost be like a dentist’s waiting room, if the magazines didn’t feature cover models in latex and the pictures on the wall were of rotting teeth instead of people tied up with their rude bits on show. The pot plants and the water cooler give an incongruous everyday feel to what I am sure will not be an everyday experience.

‘They won’t be a moment,’ says the doorman. ‘I’ll get back downstairs now, if you don’t mind. Had a bit of an incident earlier with vanillas trying to spy on us – better make sure everything’s clear.’

Once he is gone, I turn to Dimitri. ‘Vanillas? I feel like I’m learning a whole new vocabulary here.’

He squeezes my hand. ‘Think of me. I am learning English too.’

‘I feel a bit nervous. What are they going to do? What’s this vetting?’

He puts an arm around my shoulder. God, it feels nice. I would be happy just to sit there like that for the rest of the evening.

‘Don’t worry. It’s an adventure. Enjoy it.’

That seems to be his philosophy of life, I muse. I snuggle into his side and he rubs his fingers soothingly up and down my upper arm. He smells of so many things – cigarette smoke, wood smoke, mint, something herbal a bit like a joss stick. I breathe him in, inhaling intoxication.

The spell is broken when a door beyond the waiting room opens and a man dressed up as a vampire beckons us in.

I look askance at Dimitri, but he appears to be qualm-free, striding into the office with that snake-hipped swagger I had admired earlier.

Sitting behind a desk is a woman in a very smart 1940s-style skirt suit and a pillbox hat with a veil.

‘Good evening,’ says the vampire, putting out a hand for us to shake. ‘I’m Mal, and this is O. We’re the people behind Kinky Cupcake – we own the lot of you.’ He laughs. ‘You’re new here, I gather, so we need to run through a few things with you. Nothing to worry about – we just have to make sure all new members are genuine deviants, if you like. It’d be a shame if a journalist or somebody unfriendly to our interests slipped through the net and ruined what we’ve got here, don’t you think?’

‘Sure.’ Dimitri nods vigorously. I offer a weak smile.

‘So I’m going to run through the dos and don’ts of the club with you, and then I just need a little demonstration of your dynamic, if you don’t mind. I gather you, sir, are the dom and this lovely lady is your sub, so perhaps you could show us how you like to spank her, or a bit of bondage maybe …’

What? My mouth falls open and I stare at Dimitri, aghast.

‘Ah, don’t be shy now,’ pipes up O in a sexy husky voice. ‘We’ve all seen it a thousand times. You’ll see me whipped by every dom in the place before too long. But I know the first time in front of other people is hard, so please be aware that I sympathise. I envy you too. Gosh, that feeling of being on the edge of a precipice – the exhilaration. I’d give anything to relive that, you lucky thing.’

‘If you’re really not ready, I can get him to spank O instead,’ offers Mal, but I shake my head.

No. If he touches any woman’s bottom, it will be mine.

‘No, no,’ I croak. ‘It’s fine. I’ll do it.’

I’ll do it.

Chapter Two

The first rule of kink club, apparently, is that you don’t talk about kink club. There are other rules too, centring on respect and consent – basic good manners, I guess. You don’t strip people naked and whip them unless they want you to. You take turns. You play nicely.

I find myself watching Mal’s lips as he enunciates. He has blue lipstick on and his false vampire teeth are fascinating to follow. Perhaps they aren’t even false. Perhaps he’s had them filed that way.

I come to with a slight jerk of the neck when O asks us a direct question. What do we do for a living?

‘I’m in advertising,’ I tell her.

‘Oh.’ Not impressed, I gather. ‘And you, Dimitri?’

‘I have plan to be professional dominant person.’

‘You’ve come here looking for work?’ She is taken aback. ‘Well, we do have some members who work on the scene. I’m sure you’d benefit from meeting them. It’s funny, but you really don’t look or dress like the stereotype. I like that though.’

‘I have no leather pants,’ says Dimitri regretfully. ‘Too expensive. But I have other job too. I work in Russia as an actor. I want to improve my English, get into the movies, you know.’

Mal and O are obviously transfixed by this odd foreign fish. I must admit, I’m pretty hooked myself. Is he approaching this ‘dom’ thing as method-acting practice, or is it a genuine predilection? I rather hope I will get to find out.

‘How long have you two been playing together?’ asks Mal suddenly, and I dry up. We are going to be found out and kicked down the stairs by his rather sexy steel-capped boots. Or O’s gorgeous pointy stilettos. Either way.

But Dimitri saves the ball, apparently having presence of mind among his other skills. ‘Not long. Maybe six weeks,’ he says. ‘We are learning. She don’t have kinky lover before, but I do. Lots of kinky lovers for me.’

‘What a wonderful time you will have here,’ says O with a rather flirtatious smile. She fancies him! ‘I think you’re going to be valuable additions to our merry little band.’

‘And now,’ says Mal, leaning back to perch on his vast desk, ‘for your initiation. What do you want to show us?’

Dimitri looks down at me, awaiting my pleasure.

‘Um.’ I can’t hedge, I have to look confident, as if this is something I do all the time. ‘Maybe just a little spanking.’

‘Just a little one?’ He curls his lip and winks at me. I have to catch my breath. ‘OK.’ He takes off his battered leather jacket to reveal heavily tattooed arms. I try not to look too surprised at the colourful display but it’s hard not to stare.

‘Gorgeous work,’ purrs O. ‘I presume you had these done in Russia?’

‘Uh-huh,’ he says, throwing the jacket into the corner of the room with a fluid motion of his sinewy arm. ‘Can I get a chair, please?’

Mal obliges, pushing a plain wooden chair into the centre of the room.

‘Do you need any implements?’ he asks politely, then, registering Dimitri’s frown, he explains, ‘Straps, whips, you know.’

I put my hand on Dimitri’s forearm and grip it fearfully.

‘Oh, uh-huh. Well, maybe tonight Rosie is a little shy so I just use my hand, right? That’s OK?’

‘That’s fine,’ says O. ‘I love the intimacy of an old-fashioned hand spanking.’

Intimacy. I look down at what I’m wearing. A thick tweedy skirt for the autumn weather, diamond-patterned opaque tights over cotton boy shorts. Kinky it ain’t, unless you hanker after that librarian look. Will I have to … bare anything?

I can leave. I can just walk away. No consequences, no risks. I know what this place is now; my curiosity is sated.

Except it isn’t. In its place are a dozen new curiosities about Dimitri, about S&M, about how it could feel, how it could be to have fantasies made flesh.

I watch him take his place on the chair, then he sweeps his hand in a broad gesture that starts out pointing at me and ends up slapping his thigh.

It’s unequivocal enough, and so terribly sexy my cotton boy shorts flood. I shuffle over and stand by his knees, wondering if there’s a graceful way to put myself across them.

His face is set and intense. He takes my arm and manoeuvres me down until my stomach presses against his strong thighs and my view is of the floor. I’m going to have to keep my eyes shut for this, I think, though I’d love to see what we look like from a third person’s perspective. Perhaps Mal or O will take a photograph.

‘OK, OK,’ he mutters, quite gently, positioning my legs so that they are straight, tiptoes touching the floor, then he elevates his thighs a little, having an unmistakable knock-on effect on my bottom, and rubs my spine.

‘This is comfortable for you?’ he whispers and I nod. Actually, it really is. It feels so safe and held – it’s almost as if I’ve come to him for protection rather than punishment.

The word ‘punishment’ starts my juices flowing again. My heart thunders. I’m really doing this, really putting myself across a strange man’s lap to get spanked in front of witnesses. My breath hitches.

He puts his hand on my thigh, just below my skirt hem, and traces the diamond pattern with an idle finger.

‘You know, Rosie, I can’t have this skirt this way. It’s too thick. I push it up, right?’

Oh God. I’m quivering so much from the way his finger strokes the back of my thighs that I can’t speak. I just lie there while he pushes the heavy tweed up and up, over the curve of my bum, taking it unbearably slowly until I feel his palm flat on my buttocks, protected only by tights and knickers now.

‘And these things,’ he says, moving his palm in a circular motion over the target area while I try really, really hard not to buck and press my groin into his leg. ‘What you call them? Hoses?’

‘Tights,’ I gasp with a giggle.

‘Too tights,’ he quips, and before my brain catches up with his fingers I am feeling cool air on bare flesh.

The boy shorts are cut high and a good portion of my bottom swells out from beneath their edges – more, really, than they cover. I kick out in panic, but it’s hard to kick when your knees are hobbled by tights and Dimitri places a cautionary hand on the scoops of flesh he has just exposed. My rebellious nerves are quelled at once by the caress of his warm palm, moulding itself to my natural curves. It feels ridiculously good.

‘OK, Rosie?’ he whispers, leaning down so that only I can hear him for a moment.

‘I didn’t know you were going to do that.’

‘No, me either. It seems right.’

‘Don’t take my knickers down or I’ll kill you.’

‘OK. Not tonight.’

He unwinds his spine and I feel him tensing, preparing. I picture him putting his shoulders back, flexing his muscular forearms. Speaking of muscular forearms, how hard is this going to be? How much is it going to hurt?

A flash of fear plunges to my stomach as I hear him – courtesy of his multitude of bangly things – raise his hand.

‘You have anything to say to me before I start?’

His voice has changed. It’s gruff and menacing. My insides coil, my clit fattens.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. What the hell I’m sorry for, I don’t know. I’ve been transported to another headspace.

‘Who you are apologise to? To me?’

‘Uh, yeah.’ I catch my breath, realising what he means. ‘Oh, sorry, sir.’

‘You must learn,’ he says. ‘This is not respectful. I teach you respectful.’

I teach you English grammar. What would happen if I said it? I daren’t imagine.

The speculation flies from my mind at the first sharp contact of his hand with my arse. It’s loud and shocking and I actually laugh, as if I can’t distinguish slap from tickle.

‘What?’ He pantomimes horror. ‘You are laughing at me? I don’t stand it. She is nervous.’ This last presumably addressed to our audience, who chuckle understandingly. ‘I get serious.’

His hand falls again, hard enough to sting, not so hard as to really hurt. I get the sense that he is holding a lot back, but what he gives is plenty. The surreality of the situation masks some of the pain – a big part of my head is engaged in establishing the fact that this is happening at all, and then trying to work out whether it’s good or bad. I’m slightly detached from it, trying to capture each sensation individually rather than letting the experience take me over.

The sound of it is so satisfying, and the pain is little more than discomfort. I focus on the humiliation of my position. That’s the element I want to sink into, to inhabit and explore from every angle. That’s what’s going to get me off tonight, after all this is done and I’m back in my bed. Think of where I am, think of what’s happening to me. It’s happening to me! It can’t be real. Yes, it’s real, I thought we’d established that.

These thoughts in a loop prevent me from getting into the mindset I thought I’d be in if and when I ever got spanked by an attractive man. I need to switch off and, as if he knows this, Dimitri suddenly ups the ante, smacking harder, lower, on the vulnerable area around the tops of my thighs, and all my thoughts are instantly diverted to the corridor marked ‘Ouch’.

No room for over thinking now. Perhaps this is the antidote I have always needed. I begin to squirm and jolt. I reach back and claw at his leg, my tiny fake squeals graduating into proper yelps.

‘You know I am serious,’ he growls, lighting up the crease underneath the curve of my arse. ‘I will make you to obey me.’

‘I will, sir,’ I moan, kicking pathetically. How long is this going to go on for? I curl my fingers up in the rough denim of his jeans and cling.

He speeds up and my yelps turn into a continuous keen, the peppery sting becomes a burn, searing itself tissue deep. I can’t take much more – except I probably could, if I knew how many more, how much longer. It’s the uncertainty, the unpredictability that is distressing me.

‘Please, sir,’ I cry, and he holds fire.

‘Yes?’

‘Are you nearly finished?’

‘Are you nearly sorry?’

‘Yes, sir. Very, very nearly sorry.’

‘OK. Then I am nearly finished.’

I trust him, a realisation that knocks me for six. The man is a complete stranger who has somehow lured me into a fetish club so he can perform humiliating acts on me in front of other strangers, but I trust him. Either I’m profoundly stupid or I’m on to something with this guy.

My fingers unclench and I drop my legs again. I offer my heated arse to him to treat as he sees fit. I know he won’t give more than I can take. I am safe with him.

My instincts prove correct. He finishes with a volley of sweet, light slaps, the stinging icing on the burning cake, then he rests one hand on the sore area and rubs my back with the other.

‘You learn your lesson, right?’ he says.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘OK. You can get up.’

I can’t face Mal and O, and I turn away from them as soon as I am up, hiking up the tights and wrenching down the skirt with immoderate haste.

‘Nicely done,’ says Mal. ‘She needs a bit of practice. She’s a bit skittish.’

‘Inexperienced,’ says O, and there’s a weight of worldly knowledge in her tone. ‘She just needs to be brought on a bit. You seem well capable of the task. Anyway, welcome to Kinky Cupcake. We’re very happy to have you.’

Dimitri rises from his chair and I watch him, from the corner of my eye, stride over to Mal and shake his hand with too much vigour for a man who has been using that arm to whack my behind for the last five minutes.

‘Take a look around the place,’ says Mal. ‘You’ll get a lot out of being a member, I’m sure. Anything you want to know, any ideas you have for making tweaks or improvements – we’re always here. Just pop into the office. Cheers.’

‘Rosie.’ Dimitri’s voice is no less stern than it was while I was over his knee. I almost jump to attention, wheeling around to face him with my eyes wide. ‘This is good manners? Say thank you to our hosts.’

I mutter thank yous without catching their eyes and follow Dimitri back out to the landing as fast as my feet will shuffle.

He takes my hand and leads me through another door, into a capacious space that could very easily be mistaken for a regular café or bar. Blond wood floor, high spot lit ceilings, a long maple counter with large glass domes housing pretty pyramids of cupcakes and Jenga-structures of flapjacks – it’s like a giant branch of Prêt.

There are differences, of course. Prêt wouldn’t have quite the same prints on the walls, for instance, nor would the clientele be quite so skewed towards the rubber clad. All the same, I feel my headspace veer from submissive to ‘normal’ again as I breathe in the aroma of coffee.

‘I’ll get us a coffee,’ I tell Dimitri. ‘Do you want a cupcake? Do you suppose the cupcakes are actually kinky?’ Reaching the counter, I frown down at the frosting of the cakes in the nearest display case. Black and red liquorice whips decorate it, formed into a very elaborate flogger design. ‘Wow, that’s so cool. They are.’

The handsome barista in a black silk shirt, leather pants and Zorro mask completes our order with a flourish and we take ourselves to a cream sofa in the corner, from which all things are visible.

‘This is nice,’ I say vaguely, sipping at my coffee and watching gorgeous exotically dressed people flit to and fro.

‘You can sit OK?’ Dimitri puts a hand on my spine, fingers crawling down towards my coccyx.

I flush with recollection, not wanting to talk about it. ‘Fine. This sofa’s very soft.’

‘I don’t hurt you too much?’

‘No, no. It’s cool.’

‘Cool?’ He tilts my chin up with a lone finger and makes my head swivel to face him. I drop my eyes, but he tuts and I lift them again. ‘What’s that? Cool? But did you like it?’

‘Like it?’

He tips his head to one side, watching me intently. He will have his answer. Hedging is going to be futile, I can tell.

‘It was … different.’

‘No, Rosie. You liked it. I could tell.’

‘How?’

He drops his neck low and sniffs with a dramatic flourish.

I raise a hand as if to slap him, but he catches my wrist and lowers it, chuckling. ‘What? It’s true. This is your thing, this spanking. This submission. Why pretend not?’

‘I don’t even know you.’

‘You know what you need to know.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘I like spanking and you like to be spanked. What else you need to know but that?’ His grin, almost broader than his face, gleams in my eye line.

Put like that, it does sound beautifully simple. Two halves that click into a piece. It really can’t be that simple, though, can it?

‘Ha, well, there you go,’ I say lamely, once my cheeks have reached the critical mass of blush. ‘So you like this place? You think you’ll, uh, come here often?’

His laugh is dirty. ‘Yeah. I will come here very often. And I hope you will too. Drink that, we’ll look around.’

He picks up a card from the sheaf tucked inside the menu.

‘This week,’ he reads in portentous tones, ‘at Kinky Cupcake. Second of October – that’s today, right? – in the dungeon at eleven p.m. – How to Use the St Andrew’s Cross. In the schoolroom at eight p.m. – Lessons With Mr Strict. Hey, that was what we saw, you think? In the boudoir at midnight – Share a Slave.’ He puts the card down, raising his eyebrows at me.

‘It sounds like a kind of college of kink,’ I muse. ‘Lessons and activities. If I’d known all this was here, perhaps I’d have tried to get in sooner.’

‘You think is allowed to watch any of this? Or only to join in?’

‘I don’t know. I feel I’d like to take a look, but I don’t think I’m ready to, er, throw myself into the fray quite yet.’

‘We find out.’ He puts down the coffee cup, wipes his moustache with the back of his hand and pulls me to my feet.

Almost immediately, every eye in the room is upon him. Even in a place jam-packed with people in chains and gimp masks, Dimitri manages to look picturesque and striking. I feel obscurely flattered that this charismatic man has somehow latched on to me and I follow him past the counter and towards the spiral staircase beyond.

We can go up it or down it. My guess is that the dungeon will be downstairs, along with that schoolroom we so fatefully peeked into, so we head for the basement.

A dark corridor lit with old-fashioned sconces is our destination. Three arched doors are set in the wall at intervals.

Dimitri pushes the first, gently enough, and it swings open to reveal the schoolroom, empty now. He leads me inside and we tiptoe around, running our fingertips over the desks, gathering chalk dust as we go.

‘You like this?’ asks Dimitri, opening the cupboard and taking out a cane, which he swishes terrifyingly.

‘Christ, watch yourself with that. You’ll take someone’s eye out.’

‘I never use one of these,’ he said, flexing it into an inverted U shape. ‘This could be very painful, I think.’

‘Yeah, so do I. Don’t even go there. I’m not ready for it.’

‘One day, maybe.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Go on, bend over for me. I just tap you, I promise.’

‘Dimitri!’

‘I promise. Bend over chair, like the lady we see, I forgot her name.’

‘Twinkletits or whatever it was, you mean?’

‘Do it. I give you, what they say, six of the best? Except it’s not the best. Six of the lightest, not painful, not at all.’

He wheedles so attractively that I can’t deny him. With a sigh, I place my hands palms down on the seat of the chair and wiggle my still rather heated behind inside its skirt.

He holds the cane at arm’s length and places it, very gently, across my posterior. Even the feel of it there, doing nothing, is scary. In rest, it is no more than dormant, lying in wait for the moment when it will deliver the fiercest sting in the spanker’s armoury. I clench my buttocks and Dimitri taps them.

‘Easy,’ he says, then he brings it down, lightly as anything, on the seat of my skirt.

Any force it might have had is muffled by the thick tweedy material, but I’m far from impervious to its effect. A pleasurable shock travels through my legs, reawakening the sensations aroused by the earlier spanking.

‘That hurts?’ My wriggle and gasp might have given the wrong impression.

‘No, it doesn’t. Look, let’s go and see what’s next door.’

If he carries this on, I’m going to need relief.

‘Oh, you don’t like it.’ He sounds so disappointed. ‘If I hit harder?’

‘Another time.’ I straighten up, put a hand on his chest. ‘Another time would be better. I’m worried someone will walk in and we’ll get into trouble and get thrown out. And, since we’ve only just got here, that would be a shame.’

‘Yes, it’s true.’ He puts the cane back on the rack with its brothers and runs curious fingers over the ranks of straps and tawses and paddles that fill the shelves.

The second room is also empty, but it’s interestingly fitted out with medical trappings – various trolleys with straps hanging off them are lined up against the far wall. I spy something that looks like an enema kit, tug at Dimitri’s wrist and get him out of there. That’s a doctor and patient scenario too far for me right now.

The door of the third room is a little ajar, and we enter to find ourselves at the back of a small crowd, standing in the gloom watching something taking place on a stage beneath the blacked-out window.

A girl is getting her arms and legs strapped to a wooden X-shape inside a large wheel. She is completely naked, her pierced nipples standing hard and red, similar silverware glinting from her labia. She is blindfolded and, once the shirtless man by her side finishes binding her, he fits a gag around her mouth as well.

‘Of course, it’s up to you whether you use a blindfold and/or gag,’ the man says to the audience. ‘Some might see it as gilding the lily. For others, it’s an essential part of the experience. Kiki here didn’t start using them until she’d really got to know the cross and the way I like to play with it. As ever, trust is the watchword.’

‘You’ve got her facing outwards,’ comments a woman in the front row. ‘I thought it was used more as a whipping post.’

‘Aha, I want to show you some of the different uses it can be put to before we get to the classics,’ says the … I guess he’s one of these doms, with a smile. ‘Kiki is facing out so I can be a little bit creative with those parts of her that are exposed.’

He picks up a flogger, a cute thing with a crystal handle and purple strands, and begins swishing it gently over Kiki’s nipples.

The woman’s teeth gnash over the gag. Her stomach undulates. I can see, even from here, her clit swell between her spread lips.

‘This is the perfect opportunity to tease.’ The dom chuckles. The flogger caresses Kiki’s belly and thighs.

I clamp mine together, feeling a little hot and bothered, hoping Dimitri is too transfixed by the demonstration to notice.

The dom flicks the flogger between Kiki’s legs, catching that sensitive inner-thigh skin, making me wince in sympathy. Tiny muffled mewls pour from her. A lacing of red patterns the whiteness on display. It must feel hot down there.

Then he begins to flick the tips upwards.

‘Oh God,’ I whisper, unable to help myself. How would a flogger feel just there, right on the clit, right on the cunt? Would it burn?

Dimitri puts a hand on the small of my back, as if sensing that I need steadying.

Her moans stream from her while her head rotates ceaselessly on her neck.

‘A good heated cunt, just the way we like it, eh, Kiki,’ drawls the dom. ‘Ready to take what’s coming.’

I forget how to breathe. Is there going to be live sex? If there is, will I be able to tear myself away? Dimitri’s fingers are drifting up and down the hollow of my back, rather hypnotically. I’m not sure he realises he’s doing it, but it’s turning me on even more.

The dom puts down the flogger and reaches into the girl’s shaven private parts. He rubs her clit between finger and thumb, then spears two fingers up behind. When he draws them out, he shows them solemnly to the front row.

‘Wet enough, I think you’ll agree. Pussy whipping is a subject for another class – don’t forget to sign up for next week’s session if you’re interested.’

With his juiced-up fingers, he spends an idle moment or two twiddling Kiki’s nipples while she strains piteously against her bonds.

‘Now, Kiki, you’ve gone and disgraced yourself in front of our audience again, getting horny when you’re meant to be informing and educating. Tut-tut. I guess that means I’ll have to whip you. Now, I’m going to untie you, then you turn around so I can fasten you again, OK?’

She can hardly argue with him, mouth stuffed with silicone, but she seems happy to comply, turning obediently when her buckles are undone.

As the dom fiddles with straps, I hazard a shy glance up at Dimitri, whose eyes have darkened in fascination. His hand appears to have come to rest on my hip and he is closer to me, almost holding me against him, like a lover would.

He breaks his gaze and swivels it in my direction. ‘What do you think?’ he asks.

‘What do I think? What do you mean?’

‘This is interesting to you? You feel it makes you hot?’

I laugh nervously. The ambient temperature of this dungeon is rather cold, but I hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it. ‘It’s interesting, of course. Hard not to be interested in girls strapped to crosses getting flogged. It’s like an old Hammer horror movie.’

‘But it don’t make you hot?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Really? You think?’

He grimaces, as if I’ve mortally offended him, and his attention reverts to Kiki, whose plump rounded arse now faces us. Another stranger’s bare bum in my sights – how many more can I expect to see tonight?

The whip is applied to back and bottom, covering her skin with fascinating line drawings until the lines begin to fill and she is a mass of raised welts.

She doesn’t utter a single cry.

‘Why is she so quiet?’ I ask Dimitri.

He shrugs. ‘Well training, I think. Is nice effect with the whip, I like.’

The dom steps back and drops the whip. ‘Now, this particular cross,’ he says, somewhat hoarsely, ‘has a special extra feature.’ He puts a hand on the external wheel and spins. Kiki’s body performs one whole revolution. ‘It spins. My colleague Ricardo and his submissive Jared are going to show you how you can utilise this to best effect – I’m not quite the expert with a bullwhip I’d like to be, so I’m handing over to him now.’

Unexpectedly, the spinning bullwhip demonstration provides an oasis of relief in my desert of squirmy arousal. It’s too circus-act-like to turn me on and my clit returns to normal dimensions, breath speeding from my lungs as if released from long incarceration. All the same, it’s fascinating to watch and I bite my lip on Jared’s behalf, watching the welts rise across his pale flesh.

‘Would you whip men as well as women?’ I ask Dimitri. ‘In your new career?’

‘Sure, why not? An ass is an ass, right?’

‘And would you offer sexual favours too?’

‘No, I don’t offer sex. Just domination, right? Maybe I fuck somebody with a dildo, who knows? I think this thing through later.’ The succession of ‘th’ sounds nearly ties his tongue and he stumbles over the words, but I get their sense.

Fair enough.

We watch the show to the bittersweet end.

Jared, released from the cross, falls on to all fours and pushes his arse up for his master, but Ricardo just laughs and swats it.

‘No way, baby,’ he says. ‘Nearly time for Share a Slave, and you’re on the list, boy.’

Amid applause, he collars Jared and leads him, every inch the proud owner, out of the dungeon.

‘Share a slave, huh?’ Dimitri raises an eyebrow at me. ‘You think we can watch?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

Chapter Three

The crowd begins to turn and flow out of the dungeon, heading back up the stairs.

‘Where’s this boudoir then?’ I wonder, but obviously there is no need to ask – they will lead us there.

Many people spill back into the café but others ascend to the upper floor, where the handsome barista presides with a clipboard in front of a door plastered in flock wallpaper and decorated with obscene cherubs.

‘Sorry, guest list only,’ he tells us. ‘Our multi-partner events are limited to thirty ticket holders. There’s another one next month, if you want to sign up.’

‘Is some kind of orgy?’ Dimitri asks.

‘Some kind of.’ The barista smiles. ‘The café is still open, with a licensed bar, if you want to carry on socialising.’

‘OK, thanks.’

‘So that’s that,’ I say, once we are back in the café. ‘Kinky Cupcake in a nutshell. Or a cake wrapper.’

Dimitri is busy looking at a pinboard full of business cards and leaflets offering specialist services. ‘You see,’ he says. ‘This can work. Nearly all these are women. Dominatrix … dominatrix … submissive girls … girls need a spanking … I spank bad boys … so far no man advertise.’

‘That could be something to do with market forces,’ I point out gently, then a horrible, horrible thought knocks me for six. Markets. Business. Advertising. ‘Fuck!’

Dimitri turns to me. ‘That is an order?’

‘Tch. No, I mean, fuck! I haven’t finished the air-freshener campaign. I’m going to get it right in the neck. Look, I have to go. Maybe if I do a bit of work from home … but all the stuff is in the office – shit.’

‘Hey, calm, calm.’ Dimitri puts his hands over my arms, reining in some of my wilder gesticulations. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I have a presentation to give tomorrow, but when I saw the light coming from here, I left work before I was ready. I have to finish this work! But the office is closed until seven now. And the presentation is at nine. I’m doomed. Haven’t even got a slogan, let alone the PowerPoint.’

‘You panic, don’t panic. You work …’ He waves a hand in the direction of my office. ‘Right?’

‘Yeah. Over the road.’

‘Come on. I get you in there.’

‘What?’

He doesn’t answer and I’m reduced to trotting across the café and down the stairs after him, voicing questions to the air around me. ‘What do you mean, get me in there?’

It’s chilly on the street outside. I wrap myself in my coat and frown at Dimitri, who is standing, stroking his chin and staring at my office.

‘We go round the back,’ he says eventually.

‘Dimitri, we are not breaking into my workplace! We just aren’t. There’s a security guard!’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.