‘I’m sorry. It must have been awful.’
‘Yes,’ he sighs. He turns his face to me.
‘Vann?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you believe in God?’
‘I don’t know if I do or not. He gives us so many flaws and then he goes so silent.’
‘Do you think Blake believes in God?’
‘Why do you ask?’ His voice is casual enough, but again his body is suddenly tense.
‘Just wondered.’
‘Has Lana said something to you?’
‘No.’
He props his head on the palms of his hands. ‘Have you been snooping again, Julie Sugar?’
I become red-faced. ‘I kind of read Lana’s notes.’ I don’t tell him it was her diary.
His face becomes grave. ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’
‘I’m not a cat. Anyway,’ I say, standing up, flinging his clothes on him, and getting into mine, ‘I’ve got to go and practice.’
You see, I am learning pole dancing. Every day I lock the bedroom door and I practice. I am surprisingly good at it since I have been hanging off door ledges doing my Callanetics for years, and I have very strong arms and the suppleness of a gymnast.
Twenty-six
It is a Sunday morning and we have just had breakfast when I turn towards Vann and ask, ‘What about BDSM? Are you going to teach me something about that?’
He looks at me over the rim of his glass. ‘Why? Are you interested in being a submissive?’
‘I don’t know. I could be. What is it?’
‘It’s a game.’
‘I like games. Start me off and I’ll tell you if I like it.’
He stops smiling, his eyes change, darken. Very deliberately he pushes his glass of orange juice to the middle of the table, reaches for the carton of milk and, holding it right in front of him, slowly tips it sideways until the milk in it pours onto the table. I watch the puddle grow on the table. At some point well before the carton is empty he stops pouring. I lift my eyes from the spill and look at him. His eyes are expressionless, watchful. The silence stretches. I break it. ‘Well?’
‘Clean it up,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘I don’t need to repeat myself, do I? It is a punishable offense.’
For a moment I feel confused. Was this the thing that has everybody hot under the collar? Do I want to be his little slave? The answer is obvious and immediate. I don’t. Definitely not. But I’ll let it play a bit more and see where this game goes. I turn towards the paper towels.
‘Not with paper towel.’ His voice cracks like a whip.
I turn towards him slowly. Our eyes clash, a look of impatience about his. What does he want me to do? Clean the table with my tongue? The thought is unsexy, off-putting. ‘With what, then?’
He leans back and folds his arms across his chest. ‘With your sex.’
And suddenly I am wet. The idea is shocking but incredibly, unbelievably erotic. I hook my thumbs into the scrap of white lace around my hips, push it all the way down and step out of it.
‘Give them to me.’
I bend down to retrieve them and walk towards him. I look into his eyes as I drop my bunched up knickers into his outstretched hand. He puts them into his trouser pocket.
I hop onto the table with my legs apart so he can see what I am doing, I bend forward and, flattening my thighs, slowly drag my sex across the liquid. Something flashes in his eyes. The milk is cold on my warm skin. When I have swept myself across the spill I stop and look to him.
He nods slowly. ‘You,’ he says, and there is a touch of admiration in his voice, ‘are an excellent pupil. You never do more than what you are instructed to do.’
I say nothing. Just hold myself in that position.
‘Now spread your legs,’ he orders.
Silently, I open my thighs, sliding them not one by one but at the same time, knees straight and holding them aloft from the table the way a dancer would. My pussy opens out like an oyster, glossy and gooey and unashamedly lewd. Milk drips from the hairs onto the surface of the table.
‘Wider.’
I spread out farther. I am so supple I can open wider than most girls. Totally exposed, I wait. The intensity of his gaze makes my flesh tingle. Makes me feel wanton and brings on such an intense craving to be filled and taken urgently that I feel myself creaming right before his eyes, and he hasn’t even touched me.
‘Spread the labia and show me the pink insides.’
Blood pumps into my clit. I take the plump lips in my fingers and pull them apart, exposing the glistening hole that seems to have a one-track mind. It is desperate to be stretched open, to swallow some rigid meat whole.
He taps his fingers on the table. ‘Are you turned on?’
He knows I am, big time. ‘Yes.’
‘BDSM 101. The game where you are punished for no good reason, and then blissfully rewarded for following instructions and for waiting like a good girl for it. Do you know what your reward is?’
I shake my head.
He sinks two fingers into the soaking folds and, crooking them, begins to stroke that inner nerve that beckons the delicious whole body climax. I throw my head back and moan.
‘You like that, pretty puss?’
‘Yes, oh God, yes,’ I rasp.
He laughs wickedly.
I move my hips so his fingers will enter deeper into my pussy and he suddenly removes his fingers. I open my eyes and look at him. ‘Who told you you could move your hips?’
‘Sorry.’ I have never wanted him more. I look down to his pants. They are bulging with his erection. I know if I touch that rod it will be hot and pulsing. And the tip, my favorite part, that bit that looks like a miniature bum, will be satiny.
‘Go and lie face down over the arm of the couch.’
I slide off the table and go drape myself over the armrest. Brazenly I flip my skirt up towards my waist and present myself with my bare ass pushed high up into the air. I try to arrange my legs to be as alluring as possible, think of my bottom as a heart-shaped offering, but it is an odd position—exposed and vulnerable.
Perhaps even a little humiliating. Definitely a ready, begging position.
I am his to ride or do with as he pleases. I feel like a slut, his slut and love the fantasy of it. The loss of control and responsibility for my own body is strangely exhilarating and fantastically exciting. I have the sensation that we are no longer equal, that I have become nothing more than a faceless, anonymous body, an object for his pleasure, to do with as he pleases.
The fantasy of being taken and used selfishly by him makes heat pool between my legs. My own juices are leaking onto my thighs. He doesn’t move.
The anticipation is killing me.
Finally, the chair is being pushed back. A delicious shiver. I hear him come and stand over me. For what seems like ages he stands motionless looking down at me. The flat becomes very still. Nothing moves. It is as if time has been suspended. I want to speak, say something, but somehow I know I am not allowed to. I must not move or shift.
‘Spread open.’
Two words. Hard like pebbles. I obey instantly. I have to. I have become in the blink of an eye his little sex slave. Now I am splayed open like a starfish with an open pink eye. I feel the air around me move as he bends down and runs his fingers along the wet slit of my pussy and pushes two into the hole. The rush of hot blood into my head is amazing. I feel dizzy as if I am going to climax. My eyes close involuntarily, but he takes his fingers out.
‘A Chinese philosopher once said, ‘Beat your woman often—you may not know why, but she will.’
While I am trying to get my lust tangled mind around the philosophy of that phrase his palm crashes down hard on my butt. Only when his hand leaves and the cool air touches my skin do I feel the sting and scream. I try to wriggle away. His hands grip my legs hard, not with affection but the way my mother had, once, when I was a child and had unthinkingly tried to run across the road. So hard I cannot move an inch. My cheek is squashed into the cushion.