Eighty Days White (16 page)

Blood rushed into my face, heating my cheeks, as I flushed with shame imagining how I must appear bent over the spanking bench with my head hanging low and limp like a doll’s and my bare arse in the air and fully exposed to all and sundry. I was briefly grateful for the cut-out buttocks as I knew that no matter what, She would have insisted on my spanking being on bare flesh. Having just my arse exposed was humiliating, but nowhere near as bad as it would have been to shimmy my skirt up to my waist and display my legs and bare pussy to anyone who cared to look closely enough.

Grayson’s breath was hot against my skin as he bent forward and whispered into my ear. ‘Try to let go,’ he said. ‘Let yourself fall into it. It’ll be easier.’ He stroked a lock of my hair as he drew away. It was a simple gesture, but full of affection and reminded me that we were both unwilling partners in this exercise and I was not fighting against him. Just trying something new.

His next few blows were more rhythmic and I tried to follow his advice and relax into the sensation of his palm
slapping against my skin. Eventually the slaps began to blend into each other and the impact was no longer painful, but more like being exposed to a source of heat. After the stroke he would cup my buttocks gently, as if he were catching the pain in his hand. I began to learn the pattern of his strokes and press back against him each time he rested his hand on my arse, to encourage him to keep it there longer. I also noticed that as I pushed forward and back to match his rhythm, I had begun unwittingly grinding against the rough leather padding that covered the bench.

Then I lost control and cried out as a much sharper blow landed from a smaller, cooler hand. She. Grayson’s warm palm was quick to apply pressure to ease the sting.

Her voice was harsh in my ear.

‘Think about how much he hates this,’ She said. ‘How he’s only doing it to serve.’

I imagined She leaning over Grayson and directing each of his blows. The frustration on his face as his instincts warred with each other and his compulsion to submit to She won over everything else.

Briefly I felt almost drunk as I pictured how it would feel to have someone feel that way about me. How I would humiliate them, hurt them, debase them, care for them and hold them safely through it all.

‘Oh,’ I moaned, this time with pleasure, as Grayson brought his palm down on my flesh again.

‘That’s enough,’ She said. ‘I don’t want her to enjoy herself too much. The night is still young and we have so many more treats in store …’

Neil held the door open for me, removed my coat and then gallantly pulled out my chair once we reached the restaurant’s dining area.

He looked the picture of the London gentleman in a crisp white shirt with a grey waistcoat over the top, matching cigarette-cut suit trousers and pointed black shoes that shined like mirrors when they caught the light. His usually curly hair was slicked back into submission bar the one stubborn lock that had been falling over his left eye and irritating him for as long as we had known each other.

I leaned forward and tucked it back into the rest of his fringe. Neil took my hand and held it across the table.

‘It’s nice to see you, Lily,’ he said. ‘It’s been too long.’

‘Yes,’ I murmured, pulling away and upsetting the flower arrangement that stood between us. Neil caught the falling vase just before it crashed over the pristine white tablecloth.

Our relationship had been strained and uneasy for the past few months since I had walked out on him after his unsympathetic reaction to my then recently ended romance with Leonard. I’d received a few emails and text messages from him, breezy updates about his new job and flat in Hoxton. I had read and swiftly deleted them all without responding.

The last time I’d spoken to Liana, she had surprised me by standing up for him.

‘Don’t be so hard on the guy,’ she’d said. ‘It’s not his fault he’s done well for himself.’

So when Neil called and invited me out to dinner, I agreed. He’d just been promoted and wanted to celebrate.

‘But not with my workmates,’ he’d added.

‘How come?’ I asked. ‘Are they so bad?’

‘Not bad, exactly,’ he said. ‘Just all so full of themselves sometimes. I want to spend a night not thinking or talking about PR for once. And see you.’

He’d taken me to Miyama, a Japanese restaurant in the City. He said it reminded him of Brighton and the time that Liana had blown a wad of her father’s money taking us all out to dinner at the sushi restaurant near the pier where we drank too much sake and took all the chopstick wrappers off the tables and made them into origami swans and frogs.

We’d just begun on the sharer plate of sashimi delivered by a young Japanese man with thick black-framed glasses when Neil waved his chopsticks in front of my face to catch my attention.

‘Earth to Lily,’ he said. ‘Your phone is ringing’. His voice brought me back to the present and the sound of my mobile. I’d been distracted, imagining how the waiter’s flesh would look constricted by a web of rope. Images like that had begun jumping into my mind more and more often lately and I was sometimes a little disturbed by the frequency and intensity of my kinky thoughts. I shook my head slightly in a vain attempt to clear my mind.

‘Nice ring tone,’ Neil said, as I pulled my phone out of my bag. It was the
True Blood
theme, ‘Bad Things’ by Jace
Everett. Liana had programmed it into my settings when I’d been to visit her and I hadn’t got around to changing it back.

Neil raised his eyebrows even higher when the word ‘She’ flashed up on the screen.

I answered immediately.

‘Lily,’ She said, and continued talking without so much as waiting for me to reply. ‘Are you free tonight? Sherry’s called in ill.’

‘Ah.’ I looked up at Neil. We’d only just received the first course and it seemed terribly rude of me to bow out now, though I could really have used the money from an extra shift. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’ve got plans tonight.’

She huffed into the phone. ‘Nothing you could move around? I really need you. I’d be truly grateful, Lily.’

‘Actually, I’m with a friend.’

‘Oh,’ she said. I could hear the grin in her voice. ‘By all means, bring him along. I’d be delighted to meet your “friend”.’

I grimaced. She would eat Neil for breakfast and I shuddered to think of what he might think of her. If he’d thought that my relationship with an older man was weird, I couldn’t imagine what he might think of the club and its inhabitants in their various states of dress and undress.

As if he knew that I was thinking of him, Neil waved his chopsticks in front of my face again.

‘Hang on,’ I said into the handset, taking a small measure of pleasure in the knowledge that She would be fuming at the interruption.

‘If you have to go to work, Lily, it’s OK. I understand,’ Neil said.

‘No, really, I—’

‘Honestly. We can finish the sashimi and come back another time for the other courses.’

He wiped his mouth on the napkin and called the waiter over again to ask for the bill.

‘Lily,’ She hissed into the other end of the phone. ‘Bring him with you.’ The phone went dead. She had hung up before waiting to hear me agree.

She’d spoken loudly and I knew that Neil had been able to hear most of the conversation from across the table.

‘You’ve been called into that club you work at?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. Someone’s called in sick.’

‘I could come with you. I haven’t had a night out in ages.’

I sighed. ‘It’s really not your kind of place.’

‘How do you know? And why can’t you just give me a chance?’ he replied angrily. ‘You’re always so pissed when people make presumptions about you, Lily, but you do the same thing to other people all the time.’ He stabbed a chopstick into a stray piece of ginger and bit into it savagely.

‘Fine,’ I said, convinced that as soon as he set one foot in the place and looked around he would make a bolt for the door and I wouldn’t hear from him again. Probably for the best, too. If he couldn’t handle it, then maybe we should give up pretending to still have anything in common and just put our university friendship behind us and move on.

She looked as harried as I’d seen her when the taxi pulled up outside the club and she met us at the door. The Fox and Garter, another club in town that masqueraded as a pub with a dungeon hidden beneath it, had closed early due to a power failure and so it was extra busy tonight with all the punters who had come to us to continue their evening.

Neil’s eyes widened as he took in She’s sleek crimson catsuit, matching top-hat fascinator and higher-than-high heels. She was dressed as a ring master tonight and carried a whip by her side. Her arm was relaxed, but there was something about her manner that promised that the whip was not far away from cracking even when she was leaning nonchalantly against the wall seemingly without a care in the world.

‘Well, hello, Lily’s friend,’ she said to him in her best Jessica Rabbit voice, running her eyes up and down his body as if she owned him.

I bristled at her approach and took Neil’s hand in mine as we stepped inside.

‘Oh,’ She said, raising an eyebrow at my gesture. ‘Like that, is it?’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It is like that. Come with me, Neil,’ I added in the most authoritative tone I could muster and led him into the cloakroom.

His eyes darted here, there and everywhere as he caught a glimpse of the busy bar area and the people within who were dressed in all manner of costumes that all seemed quite ordinary to me now, but which were probably overwhelming to him. There were men in corsets, frilly skirts and high heels; women in military uniforms or lingerie; both sexes in latex body suits, and some with masks as well. Several women were topless and there was the obligatory man wearing just a cock ring with his flaccid penis bouncing as he walked.

‘You’re going to have to change,’ I said to him abruptly. ‘You’ll stand out like a sore thumb in that.’

‘OK,’ he said meekly.

I unbuttoned his waistcoat and then his shirt. The fabric felt pleasantly rough beneath my fingers and without even meaning to, I found myself running my hands along the stiff cotton and fumbling with the buttons for longer than strictly necessary. He held his arms out as I slipped each garment off his shoulders and onto a hanger and then hung them on the rail.

Neil didn’t move a muscle. He was like a doll, allowing me to move him back and forward as I wished. I hesitated before I moved down to his belt. The leather strap felt warm to the touch, in strong contrast to the cool metal buckle. Dagur had once let me bind his ankles together using his belt strap and I immediately pictured Neil in the same position, face down and lying uncomfortably on his erection while I ran my finger into his arse. The thought excited me and I fought to bring my mind back to the present. This was Neil, not Dagur, and I was at work, and any minute now he would panic and make a run for it.

‘Are you wearing underwear?’ I asked him in the most unfeeling and casual tone that I could muster.

He nodded.

A spare pair of the hot pants that She’s slaves wore lay on the shelf behind me. They would most likely fit Neil, but I didn’t want to see him in a pair of pants that said ‘She’s slave’. He didn’t belong to her.

His boxers would do. They were designer-branded, black and forgettable. I looked him up and down. He had definitely been working out. Or maybe he’d always been built this way and I’d just never noticed. His naked torso was not at all unpleasant. The bulge in his shorts was unmistakable, but he was a man, and the place was full of
women in skimpy clothing. I didn’t take his response to heart and no one in the club would be offended by his erection if it didn’t shrink by the time we reached the bar.

Neil was a fish out of water and clearly had no clue how to behave in the sea of flesh that surrounded him, so I took him by the hand and led him down to the dungeon. I wasn’t worried that Neil would do something inappropriate like gawk creepily or reach over and grab a stray breast that fell into his line of sight, as he was far too shy and well-mannered for that. But with his baby-faced good looks and air of innocence, he would be like catnip to She’s troupe of dommes who were lined up and leaning against the bar like lionesses reclining at a waterhole, sleek and relaxed but ready to spring into action at any moment and only too eager to initiate a newcomer into the pleasures of a riding crop.

‘Richard, thank God you’re here,’ I said to the Dungeon Master. Tonight he was shirtless and wearing a leather kilt with half a dozen pockets, each one containing a tool of the trade. It was the first time that I’d noticed he had a silver barbell through each of his nipples. He hadn’t previously struck me as the type of guy who would sport a nipple piercing. He was short and bordering on fat, but had thick biceps and having seen him in action I knew that he had a fierce strength in his limbs that belied his gentle expression. Most of the experienced dominants – the ones that Liana would call ‘good doms’ – had a similar air of softness with a steely core beneath it. Those who were confident in their own power had no need to swagger around the club and show off their assertiveness or ability to suspend a willing sub from the ceiling at every opportunity.

‘I’m always here for you, Lady Lily,’ Richard replied. He’d started calling me Lady as an affectionate term of endearment ever since the night a few months ago now that I had ridden She’s slave, Stuart, across the room on a saddle. Since then I had been learning more and more of the arts of domination and was particularly proud of the fact that I could surprise a room full of people by swinging a bull-whip longer than I was.

‘What’s that?’ Neil asked, pointing at the pinwheel that poked out of one of the flaps on Richard’s skirt and was glinting menacingly in the light. Curiosity had got the better of him.

I removed the instrument from Richard’s pocket and held it up to Neil’s face. He’d turned white.

‘It’s a pin wheel.’

‘Looks like a mini pizza slicer. But sharper. Doesn’t it … hurt?’

I had wondered the same thing the first time I’d seen a Wartenberg wheel, a device originally used to test nerve sensitivity in skin that had been abandoned by the medical profession in favour of more modern techniques and subverted by kinksters as a sensation sex toy. It was a particularly evil-looking device with a seven-inch-long handle and twenty or so radiating sharp pins at one end, but unlike most of the other implements that looked much softer than they were in reality, the pinwheel was much less evil in practice than it appeared. She had demonstrated one to me by rolling it over Grayson’s skin after she’d flogged him. He had gone into spasms of delight, shivering and shuddering and moaning with each line that she drew across his hot skin. I’d loved watching the crisscross
pattern that bloomed white and red and then faded, like a road map of pleasure and pain across his body.