Hearts and Diamonds (14 page)

The assistant cleared her throat.

‘Can I help you at all?’ she said.

‘We want to try some of these on,’ said Jason. ‘But first I want a scout round the back room. What’s in there?’

‘That’s where we display some of our more intimate items,’ said the woman.

More
intimate? Jenna looked in puzzlement at the array of frankly obscene underwear around her and wondered how on earth that was possible.

‘Pleasure enhancers,’ the woman added, seeming to note Jenna’s bemusement.

‘Ah,’ said Jenna, cottoning on.

‘Oh, I’m always in the market for pleasure enhancement,’ said Jason, winking.

Jenna cringed but followed Jason into the back room without catching the assistant’s eye.

‘Wow,’ she said, once through what she thought of as a kind of magic portal. ‘This is so unlike that other sex shop I went to that time.’

And it was. That other sex shop had been a glaring assault on her ocular faculties: shelf after shelf of brightly coloured plastic and garish packaging.

Here, everything was muted and tasteful. The materials were polished metals or smooth minerals. Marble, crystal, aluminium. It looked almost more like a showroom for executive gadgets or the gift shop on a fossil-rich section of the coast than a place where sex toys were on sale.

‘No way is this a butt plug,’ said Jason, picking up a beautiful decorated china implement that wouldn’t be out of place on some mantelpiece in a stately home.

‘I hope it’s sturdier than it looks,’ she commented, trying not to think about the thing shattering into fragments during use. ‘What on earth . . .?’

She picked up a flogger with a comfortably ergonomic rubberised handle and ran her fingers through the strands.

‘It actually feels like hair,’ she said. ‘Like human hair. My hair.’

Jason tried it out himself.

‘Couldn’t hurt much,’ he commented. ‘Nice idea though. This is more like it.’

He handled a paddle of such high quality leather that Jenna felt intoxicated just breathing in its scent. The surface was tooled with a cut-out pattern of flowers that would, she imagined, make a very pretty transfer on to the skin.

‘I could tattoo you,’ he said. ‘Paint you. I’d like to make my own version of one of these, to my own design.’

‘Perhaps you could do that,’ said Jenna. ‘Get in touch with whoever makes these and see if they’d let you.’

‘I fucking would, you know. You think I’m joking, don’t you?’

‘I’d never dare think that,’ said Jenna.

‘I’m going to ask that woman out front.’

Before she could stop him, he was heading purposefully back to the front of the shop, leather paddle in hand.

‘Excuse me,’ he sang out, coming to a halt by the desk.

Jenna stopped abruptly, a foot or so behind him, trying to look as unobtrusive as possible.

‘Yes, sir?’

There was a tell-tale little pause during which Jenna surmised that being addressed so respectfully in a shop had flummoxed Jason.

‘I was wondering,’ he said, recovering himself, ‘who makes these paddles?’

She took it from him and examined it with obvious pleasure.

‘Ah, these are beautiful, aren’t they? Handcrafted by an expert. He has a little workshop south of the river. He’s exclusive to us, you know. You won’t find his implements anywhere else.’

‘Unless I went to the workshop,’ suggested Jason. ‘I’d like to contact him, if you’ve got his details. Got a proposition for him.’

The assistant was clearly surprised.

‘He trades under the name The South Bank Tannery, but he’s called John Lindo. I can call him for you, if you want. What sort of thing did you want to discuss with him?’

‘A commission,’ said Jason.

‘Oh, well, I daresay he might be interested. Let me call him for you.’

She looked up the number on her mobile phone and began to dial.

Jenna watched all this, too curious to remember to be aghast, and also seriously impressed with Jason’s confident and rather suave manner. He was full of surprises.

‘Hello, Mr Lindo? It’s Caro here, from Cinq à Sept – the Mayfair branch. Yes, lovely, thank you. How are you? Oh good. No, no problems at all, but I have a customer in the shop who would like to talk to you, if you wouldn’t mind. Don’t worry, it’s not a complaint. Yes. Fine. I’ll put him on then.’

She handed the phone to Jason.

‘Hi,’ he said, turning to wink at Jenna, who shrank back even further. She felt critically exposed by what was going on, as if the shop assistant were now a voyeuristic third party in their relationship. She knew their tastes in underwear, and, much worse than that, she knew that Jason liked to give her bottom a good spanking. She squirmed a little at the thought and pretended to take an interest in a rack of babydoll nighties.

Jason’s voice floated over to her, settling among the clouds of lace and ribbons.

‘I was looking at one of your paddles in the shop and I’m really impressed by the design and the workmanship. Yeah. So I was wondering if you’d make one especially for me, if I came up with a design of my own. Yeah? That’d be great. How about tomorrow? Jen?’

She came reluctantly back into the group, hearing her name.

‘What are we doing tomorrow? Got any meetings or owt?’

‘One, in the morning. Should be finished by lunchtime. And I was going to pop into the office, just to be friendly and make sure everything’s ticking over.’

‘Right. Yeah, how about tomorrow afternoon then? Three sounds good. Where are you, exactly? Will do. Cheers. Oh, yeah, sorry, it’s Watson. Jason. See you then, then.’

He handed the phone back to Caro, who uttered a few polite words before ending the call.

‘Well, that seemed to go well,’ she said. ‘Do you want this?’ She proffered the paddle.

‘Yeah, I think I do,’ said Jason, taking it and slapping it into the palm of his hand. ‘And there’s some stuff we’d like to try on.’

‘Of course. Just let me find our samples. Do you know your size?’

This was addressed to Jenna, who mumbled the answers. She was far from her efficient, professional self in here, and Jason seemed to enjoy the contrast, smiling at her and ruffling her hair.

‘You’ve gone all shy,’ he said, as the assistant disappeared behind a curtain that presumably concealed a stock cupboard.

‘I’m not used to broadcasting the details of my private life in shops,’ she replied, smoothing her hair back down with an irritable hand. ‘I’m dying of embarrassment here.’

‘It’s only Caro. She won’t tell anyone,’ said Jason. ‘That’s what these posh shops are all about, isn’t it? Good service. Keeping the customer’s secrets.’

‘I suppose so. I bloody well hope so. The last thing I want is us on the front page
again
with some sordid S&M sex scandal.’

‘Do you think it’s sordid? What we get up to?’

‘No, I don’t, but I know what the tabloids would make of it.’

Caro reappeared with some open boxes trailing fountains of tissue paper.

‘These are the ones you were looking at, I think,’ she said. ‘Our changing room is just at the very back of the shop, behind that shelf of bondage harnesses.’

Hearing the words ‘bondage harnesses’ coming from the rather school-mistressy lips of Caro made Jenna want to giggle, but she restrained herself.

‘Thank you,’ she said, grateful that Caro had not mentioned her fame or made any appearance of recognising her at all. Perhaps she didn’t. Strange thought.

The changing room had silk-lined walls, soft lighting and a beautiful oval pier glass in which to study one’s gussied-up body.

Jason entered behind Jenna and put his hands on her shoulders, reaching down to unbutton her blouse from the top.

Jenna watched his progress in the mirror, watched his strong, sure hands work at the buttons, watched her skin emerge from the cream silk shell.

He slid the shirt off her, revealing her skin, subtly sheened from the expensive moisturiser she used. She watched him bury his nose in her neck and breathe her in, ending the inhalation with a low groan of desire.

She felt his fingers at the fastening of her trousers now, and then they crumpled down, sliding past her thighs and knees to heap at her ankles.

She stepped out of them, along with her shoes, and looked at herself, framed by Jason’s arms, in her pretty but unexciting pale pink lace underset.

‘You look so prim and proper,’ said Jason with a smirk. ‘But I think we’re about to change all that.’

He unhooked Jenna’s bra and made a meal of removing it, but he didn’t try to touch or cup her breasts, which surprised her.

Apparently he picked up on this, because he said, ‘I’m not going to get too carried away too soon. I want to see you in these little numbers first.’

‘Are you really going to get a bespoke paddle made by that guy?’ she asked, her mind still half on the telephone conversation.

‘If he’s up for it. Why not?’

‘It’s just . . . It seems so . . . The potential for him to go to the press.’

‘Oh, Jen, don’t be paranoid. He won’t if we ask him not to. And it’d look bad on him. Might affect his business if his clients feel he can’t keep a secret.’

‘I suppose so. I don’t have to go, do I?’

‘Of course you do! I’m not going alone. Get those knickers off – her outside’ll be thinking we’re shagging in here if we don’t get a move on.’

She looked at herself, naked in the mirror, with Jason at her shoulder. She barely recognised herself. It wasn’t that her body or face had changed, though her hair was less styled and her make-up barely there, compared with her days of LA glory. No, there was something in her eye – a vulnerability, maybe, or an uncertainty – that made her look younger. Every day she spent with Jason seemed to bring a new challenge, a new thing to learn about herself. She seemed to be reassessing her entire self, and the meaning of her life.

No wonder she looked a bit scared.

When was the last time she had given control to another person?

Never.

And now, here was Jason, making decisions over her head, getting her to do things she had never dreamed of doing. Would she have done these things for Deano? She really wasn’t sure.

‘OK,’ she said, trying to strike a confident note. ‘This is me. Dress me up.’

Jason took the flirty lilac and apricot silk set first. The knickers were relatively tame in the front, with their scanty triangle of lilac silk surrounded by pale apricot lace, but at the back they were almost non-existent; just a pair of elastic straps on either side, travelling diagonally up her bottom cheeks from the crevice between her thighs. Essentially, they were crotchless and would provide no barrier at all to even the least assertive of lovers. And Jason was far from being that.

‘Whoa, baby,’ he said appreciatively. ‘This is what I like to see. Knickers that aren’t really knickers. You can wear them any time you like.’

She posed in them, making the adhesive hygiene strips inside rustle.

‘And the bra,’ prompted Jason, handing it over.

The matching bra had peephole slits over the nipples that could be tied shut with two little flaps of lilac silk ribbon. Jenna knotted them shut, feeling the delicious naughtiness of it so that her nipples hardened and brushed the material. Oh God, it was turning her on. She couldn’t possibly walk about with this thing on underneath her normal clothes – she’d be permanently hot and bothered, not to mention feeling the backlessness of the knickers at the same time.

She imagined them under a close-fitting elasticated dress and the idea made her gush between her legs. She’d never understood the appeal of tarty underwear, thinking it was made only to appeal to men, but now she was starting to think otherwise. She felt as if she might positively burst with sexuality and it was a strangely empowering sensation.

Jason hooked a finger into the loop of one of the bows and untied it, revealing her nipple, as it peeked cheekily through the parted silk.

‘We’re having these,’ he said decisively. He took the nipple between his fingers and Jenna watched him roll it, then do the same with her other breast. He pressed himself into her from behind, and his new suit of fine black cloth covered her bare skin in the most pleasing manner. It was much better than the rough denim she was used to. She wanted to rub herself up and down against it, especially when she recognised a hard bulge pushing at her bottom.

‘We shouldn’t do this,’ she gasped, but the furtive frottage was going to both of their heads, and shoulds and shouldn’ts were sliding slowly off the agenda with every laboured breath they took.

‘No,’ he said, suddenly pulling back. ‘Not till I’ve seen you in the other set, anyway. Take those off.’

The lump in his trousers was rudely evident, and Jenna grinned at it in the mirror as she bent to remove her knickers.

‘You won’t want to be taking that back out into the street with you,’ she said.

He looked down and then caught her gaze with his, straight and cool.

‘Trust me, I won’t be,’ he said.

She dropped her jaw.

‘What do you . . .?’

‘Carry on,’ he said. ‘Here.’

She exchanged the scrap of pastel-coloured silk for the PVC quarter-cup bra. This certainly crossed the line between cheeky and downright rude. Her nipples stood proud over the PVC curve that failed to contain more than an inch or so of her lower breasts. The lacy strapping that described the outline of a real bra framed them beautifully and very overtly. It was crazy, thought Jenna, how a few bits of material could transform one from innocent to very, very guilty. Naked, her body was something to be looked at, admired, perhaps gloated over – but in this, it was something to be fucked. There were no two ways about it.

‘You look proper dirty.’ Jason voiced the same thought in his own inimitable fashion. ‘Put the knickers on before I have to jump you here and now.’

She pulled on the matching pair. The feel of PVC over her pubis, even with the hygiene strip, was almost overwhelming. The gathered elastic at the edge of the mesh, signalling that a large portion of her bottom was bare, sent another strong rush of arousal through her. Again, there was no doubt that these knickers were to be worn to be spanked in and then fucked. She couldn’t escape from that reality, especially when she caught the look in Jason’s eyes. In his head, he was doing those things to her right now.