The Business of Pleasure (21 page)

‘OK.’ Mr Handsome is thoughtful, his hands tracing my breasts, poking around the nipples. ‘Nice rack. Turn her around; a good arse is my number one requirement.’

Eamonn shoves me around by the shoulder so that Mr Handsome can give my buttocks a comprehensive tactile examination.

‘Outstanding quality,’ he drawls, giving them a little pat. ‘Can you bend her over for me. I just want to make absolutely sure.’

Eamonn makes me lean over, elbows on the desk, bottom up high so that the lycra strains around my thigh tops, easily revealing my pussy to anybody’s curious view.

‘Ah, yeah, I can see that she’s used now,’ says Mr Handsome, peering up the canyon of my thighs. He puts a hand at the slope of each bottom cheek and pulls them apart, nudging up the lycra. I can feel his thumbs press into the soft inner cheek, feel my tensed anus under close inspection. ‘Not so much here though. This part looks almost pristine. I’m happy with it. I’ll take it. How much do you want for it?’

‘Well, considering the stretched state of the front hole, I’ll knock it down to a tenner.’

‘Hm, make it a fiver and you’ve got a deal.’

‘Well …’ Eamonn crouches beside Mr Handsome, staring up at the pussy he fucked so diligently earlier that morning. ‘OK. Five pounds. It’ll last you ages though, and it can take all kinds of hard use. You’ve got a bargain there. I’m robbing myself really.’

Mr Handsome just laughs and hands over a crumpled banknote before slapping my backside and ordering me over to his bike.

‘Come on. I’ve got plans for you,’ he says, handing me his spare helmet. I struggle to fasten it, never having worn one before, and he has to help me, keeping one hand on my tight lycra-clad bottom while he fidgets with it.

‘Right. Hop on. The bike, that is.’ He winks, climbing astride the seat and waiting for me to arrange myself behind him. I have to spread my legs over the leather pillion and my pussy is all but open to the air; the skirt hovering around the crest of my bottom cheeks. Anyone driving behind will glimpse a strip of split flesh between the sleek black seat and the tight white lycra.

‘You ought to be wearing jeans and a jacket, for safety, but I’ll take it as slow and easy as I can,’ says Mr Handsome, twisting his head round to me. ‘Hold on – hang on to me round the waist if you want, or you can hold the handle behind you.’

I don’t feel confident enough to hang on behind, so I place shivery arms around his waist. I have a feeling this is going to be a cold ride, despite the early summer warmth, and I half wish for a set of my own leathers, although that would negate the Ride of Shame element of my fantasy. Ah well. The practical and the fantastical rarely marry, and, so far, things have gone rather more swimmingly than I expected. A little discomfort won’t kill me.

The engine surprises me, flaring into sudden life, and I squeeze Mr Handsome tight. The vibrations roar through me. Oh, I am going to hate this. And I am going to love it. I have my eyes shut when he begins to wheel the bike slowly out of the garage, and shut even tighter when he turns into the High Road, building up speed, but keeping it steady and the pair of us upright. I open my eyes for the last few yards and am gratified to see some poppy-out eyes and dropped jaws on the pavement, following our progress out of town.

The bike takes us down into the valleys, along the shining snake of a river, and, although I hate the hairpin bends that force us to lean sideways until we almost touch the tarmac, I do enjoy the straight bursts that make my neck want to snap back and the wind sweep all around me. I laugh. I am exhilarated. It is almost what I thought it would be, and I am always pleased when my expectations are borne out. Perhaps, after all, I have missed my calling and was born to be wild. Rather inconvenient, if so. I shall put the thought from my head and resolve to simply enjoy this interlude for what it is, rather than where it could lead – for it really can’t lead anywhere.

Mr Handsome steers his monster off the beaten track and into coniferous woodland, finally coming to a halt in a pine-needly patch of makeshift car park, overhung by trees and completely deserted. It would be quite easy to believe that nobody had ever been here, if only the car park didn’t make it rather obvious that they had.

‘Here we are.’ Mr Handsome removes his helmet and places booted feet on the soft ground, grinning at me. ‘Enjoy the ride?’

‘Actually, yes. It was super.’

‘Good. I hope you enjoy the next one too. Get your helmet off and bend over the seat. Quickly!’ The last word is a growl; he grabs my wrist and pulls me off the bike. Once again, I can’t make head nor tail of the helmet, so he removes it for me, then nods, grim-faced, at the bike seat. I swallow. This is it. It is going to happen. I am going to be buggered over a bike in the open air, just as planned.

The trees swish and birds tweet. It’s all so wholesome I can hardly bring myself to … but I do it. I fold my stomach over the leather, still warm where we sat, and attempt to get comfortable while also ensuring that my legs don’t accidentally touch the hot exhaust pipe. So many things I hadn’t imagined having to consider … but now we are here, and now it will be done, and Mr Handsome gives a very good impression of a man who knows what he is doing, so I will just let him … do.

I hear him behind me; boots on the soft needles, then his leather trousers nudge my nude thighs, and he is standing over me, hard crotch perched between my exposed bottom cheeks, looking down at the picture I make, laid in readiness for my sodomising.

I wonder what he is waiting for when he makes no move for a minute or two.

‘You sure about this?’ he says softly.

‘Excuse me, I am the paying customer here,’ I tell him. ‘If I’m not sure about something, you can be quite sure I will tell you.’

My condescending tone spurs him into immediate action, as I hoped it would. He lifts the inadequate scrap of fabric over my bottom, unzips a pocket and uncaps something – I can guess what. I have guessed correctly, as the chilly drip of a gelatinous substance hitting the target between my parted rear cheeks is the next sensation. Mr Handsome’s rough, stubby fingers dive into the splodgy lube, smearing it all over the back entrance, working it in, making me twitch and quiver, making me delirious with the knowledge that I have no escape, that I must just bend over and take it.

‘Your arse is getting fucked,’ he tells me, as if I needed to be told. ‘And if I had my way, I’d be spanking it first, but you didn’t put that in your list …’ He trails off, waiting for a yea or nay, hopeful of the former.

‘No, I didn’t. I’m not into pain. Only humiliation.’

‘Right. Humiliation coming right up.’ His thumb spears me, easily sneaking through the sphincter and inside the back passage, where it jiggles for a while, as if measuring dimensions. I squirm on it, happily helpless, loving the sound of his leather trousers creaking downwards, releasing the cock that has already fucked me once today.

His thumb pops out and then there is something wider and heavier there, backed by pressure that would be far too strong to fight. Mr H’s hands are beneath my thighs, holding my legs straight and still, clearing the way for his intent prick. It makes its first bold sally into the tight breach, half-opening me where I have sealed shut on the exit of the thumb. My body tries to resist at first, in its inevitable way, but I manage to still my reflexes and hold tight, pushing out while he inches in, letting this man who is a stranger further and further up the forbidden passage until I feel his balls swing against the curve of my cheeks and I am full. Uncomfortably full, it must be said. But gloriously, uncomfortably full.

‘This is what you need,’ he grunts. ‘What you’ve been after all along. Isn’t it?’

‘Yah.’

He begins to thrust. He is not ceremonious or sensitive about it. He gives me the hard, fast bangbangbang I dream of, pinning me to his machine, slamming me into the cushioned leather. It is a miracle that the bike stays upright, but somehow it does, all the way through, from the opening of my arse to the filling of it with hot cream, from making me feel the thrill of submission to making me feel the thrill of orgasm. The bike triumphs – I think it is a Triumph, actually – and I take what I deserve.

When I stop howling, the birds are still tweeting, the trees still swaying. It is comforting to know that the world is still the same. Mr Handsome is still pulling out, and my muscles are doing that strange, possessive thing, as if they want him to stay for ever, when I start moving on in my mind, thinking about what I have to do when I get home, and whom I need to call, and how my hustings speech is only half-written.

He straightens up, puffing, chuckling a little under my breath.

‘Christ,’ he says. ‘I could do that all over again.’

I breathe out, then find the forest floor with the soles of my gogo boots.

‘Awfully sorry,’ I say turning and pulling the tight skirt back down over my sore backside. ‘But it’s highly unlikely that you will.’

‘I know.’ He smiles. ‘I can’t promise I’ll vote for you, but I think I’ll be getting a special feeling in my trousers every time I see you on the news. I wonder what your leader would say if he knew …’

‘Well, he won’t know, will he?’ I am irritated with Mr Handsome. I want to brush him off like a fly. He has served, and now he should just back discreetly away. If I could make his memory of today vanish with the flick of a switch, I’d do it.

I think he realises this.

‘Hop on then, if you don’t want to do post-shag conversation. I’ll get you back to your car.’

‘Fine. Thanks. Really, thanks for everything.’ I soften a little; he is trying to be nice, after all. He smiles and winks, then does the honours with the helmet again, and before my legs have recovered, I am back on the bike, sailing through the highways and byways, back to that same cindery car park the day began in.

I think of the road ahead – a long, hard road. Late nights, early press calls, endless canvassing. But at least that dark edge has been taken off now and I can face the future: true to my country, true to my heritage. I might buy a bike though, all the same.

I
T WAS DIFFICULT, ROLLING
along the tracks from London to Colliton on a forlorn and foggy morning, not to remember the train journey that started it all off. Charlotte laid her head back against the dusty blue-black check upholstery and swallowed down a lump. Nobody shared the compartment with her this time – was it the very same compartment they had used, all those weeks ago? There was nobody to make her take off her knickers and sit with her legs spread wide while they tapped away at their Blackberries, careless of anybody passing in the corridor outside. Nobody would demand she remove her earpiece and discuss erotic literature with them. Nobody. She was alone again, just her and her kink, rattling around together in the remote English countryside.

‘I should have known,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Should have known it was too good to last. Too good to be true.’ Melancholy music on the iPod tuned in with her mood, and she thought back to that last heated exchange between Bryant and Collins: the one when they had threatened to disband the agency unless Charlotte chose one of them or the other.

An impossible demand, and she had chosen not to make it. So here she was, on her way … well, it didn’t feel like ‘home’ any more. It felt like failure.

There were no Torture Gardens in Colliton; the most outrageous thing the town had to offer was a popular dogging spot in the forest. If Charlotte wanted to express her sexuality, she would have to trawl the online sites for somebody who didn’t live too far away – and even then, they would probably turn out to be all wrong. It was too daunting to contemplate. She would try to get her old job back at County Hall; meet up with old school friends; forget about her metropolitan adventure and settle back into the monotony of Colliton.

At the employment agency the next day, a spotty youth asked her why she had left her previous job.

‘Redundancy? Dismissal?’ he asked nasally.

‘No. Not really.’ Charlotte looked away, studying the cards, with their felt-tipped invitations to be a chef de partie or a stenographer.

‘Umm … why then?’

‘Personal reasons,’ she said.

‘You won’t get Jobseekers Allowance then.’

‘I know. That’s why I’m here.’ Charlotte’s voice was ragged, on the verge of angry tears, and the clueless boy took refuge in his biro, clicking it up and down to fill the awkward silence. ‘You’re meant to find me a job.’

‘Economic climate … is difficult,’ he mumbled. ‘Will your previous employer provide a reference?’

Charlotte bit her lip. She had been wondering how to deal with this.

‘I left rather suddenly,’ she admitted. ‘So … I’m not sure I want to ask them. I’m not sure I want them to know I’m here, to be honest.’

‘Really?’ The boy was intrigued. Charlotte suddenly had the horrible feeling he thought she had absconded with a large sum of company money. ‘That’s a shame. We can’t really offer you anything unless we have a referee. Two, ideally.’

Charlotte clenched her hands. She couldn’t ask her boss at County Hall – not after she had left without giving
them
notice either … but she needed money. She needed a deposit and a month’s rent so she could get away from her parents’ understated disappointment as soon as possible.

‘OK. You could try giving them a call. Umm …’ She gave the boy Collins’s office number and sat back, tense in every muscle, barely daring to keep her eyes open, as he dialled the number.

‘Am I speaking to Mr Collins? Hello. My name’s Paul; I’m calling from the Colliton branch of JobsWorth … I wonder if I could take a few minutes of your time to ask you about a Miss Charlotte Steele …’

Charlotte let the boy’s annoyingly ingratiating words drift over her, consciously shutting her ears, refusing to hear what he said. Only when the click of the phone handset filtered through did she lift the self-imposed ban.

‘So I’ll give you a call when I’ve phoned round some of our employers,’ the boy was saying.

‘Oh. He agreed?’

‘Er … yes.’ The boy shook his head. ‘As you must have heard. He said you were an excellent worker – very conscientious and that you consistently went above and beyond the call of duty.’

‘He got that right.’

‘Good. So we can start to find opportunities for you, Miss Steele. I’ll be in touch later today, hopefully. Good morning.’

Charlotte, thus dismissed, picked up her bag and wandered off into the High Street, her emotions high and not completely comprehensible. It was good of Collins to give her a positive reference, wasn’t it? That was good. But no. It was bad. It was a formal farewell. It meant that he washed his hands of her and consigned her, happily, to her freedom. He could have asked to speak to her, but he didn’t. He could have raged at the boy and said he was owed four weeks work and if she didn’t get straight back and perform them, he would take legal action. That would have been a comfort. Well, maybe not a comfort. But it would have left hope … The thought that his voice had been in the room, pouring into the boy’s ears, the mellifluous majesty of it wasted on the cheap-suited drone, made her want to cry. And she did cry, in the porch of the county museum, until the sun came out and she decided to browse the National Trust shop instead of moping.

The next day, she donned the smartest skirt suit from her old work wardrobe, applied discreetly glamorous make-up and headed out of the house and towards the offices of Allder, Lewis & Allder, Colliton’s oldest firm of solicitors, specialising – cannily in this town of rich retirees – in the preparation of wills. The sun was out again and, as she walked along the flower-bordered Ropewalk to the town centre, she felt a tiny gleam of optimism flash through the dark clouds.
It’ll be all right
, she told herself.
I will survive this.

She swung her handbag and almost skipped, pretending to be a girl in an advert for hair products, letting the warm sun touch her skin and prepare her for the process of rebirth.

‘Wake up, it’s a beautiful morning,’ she sang, passing the employee car park of a frozen food chain, its piled-high waste bins and general grottiness signalling the end of the fragrant Ropewalk and the start of the seediest area of town. Shame there were eyesores like this in such a pretty town, she thought idly for the millionth time, and then all coherent thought stopped abruptly, with the shocking clamp of a hand around her mouth and a backward yanking on to the dusty gravel.

She tried to yell that the hand tightening around her upper arm
hurt
, but all her breath was forced back into her throat by uncompromising fingers. In short order, she found that her mouth was taped shut, eyes blindfolded and wrists bound before she was pushed unceremoniously into the back seat of a car. Her kidnapper, though, had enough regard for her safety that he seat-belted her in. How odd. Why would he let her sit upright, where she could be seen from passing vehicles? The windows must be blacked out, she thought. Her heart leapt up her gullet, making her want to vomit. She made herself breathe deeply – vomiting wasn’t an option when you were gagged. Feeling the warmth of whoever it was hovering near her skin, she tried to talk, making those frantic stunted noises that are all the gagged have recourse to. He – was it a he? – said nothing at all, but he brushed a fingertip along her cheek, and she smelled his scent and … She stopped making the animal noises instantly. She recognised it. She knew who he was. And she smiled, forcing the corners of the tape upward into her cheeks.

Charlotte was in the car a long time, it seemed, but the driver’s pleasant taste in classical music helped her along. Once or twice, she even came close to dozing off, sealed in her silent darkness, unable to move or do anything for herself. If only she could talk, she thought, she would ask the driver to stop off so she could take a leak. It was starting to get uncomfortable. She wondered if he would insist on watching her, if she did. Probably, knowing him.

Just as she thought she might have to stain the rather comfortable seat, the car purred to a halt. The music stilled halfway through a crescendo; the front door clunked and then hers opened, allowing warmth to drift in and over her. The car must have been air-conditioned. The smell was … London. A city smell. Vague rumbling noise in the background was probably traffic, or even trains. Trains. How she loved the sound of trains.

She felt the seatbelt slither diagonally across her chest and stomach, returning to its origins, and then there was a hand on her shoulder, steering her along the seat and towards the open air.
Does he think I don’t know it’s him? He must do, or he would speak. His voice would give the game away immediately.

He helped her to her feet, standing her on the ground with two supporting hands on her shoulders. Then one of them lifted and she heard his fingers clicking, loudly, just next to her ear, making her jump. Footsteps approached, and she was manhandled roughly out of her kidnapper’s grasp by another man.
I don’t know this one!

Her feelings were confirmed by his voice, which was unfamiliar. ‘Come on. Let’s get you tucked up nice and tight and safe, shall we?’

He dragged her by the elbow across what she guessed was a yard – the ground was hard beneath her feet, like concrete or asphalt. When they stopped, she heard a heavy door being unbolted, then she was inside somewhere dark and airless, chilly and damp. Very carefully, they negotiated a staircase, then they were in a small room with a very heavy – metallic-sounding – door. Without being able to see a thing, Charlotte somehow knew that it was a cell of some kind. Her captor brought her across to sit on a small, not-very-comfortable bed while he himself remained standing before her.

‘Right then, Miss, I’m going to leave you here until the master calls for you, but you needn’t think you aren’t being watched – I’m to guard you, and I’ll be looking in through the grille in the door to make sure you’re behaving yourself. The bed is there, and just here,’ – he nudged something up to her toe, ‘is your chamber pot. Not easy to perform with your hands tied behind your back, I know, but I’m sure you’ll find a way. Any questions? No? Good. I’ll be back when you’re summoned.’

Charlotte had questions – scores of them – but none could burst through the sleek black tape that trapped her mouth. Besides, she was so relieved at the presence of the chamber pot that every other consideration had been temporarily driven from her mind. She waited the few seconds it took for the cell door to bang shut, then she stood up and worked hard at lifting her skirt and lowering her knickers with her tightly tethered hands, having to rub them up and down the small of her back to do anything at all. It was a struggle, but eventually she got the knickers down to her knees, with the aid of much wriggling of hips and bending of legs, and was able to drop down on to the pot with a muted sigh.

As the hot liquid clattered into the basin, she knew she was being watched – it was inevitable – but she was strangely serene. Her tenuously gathered wits told her that she knew what was going to happen. It was all written down and stored in a file on her old work computer. And so far, the script had been followed to the letter. All that remained for her to do was to sit and wait …

He made her sit there, beached on the chamber pot while her nether regions dried slowly in the cold cell air, for exactly one hour. Not that she knew this – to Charlotte, it seemed like an endless void of time. She had pins and needles in her wrists and knew that the rim of the pot had impressed itself into her skin by the time the keys jangled in the lock once more.

She made a vocalisation, an incoherent ‘Who’s there?’ her heartbeat picking up speed while her chest tightened.

‘Just me again,’ said the guard cheerily. ‘You need to get on your feet, Miss Steele. The master is ready to see you.’

Will I be able to see him, though?
Charlotte thought, feeling that she ought to be able to exchange a joke with this man – he was probably one of their agency people, on call to perform in various fantasy guises. They had probably spoken dozens of times over the phone or at scenes. They were friends, weren’t they? Probably?

He was in role, though, and the casual chumminess disappeared from his voice, replaced by an official stiffness.

‘You’ll need to show a bit more willing, Miss,’ he reproved, grabbing her by the elbow to help her, slightly awkwardly, to her feet.

She made an apologetic noise, blushing furiously, and tried to gesture downward with her chin, to her knickers. They were still bunched at her knees, plainly visible beneath the hem of her flippy skirt.

‘I think the master will prefer you to keep them where they are, to be honest,’ he said.
Oh, I know that you’re right
, Charlotte thought, with a mingling rush of glee and dread.
He will love the additional humiliation factor
.

She allowed herself to be led, shuffling, trying to keep the knickers from falling further, across the cell and back out to the corridor. Making a bolt for it was not going to be an option, especially when the knickers finally slipped to ankle level on the way down a flight of stone stairs. She was tempted to just kick them off and leave them there, but the guard seemed patient enough with her slow gait, bringing her to an echoing chamber where her muffled slipshod steps were amplified alongside the guard’s heavy tread.

Eventually, they stopped. The air around Charlotte’s head seemed dense and full of dire forewarning. There was somebody else in here with them. Somebody was looking at her. And she couldn’t see him.

He must have made some gesture to the guard, perhaps a nod or an upheld hand, because suddenly the blindfold was removed from Charlotte’s eyes. She was still blinking, finding even the gloom of this subterranean chamber too bright for her long-sealed eyes, when the guard whipped off the tape gag, causing her mouth to sting and a gasp to fly out of its newly open lips.

‘Thank you, Saunders,’ said Collins. ‘Return to your post now.’

Slowly Charlotte’s eyes refocused, and the lean shadow behind the blocky shadow revealed itself to be Collins sitting at a desk, fingers steepled in the way she remembered so well, spectacles on, face absolutely impassive.