The Exchange (11 page)

‘Is it time to move on?’ I said, looking pointedly at their own empty glasses.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Tatiana, now glaring at the bartender.

Inwardly I seethed. I resented this attitude of ownership of me that she and Morgan had assumed. For the rest of the evening, I’d insist on paying my way. That might at least help me cast off this sense of being, in some sense, their child.

We headed out of the bar, towards the lift, Tatiana leading the way. I watched her as she walked, with a dancer’s elegance. Of mid-height, she was slender but not as fragile as me. She was wearing a pale-blue linen shift dress and white leather pumps, and had a white cashmere cardigan slung over her shoulders. Her platinum-blonde hair swung loose, mane-like, down her back, in direct contrast to my severe style that evening. It wasn’t my favourite style, but you couldn’t deny that she was a very attractive woman.

As we stepped into the lift, the two of them now in front of me, I studied Morgan in turn. Like the previous night, and like Tatiana, he was smart if conservative, in a pale green-grey suit. Beside them I must look ridiculous. I wondered what kind of crowd there would be at the party, but I told myself there had to be some interesting people at a hotel launch on Park Lane. There’d be business people and bankers, of course, but there’d also be models, fashionistas, journalists, and perhaps even rock stars.

The rum had gone to my head and for a moment I thought a little ruefully of the bartender, and then by association of Konrad. Though I wanted this night for myself, no matter what it might bring, part of me wished he was here with me. We always had such a great time when we were out together, and that in part kept us together in spite of the problems with sex. People gravitated to us, formed an entourage who followed in our wake. Where separately we might be charismatic, together, it seemed, we were on fire.

We exited the hotel, turning right in the direction in which I’d come. Within a few steps, a red carpet and a barrier suggested that we’d arrived at our destination. Tatiana fished in her clutch bag for the invitations and flashed them at the doorman, who waved us through.

Inside the lobby it was all scarlet velvet armchairs and clubby leather sofas, polished dark-wood furniture and vast chandeliers – impressive but not to my taste. A few photographers were loitering with intent and I wondered if I might get my picture on the party pages of
Vogue
, but no one seemed interested in us.

We made our way through to the bar, which was enlivened by colourful and surprisingly quirky artworks. A reasonably sized crowd had already gathered, and Tatiana and Morgan began to make their way through it with much air-kissing and waving across the room. I followed them, glancing around for kindred spirits, but most people looked much like Tatiana and Morgan – moneyed but essentially dull. At the bar I grabbed a flute of champagne and downed it in one before reaching for another.

Tatiana called someone’s name and gestured, and suddenly we were sucked into a group of about eight people, all of whom seemed to know each other. A few of them shot me curious glances, but no one introduced me. All at once I felt ludicrous in my haute couture and my space-cadet shoes. Suddenly I wanted to run home through the night and cast it all off and just lie on my bed and cry. The evening was going to be a disaster – a trashing of my longest-held dream. Petulantly, I told myself that I hated London and everyone in it. I wanted to be home, partying in Pigalle with Konrad. Not that we didn’t go to the hip places there, but even those had a loucheness to them, like Le Lautrec Café. And then afterwards we’d go to somewhere properly sleazy too. ‘The rough and the smooth,’ as Konrad would often say, nibbling my earlobe in the corner of some dingy basement venue reeking of sex. Sometimes we’d end up in one of the old-school porn cinemas on the boulevard de Clichy. This was for a laugh more than anything else, although usually I’d end up jerking him off while we watched, and a couple of times I even sat astride him and fucked him. Once, we both masturbated to orgasm as we sat there, holding hands. I wouldn’t swear on it, but it may be the only time Konrad had actually been present as I’d climaxed.

I was brought back to the present when a guy next to me introduced himself and asked my name. I hadn’t noticed him a few minutes before and wondered if he’d just stepped into the circle.

His name was Jeremy, and he was, he told me, a conductor. Hence his being friends with Morgan.

‘What about you?’ he said. ‘How do you know them?’

‘Oh, I don’t really.’ I shrugged. ‘I’m new in town, and a friend of a friend introduced us just last night.’

‘I see,’ said Jeremy, then he gestured to his right. ‘This is my girlfriend Alice,’ he said. ‘Alice, this is Rochelle – from …’

‘From Paris,’ I said, holding out my hand to shake Alice’s. As I did, I noticed her look me up and down, appraisingly. Like Tatiana and Morgan, Jeremy and his partner were expensively, unadventurously chic.

I kept drinking, and chatting, borne along by the crowed and my increasing lightheadedness. I gave little of myself away, and equally I invested little in what people said to me. But I tried not to wish the evening away. I was determined to extract something of value from it. I just needed to be patient.

After a few hours, when I found myself installed on a bar-stool beside a New York art dealer who specialised in sourcing artworks for hotels such as this one, I felt Tatiana’s claw on my shoulder.

‘We’re moving on,’ she said.

‘Oh, well thanks for tonight,’ I started, with a certain feeling of relief.

Her pearl-white teeth flashed at me. ‘Oh, you don’t escape my clutches that easily, Roch,’ she said. She was purring again, but this time I thought of big cats rather than kittens. She laid her hand on my thigh. ‘Come on,’ she said, gesturing towards the door with her head.

I looked over and Morgan and some of the crowd they had hooked up with, including Jeremy and Alice, stood waiting for us.

I inhaled deeply.
Here goes nothing
, I thought, and I stood up, smoothing down my dress, and walked over to them.

***

It was dark, when I opened my eyes – pitch dark. For a while I had no idea where I was, but I was too scared to stand up and find out. I certainly wasn’t in Rachel’s flat, where the flimsy curtains meant that light poured in from dawn. But for a while I was flummoxed.

And then, as I lay in the blackness, listening to the breathing of strangers around me, it all came back to me. There was another short walk, up Park Lane, and then we entered a mansion block. I don’t know how many of us there were at this time – perhaps ten or twelve. There were a few couples, and then a few people who seemed, like me, to be unattached.

Upstairs, we were ushered into a breathtaking penthouse flat with a terrace looking over the darkness of Hyde Park. As we entered, I realised that Tatiana and Morgan had been at my shoulders since we’d left the hotel, like bodyguards. Only I sensed that they weren’t protecting me so much as preventing me from running away.

The penthouse was loft-style, with a vast bed almost dominating the space. I clocked the handcuffs on one of the bedposts almost immediately, and my heart skipped a beat. I’d wanted this, however little I now wanted to admit that to myself. I’d thirsted for sleaze, and now here it was. My throat was dry with apprehension, but at the same time my pussy was moistening.

‘More champagne!’ cried Tatiana, clapping her hands and then turning to look at me meaningfully. Her pupils were huge and I wondered if she was on something.

Then her claw closed in on one of my shoulders and she began steering me towards the bed. Puppet-like, I gave myself over to her. Suddenly I was without any will of my own, a plaything.
Let them do what they want to me
, I thought.
Let them do their worst
.

Tatiana sat on one end of the bed, pulling me down with her. For a moment she clasped my face in her hands, and I thought she was going to kiss me. It wouldn’t be so bad, I thought – she was an attractive woman. But instead she pushed me back on the bed and loosened the straps around my ankles then slipped my shoes off and let them fall to the floor. When that was done, she pushed the bottom of my dress up around my waist and busied herself with my panties. I lifted my arse to make it easier for her to pull them down.
Bring it on
, I thought. My cunt was dripping wet.

Tatiana sat back, throwing my panties to the floor. At either side of her appeared Morgan and Jeremy. She looked at them in turn, nodding to each, and as if by some prearranged ritual they both unzipped their trouser flies and started stripping. I watched, fingering my pussy, moaning at what I knew was to come. Then, as both men clambered onto the bed, I threw back my head and arched my body up to meet them, pulling the bodice top of my dress down so that my breasts overspilled the top.

Fingers played around my cunt now – I wasn’t sure whose, and I didn’t care. They could be Morgan’s or Jeremy’s, or even Tatiana’s – it didn’t matter, it felt so good. I raised one hand and bit my knuckles, unsurprised when I saw blood spring forth.

‘Fuck me,’ I heard myself pleading. ‘Fuck me
now
.’

For a while they tormented me, making me beg, and I thought again of how I’d turned the tables on Morgan the night before. Now it was very definitely not me who was in control. And in spite of everything, I kind of liked that.

Then suddenly they were up and upon me. Grabbing my upper legs, Morgan pulled me forwards on the bed so that my arse was on the edge of it, my legs dangling over. Then he knelt on the floor in front of me and brought the tip of his condomed cock towards me. As he entered me with a swift, hard thrust, I looked up into Tatiana’s face. She was smiling. It was a smile of victory, I thought – the smile of a woman whose plans are coming to fruition. She fixed me with her gaze as she began to take her own clothes off. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, and as Morgan began to pump in and out of me, hard and fast, as if taking his revenge on me for the night before, she and I continued to look at each other.

Then, as if from nowhere, Alice appeared behind Tatiana and, looping her arms around her, clutched her breasts. Tatiana smiled at me again, but this time there was no decoding her expression. Her head cocked to one side, she began playing indolently with her pussy as she continued to watch her husband fuck the living daylights out of me. Then, stepping forward a little, she brought her wet fingers to my mouth. I opened my lips obediently and drank in some sweet nectar.

As Tatiana and Alice climbed onto the bed beside me, Jeremy appeared by my head, his cock – also condomed – straining towards my face. I took it in my fist and then brought it into my mouth. The women beside me began moaning, and though I couldn’t see them, I guessed that Alice was going down on Tatiana and that before long the latter was going to come. That sparked off my own orgasm, and I started pitching about beneath Morgan. This in turn got him and Jeremy going, and as Morgan started writhing and grunting and then forced himself far inside me and, with a bellow, stopped moving, his friend reached his climax in my mouth.

Morgan pulled back and out and stood looking down on the scene. Tatiana was in the full throes of her own orgasm now, having obviously heard all three of us come. When it was over, she lay there, spent, beside me and Jeremy. Alice, the only one not to have climaxed, rose to her knees and, as the rest of us looked on, our own sexes numbed by pleasure, she spread her lips wide with one hand and brought herself off with the other. At the moment of rapture, she fell back onto the bed, and for a long time there was silence.

I think I may have dozed for a while, for when I next sat up I was alone on the bed. When I looked about me I saw that everyone was sitting out on the terrace, drinking champagne and smoking. Some of them were naked. I reached down between my legs. I was a little sore, but I was grateful for the fact of having had another orgasm that wasn’t self-induced. If nothing much else, Morgan was a pretty good fuck.

I lay back, thinking about Konrad, missing him and wondering what he was doing, but also trying to assess where our relationship was going. I thought I’d ring him in the morning, talk to him frankly about the fact that the sex just wasn’t doing it for me and suggesting that we try to address the problem.

As I lay back on the sheets, considering all this, I felt a presence by the bed, and looking up I saw Tatiana standing over me. That same half-smile played about her lips.

‘Enjoy that, Roch?’ she purred, and this time it was predatory.

I didn’t reply – I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly I was a little fearful at this hold she and Morgan seemed to be developing over me.

She stepped closer. She was naked still, but she had on a pair of patent black stilettos. I remembered her conservative pumps of earlier in the evening and wondered where she’d got these from.

She put one knee on the bed and leaned forwards over me. Her breath was sharp with champagne. She hissed at me.

‘I hope you realise that you’ve been a very very naughty girl and that I have to punish you?’

I swallowed hard. I’d been there before and enjoyed it, but that was with a lover and not a virtual stranger, and with a man, not a woman.

Taking me roughly by the shoulders, Tatiana rolled me over on the bed so that I was lying face down.

‘Stretch your arms forward,’ she said, and I remembered the manacles on the bedposts. Sure enough, I heard a click as they opened and then felt the cool metal on the flesh of my wrists as she encircled them. They clicked again, and I tugged and realised I was secured to the bed.

I looked over my shoulder. Tatiana had crossed the room to fetch something and was now heading back over to me. She held something in her hand, and as she came closer I realised it was a spanking paddle.

I held my breath as I felt her climb onto the bed and then straddle me. Then I exhaled as I felt the smooth leather caress me. For a while she was happy to just move it over my goosepimpled flesh, almost lovingly, it seemed. Occasionally she’d let out a purr of what sounded like contentment. But then suddenly she snapped.