Bound by Lust (8 page)

This is where we first met. It wasn't rush hour then, it was midmorning on a weekday, so the people passing weren't in such a hurry—for the most part shoppers and tourists. I had been told to wait under the clock. I wasn't dressed to draw attention that day, but I knew—and he knew—that underneath the demure polka-dot dress I was wearing some of Agent Provocateur's flimsiest, filthiest merchandise.

I clamped my thighs together, rubbing the suspenders so that the snaps pressed into my skin. Was this a mistake? What would happen? Would he even turn up?

 

I may be a little late. Don't go. Wait under the clock for me.

That had been his last text message, a quarter of an hour before my train had pulled into the station. I had stood there for half an hour, huffing and clicking my tongue, looking around at all the different shops and cafés that lined the vast space, boredom tempting me into a spot of people-watching.
God, this basque is pinching me.
Beautiful people at the coffee shop, slouchy teenagers at the burger bar, amazing outfits and outlandish piercings—at least he had chosen an interesting place for me to stand doing nothing for all this time. A man at a table outside Costa Coffee folded his newspaper and sat sipping, looking at his watch now and then.

A young man, a tourist, walked up to me and asked me if I knew how to get to Hampton Court Palace.

I shrugged, shook my head.

He looked as if he wanted to say something else and hung around for a moment, so I turned my face away. He half-laughed, embarrassed, and trudged off.

I thought about leaving. The man from Costa Coffee stood up and I realized that it was him, just clean shaven instead of the bearded sophisticate in the photograph.

My legs almost gave way beneath me, and I leaned back against the pillar for support, watching him approach, unsure of what to do with my facial features.

“You made me wait,” I accused. “You were there all along.”

“I wanted to see if you would wait. You did.”

He held out a hand.

“Let's go.”

“I'm…not into mind games.” The words stumbled. I wanted to be assertive, but his presence in my real physical space overwhelmed me too much.

“Mind games? That wasn't a mind game. That was a test. You passed. Even if you'd failed, it wouldn't have mattered. I just wanted to know what you would do. Besides, it's always interesting to watch people who don't know you're there.”

 

His words come back to me now, and the nape of my neck prickles. I wonder if he is watching me from some hidden spot. He is not at Costa Coffee; in his place a harassed woman with a toddler, cake crumbs everywhere. If I search among and between the endless flood of commuters, they will think I'm looking at them, and look back. I work on an impenetrable glaze for my eyes and concentrate on the feeling of erotic compression the rubber gives me, of being tightly packaged, wrapped up with a dog-leash bow on top. Every curve and bump is cartoonishly emphasized, and of course I can't wear anything underneath. The stale station air flows up my micro-miniskirt and over my bare pussy. It's damp. I can feel sticky dew at the tops of my thighs, something to do with all the eyes on me, every man in the station looking sideways and filing the sight away for
leisurely contemplation on the train home. I know what they're thinking. I'm dressed to be fucked. I'm collared and owned. If only I was theirs…could I be theirs?

I swallow and clench my pelvic floor, not wanting to add the scent of my arousal to the hurly-burly of mingling aromas. I can't see the clock, but ten minutes must have passed by now. Twenty to six. How much longer?

 

I didn't know what to expect on that first day. Would he whisk me straightaway to some hotel, undress me and use me in every way possible? No. He took me to an exhibition at the National Gallery, then a lunchtime concert at St. Martin in the Fields. I was touched. I sensed, beneath the suavity and sureness, a vulnerability. It was important to him that I recognized his humanity as well as his sexuality.
I might want to hurt you and whip you and fuck your arse, but look, I love Haydn and Millais. I'm more than that man who makes monstrous suggestions to you via IM.

It wasn't until he had poured tea and filled my plate with petits fours—I'd never seen a petit four before—at the Ritz that the subject of sex reared its ugly, lovely, scary, brutal, sweet, confusing face.

“What are you wearing underneath that pretty dress?”

I stared down at the snow-white linen, thankful for the loud conversation the elderly American women at the next table were enjoying.

“Don't be shy, Liv. I've asked you a direct question. I expect a direct answer.”

“The things you said.”

“The things I said? Do they have names?”

I couldn't get used to him without the beard. I made my eyes climb up the ridge of his nose, seeking his crinkled brown-green
gaze, then lowered them again before he could…what? Read my thoughts?

“Basque,” I whispered. “Suspenders. Stockings.”

“Anything else?”

“Knickers.”

“Describe them.”

“Floral. Lacy.”

“And…?”

“Not a thong. Boy shorts.”

“I prefer that style anyway. I'd like to see them.”

“Oh…” I looked around, then looked at the cakes on my plate, wondering if I was about to be whisked off to a room upstairs. Would we be allowed to take the glass of champagne?

“Not here.” He laughed. “At least, not today. Finish your tea and let's go.”

In Green Park, up against a tree, watching the open-topped tour buses rumble up and down Piccadilly, I lifted my skirt for him.

He made me turn around, giving my bottom a light but resounding smack before allowing me to drop the hem again.

“Are you wet?”

“Yes.”

“Liv, do you want to…as the young people say…get a room?”

“Yes.”

 

Ten to six. He isn't in Tie Rack, though he has been known to use their products as bondage accessories. A man in a suit stops dead when he sees me and stares at me with disarming frankness.

He cranes his neck toward the departures board, assessing perhaps whether he has time to stop and gawp before rushing for the suburbs. Then he walks over to me.

I smarten up my posture, standing to attention.

Speak to nobody
.

“Are you waiting for someone?”

I nod, avoiding his eye.

“That's some outfit you're wearing. Is it for his benefit? The boyfriend?”

I swallow. This man is standing quite close now. When he picks up the leash and trails it across his palm, I cannot quite hide my flinch.

“Does he walk you around on all fours?”

I shut my eyes for a second or two. When I open them, he is still there. He is good-looking, his voice is gentle, but his words aren't.

“Well? I asked you a question, Liv. Does Reuben walk you around on all fours?”

He laughs again, enchanted, as my mouth drops open. Reuben's words come back to me…
a surprise for your anniversary…something we've discussed before…something very special….

“He's waiting for us. Come on.”

Is this a trick? A test? Reuben said I was to wait for him, not the other way around. He said I was not to move until he arrived.

I catch the stranger's lustful eye for a moment and shake my head.

“Oh, what a good girl,” he coos, stroking me under the chin before trying to curl a finger inside my collar. “All the same, I'll wait here with you.” His hand is heavy against my hip, rubbing the latex. He steps up close to me, pressing his pelvis in its tailored trousers into my rubbery stomach and covers my mouth with his. Hot breath surges between my lips as the stranger's kiss gathers steam. His tongue flickers inside me, darting about,
finding my hidden recesses. I keep my hands behind my back and submit to it, the reality of my surrender to this unknown man stirring me into a swoon of lust.

He finds my bottom, snug in its rubber case, an emphasized curve that he follows to its end. He grunts into my throat, then breaks the kiss.

“I bet this makes a lovely sound when he spanks you.”

He pats it lightly, as if contemplating finding out for himself. My legs dissolve.

“Never mind. Perhaps he'll show me…if you decide that's what you want.”

I look up sharply.

Behind his shoulder, I see Reuben.

“You've met Luke, I see.”

“She didn't introduce herself,” grins the stranger. “I hope I got the right girl.”

“You got the right girl.” Reuben pulls me close and kisses me passionately while the station loudspeaker echoes around and above the dull roar of the rush hour. “Tell me what you're thinking, Liv. I never know what you're thinking.”

This is true. He used to be just as tight knit, but I unpicked his stitches, one by one, and now I can recite him like the alphabet. He has never pulled off the same trick with me.

“I'm thinking how much I love you.”

“Now I have a question for you. You can leave here with me, or with Luke, or with both of us. Or, indeed, alone. Which shall it be?”

I unclasp my hands, stretch out my aching arms, one to each man.

I sit between them on the tube, while Luke fidgets with my leash, tugging it sometimes so that my neck inclines toward him.

They escort me off at Piccadilly Circus and cross with me
to the statue of Eros, beneath which they take turns to kiss and fondle me while the European students and teenage runaways look on, enthralled.

After cocktails at the Criterion, we head into Soho, no longer standing out so much. They take me into a seedy hotel and make a meal of booking a room, making sure that the receptionist knows exactly what we are there for.

“You didn't forget the floggers, did you?” Reuben asks languidly of Luke as we are led up creaky stairs to a stifling room.

“Enjoy your stay,” says the porter, poker faced.

“Oh, we will.” Reuben smiles and hands him a folded banknote.

My anniversary gifts are the red stripes laid across my bottom and thighs, the two sets of DNA imprinted on my cunt and my arsehole, the bite marks on my breasts and neck, the ache in every muscle. Shakily taped recordings of our debauchery will be my memento, along with the rope burns on my wrists and ankles. Perhaps we will put them on KinkTube one day.

Lying between and beneath them in the cigarette-smelling sheets, I contemplate the journey so far. That polka-dotted girl would not have done this, but that polka-dotted girl didn't love him yet, as she does now.

“How long would you have waited?” asks Reuben, yawning. “Under that clock.”

Until darkness fell. Until the last train. Until the cleaners swept their wide brooms across the pocked concourse. Until my legs gave way. Until my latex perished. Until my wrists seized up.

“Until you came.”

 

 

 

 

 

F
ifty feet of rope, so soft it could be skin, uncoiling like a sensuous lover. I've had this rope for a very long time; you, I've only had for eight weeks. You're naked and waiting, standing perfectly still. I guess it's time to begin.

 

I love how strong your neck is. It was one of the first things I noticed about you, that, and the fact that your Adam's apple bobbed when you were nervous, a giveaway that I've come to be intimately acquainted with, though I'm not even sure you're aware of it.

You were trying so hard to be calm and collected that first night, pretending to be something other than what you were, a nervous boy with fantasies.

Your hands reach up out of reflex now, holding the rope in place gently while I begin to fashion your harness.

“You understand what the arrangement is to be, Joshua?” I had asked, face impassive, although inside a hungry curiosity was already awakening, stretching wide and reaching out, taking in your young lean frame, strong, but not yet over-muscled, your wide shoulders and long legs, and your carefully disheveled hair. I imagined already peeling back your layers, the clothes from your body, your ego, your pride, until I reached the meat of you.