Switch - a full length bdsm erotic novel (10 page)

I barely glanced at them, then I didn’t look at them at all. My master was there. Only a few feet away from me. I could hear his voice. He was greeting the shopkeeper; they were old friends. Then he was turning, towards me, but not looking at me. He walked past me and up the old wooden steps to the next floor.

The shopkeeper gave me a reassuring smile and said hello even though we’d greeted each other when I’d arrived mere minutes ago. I wondered how much he knew about my relationship with my lover. But I didn’t care. When my lover had reached the top of the stairs I took them two at a time after him.

He was going up the winding staircase to the third floor where the most academic and specialist texts were kept. I called out his name. He didn’t stop his ascent. I chased after him.

When I reached the top of the stairs, he grabbed the flesh of my upper arm and pushed my back against the nearest bookshelf. He pressed his body against me and I breathed in his scent. It was pure oxygen to my lungs.

‘Why did you choose here to meet?’ His lips were next to my ear, brushing against my skin as he spoke. ‘A place you and I have been many times. Did you want my friend to see you with another man, to report back to me? Did you want me to feel humiliated, jealous?’

He moved his head so he was looking into my eyes; the tips of our noses were kissing. His eyes were smiling, teasing.

‘It was a place I knew. I like the cake. I texted you myself to say I was meeting a man.’ I could only speak in short bursts of words. My heart hurt, my lungs hurt, my head hurt.

In old stories, people die of broken hearts. I felt I would die, expire in that moment, from too much love, too many expectations and hopes.

‘Are you happy?’ His hand went under the waistband of my jeans, beneath my knickers, and cupped the heat of my sex.

‘You know.’ My hands were by my side, my nails digging into my palms.

‘Do I?’ His thumb tweaked over my clit.

‘Yes,’ I sighed.

His hand pressed hard against me, his fingers curling up towards my cunt; a book tumbled from the shelf.

‘I know I shouldn’t be here.’ He bit my neck. ‘That I’m breaking my own rules, when you’re being such an obedient little slave and doing what I told you to, tasting the world, meeting new men.’

I put my arms around him and scratched my nails down his back. ‘I’ll always do whatever you tell me to. You’re my master.’

‘Then go and meet your internet slave.’ He stepped back from me.

I collapsed forward onto him. Then dropped to my knees, clinging onto his legs. ‘You’re here. I don’t want anyone else.’

There was a cough beside us. An elderly man stood at the top of the stairs. Neither of us moved or even acknowledged him and he retreated.

My hands, with their own will, moved to my lover’s crotch. One squeezed his balls through his trousers and the other worked at his fly.

‘That’s not fair,’ he said.

Maybe it wasn’t. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t stop me as I found the beautiful familiarity of his erection and took him into my mouth. He gripped my hair and held onto my right shoulder and he fucked me in the way I’d been dreaming of being fucked since this whole thing started.

His cock hit the back of my mouth again and again. Relentless. Powerful. I emitted a wail of pleasure. His fingers dug deeper into my skin; he pulled harder on my hair. The taste of him was manna on my tongue and I was starving. I sucked on him with as much force as he thrust into me. I let my teeth drag along his length. My nails pinched into his balls with all the lust and pain and love that made life agony without him.

‘Hellcat.’ Between us, that word was comfort and endearment.

I stared up at him as his cock pounded into me; he gazed down at me. I recognised the look in his eyes and pleasure flowed through me. He yanked my head backwards and his hot spunk shot over my face, over my cheeks, lips, nose, chin. It dripped onto my top and jeans.

We remained looking at each other; he didn’t release or soften his grip on me. I flicked my tongue out and claimed the come glistening on the end of his cock.

This was us. In the empty academic floor of a second-hand bookshop, the air rich with the scent of his sex and musty books, me on my knees, my jaw aching, the world close around us.

He smiled at me, a slow, sad smile which made my limbs feel heavy.

‘This shouldn’t have happened.’ He wiped my face on his shirt, with a tenderness that I obtained hope from even though I knew what he was about to say. ‘We’re still on a separation. This was a weakness. A mistake.’

I licked the whole of his cock, taking him in my mouth a final time before I placed him back within the refines of his trousers.

‘Is that how you view me, as a weakness, a mistake?’ I remained on my knees before him.

‘No.’ He stroked my hair where a moment earlier he’d been pulling it. ‘No.’

I looked away from him. I blinked, pretending there weren’t tears stinging my eyes. ‘Where does this leave us? What do you want me to do?’

‘This slave you met on the internet, is he the only man you’ve chosen to meet?’

‘I had sex with the guy from work.’

‘You told me. But only the once?’

‘Yes. Only once.’

‘There must have been something about this slave that appealed to you. Play it out. See what happens.’ He put his hand out and raised me back into a standing position.

I pressed against his body, savouring his warmth, his scent, before stepping away. ‘Sometimes I think I’m on the edge of understanding this. Mostly I try not to think about it and just wait for it to end and you to call me back into your bed.’

‘Go and see your man.’

My foot was on the top stair before something struck me, something I somehow hadn’t thought about before, hadn’t let myself think about before.

I looked over my shoulder. He’d already picked up a book and was studying its frontispiece. ‘What about you? Are you meeting other people? Checking whether there is anyone else better out there before you decide whether you want to propose to me or not?’

‘Lots of relationships end, lots of people get divorced, men and women both have affairs.’

What the hell did that mean?

I gave him a final look, engraving his image onto my mind, not knowing how long this moment would have to last me. Then I made myself, step by step, walk away from the man I loved.

I stopped at the second floor, looking down over the balcony. There were a few people, maybe a dozen, all singletons, mingling with the books rather than each other. I couldn’t see the tea shop at the back from my position, but there would be more people in there.

I knew the slave immediately. I did recognise him from the photo and he was holding a pink carnation, his hand gripped around the stem, the petals not more than an inch above his thumb. He was burdened down with something else: tucked under his arm was a packet wrapped in silver, shiny paper reflecting the little sunlight that was allowed to creep in amongst the old books. His clothes were smart casual; I wondered if he’d spent more time putting his outfit together than I had. There was nothing surprising about his appearance, except maybe how neatly he matched my expectations, how closely he resembled the picture he’d used on the site.

I looked at the time on my mobile. It was nearly three o’clock; was it two I had set for our meeting? I noticed there were ten more texts from Slave, I deleted them without reading any.

He glanced around, furtively. There were three women that I could see. None looked like a potential mistress, but then neither did I, with my jeans and no make-up and scrappy ponytail and the smell of a man’s spunk clinging to me.

I considered which one the slave might favour as being most likely to spend her nights on sex sites looking for an easy fuck. They weren’t Wickedgirl; they carried around the quiet, intent air of intelligent people going about their business, in this case browsing books, without any desire for social interruption.

I fantasised that I was them and they were me. In my mind their seeming primness was tossed aside like so many of the other façades and masks that people wear. They lifted their long, flowery skirts, pulled down their beige corduroys, and bared pale buttocks for punishment. I imagined the shopkeeper taking his precious books and spanking the women’s arses, leaving perfect red lines with the hard edges of the covers.

Did the slave see the same things I did as he cautiously looked at them? He was too obviously nervous and not wanting them to notice his attention. But no one did notice him; this was a place where people wanted their own thoughts and their own company.

There was only him looking at them. And me looking at him. Him waiting for me. Me waiting for my master. It was a strange sense of being between two relationships. As soon as I saw my lover I knew I had to follow him. I didn’t even know. It was instinct, like breathing, like staying balanced when we move; a deep calculation and complex process the body works out without the conscious mind ever being involved.

With this slave, I could watch him, I could go down to him, I could text him and tell him to drive home.

Perhaps there was some connection between us like he’d suggested: as I was thinking about texting him, the slave got his phone out and stared at it as if he was willing it to ring. He glanced hopefully around the shop. In that instant there was something so vulnerable and wistful about him that I did almost go to him. Almost. I couldn’t meet a new person right now. I couldn’t meet any person right now. I looked up at the ceiling and thought of my lover on the floor above. All the times he’d tied me up and left me alone, I should have been used to having him out of my sight and not knowing what he was doing. But of course, I wasn’t.

Fifteen minutes later, my lover hadn’t descended to see me and the slave was still sidling up to women and then quickly moving away below me.

I sent Slave a text.

Go to your car and wait.

I do not know honestly if the curtness was for his benefit or mine. Watching his mannerisms, knowing the sexual role he preferred, the fact he’d waited so long for Wickedgirl to appear, I felt I understood him. Or I understood one part of him anyway, the part that was like me. He wanted orders, simple commands that he could respond to.

And I didn’t want to be so cruel as to stand someone up, but I couldn’t meet a stranger and be funny and witty and charming and pretty and all the other amazing things you’re supposed to be when you invite a man to drive 50 miles to see you. Neither did I want to start our face-to-face relationship by giving him the most private parts of my life, nor could I summon the energy to create a lie that wouldn’t be insulting and hurtful in its obvious falseness.

I was being direct, in any other situation rude, for his benefit, but it suited me too. The slave paused. Appearing to read the text several times, he gazed around the lower floor of the shop one last time and left.

I followed shortly after him, deciding to go for a smiling pretence at normality – whatever that was – with the shopkeeper. Outside, I walked down the street texting a short message to my lover.

I can taste you on my tongue. Your little slut is hungry for more. But you’re safe. Your temptation has left the building.

At home I gave my flat a cursory clean, showered, washed my hair, put on a light layer of make-up, touched up my nails and phoned Slave.

‘Hello, mistress.’ His voice was uncertain.

‘Are you in your car?’

‘Yes, mistress. It’s quite hot.’

‘I didn’t ask you for a weather report.’

‘Sorry, mistress. I was just saying …’

‘Don’t say. Listen. Go to a pub called The Fallen Angel. Order a glass of tap water for yourself and a G and T for me.’

‘Yes, mistress. May I ask where this pub is?’

‘I’m not your sat-nav.’ I put the phone down on him feeling that I had done quite well.

True, I had told a stranger to the town to find a small pub off the main streets on his own, but I sensed that he liked the authority and it saved me the hassle of having to work out directions.

I applied more make-up, a spray of perfume, and set out for the second time that day. At least today was giving me a break from my flat and work if nothing else.

He was sitting at a corner table with two full glasses in front of him. I had to be impressed he’d found a table to himself when the pub was filled with students, their presence explained by posters for a poetry slam pinned over the walls. An unlucky choice of place on my part, but it would be too much to send him another text and ask him to move again. Too much at this stage, but I was sensing a potential in him for obedience that could retain my interest until my lover decided this game was over.

I sauntered over, playing a lets-pretend game of being an incredibly desirable princess, and sat down on the chair opposite him.

He raised his eyes. ‘Mistress?’ The word a nervous whisper.

‘Don’t look at me.’

He lowered his gaze to a warped cardboard coaster on the table. ‘Yes. Mistress?’ Still the uncertainty, the question in his voice.

I smiled, wondering if he had so much experience of unknown women approaching him in public places and ordering him not to look at them that he could doubt who I was.

‘Have you had a nice day, slave?’

‘Um, yes. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you but I thought you might be mucking me around.’

‘A mistress does not
muck around
.’ I had no real idea what a mistress did or didn’t do aside from the common image of leather and whips. I thought of my master, I thought of his quiet control. I stroked my hand over my shoulder where he’d held me mere hours earlier. I hoped I was bruised; I wished his fingerprints were tattooed into my flesh.

‘Sorry. I mean, I thought after the bookshop you might not be meeting me. I understand perfectly that you might change your mind.’ The slave’s eyes rose; a natural habit rather than deliberate disobedience. I met his gaze with a warning look and he immediately went back to staring at the table.

‘Why didn’t you go upstairs in the bookshop?’

Again his gaze lifted, this time in surprise. I slammed the palm of my hand down on the table. A few students looked over, but my version of a mistress did not care what other people saw or thought.