‘It’s called Kinky Cupcake, but you can’t just go in. You have to know the password. It’s members only.’
‘How you get to be a member?’
‘You make friends with another member. I’ll be your friend if you like.’
‘I will like that a lot.’ His voice is all low and seductive, bloody man-whore that he is.
She giggles. ‘OK, tell the doorman that Trixietots sent you. The password is Lacoste.’
‘Trixietots. Lacoste. Right.’
‘Have fun. Maybe I’ll see you in there sometime. I really ought to go now, or Mr Strict will wonder where I am. And I don’t want to make him angry, believe me.’
She giggles again, flutters her eyelashes and flees.
‘Does this happen to you a lot?’ I ask, curling my lip. ‘Random women throwing themselves at you?’
‘You are jealous?’
‘No! But you love it, don’t you? You’re a man-whore.’
‘Man-whore? A gigolo? I could do that. I am very good at the sex.’
I give up. This man’s relationship with shame is utterly opposite to my own.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ he urges and drains his vodka.
‘Go?’
‘Yes, to this place, of course. Kinky Cupcake. You want to see inside, don’t you?’
Of course I do. Of course.
But now? And with him?
‘They won’t let us in. Or they might let you in, but probably not me. You’re the one old Trixietots there was interested in.’
‘Stop make excuses. What are you afraid of?’
‘I’m not afraid.’
‘Yes you are. I know why you’re afraid. You may have to be honest about your, what was it, your kinks. You’re scared of your kinks, right?’
‘Wrong.’
He shakes his head, giving me a look of disapproval that makes me see exactly how good he’d be as a stern teacher type. Very good. Blinding.
My legs buckle. Suddenly I just want him so badly I could …
‘You want this,’ he says, bending down to speak the words into my ear. ‘Here is your chance to get what you want. Take it.’
‘Don’t leave me in there,’ I whisper. ‘Stay with me.’
‘I’ll stay with you, I promise.’
He takes my hand and walks with me back across the estate and into the street where I work. The office lights are all out now, but it’s too late to panic about the air-freshener campaign. I have a new campaign on my mind.
I hold on tight as he knocks on that oft-regarded door.
It opens a fraction.
‘Password,’ demands a disembodied voice.
‘Lacoste,’ says Dimitri.
The door opens.
‘Sign the members’ book,’ says a black-suited man, but as he looks at us he frowns. ‘Are you new?’
‘Trixietots recommended us,’ I tell him.
‘Both of you?’
I nod, hoping upon hope that this will be accepted.
‘Which of you is the dom and which the sub?’
I blink, understanding neither of these terms.
‘Or are you switches?’
Switches?
‘She likes for me to whip her,’ says Dimitri helpfully, and I kick him rather violently in the ankle, though he seems not to register. ‘Don’t you, Rosie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Tell them,’ he insists. ‘Say the words.’
Oh God, you bastard!
The doorman laughs. ‘I get the picture.’ He hands a blue badge to Dimitri. ‘You’re the dom.’ My badge is red. ‘You’re the sub. Now hold on there a minute and I’ll call up Mal and O. They’re the owners – they’ll want to vet you.’
‘Vet us?’
He nods, the phone already at his ear while he waits for the other end to pick up. ‘Yeah, Mal, I’ve got a couple of newbies here. You got a minute to come and do the necessary? Great. I’ll show them up.’
We follow him up some narrow stairs and through a door that leads to a little waiting room. It would almost be like a dentist’s waiting room, if the magazines didn’t feature cover models in latex and the pictures on the wall were of rotting teeth instead of people tied up with their rude bits on show. The pot plants and the water cooler give an incongruous everyday feel to what I am sure will not be an everyday experience.
‘They won’t be a moment,’ says the doorman. ‘I’ll get back downstairs now, if you don’t mind. Had a bit of an incident earlier with vanillas trying to spy on us – better make sure everything’s clear.’
Once he is gone, I turn to Dimitri. ‘Vanillas? I feel like I’m learning a whole new vocabulary here.’
He squeezes my hand. ‘Think of me. I am learning English too.’
‘I feel a bit nervous. What are they going to do? What’s this vetting?’
He puts an arm around my shoulder. God, it feels nice. I would be happy just to sit there like that for the rest of the evening.
‘Don’t worry. It’s an adventure. Enjoy it.’
That seems to be his philosophy of life, I muse. I snuggle into his side and he rubs his fingers soothingly up and down my upper arm. He smells of so many things – cigarette smoke, wood smoke, mint, something herbal a bit like a joss stick. I breathe him in, inhaling intoxication.
The spell is broken when a door beyond the waiting room opens and a man dressed up as a vampire beckons us in.
I look askance at Dimitri, but he appears to be qualm-free, striding into the office with that snake-hipped swagger I had admired earlier.
Sitting behind a desk is a woman in a very smart 1940s-style skirt suit and a pillbox hat with a veil.
‘Good evening,’ says the vampire, putting out a hand for us to shake. ‘I’m Mal, and this is O. We’re the people behind Kinky Cupcake – we own the lot of you.’ He laughs. ‘You’re new here, I gather, so we need to run through a few things with you. Nothing to worry about – we just have to make sure all new members are genuine deviants, if you like. It’d be a shame if a journalist or somebody unfriendly to our interests slipped through the net and ruined what we’ve got here, don’t you think?’
‘Sure.’ Dimitri nods vigorously. I offer a weak smile.
‘So I’m going to run through the dos and don’ts of the club with you, and then I just need a little demonstration of your dynamic, if you don’t mind. I gather you, sir, are the dom and this lovely lady is your sub, so perhaps you could show us how you like to spank her, or a bit of bondage maybe …’
What? My mouth falls open and I stare at Dimitri, aghast.
‘Ah, don’t be shy now,’ pipes up O in a sexy husky voice. ‘We’ve all seen it a thousand times. You’ll see me whipped by every dom in the place before too long. But I know the first time in front of other people is hard, so please be aware that I sympathise. I envy you too. Gosh, that feeling of being on the edge of a precipice – the exhilaration. I’d give anything to relive that, you lucky thing.’
‘If you’re really not ready, I can get him to spank O instead,’ offers Mal, but I shake my head.
No. If he touches any woman’s bottom, it will be mine.
‘No, no,’ I croak. ‘It’s fine. I’ll do it.’
I’ll do it.
Chapter Two
The first rule of kink club, apparently, is that you don’t talk about kink club. There are other rules too, centring on respect and consent – basic good manners, I guess. You don’t strip people naked and whip them unless they want you to. You take turns. You play nicely.
I find myself watching Mal’s lips as he enunciates. He has blue lipstick on and his false vampire teeth are fascinating to follow. Perhaps they aren’t even false. Perhaps he’s had them filed that way.
I come to with a slight jerk of the neck when O asks us a direct question. What do we do for a living?
‘I’m in advertising,’ I tell her.
‘Oh.’ Not impressed, I gather. ‘And you, Dimitri?’
‘I have plan to be profession
al dominant person.’
‘You’ve come here looking for work?’ She is taken aback. ‘Well, we do have some members who work on the scene. I’m sure you’d benefit from meeting them. It’s funny, but you really don’t look or dress like the stereotype. I like that though.’
‘I have no leather pants,’ says Dimitri regretfully. ‘Too expensive. But I have other job too. I work in Russia as an actor. I want to improve my English, get into the movies, you know.’
Mal and O are obviously transfixed by this odd foreign fish. I must admit, I’m pretty hooked myself. Is he approaching this ‘dom’ thing as method-acting practice, or is it a genuine predilection? I rather hope I will get to find out.
‘How long have you two been playing together?’ asks Mal suddenly, and I dry up. We are going to be found out and kicked down the stairs by his rather sexy steel-capped boots. Or O’s gorgeous pointy stilettos. Either way.
But Dimitri saves the ball, apparently having presence of mind among his other skills. ‘Not long. Maybe six weeks,’ he says. ‘We are learning. She don’t have kinky lover before, but I do. Lots of kinky lovers for me.’
‘What a wonderful time you will have here,’ says O with a rather flirtatious smile. She fancies him! ‘I think you’re going to be valuable additions to our merry little band.’
‘And now,’ says Mal, leaning back to perch on his vast desk, ‘for your initiation. What do you want to show us?’
Dimitri looks down at me, awaiting my pleasure.
‘Um.’ I can’t hedge, I have to look confident, as if this is something I do all the time. ‘Maybe just a little spanking.’
‘Just a little one?’ He curls his lip and winks at me. I have to catch my breath. ‘OK.’ He takes off his battered leather jacket to reveal heavily tattooed arms. I try not to look too surprised at the colourful display but it’s hard not to stare.
‘Gorgeous work,’ purrs O. ‘I presume you had these done in Russia?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he says, throwing the jacket into the corner of the room with a fluid motion of his sinewy arm. ‘Can I get a chair, please?’
Mal obliges, pushing a plain wooden chair into the centre of the room.
‘Do you need any implements?’ he asks politely, then, registering Dimitri’s frown, he explains, ‘Straps, whips, you know.’
I put my hand on Dimitri’s forearm and grip it fearfully.
‘Oh, uh-huh. Well, maybe tonight Rosie is a little shy so I just use my hand, right? That’s OK?’
‘That’s fine,’ says O. ‘I love the intimacy of an old-fashioned hand spanking.’
Intimacy. I look down at what I’m wearing. A thick tweedy skirt for the autumn weather, diamond-patterned opaque tights over cotton boy shorts. Kinky it ain’t, unless you hanker after that librarian look. Will I have to … bare anything?
I can leave. I can just walk away. No consequences, no risks. I know what this place is now; my curiosity is sated.
Except it isn’t. In its place are a dozen new curiosities about Dimitri, about S&M, about how it could feel, how it could be to have fantasies made flesh.
I watch him take his place on the chair, then he sweeps his hand in a broad gesture that starts out pointing at me and ends up slapping his thigh.
It’s unequivocal enough, and so terribly sexy my cotton boy shorts flood. I shuffle over and stand by his knees, wondering if there’s a graceful way to put myself across them.
His face is set and intense. He takes my arm and manoeuvres me down until my stomach presses against his strong thighs and my view is of the floor. I’m going to have to keep my eyes shut for this, I think, though I’d love to see what we look like from a third person’s perspective. Perhaps Mal or O will take a photograph.
‘OK, OK,’ he mutters, quite gently, positioning my legs so that they are straight, tiptoes touching the floor, then he elevates his thighs a little, having an unmistakable knock-on effect on my bottom, and rubs my spine.
‘This is comfortable for you?’ he whispers and I nod. Actually, it really is. It feels so safe and held – it’s almost as if I’ve come to him for protection rather than punishment.
The word ‘punishment’ starts my juices flowing again. My heart thunders. I’m really doing this, really putting myself across a strange man’s lap to get spanked in front of witnesses. My breath hitches.
He puts his hand on my thigh, just below my skirt hem, and traces the diamond pattern with an idle finger.
‘You know, Rosie, I can’t have this skirt this way. It’s too thick. I push it up, right?’
Oh God. I’m quivering so much from the way his finger strokes the back of my thighs that I can’t speak. I just lie there while he pushes the heavy tweed up and up, over the curve of my bum, taking it unbearably slowly until I feel his palm flat on my buttocks, protected only by tights and knickers now.
‘And these things,’ he says, moving his palm in a circular motion over the target area while I try really, really hard not to buck and press my groin into his leg. ‘What you call them? Hoses?’
‘Tights,’ I gasp with a giggle.
‘Too tights,’ he quips, and before my brain catches up with his fingers I am feeling cool air on bare flesh.
The boy shorts are cut high and a good portion of my bottom swells out from beneath their edges – more, really, than they cover. I kick out in panic, but it’s hard to kick when your knees are hobbled by tights and Dimitri places a cautionary hand on the scoops of flesh he has just exposed. My rebellious nerves are quelled at once by the caress of his warm palm, moulding itself to my natural curves. It feels ridiculously good.
‘OK, Rosie?’ he whispers, leaning down so that only I can hear him for a moment.
‘I didn’t know you were going to do that.’
‘No, me either. It seems right.’
‘Don’t take my knickers down or I’ll kill you.’
‘OK. Not tonight.’
He unwinds his spine and I feel him tensing, preparing. I picture him putting his shoulders back, flexing his muscular forearms. Speaking of muscular forearms, how hard is this going to be? How much is it going to hurt?
A flash of fear plunges to my stomach as I hear him – courtesy of his multitude of bangly things – raise his hand.
‘You have anything to say to me before I start?’
His voice has changed. It’s gruff and menacing. My insides coil, my clit fattens.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. What the hell I’m sorry for, I don’t know. I’ve been transported to another headspace.
‘Who you are apologise to? To me?’
‘Uh, yeah.’ I catch my breath, realising what he means. ‘Oh, sorry, sir.’
‘You must learn,’ he says. ‘This is not respectful. I teach you respectful.’
I teach you English grammar. What would happen if I said it? I daren’t imagine.
The speculation flies from my mind at the first sharp contact of his hand with my arse. It’s loud and shocking and I actually laugh, as if I can’t distinguish slap from tickle.
‘What?’ He pantomimes horror. ‘You are laughing at me? I don’t stand it. She is nervous.’ This last presumably addressed to our audience, who chuckle understandingly. ‘I get serious.’
His hand falls again, hard enough to sting, not so hard as to really hurt. I get the sense that he is holding a lot back, but what he gives is plenty. The surreality of the situation masks some of the pain – a big part of my head is engaged in establishing the fact that this is happening at all, and then trying to work out whether it’s good or bad. I’m slightly detached from it, trying to capture each sensation individually rather than letting the experience take me over.
The sound of it is so satisfying, and the pain is little more than discomfort. I focus on the humiliation of my position. That’s the element I want to sink into, to inhabit and explore from every angle. That’s what’s going to get me off tonight, after all this is done and I’m back in my bed. Think of where I am, think of what’s happening
to me. It’s happening to me! It can’t be real. Yes, it’s real, I thought we’d established that.
These thoughts in a loop prevent me from getting into the mindset I thought I’d be in if and when I ever got spanked by an attractive man. I need to switch off and, as if he knows this, Dimitri suddenly ups the ante, smacking harder, lower, on the vulnerable area around the tops of my thighs, and all my thoughts are instantly diverted to the corridor marked ‘Ouch’.
No room for over thinking now. Perhaps this is the antidote I have always needed. I begin to squirm and jolt. I reach back and claw at his leg, my tiny fake squeals graduating into proper yelps.
‘You know I am serious,’ he growls, lighting up the crease underneath the curve of my arse. ‘I will make you to obey me.’
‘I will, sir,’ I moan, kicking pathetically. How long is this going to go on for? I curl my fingers up in the rough denim of his jeans and cling.
He speeds up and my yelps turn into a continuous keen, the peppery sting becomes a burn, searing itself tissue deep. I can’t take much more – except I probably could, if I knew how many more, how much longer. It’s the uncertainty, the unpredictability that is distressing me.
‘Please, sir,’ I cry, and he holds fire.
‘Yes?’
‘Are you nearly finished?’
‘Are you nearly sorry?’
‘Yes, sir. Very, very nearly sorry.’
‘OK. Then I am nearly finished.’
I trust him, a realisation that knocks me for six. The man is a complete stranger who has somehow lured me into a fetish club so he can perform humiliating acts on me in front of other strangers, but I trust him. Either I’m profoundly stupid or I’m on to something with this guy.
My fingers unclench and I drop my legs again. I offer my heated arse to him to treat as he sees fit. I know he won’t give more than I can take. I am safe with him.
My instincts prove correct. He finishes with a volley of sweet, light slaps, the stinging icing on the burning cake, then he rests one hand on the sore area and rubs my back with the other.
‘You learn your lesson, right?’ he says.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘OK. You can get up.’
Kinky Page 2
