Kinky

by Justine Elyot

I can’t face Mal and O, and I turn away from them as soon as I am up, hiking up the tights and wrenching down the skirt with immoderate haste.

  ‘Nicely done,’ says Mal. ‘She needs a bit of practice. She’s a bit skittish.’

  ‘Inexperienced,’ says O, and there’s a weight of worldly knowledge in her tone. ‘She just needs to be brought on a bit. You seem well capable of the task. Anyway, welcome to Kinky Cupcake. We’re very happy to have you.’

  Dimitri rises from his chair and I watch him, from the corner of my eye, stride over to Mal and shake his hand with too much vigour for a man who has been using that arm to whack my behind for the last five minutes.

  ‘Take a look around the place,’ says Mal. ‘You’ll get a lot out of being a member, I’m sure. Anything you want to know, any ideas you have for making tweaks or improvements – we’re always here. Just pop into the office. Cheers.’

  ‘Rosie.’ Dimitri’s voice is no less stern than it was while I was over his knee. I almost jump to attention, wheeling around to face him with my eyes wide. ‘This is good manners? Say thank you to our hosts.’

  I mutter thank yous without catching their eyes and follow Dimitri back out to the landing as fast as my feet will shuffle.

  He takes my hand and leads me through another door, into a capacious space that could very easily be mistaken for a regular café or bar. Blond wood floor, high spot lit ceilings, a long maple counter with large glass domes housing pretty pyramids of cupcakes and Jenga-structures of flapjacks – it’s like a giant branch of Prêt.

  There are differences, of course. Prêt wouldn’t have quite the same prints on the walls, for instance, nor would the clientele be quite so skewed towards the rubber clad. All the same, I feel my headspace veer from submissive to ‘normal’ again as I breathe in the aroma of coffee.

  ‘I’ll get us a coffee,’ I tell Dimitri. ‘Do you want a cupcake? Do you suppose the cupcakes are actually kinky?’ Reaching the counter, I frown down at the frosting of the cakes in the nearest display case. Black and red liquorice whips decorate it, formed into a very elaborate flogger design. ‘Wow, that’s so cool. They are.’

  The handsome barista in a black silk shirt, leather pants and Zorro mask completes our order with a flourish and we take ourselves to a cream sofa in the corner, from which all things are visible.

  ‘This is nice,’ I say vaguely, sipping at my coffee and watching gorgeous exotically dressed people flit to and fro.

  ‘You can sit OK?’ Dimitri puts a hand on my spine, fingers crawling down towards my coccyx.

  I flush with recollection, not wanting to talk about it. ‘Fine. This sofa’s very soft.’

  ‘I don’t hurt you too much?’

  ‘No, no. It’s cool.’

  ‘Cool?’ He tilts my chin up with a lone finger and makes my head swivel to face him. I drop my eyes, but he tuts and I lift them again. ‘What’s that? Cool? But did you like it?’

  ‘Like it?’

  He tips his head to one side, watching me intently. He will have his answer. Hedging is going to be futile, I can tell.

  ‘It was … different.’

  ‘No, Rosie. You liked it. I could tell.’

  ‘How?’

  He drops his neck low and sniffs with a dramatic flourish.

  I raise a hand as if to slap him, but he catches my wrist and lowers it, chuckling. ‘What? It’s true. This is your thing, this spanking. This submission. Why pretend not?’

  ‘I don’t even know you.’

  ‘You know what you need to know.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘I like spanking and you like to be spanked. What else you need to know but that?’ His grin, almost broader than his face, gleams in my eye line.

  Put like that, it does sound beautifully simple. Two halves that click into a piece. It really can’t be that simple, though, can it?

  ‘Ha, well, there you go,’ I say lamely, once my cheeks have reached the critical mass of blush. ‘So you like this place? You think you’ll, uh, come here often?’

  His laugh is dirty. ‘Yeah. I will come here very often. And I hope you will too. Drink that, we’ll look around.’

  He picks up a card from the sheaf tucked inside the menu.

  ‘This week,’ he reads in portentous tones, ‘at Kinky Cupcake. Second of October – that’s today, right? – in the dungeon at eleven p.m. – How to Use the St Andrew’s Cross. In the schoolroom at eight p.m. – Lessons With Mr Strict. Hey, that was what we saw, you think? In the boudoir at midnight – Share a Slave.’ He puts the card down, raising his eyebrows at me.

  ‘It sounds like a kind of college of kink,’ I muse. ‘Lessons and activities. If I’d known all this was here, perhaps I’d have tried to get in sooner.’

  ‘You think is allowed to watch any of this? Or only to join in?’

  ‘I don’t know. I feel I’d like to take a look, but I don’t think I’m ready to, er, throw myself into the fray quite yet.’

  ‘We find out.’ He puts down the coffee cup, wipes his moustache with the back of his hand and pulls me to my feet.

  Almost immediately, every eye in the room is upon him. Even in a place jam-packed with people in chains and gimp masks, Dimitri manages to look picturesque and striking. I feel obscurely flattered that this charismatic man has somehow latched on to me and I follow him past the counter and towards the spiral staircase beyond.

  We can go up it or down it. My guess is that the dungeon will be downstairs, along with that schoolroom we so fatefully peeked into, so we head for the basement.

  A dark corridor lit with old-fashioned sconces is our destination. Three arched doors are set in the wall at intervals.

  Dimitri pushes the first, gently enough, and it swings open to reveal the schoolroom, empty now. He leads me inside and we tiptoe around, running our fingertips over the desks, gathering chalk dust as we go.

  ‘You like this?’ asks Dimitri, opening the cupboard and taking out a cane, which he swishes terrifyingly.

  ‘Christ, watch yourself with that. You’ll take someone’s eye out.’

  ‘I never use one of these,’ he said, flexing it into an inverted U shape. ‘This could be very painful, I think.’

  ‘Yeah, so do I. Don’t even go there. I’m not ready for it.’

  ‘One day, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Go on, bend over for me. I just tap you, I promise.’

  ‘Dimitri!’

  ‘I promise. Bend over chair, like the lady we see, I forgot her name.’

  ‘Twinkletits or whatever it was, you mean?’

  ‘Do it. I give you, what they say, six of the best? Except it’s not the best. Six of the lightest, not painful, not at all.’

  He wheedles so attractively that I can’t deny him. With a sigh, I place my hands palms down on the seat of the chair and wiggle my still rather heated behind inside its skirt.

  He holds the cane at arm’s length and places it, very gently, across my posterior. Even the feel of it there, doing nothing, is scary. In rest, it is no more than dormant, lying in wait for the moment when it will deliver the fiercest sting in the spanker’s armoury. I clench my buttocks and Dimitri taps them.

  ‘Easy,’ he says, then he brings it down, lightly as anything, on the seat of my skirt.

  Any force it might have had is muffled by the thick tweedy material, but I’m far from impervious to its effect. A pleasurable shock travels through my legs, reawakening the sensations aroused by the earlier spanking.

  ‘That hurts?’ My wriggle and gasp might have given the wrong impression.

  ‘No, it doesn’t. Look, let’s go and see what’s next door.’

  If he carries this on, I’m going to need relief.

  ‘Oh, you don’t like it.’ He sounds so disappointed. ‘If I hit harder?’

  ‘Another time.’ I straighten up, put a hand on his chest. ‘Another time would be better. I’m worried someone will walk in and we’ll get into trouble and get thrown out. An
d, since we’ve only just got here, that would be a shame.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true.’ He puts the cane back on the rack with its brothers and runs curious fingers over the ranks of straps and tawses and paddles that fill the shelves.

  The second room is also empty, but it’s interestingly fitted out with medical trappings – various trolleys with straps hanging off them are lined up against the far wall. I spy something that looks like an enema kit, tug at Dimitri’s wrist and get him out of there. That’s a doctor and patient scenario too far for me right now.

  The door of the third room is a little ajar, and we enter to find ourselves at the back of a small crowd, standing in the gloom watching something taking place on a stage beneath the blacked-out window.

  A girl is getting her arms and legs strapped to a wooden X-shape inside a large wheel. She is completely naked, her pierced nipples standing hard and red, similar silverware glinting from her labia. She is blindfolded and, once the shirtless man by her side finishes binding her, he fits a gag around her mouth as well.

  ‘Of course, it’s up to you whether you use a blindfold and/or gag,’ the man says to the audience. ‘Some might see it as gilding the lily. For others, it’s an essential part of the experience. Kiki here didn’t start using them until she’d really got to know the cross and the way I like to play with it. As ever, trust is the watchword.’

  ‘You’ve got her facing outwards,’ comments a woman in the front row. ‘I thought it was used more as a whipping post.’

  ‘Aha, I want to show you some of the different uses it can be put to before we get to the classics,’ says the … I guess he’s one of these doms, with a smile. ‘Kiki is facing out so I can be a little bit creative with those parts of her that are exposed.’

  He picks up a flogger, a cute thing with a crystal handle and purple strands, and begins swishing it gently over Kiki’s nipples.

  The woman’s teeth gnash over the gag. Her stomach undulates. I can see, even from here, her clit swell between her spread lips.

  ‘This is the perfect opportunity to tease.’ The dom chuckles. The flogger caresses Kiki’s belly and thighs.

  I clamp mine together, feeling a little hot and bothered, hoping Dimitri is too transfixed by the demonstration to notice.

  The dom flicks the flogger between Kiki’s legs, catching that sensitive inner-thigh skin, making me wince in sympathy. Tiny muffled mewls pour from her. A lacing of red patterns the whiteness on display. It must feel hot down there.

  Then he begins to flick the tips upwards.

  ‘Oh God,’ I whisper, unable to help myself. How would a flogger feel just there, right on the clit, right on the cunt? Would it burn?

  Dimitri puts a hand on the small of my back, as if sensing that I need steadying.

  Her moans stream from her while her head rotates ceaselessly on her neck.

  ‘A good heated cunt, just the way we like it, eh, Kiki,’ drawls the dom. ‘Ready to take what’s coming.’

  I forget how to breathe. Is there going to be live sex? If there is, will I be able to tear myself away? Dimitri’s fingers are drifting up and down the hollow of my back, rather hypnotically. I’m not sure he realises he’s doing it, but it’s turning me on even more.

  The dom puts down the flogger and reaches into the girl’s shaven private parts. He rubs her clit between finger and thumb, then spears two fingers up behind. When he draws them out, he shows them solemnly to the front row.

  ‘Wet enough, I think you’ll agree. Pussy whipping is a subject for another class – don’t forget to sign up for next week’s session if you’re interested.’

  With his juiced-up fingers, he spends an idle moment or two twiddling Kiki’s nipples while she strains piteously against her bonds.

  ‘Now, Kiki, you’ve gone and disgraced yourself in front of our audience again, getting horny when you’re meant to be informing and educating. Tut-tut. I guess that means I’ll have to whip you. Now, I’m going to untie you, then you turn around so I can fasten you again, OK?’

  She can hardly argue with him, mouth stuffed with silicone, but she seems happy to comply, turning obediently when her buckles are undone.

  As the dom fiddles with straps, I hazard a shy glance up at Dimitri, whose eyes have darkened in fascination. His hand appears to have come to rest on my hip and he is closer to me, almost holding me against him, like a lover would.

  He breaks his gaze and swivels it in my direction. ‘What do you think?’ he asks.

  ‘What do I think? What do you mean?’

  ‘This is interesting to you? You feel it makes you hot?’

  I laugh nervously. The ambient temperature of this dungeon is rather cold, but I hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it. ‘It’s interesting, of course. Hard not to be interested in girls strapped to crosses getting flogged. It’s like an old Hammer horror movie.’

  ‘But it don’t make you hot?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Really? You think?’

  He grimaces, as if I’ve mortally offended him, and his attention reverts to Kiki, whose plump rounded arse now faces us. Another stranger’s bare bum in my sights – how many more can I expect to see tonight?

  The whip is applied to back and bottom, covering her skin with fascinating line drawings until the lines begin to fill and she is a mass of raised welts.

  She doesn’t utter a single cry.

  ‘Why is she so quiet?’ I ask Dimitri.

  He shrugs. ‘Well training, I think. Is nice effect with the whip, I like.’

  The dom steps back and drops the whip. ‘Now, this particular cross,’ he says, somewhat hoarsely, ‘has a special extra feature.’ He puts a hand on the external wheel and spins. Kiki’s body performs one whole revolution. ‘It spins. My colleague Ricardo and his submissive Jared are going to show you how you can utilise this to best effect – I’m not quite the expert with a bullwhip I’d like to be, so I’m handing over to him now.’

  Unexpectedly, the spinning bullwhip demonstration provides an oasis of relief in my desert of squirmy arousal. It’s too circus-act-like to turn me on and my clit returns to normal dimensions, breath speeding from my lungs as if released from long incarceration. All the same, it’s fascinating to watch and I bite my lip on Jared’s behalf, watching the welts rise across his pale flesh.

  ‘Would you whip men as well as women?’ I ask Dimitri. ‘In your new career?’

  ‘Sure, why not? An ass is an ass, right?’

  ‘And would you offer sexual favours too?’

  ‘No, I don’t offer sex. Just domination, right? Maybe I fuck somebody with a dildo, who knows? I think this thing through later.’ The succession of ‘th’ sounds nearly ties his tongue and he stumbles over the words, but I get their sense.

  Fair enough.

  We watch the show to the bittersweet end.

  Jared, released from the cross, falls on to all fours and pushes his arse up for his master, but Ricardo just laughs and swats it.

  ‘No way, baby,’ he says. ‘Nearly time for Share a Slave, and you’re on the list, boy.’

  Amid applause, he collars Jared and leads him, every inch the proud owner, out of the dungeon.

  ‘Share a slave, huh?’ Dimitri raises an eyebrow at me. ‘You think we can watch?’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  Chapter Three

  The crowd begins to turn and flow out of the dungeon, heading back up the stairs.

  ‘Where’s this boudoir then?’ I wonder, but obviously there is no need to ask – they will lead us there.

  Many people spill back into the café but others ascend to the upper floor, where the handsome barista presides with a clipboard in front of a door plastered in flock wallpaper and decorated with obscene cherubs.

  ‘Sorry, guest list only,’ he tells us. ‘Our multi-partner events are limited to thirty ticket holders. There’s another one next month, if you want to sign up.’

  ‘Is some kind of orgy?’ Dimitri asks.r />
  ‘Some kind of.’ The barista smiles. ‘The café is still open, with a licensed bar, if you want to carry on socialising.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’

  ‘So that’s that,’ I say, once we are back in the café. ‘Kinky Cupcake in a nutshell. Or a cake wrapper.’

  Dimitri is busy looking at a pinboard full of business cards and leaflets offering specialist services. ‘You see,’ he says. ‘This can work. Nearly all these are women. Dominatrix … dominatrix … submissive girls … girls need a spanking … I spank bad boys … so far no man advertise.’

  ‘That could be something to do with market forces,’ I point out gently, then a horrible, horrible thought knocks me for six. Markets. Business. Advertising. ‘Fuck!’

  Dimitri turns to me. ‘That is an order?’

  ‘Tch. No, I mean, fuck! I haven’t finished the air-freshener campaign. I’m going to get it right in the neck. Look, I have to go. Maybe if I do a bit of work from home … but all the stuff is in the office – shit.’

  ‘Hey, calm, calm.’ Dimitri puts his hands over my arms, reining in some of my wilder gesticulations. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I have a presentation to give tomorrow, but when I saw the light coming from here, I left work before I was ready. I have to finish this work! But the office is closed until seven now. And the presentation is at nine. I’m doomed. Haven’t even got a slogan, let alone the PowerPoint.’

  ‘You panic, don’t panic. You work …’ He waves a hand in the direction of my office. ‘Right?’

  ‘Yeah. Over the road.’

  ‘Come on. I get you in there.’

  ‘What?’

  He doesn’t answer and I’m reduced to trotting across the café and down the stairs after him, voicing questions to the air around me. ‘What do you mean, get me in there?’

  It’s chilly on the street outside. I wrap myself in my coat and frown at Dimitri, who is standing, stroking his chin and staring at my office.

  ‘We go round the back,’ he says eventually.

  ‘Dimitri, we are not breaking into my workplace! We just aren’t. There’s a security guard!’

  ‘Oh, then it’s easy. You tell him you leave something up there. You have ID?’