The Red Collection

by Portia Da Costa

  Lounging at a table, alone, is a large, stocky man with darkish, greying hair, a broad, stubble-shadowed face and intense, gleaming eyes. For a fraction of a second his attention strays from Maria and fixes on me … and I feel almost the same sense of shock I get from her.

  I’m not gay.

  Really I’m not.

  OK, so maybe once … or twice … when I was pissed or high, I had a fumble around with Christian, the guy in the band who was bent. But that doesn’t mean I’m homosexual or even bi.

  Yet there’s something about this guy who’s watching us that seems to grab me somehow. Makes me want to shudder and look away, and yet look again. I miss yet another beat and stumble in my pathetic attempt to match Maria’s moves. Torn between her and him, I get strange flash visions of being in a room somewhere, doing dark and dangerous things. With her, and also with him.

  As my dick gets harder, I feel scared, yet infinitely excited. It’s like I’m filled with a sense of anticipation of I know not what. I glance at the happy fetish crowd around me, who all seem to know what they want and why – and I envy them.

  Maybe I want what they want? I wish I knew … I’m just feeling more and more confused. Like a disenfranchised stranger in a very strange land indeed.

  And it’s right at that moment – as if she’s read my mind – that Maria suddenly halts, mid-gyration, and fixes me with a steady blue stare. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’ With that she walks from the floor, not looking back, just leading me with her lithe, silky stride in her perfect black heels, and the muscular undulation of her gently swaying buttocks.

  I couldn’t not follow if my next breath depended on it.

  Like an eager, panting puppy, I almost trot after her, out of the function room, across the lobby and to the lift. She doesn’t check if I’m following, not once, and I have to run and almost fall into the lift carriage behind her in order to avoid it closing in my face.

  ‘Maria. What on earth are you doing here?’ I babble, still to her straight, smooth back and shoulders, ‘Look, I’m sorry –’

  Whirling like a ballet dancer, she cuts me off, mid-grovel, by the simple expedient of pushing hard on my chest, backing me up against the lift wall, and kissing me. Hard.

  And as her tongue pushes imperiously into my mouth, her hand unzips my jeans with astonishing deftness, negotiates my underwear, and takes hold of my cock.

  I’m so shocked I almost come all over her fingers.

  Yet still, inanely, I try to speak and apologise … or something. She allows me my mouth for a moment, even while her fingertips do something infernal to the head of my penis, but her eyes utterly quell me. I can’t utter a word. Somewhere in those periwinkle blue depths there could well be the answer to the meaning of the universe, but all I see is a blend of amusement and disdain, coupled with a disquieting foreknowledge of something I daren’t even think about.

  Then she’s kissing me again, and almost dispassionately handling my equipment as if it’s some mildly amusing curiosity she’s passing a minute or two with while listening to the piped lift music.

  There’s barely time for a couple of bars of ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ before the lift door slides open and she drops me like the proverbial hot potato and just walks away, leaving me standing there with my erection poking out of my flies.

  Thank Christ there’s no one on the landing.

  Shoving myself ignominiously and uncomfortably back into my jeans, I scuttle after Maria. That beautiful bottom of hers wafts from side to side as if she’s still dancing, still hearing the samba rhythm of Astrud Gilberto. I can’t take my eyes off it, and nearly trip on the edge of the carpet runner in my haste to catch up.

  Which means that I nearly cannon right into her when she stops abruptly in front of one of the room doors.

  The brass numerals read ‘17’, and my eyes bug when Maria reaches into the front of her dress and pulls out a key card, which has presumably been tucked cosily inside her bra.

  Lucky card.

  The polished door swings open, and I follow her inside to a softly lit room, where astonishingly, it isn’t Astrud Gilberto singing, but me.

  Ack, how I hate some of those songs now. And ‘You’re My Fire, Baby’ is a prime example. Poppy, bouncy, over-produced, conveyor-belt chart drivel. I cringe. Even with all the vocal enhancements at the studio engineer’s disposal, I’m barely even carrying the tune. I can sing, but this wasn’t one of my finest moments.

  Maria turns to me and gives me a look of almost pitying amusement.

  She obviously doesn’t think it’s much cop either.

  What bothers me even more than my former lack of glory is the fact that the loathsome doggerel is playing at all.

  How has that happened? Even I’m not stupid or bemused enough to believe that it’s a coincidence. I start to ask, but she silences me again with her fingers across my open lips.

  The scent of my cock is still on her skin.

  A second later she’s kissing me again. Dominating me again with her lips and her hands. Her tongue is dainty and mobile but it seems to fill my mouth, and her fingers move efficiently on the fastenings of my jeans. Loosening them so she can slide a hand inside the back of them – and my shorts – and caress my backside.

  It feels so sensational that I groan, muffled by her lips, and my dick hardens anew against her belly. I try to caress her in return, but she presses her curved fingers so firmly and so suddenly against my arsehole that I yelp against her mouth, and I can barely remember my, own name.

  And then she abandons me again, and whirls away. With a casual, uncaring grace, she throws herself down into a big, deep, chintz-covered armchair, and I’m left standing around like a dolt, my eyes skittering between the overdecorated bed with its elaborate, also chintz-patterned hangings, and the perfection of Maria’s relaxed body and long, sleek legs.

  ‘Look, Maria … I … um … I’m sorry I never called you,’ I bluster, then dry up when she raises an imperious hand to stop my babble.

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Jason,’ she says in a quiet, unperturbed, almost affable voice, ‘and take your shirt off.’

  What?

  I feel confused and excited again, but I obey her. I’ve started working out again now I’ve cleaned up my act, but I’m painfully aware of the fact that I’m not as buff as I once was. Her all-seeing eyes seem to notice it too, and narrow slightly.

  Fucking hell, I wish she’d turn off that music. My own trilling voice mocks me as I stand there shivering despite the gentle warmth from the central heating.

  I wait, but she doesn’t speak again, and I feel nullified, unable to act or move until she does.

  Slowly, she licks her pink-painted lips.

  She uncrosses and recrosses her peerless legs, careful not to allow me even the slightest glimpse of what lies between her thighs.

  Barely seeming to pay the slightest attention to what she’s doing, she reaches back into the low neckline of her black dress and slowly and idly begins to play with her nipple. Her fingertips move like some tiny animal burrowing about beneath the dark fabric and, after a moment, she closes her eyes and gives a little gasp of pleasure.

  It’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

  I’m in agony. My cock is tenting my jeans, and it’s aching for me to wank it. But I know I can’t touch it until she gives permission.

  I’ve never done the submission and domination thing. And I’ve seen no more than odd bits of scenes in films and half-watched documentaries. But suddenly I seem to understand … or at least begin to.

  It’s something I never wanted until now.

  I watch and watch as she rubs her long, silky thighs together and continues to fondle her breast. I’m still immobilised, like a pillar of burning salt.

  Eventually she gives a little gasp, and a little sigh, and relaxes back into her seat.

  Has she come? I didn’t think women could do that … just orgasm from rubbing their own nipples. Maybe she hasn�
��t … I get the feeling she’s just teasing me, and that’s strengthened when she opens her limpid blue eyes, and they mock me.

  Men are such idiots, she seems to say, without speaking.

  I don’t speak either, but while my voice burbles on and on from the sound system, a thousand questions jostle behind my lips.

  Chief amongst which is … why did I ever, in my right or addled mind, let this glorious woman go?

  I nearly fall over when she springs lightly to her feet and sashays towards me and, as I fight for composure, she looks me up and down as if I’m some kind of stud animal or piece of meat she’s assessing.

  ‘Unzip your jeans. Drop them to your ankles. Don’t step out of them,’ she instructs, her voice strangely neutral. As if she doesn’t really care if I obey her or not.

  I do though. I really care.

  ‘Pants now. The same.’

  I obey again. My mouth is dry. My heart is bashing against my chest. My cock bounces up against my belly as it’s released, tip moist and sticky.

  She does that stockwoman looking at the beast thing again, and I have a horrible feeling I’ve been judged lacking. I feel like a complete idiot standing here buck naked, with my jeans and underpants round my ankles, yet in a slightly sick but overpowering way, I like it. I like it a lot.

  There’s a knock at the door and I sway, nearly toppling over. Our eyes lock.

  ‘If you so much as move a muscle, you can put your clothes on, get out of here and I never want to see you again.’

  I’ve never fainted in my life, but I feel as if I want to now.

  But no way on earth am I going to move. Not a millimetre.

  ‘Come!’ she calls out and, as the door handle turns, I realise the door was never locked.

  I close my eyes for a moment, and I feel sweat trickling from my armpits and from between my thighs. I imagine if I could stand outside myself, and look at my skin, every inch of it would be blushing, especially my rigid, seeping cock.

  ‘Robert,’ she breathes, her voice soft, loving and happy. As she walks right past me the air she displaces feels almost blissfully cool, and a moment later I hear the small, feverish sounds of an intensely passionate kiss.

  Fight or flight instinct screams at me to grab up my clothing, bolt for the door and run for my room, then check out as soon as is possible. But another force, a greater force, keeps me in place. Rigid in muscle and in cock. Eyes wide open now and wondering what’s going on behind my back. I glance at the mirror on the dressing table, but frustratingly, the angle doesn’t show them.

  The kiss goes on and on, and not only does Maria purr and murmur, but her mysterious companion – Robert – does too. I remember her kiss and I can’t blame him.

  ‘So, my dear, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’ he says at length, when they disengage and, as he walks forwards into the room, I see that the look of wry, mocking amusement on his face matches the tone in his voice.

  It’s the big man from the ‘do’, of course. The one who watched us both so assiduously and made me feel so freaked. He’s very tall, and a bit heavy set, and has a vague look of a younger Orson Welles before he went to fat. That, and a character I might have seen on the telly recently, but I don’t know what in.

  I’m fighting the reflex to shake violently, and I don’t know what’s the most mortifying to me – my nakedness and my erection, or the fact that my own voice is still issuing interminably from the sound system. I’d give anything if one of them would turn the fucking thing off.

  I can, I think, take anything sexual that this pair choose to dish out to me, but I wish to God that all trace of J-Boy Jones and the Forever Boys could be wiped off the face of the earth now and forever …

  ‘This is Jason, darling,’ declares Maria, her voice arch and her face beautiful in quiet triumph. ‘The one I told you about. Don’t you recognise him from the magazines? He’s changed a little, of course, but when it comes down to it, it’s easy to see who he is.’

  Robert subjects me to a long, considered scrutiny, his dark gaze returning again and again to my cock.

  Hell, this guy is most definitely bisexual. There’s hunger in that slow, sly look of his. I find myself glancing towards Maria, wondering what her reaction to this is, and I find her grinning with delight and high approval.

  Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. I thought I was worldly and experienced, living large on booze and drugs and faux celebrity. But I know nothing. Nothing at all. Not a thing.

  Suddenly Robert frowns. ‘Do we have to listen to this?’ He cocks his large head, grimacing.

  ‘I don’t know. Do we?’ Maria sidles towards me, touches first my face and then my cock, and I nearly come. Dragging in air, fighting for control, I shake my head.

  Her companion moves to a small console beside the bed and depresses a button, once, twice, three times, cycling through a couple of radio stations until a very different kind of music issues from the hidden speakers.

  The delicate melody of what sounds like a piano trio fills the room, stately and elegant and a balm to my overheated soul.

  ‘Excellent,’ proclaims Robert roundly, smile widening. ‘Mozart … a well-known fetishist in his day. Couldn’t be more appropriate, could it, my love?’ He strides across the room, a looming imposing presence, and suddenly they’re both deep in my personal space and owning it completely.

  I clench every muscle, every sinew, anticipating his touch as well as Maria’s.

  But it doesn’t come. He gently fondles Maria’s breast as she pinches the tip of my cock, expertly containing my hair-trigger urge to shoot my load all over her beautiful black dress.

  The couple exchange a look while the fondling and handling continues. A glance that’s quick, yet deep and full of transferred intelligence. A decision’s just been made, I realise, and whatever my wishes are simply doesn’t factor into the equation.

  I should be horrified. I should be scared. And yet a sense of tightness, almost of calm settles over me. Everything is exactly as it should be, just like the rippling, swooping phrases of the piano and the strings, every note perfect, precise and virtuouso.

  ‘Shall we begin, my love?’ says Maria at length, sounding pleased with herself. She’s loving this, but there’s no malice in her, I realise. Her happiness is purely from the anticipation of pleasure and entertainment.

  ‘Why not?’ concurs Robert, and for just a second his hand curves around hers, cradling my cock.

  The touch of a man’s hand on my flesh makes my head go light, and something inside me soars and lifts like the rising, dancing notes around us.

  But just as I’m accepting and enjoying it, the touch is gone and they both whirl away as if dancing a secret tango. Robert crosses to the dressing table and picks up a small remote, and Maria opens a drawer in a tallboy at the other side of the room, and starts removing a selection of objects. My eyes bug at the sight of them, and then bulge even more when Robert presses a button on the remote, and a whirring and a light tinkling and jingling sound overlays Mozart’s exquisite precision phrasing.

  To my astonishment, when I look up, I see a set of shackles descending from the ceiling. A couple of tiny, concealed panels have slid aside to release them. Robert tilts his large head on one side, as if calculating, and the cuffs and chains halt in their downward progress and swing slowly in the air.

  Real fear now overcomes me, but before I’ve a chance to voice it, he’s beside me, lifting my arms one by one, and snapping me into the restraints. They’re padded and surprisingly comfortable around my wrists.

  That is until he presses the remote again, causing the chains to retract a little, and me to rise on my toes to ameliorate the sudden strain in my arms.

  I can’t help it. I whimper out loud. I’m so out of my depth. I’m in a different world to the one I’ve always known until now.

  ‘Hush, baby,’ murmurs Maria, instantly at my side. She smoothes my brow with her fingers, then kisses the side of my face while Robert looks on with
approval. I start to feel calm again, despite the grinding, agonising ache of frustrated desire that grips my genitals as if they were trapped in a vice.

  She peppers my jaw and the side of my neck with little kisses. Her fingers move lightly over me, touching my chest, then my flanks. I hear jingling again, but this time it’s tiny, barely audible. I’m not sure what it is, but in a second or two I find out.

  With a dexterity that suggests she’s done it a score of times before – possibly to her beloved Robert – Maria straps a neat, carefully crafted little leather harness around my equipment, securing my cock and balls so I remain erect but probably can’t get the blessed relief of orgasm. The constriction makes me harder than ever, and my rigid flesh flushes a brilliant crimson. Clear fluid trickles copiously from my tip.

  I groan again and she swiftly inserts a gag in my mouth. It’s a small rubber sphere that presses down on my tongue, and is buckled into place. I start to salivate around it, drooling above as I do below.

  How perfect is this subjugation? How much do I realise that I’ve always wanted it, even though I didn’t know it? Maria understands it completely, although I’m sure she never did when we were together in London.

  My eyes are wet too, and it dawns on me that there are tears streaming across my cheeks. I gaze at Maria imploringly, begging her silently to take me down and down and further down into a peaceful, if not exactly comfortable, submissive place. I glance too at the man who I now understand is her mentor. The one who gave her all the knowledge she now possesses.

  He comes to me too, and also kisses my face, running his tongue around the corners of my lips where they’re stretched around the gag.

  ‘Delicious,’ he whispers, kissing me one last time, then kissing Maria deeply and voraciously. ‘Thank you, my love,’ he whispers to her. ‘You always know how to give me the nicest presents.’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit impromptu, sweetheart,’ she murmurs back to him, her hands dropping to cup his clearly rampant erection through his trousers. ‘But I knew you’d enjoy it. Happy birthday.’