But hotel rooms have walls and doors. You can see the limits and you can leave. Now, in playing out a sexual fantasy, it felt as if our hotel room might be as big as the world, the boundaries too distant to have meaning, making the game indistinguishable from non-game.
Yes, in the beginning, it was clearer. We had an implicit start and stop button. Clearer. More manageable, more mutual. And less dangerous. Less exciting.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you happy now you’ve got your safeword?’
I sighed heavily. ‘Yes. And I safeword your mask.’
‘Evidently,’ he replied. ‘But the problem is, I might not have agreed to that. Might have chosen to walk away instead. But you gave me no option. You unmasked me without my consent.’ His frown grew hard again and I held his gaze, determined not to appear intimidated. ‘And so you’ve seen my face. It’s too late. We can’t put the mask back on.’ His eyes flared to the bright blue of a gas flame. ‘Which means,’ he said, ‘as I’m sure you realise, that now I’m going to have to kill you.’
I blanched.
He gave me a long look but his expression was as empty as the mask I’d torn off. Was he waiting for me to react? One false move and I’d be dead? Then his face crinkled with quick amusement. He laughed, flashing strong, white teeth. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘It’s fine.’ He reached out to ruffle my hair. ‘I’m joking. The mask was just to freak you out. Make you vulnerable. I need to own your mind before I can own your body. I’m fucking with your head again. Can’t you see that?’
I nudged my hair into place, refusing to be mussed by him. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m virtually blinded by it.’
‘I like you,’ he said. ‘You’ve got sass.’ His smile faded and he leaned closer. ‘But you pulled off my mask and later I’m going to seriously punish you for that.’ He paused, his eyes flicking because he was too close to see the whole of my face. ‘I’m going to make you regret your silly little rebellion, going to make sure you don’t ever pull a stunt like that again. Ever. Because that’s what you want, isn’t it? My punishment.’
I shrugged even though his words made my heart pound with a crazy mix of dread and excitement. I wasn’t sure I even liked this man although I liked what he offered. I felt weak for wanting him, ashamed and afraid that in pursuing this, I might be making too many compromises, taking too many risks. My concern was that I, rather than he, might not know where to draw the line.
‘Now, then,’ he said, sitting straighter. ‘Lunch.’
I raised my hand in a slow, sarcastic salute. ‘Yes, sir.’
He laughed again, standing and moving a couple of steps down. Then, with a sudden shift of mood, he lunged forward, his foot landing with a thump on the step-edge by my shoulder. He grabbed a clump of my hair, his expression turning cold as he leaned towards my ear, tipping my head. I could smell the tang of sweat on his body. The closeness of his revealed face had me yearning for the moist contact of a kiss, for the scratch of stubble against my skin, for something human and reassuring. And yet, even while I wanted that comfort, the resolute withholding of it thrilled me. A lust for danger made my blood pump hard, made my cunt twitch and swell.
Through gritted teeth, Den said, ‘The more you challenge me, the more I want to take you down. So consider this your warning, Ms Natalie Lovell: Push it too far and I will break you into tiny little pieces. Got that?’
I wanted to maintain my irony but instead my voice came out thin and pleasure-soaked. ‘Sir.’
The word ‘Sir’ had never sat easily with me. When I’d explained this to Baxter a few months into our relationship, he’d said, ‘Aye, well, that can be your safeword.’
We’d laughed at the perverse irreverence of his joke. We didn’t have a safeword, didn’t feel we needed one because we’d built up such a strong connection. I felt Baxter could read me like a book. Although he would act as if he were laying waste to my body, he was always observant, always measuring me and checking in, reacting to my cues and responses to take things up or down a notch. I felt so safe with him.
And yet during an atypical moment, ‘sir’ did become my safeword. We seldom played with hardcore pain or engaged in formalised discipline sessions and roleplays, preferring to incorporate ouches, shaming and threats into our lovemaking as smoothly as we did kisses and caresses.
When I safeworded him, I hadn’t passed my pain or fear threshold; I’d simply hit my limit of what I could tolerate that night. I’d had enough, e-fucking-nuff, but Baxter, rabidly horny and eager to continue, wasn’t listening to my weary pleas for mercy. Or rather, he couldn’t hear the sincerity in them.
‘Bax,’ I gasped. ‘I’m getting close to my limit.’
‘Yeah?’ he growled. ‘Then you’re not there yet.’
For almost three hours, he’d subjected me to what he later proudly termed his ‘reign of terror’. I’d been bound and brutalised, had had wax dripped on me, been thwacked with a skanky piece of MDF he’d found in the street on his way to mine. I’d been fucked every which way, had come three times, had been blindfolded, spun around then ordered to crawl in search of cock. The best and the worst of it was when Baxter paused to examine the silicone dildo he’d just been forcing me to suck.
‘You got a broom?’ he asked.
I drew my hand across my wet mouth. ‘Why?’ I managed to gasp.
‘Just answer the fucking question.’
I directed him to the kitchen downstairs, glad of a few minutes’ respite. He returned with the broom’s wooden pole, the brush head removed, and promptly rammed the dil on one end. He huffed and cussed as he skewered the toy onto the stick. I’d never even noticed my dil contained a hole at the base but Baxter, whose imagination seemed capable of corrupting everything in his path, had spotted it.
Satisfied with the fit, he gave his new tool a shake. ‘Open your legs,’ he said. When I did, flat on my back, he proceeded to fuck me from several feet away, turning me to a grunting, gibbering wreck while he looked down at me, gleefully cruel as he shoved the customised pole back and forth.
After too much of that, he tried to make me deep-throat the obscene object. I couldn’t manage it. The dil was too resilient and big. I gagged and spluttered, pleading for a break. As punishment for my failure, Baxter slapped my bruised, tender arse, his beefy hand cracking hard onto my cheeks. Then he popped the dil off the pole, slammed its thick shaft inside me and eased his hard cock into my arsehole. On all fours, I widened around him, gasping, his girth in my rear making the dil press in my cunt, everything squashing up within me to accommodate the double insertion.
Then, ordering me to hold the dil in place, Baxter banged away at my butt. He was building up to his third orgasm and I knew he’d be hammering at my arse until he got there, which likely wouldn’t be anytime soon. I felt on the brink of collapse, my body scorched and exhausted, my mind reeling from the depths to which we could sink. I feared I didn’t have the mental or physical stamina to hold out for much longer. Sure, I wanted Baxter to have his orgasmic hat-trick, not least because I loved the desperate, agonised noises he made when eeking out the last of his ecstasy, but I wanted him to get there fast. And to be honest, I was also getting bored.
I begged him to hurry but to no avail. And when I told him I was close to my limit, that only seemed to invigorate his desire to make me suffer. He thought I was play-acting. He began squeezing my nipples, really squeezing them as he rode, and my discomfort outweighed my pleasure. Most times, when I’m close to maximum endurance, I take pride in not safewording, so I couldn’t blame Baxter for not spotting a difference between those times and this.
But for some reason, something gave up inside me that night. Additionally, I guess I’d become confident enough with Baxter that I felt safewording would be OK, not an indicator of failure on my part or his.
I heard myself crying out, ‘Sir, sir, sir!’
‘What?’ he snapped, still fucking and squeezing.
He’d forgotten my safeword.
‘Stop,’ I wailed.
‘Stop, sir. Sir! Stop!’
He froze. ‘Ach, your safeword.’ He snatched himself free of me, full of concern. ‘You OK, hen? Did I hurt you?’
He tried to embrace me but I gently pushed him away, needing a moment’s space. I flopped onto my back. ‘I’m fine. Not hurt.’
‘You traumatised?’ He knelt up on the futon, frowning at me, his hand moving gently on his cock.
I shook my head. ‘I just needed you to ease up and you weren’t listening.’
‘Ah, fuck. Sorry. I’m such a cunt. Can’t believe I missed that. Not like me at all.’ He raked fingers through his tousled hair. ‘You sure you’re OK? You want a wee cuddle?’
I shook my head again. I didn’t want a cuddle. I wasn’t being a hero in rejecting the offer. I genuinely wanted my space and a moment’s distance from him. ‘Just need to lie still and catch my breath.’
‘You sure? Fuck, I’m sorry, hen. I feel awful.’
‘Honestly, Bax. It’s not a big deal. You didn’t screw up. Don’t go all guilty on me.’
‘I’ll take it easier next time, I promise.’ Still kneeling over me where I lay sprawled on my back, he waggled his fingertips against mine.
‘No, I said. ‘I’d rather you took risks than didn’t. Don’t make me feel bad for safewording.’
‘But I do feel bad,’ he replied.
‘Then please bottle it,’ I said. ‘Let’s not make this into a drama about you.’
‘Ay, you’re right, sorry. So you’re OK, then?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. Fine.’
His hand returned to his cock, still hard. His fist shunted slowly. ‘Then do you mind if I risk asking if I can wank on your tits?’
I laughed hard. God, but he was adorable. When he came, he released a volley of dark, twisted cries, peaking on a rattle of raw bliss as his heat spattered down on me. Later, as we lay in each other’s arm, we agreed ‘sir’ was too confusing to be an effective safeword. Baxter said, ‘My trusty perverts’ manual recommends the word “amber” for go slow and either “red” for stop. Or a long, distinctive word.’
‘Seems sensible,’ I said.
‘So from now on,’ said Baxter. He leaned on one elbow alongside me, nudging a coil of hair from my face, getting stern and serious. ‘I want you to remember that your safeword is “supercalifragilistic …”’
I laughed and flung my arm around his neck, planting a smacker of a kiss on his lips. ‘You’re funny,’ I said, sinking back into the pillows and pleased that using a safeword hadn’t caused a major angst.
Baxter beamed down at me, his dark, dishevelled hair backlit by my bedside lamp and outlined with an unlikely halo. He traced a finger across my smile and after a while said, ‘I have a wee confession to make.’
I raised my brows.
He looked at me for too long, making me nervous. What had he done? What was wrong? At length, he said, ‘I think I’m falling in love with you.’
I kept smiling, afraid and delighted because for a while I’d been trying not to say a similar thing myself. When we’d started out, Baxter had expressed reservations about getting involved after the collapse of his marriage. He’d said he needed to play the field, needed to rediscover himself before committing to someone new. I’d accepted that, warning myself to keep my distance and not fall in love.
But the magic was happening, despite my attempts to resist it. The excitement of physical lust was swelling to become something far greater and deeper. I was walking on clouds, always longing to see him, and my life seemed to glow with possibilities. Everything I discovered about Baxter made me want to discover more. I wanted to do everything and nothing with him, and wished we could spend more time on the latter, just hanging out at mine. But Baxter was always so busy with work, so full of energy, that mellow times were rare. Perhaps that would change now Baxter had fessed up to his feelings. I was about to return the compliment and celebrate our moment with a kiss when he cut in.
‘And that wasnae meant to happen,’ he said.
It never crossed my mind it wasn’t meant to happen because his marriage was still intact.
After a spartan lunch of bread, cheddar and water, Den showed me to the dressing rooms in the basement below the stage. He carried a Maglite, its beam swooping left and right across a corridor made sickly by the greenish hue of fluorescent lights. Glossy, beetroot-red paint on the walls had shattered into crackle-glaze fragments so the corridor appeared to be tiled in mosaics. Den’s torchlight swept into dark rooms and over scrawls of angular, illegible graffiti. The fear of other trespassers made sweat prickle on my back.
I followed Den, my wrists fixed in front of me, a length of chain running from my leather handcuffs to a belt loop in his jeans. I watched his feet, trying to put mine where his had been, scooping up the slack chain when I got too close to him. He wore black Converse All Stars, the soles worn at the heel. I bet he’s from London, I thought. Hardly anyone wears Converse in Saltbourne.
As we passed along the corridor, Den shone his torch into the dressing rooms, revealing a range of interiors as garish as children’s building blocks: pea green, daffodil yellow, electric blue. Other than that, the rooms were similar: small, windowless spaces, their walls lined with broken mirrors framed by blank bulbs and empty sockets.
Damp and mustiness permeated the air. What stories these walls could tell, I thought.
‘When did this place become empty?’ I asked.
‘Late eighties. It’s an absolute tragedy. Ours is an era of advanced philistinism.’
‘So where are we? How did you get in? Is it safe?’
‘It’s safe enough,’ he said. ‘And we have electricity in some areas and running water so more civilised than it looks.’
‘But where are we?’
‘No more questions,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll gag you again.’
He showed me a shower we could use in a large, fuchsia-pink dressing room which also contained a sturdy toilet cubicle. A harsh, chemical scent of cleaning fluids spiked the stale air. ‘I’ve spruced this room up for us,’ he said. ‘It’s not the Ritz but it’s good enough for a couple of days.’
‘A couple of days,’ I echoed in shock. ‘Come on, get serious!’
‘I’ve kidnapped you, remember?’ He raised the Maglite and shone its beam into my face. I flinched, the chain rattling as my cuffed hands jumped to shield my eyes from the glare.
‘Yeah but … a couple of days is a long time.’ I wasn’t sure if his was a genuine plan or another attempt to mess with my mind. I squinted at the light, trying to read the face behind it, but was too dazzled to make anything out. After weeks of him being my faceless fantasy, I wanted to gawp at him until every feature was etched on my mind. Whether by accident or design, Den seemed determined to deny me the chance.
‘What are you afraid of?’ he asked.
‘Um, rats,’ I said. ‘The police. Getting sacked if I don’t turn up for work on Monday.’ My temptation to add ‘you’ was silenced by my stubborn reluctance to give him the pleasure.
Den lowered the torch and grinned. In the weak, green-tinged light of the wrecked corridor, he looked monstrous; a monster made more dangerous by his beguiling beauty. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘Those are the least of your worries. Come on. I’ll show you where you’re going to be chained.’
Ten
We returned to the arena of the former stalls in the shabby auditorium. After the gloomy, below-stage corridors, the expanse was exhilarating, the hazy pearl light and richness of colour a welcome relief. My sandals rang on the concrete as we crossed the empty space while Den’s trainers barely made a sound. The chain sagged between us, occasionally scraping on the ground.
‘There,’ said Den, signalling to the far corner of the room.
By one of the pillars supporting the dress circle, a cluster of furniture and belongings made a strange, homely room, albeit one without walls. A stage set appeared to have escaped and regrouped. The surreal sight bordered on the supernatural, the half-room’s exis
tence suggesting unlikely beings dwelled here, unseen by human eyes.
I guessed we were the unlikely, unseen beings, cooped up in this forgotten theatre while the world outside went about its business.
‘Did you set this up?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’
The bed was the most prominent feature, a duvet-covered double mattress on a low platform of wooden pallets, the sort used for moving goods on forklift trucks. An armchair draped in a red throw was angled towards nothing, and at a polished, pine dining table, two high-backed chairs awaited their guests.
‘I’m flattered,’ I said sincerely. ‘All this effort.’
As we drew closer, I noticed other objects at odds with the suggestion of familiar comforts. Objects which stirred feelings of unease and excitement. A length of chain dangled from a hook fixed to the balcony above. Each curvaceous leg of that nice pine table was looped with chains. Although they made me nervous, I understood those chains. I knew what they would be used for.
What I didn’t understand was a peculiar piece of furniture resembling a medieval stool, although not one you’d choose to sit on for comfort. It was made of deeply polished oak, the seat a bowed, narrow plank with a sturdy, carved ring at either side. The back of the chair was painfully narrow too, sloping away from the seat, and topped with another carved ring. I could imagine it once being used for tying people up in the market square so they could be pelted with rotten tomatoes.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, pointing with both hands. My voice surprised me with its quietness.
‘A birthing stool.’
Ah, of course. Legs spread, something to grip, lean back and push.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I like you but there’s no way I’m having your baby.’
Den laughed as we crossed to the object. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t plan on keeping you here that long.’
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