He did just that, turning me on to my stomach and ordering me sharply to stay there while he fled from the room, returning a few minutes later with some bondage ties and a bottle of lubricant.
‘In due course, I need to review that scene,’ he said, wrapping cord around my wrists and securing them together behind my back. ‘But I’m a little distracted just now … so …’
He tied my ankles too, giving me a clue that he was not intending the more usual means of penetration.
Once I was lying helpless on the sofa, my breasts crushed into the cold leather upholstery, my face pressed into the arm, breathing in its scent, he took off his jeans and straddled my hips.
I couldn’t see him but I could feel the rough hair of his thighs chafe mine, then his hands were on my bottom, squeezing and pinching it, making me gasp at the residual pain of the cane marks.
‘This turns me on,’ he said, pinching the low one, the one that had not been in the script. ‘Oh, look at you trying to squirm. Look at you, all tethered and tied and waiting to get your arse filled. You know it’s going to happen. You know there’s nothing you can do about it.’
Apart from safeword.
But why on earth would I want to do that?
He seemed to read my mind, because he said, ‘Even if you didn’t want it just as badly as I do. You know how much you love it. I know it, you know it … perhaps one day everyone will know it.’
I stiffened slightly, knowing that he was referring to his film and the possible fallout. I didn’t want to think about that now. All the same, it helped my libido to imagine a huge banner headline: SARAH WELLS TAKES IT UP THE ARSE.
He prised open my cheeks and dripped lube slowly and coldly between them. When he rubbed it in, moving ever closer to my tight pucker, I mewled in mock protest, but I was heating up between my legs again and he surely knew it.
His finger circled the spot with agonising sweetness while various inner spasms set each other off like butterfly skittles. I couldn’t escape him. This private part of me, along with every other, was his.
One finger tested my resistance then slid inside despite it. I worked on holding myself open, on breathing through the initial stirrings of violation. He violated me with my full consent. I invited every outrage he perpetrated upon me.
The first finger was joined by another and I felt myself gently stretched, taken towards my boundaries. He dipped them slowly in and out, twisting them, scissoring them a little wider to see if I would give. I concentrated on receiving his attentions with absolute submission, increasingly aware of the flaring desire a little further forward. I wanted to touch myself but all I could do was curl my helpless fingers tight.
‘You can stretch,’ he said in a low, mesmeric voice. ‘You can take more than this. You can take something good and thick up here. Can’t you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said in an ecstasy of humiliation.
‘Luckily I’ve got something that fits that bill. Do you know what it is?’
Fingers, spearing down lower then retracting, throwing my muscles into quivering confusion.
‘Is it you, sir?’
‘Mmm, I want to hear you say it. Say the word.’
‘Oh …’ I didn’t like to. I still found dirty talk embarrassing. It seemed crazy to be self-conscious when I had a man’s fingers up my bottom, but there it was.
‘You won’t get it if you don’t say it,’ he goaded. ‘Say it. Say what it is that’s going right up inside here.’
‘Oh …’ I stalled, jiggling in protest, but I knew from experience that he had enough self-mastery to keep this up indefinitely. He had kept me on edge and unsatisfied for a day and a half back in France once – using his fingers and tongue to take me there, then withdrawing and masturbating over my tied body instead, three or four times, until I was brought to heel.
His fingers stilled. I didn’t want that.
‘Your cock,’ I spluttered, trying to mask the word with a fake cough.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘You can’t mask it with flowery language. You can’t disguise what you want. You want it dirty and low and filthy. You want to be used. Hmm?’
He smacked my bum cheek with his free hand and I yelped out the affirmative.
It was true. I wanted his cock. Wanted it badly, in the worst and most perverted place.
He slid an arm beneath my hips and raised me up to my knees, positioning my bottom high and vulnerable to whatever he chose to do to it.
His fingers popped out and then something wider and harder and hotter pressed forwards, opening me for that first moment of disbelief, of ‘this can’t work’, of ‘this will kill me’, before subverting all those impulses by seating itself inside me without injury.
But not without pain – the pain I had learned to embrace and to push myself into, the pain that was necessary for the pleasure. I let myself wail through the sting, knowing it was temporary and needing the release of tension.
‘It hurts, does it?’ he said, bending low with his lips against my ear. ‘So it should. You won’t forget this in a hurry.’
No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t forget the primitive joy of his abs grinding against my bottom and his long, thick shaft owning me, my cheeks spread open, my wrists and ankles tied, my hips in his firm grip. He knew now how forceful he could safely be and he slammed into me, over and over, grunting with the effort of it.
I was desperate to touch myself, the need driving me mad and making the sex even more powerful.
‘Get ready, get ready,’ he said, and at the perfect moment he reached down to finger me, the sensation exploding first from the front and then the back, a star-invoking double-whammy.
Whenever I came with him inside me, that was enough to bring him to his climax too. I think the idea of me getting off on what he was doing to me was his ultimate kinky turn-on and he was never more than a few seconds behind me.
He lay down on top of me, his softening cock still inside me, and kissed the back of my neck like a man possessed. His hands on my shoulders, he moved my face to meet his and catch me in a long, tongue-heavy kiss.
I was dazed, still somewhere up the air, when he broke off and said, ‘This is you, isn’t it?’
‘Hmm?’
‘You are who you are – most purely, most completely – when you’re with me, like this.’
Oh, God, it sounded like something I was going to have to think about rather than give the catch-all post-coital ‘mm hmm’.
‘Whayya mean?’
‘You’re like me. Keeping it all in. When it all comes out – the freedom is almost too much.’
He was right, yes. He was right about that. But the thought of being like him was strange and made me wonder.
* * *
In the car on the way to my bedsit, he took up the theme again.
‘It’s about letting ourselves out, don’t you think?’
I watched the streets of once grand houses, now reduced to multiple occupancy and weedy front drives, glide past behind the rain-spotted window.
‘We keep so much under control,’ I agreed. ‘But you exercise freedom by being even more in control. That’s weird.’
‘Not really. I think you’re the weird one. Why would you let me do all that stuff to you?’ He laughed; then settled his tone into something more serious again. ‘I let myself out when I’m with you, because you accept who I am. You like who I am.’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t always like who I am.’
‘Everyone feels like that sometimes.’
‘You stop me feeling like it. You’re not a sticking plaster, either. You make it OK.’
‘Jasper.’ I put my hand over his on the steering wheel.
He cocked his head to one side and smiled at me through misty eyes, then swore at the tightness of the parking space in front of my place.
‘You’re used to fitting into tight spaces, aren’t you?’ I teased and he gave me a crooked smile.
‘Very. Though I could always use a bit more practice.’
‘Maybe not today, eh?’ I said, clenching my sphincter muscles, which still felt sore and well-used.
He manoeuvred the car into position and sat there for a moment with the engine on, looking out at the rain.
‘Are you sure I can’t take you somewhere and buy you brunch?’ he said.
‘I really do have to get this article written,’ I said. ‘The deadline’s hanging over me.’
‘The Modern Victorianist,’ said Jasper. ‘It’s a good journal.’
‘I know. Which is exactly why I want to get my foot in the door.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, but it sounded so melancholy that I couldn’t help but turn and give him a sympathetic look.
‘What’s up?’
‘You. You’re such a well-balanced individual, aren’t you? There are parts of your life that don’t include me at all and I get … jealous … I suppose.’
‘You’re jealous of a history geek periodical? But Jasper, you’re a history geek too. That’s another thing we share, surely. It’s what brought us together.’
‘You’re right. I’m being pathetic. I suppose I sometimes wish you were an obsessive fuck-up like me. Why don’t you text me eighteen times an hour like other girls do? Why can’t you be needy?’
‘Needy isn’t good. Not for you, not for me.’
‘Damn you and your sanity.’ He leant over and kissed me hard. ‘Ignore me. I’m a twat, that’s all. Enjoy your writing. I hope you’ve got a good cushion for your chair.’
‘Git,’ I said, opening the car door.
‘But you love me,’ he parried.
‘Yes.’ It probably wasn’t the best moment for a declaration, with rain lashing down on the one foot I’d put on the kerb, but I tried to make it count. ‘Yes, I do.’
I shut the door and hurried along the pavement. A few yards in front of me, another car door opened and a woman in a hooded anorak leaped out and waved her arms at me, SOS-style.
‘Mum!’ I stopped short, looking at her, then back at Jasper, who had not yet put the car in gear. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We tried calling, love, but your phone was switched off.’
‘Oh.’ I fished out my mobile. I’d turned it off last night, before Jasper and I had watched the film, and had forgotten to turn it back on again. ‘Sorry. Have you been there long?’
‘Nearly an hour! We went to visit Aunty Jean and we were just passing on the way back. Where’ve you been?’
‘Oh … just had a bit of … needed to go to the cashpoint … Look, do you want to come in for a cup of tea before we drown? Hi, Dad.’
My father emerged from the other side, shielding himself from the rain with the Sunday Telegraph.
As we headed for the steps, I wondered why Jasper hadn’t gone yet.
His door opened.
Oh, my God, don’t do this to me …
‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’
Chapter Six
Even in the rain his smile was enough to stop traffic. Lucky all the traffic had stopped already.
Mum and Dad turned round on the steps and looked down at him, then at each other, then at me.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘This is my friend Jasper. He gave me a lift to the –’
‘Home,’ interrupted Jasper, speaking clearly and firmly. ‘I gave Sarah a lift home.’
‘Let’s get inside and get the kettle on,’ I said. Family drama was bad enough, but family drama in the lashing rain – no, thanks.
In my first-floor studio flat, wet coats were taken off and wet heads shaken while I scooted over to the little kitchen corner and put on the kettle. Hopefully I still had enough left on my electricity key to put the heating on for a bit. The room was arctic after a night spent out of it. My parents would pick up on that.
‘Am I right in thinking that you’re Sarah’s parents?’ Jasper’s voice.
I didn’t want to look at them, and concentrated fiercely on getting the teabags into the pot, opening the wonky fridge door without making it tip over, getting the milk out, sniffing it. Fine.
‘That’s right.’ Dad’s voice was guarded.
‘Have we met before?’ Mum sounded as if she was dredging her memory.
‘I don’t think so. Jasper Jay.’ I glanced around and saw him shaking hands with Dad, who was none the wiser, by the looks of things.
‘I’m sure I know you from somewhere … you look so familiar,’ Mum persisted.
‘Jasper used to be an actor,’ I said, over the gusty rattle of the kettle.
‘Oh!’ she cried, experiencing a revelation. ‘Of course. You were in Open Heart Surgery.’
‘That’s right. For my sins.’
They wandered over to my sofa and took places on its worn chintz.
‘Do you remember, Geoff?’ said Mum eagerly to Dad. ‘Years ago, mind you. It’s all different people now.’
‘I didn’t pay a lot of attention, I’m afraid,’ said Dad, a little brusquely. ‘You don’t act any more then?’
‘I direct,’ he said.
‘Brilliantly,’ I contributed, pouring the boiling water into the pot. ‘He’s won major international prizes.’
‘I’ve had a lot of luck and made some good contacts,’ he said, all self-effacing charm. I knew he intended to seduce my parents into approving of him, and if anyone could do it Jasper could, but I was still rather cross at how he’d inveigled his way into my parent-and-child reunion. I had not wanted to make our relationship public in this way and I felt railroaded.
‘Who was your character again?’ Mum was still a few conversational points behind. ‘The young maverick feller who was always coming a cropper with that moody consultant, what was his name?’
‘Reilly.’
‘Reilly, that’s right. And you were … Dr Stanwyck,’ she proclaimed triumphantly. ‘I used to like your character. He always stood up for his principles, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. Right up until I got stabbed in the ward by my jealous stalker ex-girlfriend. In the heart, too. Tragic irony.’
‘I was sorry they wrote you out like that. I prefer it when they leave the door open for a character to come back.’
‘I asked them to kill me off. I thought it’d motivate me to fight harder for success in my new career. I didn’t want an easy fallback.’
‘Brave of you,’ said Dad. ‘Giving up a sure-fire earner like that.’
‘Brave or stupid,’ said Jasper and they chuckled together.
Damn him! He was winning them over so easily. He was the Usain Bolt of charming birds out of trees.
‘And how long have you known our Sarah?’ asked Dad. Ah, the tone had changed. Not such a pushover after all.
I brought the tea tray over and put it on the table, pulled up the only remaining chair – an uncomfortable wooden one, unhappily for my bottom – and got to work on pouring the tea into the mismatching antique-fair cups.
‘Jasper’s who I was working for over the summer,’ I said. ‘The cataloguing job.’
‘Oh, Mr Jay,’ said Mum. ‘Oh. I see. I thought you said he was working overseas and you had the house to yourself? Didn’t you?’
‘Had to come back,’ explained Jasper. ‘Lead actor broke his leg and we had to postpone filming. So I got to know Sarah.’
‘She never said.’ Mum frowned. ‘You never said anything about him coming back, love.’
‘Didn’t I? Sorry, I didn’t think to,’ I said, feeling hot-cheeked and under suspicion.
‘You make friends with a famous film director and it’s not news?’ Dad sipped at his tea.
‘I’d have taken out an advert in the paper,’ said Mum.
‘We’re not all as easily star struck as you,’ I said tetchily.
‘Sarah,’ rumbled Dad.
‘Sorry. Just … I didn’t really know who he was. It didn’t seem that big a deal to me.’
Dear Lord, I was digging myself in deeper and deeper. Now it was Jasper’s turn to
look affronted. He looked at me for an uncomfortably long time, then said, ‘But you know now. Don’t you?’
I put down my cup. My hand was too shaky and I was close to spilling its contents.
‘Of course I do,’ I said, not knowing where to look.
‘So you’re … friends?’ said Mum uncertainly.
It must have been bleeding obvious what the situation was.
‘We both love history,’ I said. ‘He has the most beautiful collection – you should see it.’
‘Yes,’ said Jasper, ‘you should. In fact, why don’t you come over? I’ll do brunch for us all and you can take a good look around.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, we need to get back, our neighbour’s looking after the dogs.’ said Dad doubtfully, but Mum nearly snapped his hand off.
‘How lovely!’ she trilled.
Dad was outvoted, somehow, even though I was on his side.
‘But my article,’ I said to Jasper.
‘How long is it?’
‘Two thousand words.’
‘That’s nothing. You can do that in an evening. Come on. Let’s go. I’m freezing my bloody boll– Pardon my French. Spent too long in France this year. My house is warm and the cupboards are full of food. Mr and Mrs Wells, you are more than welcome.’
The teacups were replaced, still half-full, on the tray and everyone made a dash for the coat pegs.
‘You’d better come with us, Sarah,’ said Dad. ‘We’ll need directions.’
‘You can follow Jasper, can’t you?’ I said, wanting a private conversation with that gentleman before the situation grew much older.
But Jasper foiled me. ‘He could lose sight of me on the dual carriageway. If you get stuck behind a lorry, you could miss the turn-off. Better go with your Mum and Dad, love.’
Argh! He called me ‘love’. How many more signposts did my parents need?
I followed them to their car and got into the back seat – an act that made me feel small and childish once more, not the confident adult I was aiming to project.
‘Is it far?’ asked Dad, easing out of the space and following Jasper to the end of the road.
By His Command Page 7
