I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed and actually felt a bit of both. Within a couple of minutes, the man left with the blonde wriggling like a fish at his side. She gave me that same nonchalant shrug, then glanced in the direction of the other man now alone in the corner.
He was making a flapping motion with his hand, pointing at the stool next to me, then pointing at himself. He smiled and I found myself nodding. Camilla was surely on her way and I thought I'd pass a few moments chatting with a stranger.
The man was wearing a black suit like an undertaker and a silver tie. He lowered his head in an old-fashioned way as he sat on the stool beside me. He had dark eyes, a moustache, coffee-colored skin and neat hands that he placed together on the bar.
It was at that second that my phone rang. CAMILLA came up on the screen.
'Where are you?' I demanded.
'Darling, something terrible has happened.'
'What?'
'I can't tell you now. I'll tell you tomorrow.'
'What about our celebration?'
'It's a long story. Just, you know, go with the flow…'
'What?'
The phone clicked off and her name faded. I was sitting in a little red dress, legs twisting below me like snakes, a stranger at my side and, for some reason, an essay by Georges Bataille on The Object of Desire slipped into my head like a warning, or an invitation, I wasn't sure which, and I wasn't sure if that glass of champagne had gone to my head and I was imagining things.
The man had sat patiently through the phone call and now offered to buy another glass of champagne.
'Thank you.'
'Nahume,' he said, introducing himself. He was the same age as Quentin Quoyle, dark and mysterious. It made me feel mysterious. Like my new name.
'Camilla,' I told him.
'Agh, like the Queen.'
'One day.'
I smiled.
He smiled.
He was looking into my eyes and turning his watch around his wrist. His wrist was hairy and the watch was gold with a heavy bracelet. I sipped the champagne. He continued turning the watch as he cast his eyes over my legs, my breasts, my collarbones, my lips. I held my back straight. I remember reading that the secret of grace is to be poised not posed, important when your name's Grace.
'We go?' he said.
I swallowed. I could feel my heart thumping like my tutor's ebony cane. It was all so quick. So easy. I was playing a role. A game. Of course, the blonde in the green dress was a prostitute. The man had mistaken me for a prostitute. I was outraged and intrigued. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar, painted, breasts on show. I hardly recognized myself.
'I'm sorry?' I said, denying to myself that I knew exactly what he had said.
'We go?' he repeated.
This was like being another person living a stranger's life. I had told him my name was Camilla and I wondered what Camilla would have done if faced with the same proposition.
'Go?' I said stupidly.
He held up his palms, then tapped his chest and I wasn't sure if this was some sort of religious gesture or he was tapping the pocket that held his wallet.
'Yes. Of course,' he replied, and tapped his chest again.
Running through my head as I slipped to my feet was a tickertape like you see on the bottom of the television news, a long explanation that I wasn't what he thought I was…and perhaps I wasn't what I thought I was. I recalled a quote from Bataille, a line I had highlighted in yellow with a marker pen and would look up again later.
Not every woman is a potential prostitute, but prostitution is the logical consequence of the female attitude.
Is a glass of champers is all it takes, I thought as Nahume placed two £20 notes in the silver dish the waiter had left?
I followed him out into the street feeling heady and daring and glad I'd got through my first year at Cambridge.
In so far as she is attractive, a woman is prey to men's desire. Unless she refuses completely because she is determined to remain chaste, the question is at what price and under what circumstances will she yield.
It reminded me of Q.'s favorite joke. An older man meets a beautiful young girl at a party and says: Will you go to bed with me for £50,000. At first offended, the girl thinks about it and agrees. When they reach his house, the man turns to the girl and says, will you go to bed with me for £20? The girl is outraged, £20, she repeats, what do you think I am? We know what you are, the man says, we're just quibbling about the price.
Night had fallen but it was warm still. I felt hot and breathless as if all the air had been sucked out of the city. The man selling flowers outside the tube looked like the gardener who tended the school grounds. I thought for a moment it was him, but it was just the green checks of his flat cap and the tone of his voice. 'Fiver a bunch,' he was shouting. 'Come on, only a fiver. Buy 'em for the lady.'
Nahume bought a bouquet of pink roses, and I wondered if perhaps I had been mistaken, that he hadn't taken me for a working girl, just a lonely girl in a red dress looking for some fun. I wanted to explain, but was carried along by the race of the traffic, the heat of the night, the relentless logic of metamorphosis. I had objectified myself in the red dress and heels, the makeup, the trouble I had taken with my hair, the gold chain at my throat, the drop earrings.
By the care she lavishes on her toilet, by the concern she has for her beauty set off by her adornment, a woman regards herself as an object always trying to attract men's attention.
I had planned to spend the evening with a girl from university. Why had I turned myself into an object of desire? And why had Camilla suggested we meet in Dick's, where those precious objects are for sale?
A taxi stopped. It was my last chance. I had to tell him. Tell him it was all a mistake. Apologize. Go home. Take off your makeup and finish reading A Spy in the House of Love.
He opened the door.
'I…'
'Please, after you.'
And I got in. The taxi drove for about three minutes across Knightsbridge and a man in a grey top hat and tails opened the door for me when we stopped at the hotel. My heels tapped like castanets as I clipped up the steps to the foyer with its thick carpets and minions rushing about with trolleys and bags. Nahume asked for his key, and the girl behind the high desk gave me a condescending look as she handed it to him. I wanted to say, hey, I'm not that sort of girl…
But perhaps Bataille is right, given the circumstances, every girl is that sort of girl, that of all pleasure the greatest pleasure lies in falling from grace, in doing what you know is wrong and doing it because you know it is wrong.
We rose in the lift to the ninth floor. My heart was beating so fast it made my breasts swell out of the dress. There was still time to explain, go back down in the lift, but I bit my lips, followed him into a suite and listened as the door locked behind me. I could smell Jo Malone Amber and Patchouli rise from my cleavage and told myself I was there in an intellectual capacity. Just as rich students go to dig wells in Africa to understand the lives of poor people, I had left Dick's with this dark stranger disguised as a hooker to appreciate the feminine temptation to yield. Under my tutor's guiding hand I had learned that erotica is a psychological quest independent of the natural goals, and what could be more erotic than standing there blushing in heels in a tight little red dress with the first hour of night lying heavy as a blanket across the room
He took the flowers and placed them on the table. He then stood back and flicked his hand in a gesture that was obvious. This was the moment of truth, the moment when the woman transforms into an object. I bit my lips. I hesitated, and he must have taken this for a professional tactic, because he immediately reached for his wallet. I watched as he counted out five £250 on to the table and what went through my mind was a picture of me buying rounds of drinks for my friends in the little bar on the beach at Cabo de Gata.
I looked back into his eyes.
'You need something?' he aske
d.
'No,' I said.
My fingers were already at work. I lowered the zip at the back of the dress and stepped out of the material. I unhooked my bra, ran my knickers down my legs and stood there in front of him frightened and excited, the same excitement that had struck me a year ago to the day when I took off my clothes for Charlie Wright. Sex with boys is fun. I love it. But there is something so marvelously immoral meeting a man like this and stripping stark naked for him. Bataille was right, in every woman is the desire to reveal her charms in exchange for a gift. The world is a market. Everyone is for sale. A precious object knows it is a precious object and wants to be identified as such. Payment for one's charms attests to your identity. It is a form of narcissism.
A rationalization?
My knees were shaky. My mind swam in a haze of champagne bubbles. The books I had read that past year had a common theme: looking at life from a different angle, breaking taboos, doing what you know is wrong because it's wrong, and doing so knowing you will come out from the shadows into a brighter light, a nymph turned into a butterfly.
Nahume walked through to the bedroom and I followed. He threw his jacket over a chair and pulled off his silver tie. He was still wearing his shirt and trousers as he sat on the side of the bed.
'Come.'
My throat had gone dry. I swallowed hard.
I stood in front of him, my knees touching his knees. He ran his hands down my sides, over the curve of my waist, my thighs. I could see lights in the sky through the long window, planes sinking like falling stars as they descended into Heathrow. He kept sliding his hands up and down, up and down. Then he slid his fingers over my tummy and across my ribs. He took my breasts in his palms and squeezed, harder and harder until it hurt and I winced with pain.
'Good, you like. You like.' He looked up at me. 'Here. Here.'
He was pulling me sideways. When my legs were locked against his thighs, he bent me forward so that I was suddenly lying across his knees. I can't even be sure how this happened. He started stroking my bottom, gently, like he'd stroked my sides. I stretched my hands flat on the floor and looked down at my red nails through my hair. I opened my legs wider to keep balance and he ran his hand into the crack of my bottom. Sweat was pouring from me. I could feel it under my arms and on my back.
He kept on stroking, stroking. I relaxed. Then, out of the blue, I heard this hard ringing slap. I felt numb and disorientated. My bottom stung and I realized that he'd hit me. One hand was pressing down on my back, holding me still, and he smacked me again. I wriggled like a fish on a line to get away.
'No, don't. Don't. Please don't,' I cried.
But he held me still and spanked me again, really hard, the sound vibrating around the room. My head was upside down. I felt dizzy. My throat was dry. This had been a game; an intellectual experiment. After following my tutor's course work, I wanted to experience the erotic from the inside, objectively, not as an object.
I felt ashamed, stupid, too, my bottom in the air, my pussy wet, the pain running up my back and down my thighs. I kept wriggling, but he was strong and held me still, spanking me again and again. Tears fell from my eyes. I had not imagined anything like this was going to happen. I thought we would have sex, hot sex, any kind of sex. I was prepared for that, but this was more intimidating, more intimate.
Suddenly, he stopping slapping me and started stroking me again. I was sobbing, my breasts hanging heavily below me. Then he started smacking me again, not as hard, but continuously, one cheek then the other. My back and thighs were glowing and, for some reason I can't explain, it stopped hurting and my whole body tingled with strange new feelings, shame and guilt and horror, even a weird sort of pleasure I can't describe, but it's like being a child and you don't have to think for yourself, you just accept everything.
To my own complete surprise, I was sopping wet. He parted my pussy with his fingertips and pushed his long fingers up inside me, stoking me, in and out. He gave his fingers a good soaking then pushed them in my bottom, slowly, and it hurt at first but then the pain went away.
'You like, eh?' he asked and I just sort of moaned. I couldn't do anything else.
He pushed my legs a wider. Then he took hold of my waist. He pulled me up and twisted me round in one quick movement so that my toes left the floor and he had his head between my legs. He held my thighs and started licking my pussy, the crack in my cheeks. My bottom was in flames but his moist tongue made the fire go down.
I was standing upside down on my hands, my back straight, my legs bent at an odd angle. Nahume gripped me by the waist so that I didn't lose balance. He was like a piston making me wetter and wetter. My arms had started to ache. His tongue was a little animal burrowing so fervently into my pussy something totally humiliating happened. I started to climax. I pushed back and he kept going deeper inside me. I had been crying and now I was yelling, yes, yes, yes. Spasms were vibrating through me and my whole body turned liquid as I erupted in orgasm. I was ashamed and contented.
He rolled back on the bed. We were a mass of arms and legs. Then he sprang forward to his feet and undressed, dropping his clothes on the floor. He licked his fingers and smoothed back his moustache. There was barely any hair on his body and his cock was long and brown with a shiny purple head.
I lay flat on the bedcover and he straddled me, squirming forward. He propped a pillow under my head. I opened my mouth, closed my eyes, and he started to pump in and out of my mouth like a piston. My bottom was hurting again, but the rest of me was calm and I was thinking, everything I had learned that year was correct: the pleasure of sex is all the greater when it is forbidden or illicit, that the satisfaction of an affair comes from the secrets and lies that have to be told, that transgression is the triumph of the human spirit.
He kept going, in and out, my jaw was beginning to ache, then he stiffened, his body shuddered and my throat filled with warm foamy semen with a taste of foreign food and far away places. I swallowed it down. He pulled out and looked at me closely.
'Camilla,' he said and I nodded guiltily. 'You good girl.'
That was it.
I washed my face, dressed, slid the five red £50 notes into my bag and took my bunch of pink roses. He watched, lying across the bed, one hand behind his head, the other combing his pubic hair.
'Here,' he waggled his finger and I approached. There was a notepad and pen on the beside table. 'You put your number,' he said.
I was about to do so when I remembered Camilla's number, an easy sequence of sevens, fives and threes, and that's what I wrote.
Was there a slight spring in my step as I made my way down the long corridor to the lift? The doors opened. I pressed the large green G for ground floor and looked at myself in the mirror. There was a discreet smile at the corners of my lips and my eyes were bright and glossy.
I stepped out, glanced at the girl at the reception desk, the same one I had seen earlier, and trotted down the steps. I was about to cross the road when a horn tooted and a car pulled up. Camilla Hunt was at the wheel. Quentin Quoyle was at her side. He jumped out, bowed theatrically and opened the rear door for me.
'When Miss Goode is good she is very, very good. And when she is bad she is wicked.'
I live in London and have written FIVE other erotic novels and one novelette. If you enjoyed Laid & Betrayed, you’ll be sure to love these!
Flight 69
Kelly Conway has never met a man like you read about in the story books. That all changes when she meets the handsome oil man James Swanson on the night flight to Houston and discovers they do things differently in business class.
Buy a copy from Amazon USA (Amazon.com) or Amazon UK (Amazon.co.uk)
Or find out more about me at my site chloethurlow.com
A Girl's Adventure
When a mysterious stranger gives failed actress Greta May his phone number, she dreams of adventure and plucks up the courage to call him, but the moment she enters his flat he rips off her knickers and spanks her b
ottom. At first shocked and humiliated, Greta grows bewildered as the pain turns to pleasure, and after being tied to the bed for a thrashing, she agrees with rising excitement to play a game where she will win a prize if she does everything Richard demands. It is the beginning of an erotic journey of self-discovery, where Greta meets Dirty Bill, the water sports specialist; Vanlooch, who uses oils from unusual places to highlight his portraits, and the moody Count Ruspoli who, after bedding 10,000 women, has taken a vow of chastity. Can Greta save him? Under Richard's firm hand Greta finds her true nature through discipline and, after meeting film director and bogwash artiste Tyler Copic, she seizes the elusive prize: the chance to play the role that will change her life and put her back in the spotlight.
Buy a copy from Amazon USA (Amazon.com) or Amazon UK (Amazon.co.uk)
Or find out more about me at my site chloethurlow.com
Being A Girl
A journey of discovery and awakening to the delights of discipline
When Milly is late for a vital interview on a sweltering day, casting agent Jean-Luc Cartier pours her some water and holds the glass to her lips. When the water soaks her blouse he instructs her to take it off. Milly is embarrassed but curious. As Milly strips off her clothes, not only her shapely body, but also her deepest nature, is slowly uncovered.
Jean-Luc puts her over his knee. He spanks her bottom and her virgin orgasm awakens her to the mysteries of discipline. Milly embark upon an erotic journey from convent school to a black magic coven in the heart of Cambridge academia, to the secret world of fetishism and bondage on the dark side of the movie camera.
Buy a copy from Amazon USA (Amazon.com) or Amazon UK (Amazon.co.uk)
Or find out more about me at my site chloethurlow.com
LAID & BETRAYED (Getting wrong with Mr. Wright) Page 3
