by Penny Birch
So wonderful in fact that had I not been squashed into a tiny seat next to a respectable middle-aged woman I’ve have been tempted to slip my hand down my knickers. To distract myself I began to read the various wine magazines Percy had given me and quickly realised that Americans weren’t the only people I’d have to work on. The market had changed since I’d left England and, while their influence was still crucial in the US, the Far East had begun to look to one of their own. He was called Anton Yoshida, which presumably made him Japanese-French, and his articles were written with a high-handed, arrogant certainty that made him ideal for my purposes.
It seemed likely he would have the same attitude to women as he did to wine, and I was smiling to myself as I imagined how I would allow him to bring me under his control, while all the while he was the one being manipulated. Outside my window the island was now invisible behind us, the English Channel stretching in every direction, a dull blue flecked with whitecaps. Several yachts were visible, seemingly too small even for dolls, and I let my mind drift into a daydream in which he took me boating and gave me a choice of succumbing to his demands or being thrown overboard to swim to shore. I’d beg and plead, but it would do me no good. First my top would come off, then my pants, as I was forced to strip out of my bikini before being put on my knees to suck him hard, casually fucked, spunked all over and then thrown overboard anyway.
I was still running through various permutations of my fantasy when the Isle of Wight came into view and we started to descend. The only person who knew I was arriving was Percy, who was completely trustworthy, but that didn’t stop me feeling jittery and vulnerable as we came in to land, and I pushed my erotic thoughts aside. I was imagining banks of photographers at the airport, with the horrible Pia Santi at the forefront, but not even the customs officers paid me more than cursory attention, leaving me feeling relieved but also piqued. Waterloo was no different, and the cab driver talked to my tits, his bland, reddish face showing no recognition whatsoever. Percy was right. I was yesterday’s news.
He’d offered to put me up at his flat in Maida Vale, but I needed a place of my own and had asked him to rent somewhere for me instead. I only knew the address, which was in Marylebone High Street, but I rang ahead and he was there to meet me, standing outside a tall red-brick block.
‘Here will do,’ I instructed, ‘by the gentleman in the tweeds. He’s my uncle.’
I got out as the cab stopped and gave Percy a long, lingering kiss full on the mouth, leaving the cabbie so taken aback he didn’t even ask for a tip. Percy took my bag, and spoke as we walked to the building’s entrance.
‘I take it that was as much for his benefit as for mine?’
‘I told him you were my uncle,’ I explained, earning myself a smack on the seat of my skirt just in time for the cabbie to see as he pulled away. ‘I hope you’ve found me somewhere nice?’
‘I like it,’ he told me, ‘although the stairs are a bit much, so I suggest the lift. May I say that you seem remarkably bumptious?’
‘I feel it. London’s so full of life after the island.’
I didn’t confess that my mood was partly nerves, but let him steer me to a tiny lift with a grille-work door. His hand strayed to my bottom as we ascended, kneading gently. Sex was just what I needed to calm me down, and it came naturally with him anyway. The lift came to halt at the top floor and I found myself on a tiny landing with a single door, a window looking out on to rooftops a storey below, and a short passage leading to the top of the stairs. Nobody was about, or likely to be. I pushed Percy back against the windowsill and got down on my knees.
‘Don’t you want to um . . . go inside?’ he queried as I nuzzled my face against the bulge in his trousers.
My answer was to unzip him and pull his cock and balls free from his underpants. He gave a soft tut and made himself comfortable, knowing me too well to think I’d stop. I began to lick and kiss at his balls, enjoying the bulbous, straining feeling and his male taste. He took me by my hair, not too hard, but firmly enough to let me know I was to be kept in place until he’d finished, just the way I like it. His cock was already beginning to stiffen and I took it in my mouth, closing my eyes as I let my mind drift back to my earlier fantasy.
Not that the situation I was in wasn’t rude enough, on my knees in what was effectively a public corridor, sucking cock for a man more than twice my age, but the yacht fantasy had been going around in my head for too long to be ignored. I thought of how it would be, forced to strip and kneel in the nude, with the hot sun beating down on my back and bottom cheeks as my persecutor’s penis stiffened in my mouth. The man wasn’t even Anton Yoshida, but just a man, some complete bastard.
He’d be laughing as he watched me, enjoying his power as much as the feel of my lips on his cock, at least until his cock was hard and the pleasure too great to ignore. By then I’d have given in to my feelings, allowing my hand to slip between my thighs so that I could masturbate as I sucked him. He’d see, and give a final, derisive chuckle at my helpless arousal before closing his eyes in bliss, his cock now a solid rod in my mouth, just as Percy’s was.
I took a moment to adjust myself, tugging my skirt up around my hips and slipping my panties down to leave my bottom bare. Percy had looked down as I came off his cock, and smiled as he saw what I was doing. I gave him my cheekiest grin in return, my eyes locked to his as I unbuttoned my blouse and pulled up my bra, spilling my naked breasts into my cupped hands, deliberately showing off to him. As I took his cock back in I was teasing myself, rubbing my fingers over my stiff nipples and feeling the weight of my breasts.
Stripping myself had filled my head with rude images: of how I’d look to anyone who came up the stairs, of being spanked for my dirty behaviour or taken unexpectedly from behind. But I quickly returned to my original fantasy. As soon as the man was hard he would pull me off his cock, turn me around and simply fuck me. I’d be on all fours, kneeling in the scuppers of the yacht, my naked bottom spread to him as he thrust into me. He’d do it hard and rather casually, using my body for his pleasure without thought for mine.
Percy had begun to push his cock into my mouth, squashing his balls and the turn of his paunch into my face. I was sure he’d have been saving up for me and would come soon. My hand went down between my thighs, to find my pussy wet and sensitive. I began to masturbate, revelling in the taste and feel of the cock in my mouth as I imagined another inside me from behind.
It would only take moments, a brief, contemptuous fucking before he spunked in me, deep up, only to whip out his cock and do it all over my bottom and back as well. By then I’d be rubbing my pussy openly, indifferent to the display I was making of myself and too far gone to find my humiliation anything but arousing. He wouldn’t even let me finish, just laugh at me as he picked me up, lifting me with no more difficulty than if I’d been a doll. I’d scream in shock as I realised what he was going to do to me, kicking and hitting out in a pathetic attempt to resist him, begging for mercy and whining that he was being unfair. He’d only laugh all the louder, and in I’d go, tossed casually over the side, arms and legs and hair waving wildly, my horrified scream abruptly cut off as I hit the water.
At that thought I came, rubbing and sucking in a welter of humiliation and ecstasy as I imagined myself thrown overboard like a piece of refuse, worthless once I’d been fucked. Three times I ran the scene over in my head, from the moment I was spunked up to hitting the cold water, each time driving me to a new, higher peak, and with the third Percy filled my mouth.
My flat was rather better than I’d expected. Percy has old-fashioned, masculine tastes, which generally involve a lot of dark colours and heavy furniture. He’s also fairly unaware of his surroundings as long as he has a glass of something decent in his hand or a pretty girl to molest, so I had expected something respectable but basic. What he’d found was a converted attic space in a Victorian block, five storeys up and above most other buildings. Aside from a bathroom at one end, it was entirely ope
n-plan, with three windows on either side, providing plenty of light and space. I’d got used to both while living on the island and would have felt claustrophobic otherwise, and although the constant buzz of the city was all around me it was no worse than my old flat in Primrose Hill.
I spent the first day relaxing and the next two shopping, while Percy did what work was necessary and provided dinner each evening. Networking was essential, but the London wine trade is small and more than a little incestuous so it was simply a matter of Percy letting his contacts know that I was back. The trade is also mercifully isolated from celebrity gossip, and for the first time I was grateful for the stuffy image I’d always railed against when I was a writer. Only on the third day did I make my way to the offices of Hambling and Borse in St James’s.
The last time I’d been there was at a tasting, when my interest had been entirely in what they had to show, but my memories went back long before. I’d been a little girl, maybe no more than six, or seven at the most. Dad had taken me there for some reason, leaving me in a reception room with what had seemed an impossibly high ceiling. I’d spent a happy half-hour scribbling elaborate moustaches on to the faces of assorted vignerons and wine pundits in the magazines, only to discover that my most imaginative efforts had been as nothing compared to the reality of the man who eventually showed us out. Save for two pale eyes and a large red nose, his entire face had been concealed behind bushy ginger whiskers, an image that had stayed in my mind for over a decade before I was introduced to Otto Borse. Gilbert Hambling I had met only at tastings, and I remembered him only as a man with the face of a good-natured basset hound.
Nothing had changed: the tall grey-stone façade was as imposing as ever, the iron railings still thick with paint accumulated over a couple of centuries, the great black door different only in that I was now strong enough to open it. Gilbert Hambling still looked like a basset hound, and Otto Borse’s moustache was if anything yet more luxurious, although now grey. Both greeted me effusively and I was shown into a private office at the rear, where a bottle of Champagne stood in an ice bucket, already half empty at shortly before ten in the morning.
‘Bubbles?’ Gilbert Hambling offered, indicating the Champagne.
‘Please,’ I responded and accepted a glass, wondering if the offer had been a deliberate test.
Neither man said anything, but to judge by Gilbert Hambling’s grunt of approval I had made the right choice. It was good Champagne too, not from one of the big houses but a private estate.
‘Patrice Beauroy, in Ambonnay,’ Gilbert Hambling informed me. ‘Fellow plays music to his vines, Bach generally. Daft as a brush, but it seems to work.’
‘He is the most conscientious of wine-makers,’ Otto Borse put in, ‘and in my view the best in Champagne.’
‘But unknown,’ I said.
‘Hardly that,’ Gilbert Hambling protested, ‘but with only seventeen hectares the supply is necessarily limited.’
‘Fifteen thousand bottles a year?’ I suggested.
‘Certainly not,’ he answered. ‘He restricts his yields to fifty hectolitres per hectare, so ten thousand bottles would be typical.’
I nodded, not wanting to argue the point. Percy had warned me that they were devoted to quality, and no doubt they would rather go down than stock some inferior brand merely because it could be handled in commercially viable quantities. As I’d suspected, the only answer was to get outrageous profit margins.
‘So,’ Otto Borse said, abruptly clapping his hands together, ‘Percy tells us that you are the person to restore our fortunes?’
‘I intend to do my best,’ I replied cautiously. ‘What is the situation, exactly?’
‘You can look over the details at leisure,’ Gilbert Hambling replied, ‘but these are the essentials. We’re not young men, Otto and I, and both of us feel that a quiet retirement is long overdue. Before we sell up, we need to get the company on a sound footing, otherwise the only people who’re going to be interested are the ones who’re after our assets, or so it seems.’
‘We would like,’ Otto Borse continued, ‘the firm to continue as it has done in the past, with an absolute commitment to quality, and to service. We realise that this may be a little much to ask, and that some degree of modernisation is inevitable, but there are dedicated young men out there, notably in the restaurant trade, and we would like to secure their interest.’
‘Will that also be part of my job?’
‘Perhaps, if the opportunity presents itself. Percy says you want a free hand, although naturally there will be certain obvious restrictions.’
‘Such as?’
‘Not selling us down the river, basically,’ Gilbert Hambling said with a laugh. ‘Come, come, Otto, if Miss Linnet is to do her job properly we must not tie her hands.’
He finished with a knowing chuckle, which reminded me of what Percy had let slip and set me blushing. Neither seemed to notice, and we began to discuss the conditions of my employment, all of which I accepted. By the time I’d signed up we had finished the bottle of Champagne and I was feeling ever so slightly mellow. At last Otto Borse gave a purposeful clap of his hands and stood up.
‘I have an appointment,’ he declared, ‘at the Aviators, who are one of our best clients.’
‘A gentleman’s club?’ I asked.
‘Indeed,’ Gilbert Hambling supplied. ‘We have several among our clients, although in the case of the Aviators Gilbert and I are members.’
It seemed entirely in keeping with the firm – crusty old gentlemen drinking hock, claret and port until it had begun to ooze from their ears – yet not enough to keep the company afloat. Perhaps it was the thought of so much pomp and gravitas, but for some reason I’d risen as Otto Borse left the room, giving Gilbert Hambling cause to chuckle.
‘How deliciously well mannered of you,’ he remarked. ‘Percy was full of praise for you, you know, but I must say that if anything he seems to have understated the case.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Not at all. You are delightful, Natasha, and I expect that I will enjoy having you work for us immensely.’
He was grinning like the Cheshire Cat, again making me think of what Percy had told him.
‘Immensely,’ he repeated, ‘especially as dear old Percy implied that the three of us share a certain penchant, and indeed that you are perhaps not averse to indulging said penchant with other gentlemen?’
It was obvious what was coming. He was going to suggest I have my bottom smacked. I’d known it was coming, but it wasn’t easy to make the transition from business colleague to spanking toy. I found myself blushing hot at the thought of a trip across his knee, as if I were an inexperienced teenager about to have her private fantasies turned into humiliating and painful reality.
‘I . . . I don’t mind,’ I managed.
‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Well then, if you would care to lock the door?’
‘Lock the door?’ I queried. ‘Do you want to do it now?’
‘No time like the present,’ he responded. ‘Come along, there’s no cause to be coy, not with me. I’ve had many a little moppet wriggling over my lap across the years, I assure you.’
‘I’m sure you have, but not me! Look, Mr Hambling, I . . . oh God . . .’
He had me badly flustered, far more so than had he gone about it the way most men would, perhaps taking me out to dinner first, or at least lunch. Yet there was something wonderfully authoritarian in the way he’d sprung it on me as a horrid surprise, and I do like the feeling that I have no choice. In fact, if he’d really known his stuff he could have just bundled me over and pinked me up without a word of warning, but what he did next was almost as good. Pushing his chair back from the desk, he made a lap, patting one leg as he spoke.
‘Come along, Natasha. Percy warned me you could be a bit of a brat about it sometimes, but I’m not having any nonsense. Lock the door and come over my knee.’
I simply melted, walking straight to the door and turning t
he big key he’d no doubt placed on the inside on purpose. He stayed as he was while I made my way back to him, now patient, his basset-hound face set in a placid smile, as if taking a young woman’s knickers down and smacking her bare bottom was merely a pleasant and by no means unusual task. Maybe it was, for him, but however many times I get it I can never escape the feeling that spanking is the most inappropriate, undignified, indecent outrage that a man can inflict on a woman. It also makes me wet.
‘Down you go,’ he said cheerfully as I got into spanking position across his lap. ‘Bottom up, and we’ll soon have you rosy.’
He sounded unutterably smug, and began to hum to himself as he went about the routine of preparing my bottom, Wagner of all things, punctuated by painfully intimate comments.
‘Skirt up. Ah, you wear a slip, how charming.’
My skirt was lifted, very carefully, and turned up over my back. My slip followed, showing off my stocking tops.
‘What pretty stockings! Ah, that takes me back! And such lovely thighs, ever so slightly plump, the way a girl’s flesh should be, so that it bulges around the stocking tops.’
He was holding my slip up, the tail of my blouse too, with just the tuck of my bottom showing and maybe an inch of panty seat, then all of it as he finished his inspection of my stockings and thighs.
‘What a perfect little peach!’ he declared. ‘Percy said you had a delectable bottom, but the half was not told unto me. And I see you’re wearing silk. How delightful.’
He gave me a little pat on the seat of my panties. My face was already burning at the shame of my exposure and grew abruptly hotter as he pinched the waistband of my knickers between fingers and thumbs and lifted the material clear of my skin.
