'I'm very pleased to hear it.' His hand reached out to trace a path through her hair, moving down her cheeks until he held her chin, leant in and kissed her gently on the lips. 'Let's put our names to it, shall we?'
He picked up the notepad and signed his name in a sharp cursive hand beneath Rachael's loops and scrawls. She looped and scrawled in turn.
'We have an agreement, then,' he said briskly, rising once more to his feet. 'No, stay there. I haven't given you permission to stand. Reach down to unfasten and remove your robe, please.'
Rachael balked, but the cleft between her thighs lit up as if electrified, knowing what she wanted before her head caught up. She untied the knot, leaning awkwardly on one elbow and thanking her stars that the carpet was expensive, then slipped the towelling robe off, unsure whether she should keep down or kneel up to do it. She took the less dangerous but more clumsy route of keeping down, which earned her the praise of her new extracurricular boss. She was pleased with herself; perhaps she would turn out to be good at submitting. It was funny how easily it seemed to come to her. Even naked on all fours, being inspected by her manager, she felt that her desire for his approval overrode any discomfort at her predicament.
'Sit up for me, please, Rachael,' he ordered, and she crouched back on her heels. 'Spine nice and straight.' She threw back her shoulders, aware of the inevitable out-thrusting effect this had on her breasts. They were small, but the nipples were twice their usual size, joyous crimson attention-seekers. 'Pretty,' crooned Everett, running a fingertip around them before pinching them slightly, causing Rachael to mew. 'Sensitive too. Now sit at the foot of the bed and spread your legs as wide as you can.'
Rachael, ever eager to please, sat her bottom gingerly on the tip of the mattress and splayed her thighs so wide that she risked straining a muscle. If they ached tomorrow, then so much the better, she thought, having always enjoyed a little bit of bodily fatigue the day after sex. She flushed and rolled her head back when Everett knelt down between her knees and moved in close to the exposed spread.
'You feel lovely,' he complimented, kneading at her lips with his thumbs and breathing warm air over her clitoris. A finger poked rudely up inside her; she squirmed upon it and he added another. 'So tight and hot. This turns you on, doesn't it? Have you done anything like it before?'
'No,' she moaned, riveted by the slow in and out of his fingers and his tormenting hot breath against her most sensitive spot.
'You must be a natural, then. Oh yes, you do feel wonderful.' He chuckled, astounded by his good fortune. 'But how do you taste, Rachael?'
She almost screamed when the tip of his tongue darted out to scoop up her juices, circling her clitoris like a hungry predator while his fingers continued to pump. Oh, this was too good, so good it was cruel, if he kept it up for much longer, she was going to . . .
He stopped, pulled out, kissed her clit then sat back, grinning.
'Not yet you don't,' he said. Rachael made a face, a red one, and stared down at her recently bereft sex, which was a similar shade, as well as shiny wet. Everett took her wrist, from which the cord marks were now fading, and examined it closely, running his fingers along the sensitive underside in a way that did not help Rachael calm down after her near-orgasm.
'How did you get this?' he asked, his eyebrow supplying the question mark. 'The truth this time, please.'
Rachael could not answer. Not from fear of disapproval, or even ridicule, but because it seemed too personal an admission.
'How do you think?' she said eventually, slightly sulkily.
'Don't answer my questions with a question, Rachael, unless you want to see how I enforce discipline. I was planning to save that for a little later on, once the dynamic was properly established.'
Rachael flushed even darker, the word 'discipline' sending fresh rushes of wetness to her core, feeling sure that Everett could see her excitement.
'Sorry, Sir,' she improvised. 'I . . . it was my dressing gown. It chafed my wrist . . . somehow.'
'Not ''somehow'', Rachael.' She gasped as Everett dealt a slap to her thigh, not a hard one, but it shocked her enough to bring the truth out in a tumble.
'I tied myself to the bedpost.'
'Good. There. That wasn't so hard, was it? So you really are a kinky little thing, aren't you? Have you ever been tied before?'
She shook her head.
'But you've thought about it? And you'd like to try it?'
Rachael nodded.
'Well, the dressing gown cords might not be ideal.' Everett loosened and whipped off his tie, then retrieved another from his bedside drawer. 'Silk, on the other hand, is always nice. Lie down. Arms above your head.'
Rachael found that the businesslike enunciation helped her to comply. In an essential sense, this was no different from being in the office, being told to make a call or collect a file. The relationship remained the same; it was only the nature of the tasks that varied. Rachael had always been an approval-seeker and her wired-in eagerness to please would make this easy on her.
She stared up at the ceiling, which had discreet spotlights dotted across it, imagining herself in a painting or a photograph, hanging in a gallery. What kind of comments would people make? Would they be able to guess from her stance that she was about to be tied up? Did she look like a woman embarking on a thrilling new journey into her sexuality? Or did she look like a slag? Oh dear, no, hush that nasty little voice, the voice that tells you to wall yourself up until a husband comes knocking on the door of your tower. Why is it so insistent?
She dismissed it, stretched her fingers up towards the bedpost, then gasped when the mattress sloped downwards either side of her, Everett's knees straddling her hips. Even in his suit, he looked shockingly primitive, bearing down on her to bind each wrist with a tasteful paisley-patterned tether. She almost expected him to lunge down and take a chunk from her neck. If he wanted to, he could. There would be no way of stopping him. Perhaps she ought to feel afraid – properly afraid, rather than this pleasurable tension. Everett was all right, wasn't he? His ex-wife was alive, not hacked into several pieces under the patio. It would be fine.
He crouched low over her, his hands around her bound wrists, his pale pointy nose touching hers. 'I can do anything I want to you,' he said, putting a voice to her greatest fear and greatest desire. 'But since you're a novice to this, I'm going to play fair. I'm going to ask you what you'd like me to do.'
'Oh.' Rachael had not expected this. She was calling the shots? Was that allowed? And what shots should she call? 'Well . . .' She hesitated. He moved his face to the side and murmured into her ear.
'Any ideas? Anything you like.'
He sat back on his haunches, looking down at her, smiling like the cat who got an entire dairy full of cream. It was a stirring look, a look that banished Rachael's fears and made her feel as powerful as a woman tied to a bed can possibly feel.
She smiled back. 'What you were doing before . . . that was good.'
'Making you write out a contract?'
'No! With your fingers . . . and your tongue.'
'My fingers and my tongue? Where, Rachael? Here?' He bent back down, slipping the tip of his tongue between her lips, prising open her jaw while his fingers made pleasurable ripples along her scalp and down her neck.
This was what they meant by plundering lips, she thought, opening up without complaint to the thorough probing of her mouth and throat.
He sat up again abruptly, leaving her lips stinging and raw, and began to take off his shirt. 'Was that what you meant?' he asked, unbuttoning his cuffs before flinging the garment, toreador-style, to the corner of the room.
'Not quite,' she admitted shyly, casting an eye over his lightly freckled chest. It was not exactly beefcake, but she didn't like beefcake anyway. In fact, what the heck was beefcake? Some kind of burger? No, this would do fine; the beginnings of a paunch might not get him on to the cover of GQ but it would feel enjoyably heavy on top of her. She had always liked to feel weighed down, almost cr
ushed, by her lovers.
'Maybe this then?' His hands drifted down to her modest breasts, playing with them as if they were an arcade game, flicking and twisting the switches that made her light up. He dabbed his tongue across a nipple and hit the jackpot.
'Oh, not there! That's good but . . . lower . . .' pleaded Rachael.
'Lower, eh?' Everett grinned demonically. 'I'm not a toesucker, if that's what you're after.' He unbuckled his belt and swished it from its loops, doubling it over and cracking it into his palm for effect. 'Do you like a bit of pain, Rachael?' he asked, running the cold leather across her nipples and down her stomach. 'I hope you do, because soon enough I'm going to want to warm your arse with this.'
She squealed a little and bit her lip. Her heart was pounding, and her clit echoing the rhythm. To her partial relief, Everett dropped the belt to the floor with a jingling clink, then began to undo his trousers. He shifted, parting her thighs and kneeling between them, to remove them completely, getting rid of his boxers at the same time. The erect cock that sprang up from its nest of pale gold was decently proportioned and ready for action. All at once Rachael changed her mind, wanting to feel this inside her. Fingers and tongues could wait for another day.
But there were certain proprieties to attend to first.
'Oh, you're still wearing your shoes and socks,' she pointed out. Strange that a mature man would make this schoolboy error, but somehow touching.
'So I am. Getting carried away,' he muttered, pulling them off. 'You'll have to pay for that.'
'Me?'
'Oh, yes. You'll find that the fault is never mine.' He smiled again, recovering from his temporary embarrassment, and made a dive between her knees.
'I want you to fuck me!' blurted Rachael, before Everett's tongue took its chance to addle her brain.
He leant up on his elbows, perfectly triumphant, the naked civil servant.
'I'm happy to oblige,' he said. 'We ought to use protection, I suppose.'
'Yes, we ought,' said Rachael, amused by the glumness this seemed to produce.
'Some submissives don't like it,' he said, fumbling in his trouser pocket.
'Some submissives.' Rachael shrugged, finding it odd to hear herself referred to as an adjective. Everett pushed his moment of pique aside, rubbered up and returned to his predatory position, shinning up Rachael's body, lifting each thigh in his hands and sucking hard on their insides before covering her upper half, braced as if about to perform a set of athletic press-ups over her. She pushed her bottom up off the covers, digging her heels in, welcoming the new visitor to her doors, straining against the silken ties that were so much better than the dressing gown cord.
Almost abruptly, Everett surged up inside Rachael, impaling her at a stroke. He formed a cradle with his hands under her bottom, keeping it raised at the angle he needed to perform the fastest and most blistering fuck he could manage. This was going to be a statement of intent, a promise of things to come. Rachael crossed her ankles behind his back, hanging on for dear life as he began to stamp his ownership at a pounding pace, angling diagonally down so that he crossed her clitoris with each stroke.
'I could do this all night,' he growled. 'You couldn't do anything about it.'
'No, I couldn't,' she agreed happily, her words jolting out. His hands gripped her arse cheeks, pulling them apart, opening her wider to the punishing thrusts. She flexed her thighs and knees, pushing herself aggressively into his crotch, egging him on to take it harder and faster and higher.
'You do like it rough, don't you, you little trollop,' muttered Everett. 'Well, you'll get it. Hard and fast and often. Whenever and wherever. Whether you're sore or not. And you will be.'
Rachael's wrists were beginning to numb but she could not have said so, she could not have felt it, because all her blood was down between her legs. She began to keen, began to cry, began to come and Everett crashed into it with her, pushing and pulling her, marking her, taking her. Rachael yanked hard at her bonds and, with a tearing sound, one of the ties ripped in half.
Everett untied the half that was still attached to Rachael's wrist.
'Present from my wife,' he said, checking the label. 'Tested to destruction.' He aimed it at the bin and smiled tenderly down. 'I hope that was good for you.'
'Yeah,' said Rachael, still dazed. 'Good.'
'I can't quite believe my luck,' said Everett, and he untied her other wrist, kissing it back to life.
'So did you see him again?' I asked her. 'After you came back from your trip?'
Rachael smiled inscrutably into her drink.
'Only by accident. At a couple of parties. He said he wouldn't bother me once the contract was up, and he kept his word.'
'You didn't want to take it up with him again?'
'No, it wasn't that. He met somebody else while I was in Europe. They're married now, I think.'
'Oh, right. But he'd given you the taste?'
'God, yes. He'd given me the taste. I went to Europe and suddenly romantic olive-skinned guys in vineyards weren't doing it for me. It was older men in suits all the way. Would you believe, in Paris, instead of sitting at pavement cafés in Montmartre, I took to hanging around the Bourse.'
I laughed. 'Did you pull un stockbrokeur?'
'Nope. Most sexually frustrating year of my life. Surrounded by beautiful boys, but not remotely interested in any of them.' She sighed. 'Life has a sick sense of humour sometimes.'
'I suppose.' I sucked my orange juice through a straw. Chase passed through en route to harangue the Head Barman about something.
'Now he'd make a good dom, I bet,' said Rachael, following him with her eyes.
'No, he wouldn't,' I said hastily. 'He's gay anyway.'
'Gay? Are you sure?' She squinted at him, sizing him up.
'Might as well be,' I muttered. 'So these parties that you bumped into Everett at. Tell me about them.'
She ordered another drink.
Health and Fitness
He's at it again.
The banks of static cycles, treadmills and stepping machines might as well not exist. The non-stop VH1 on the big screen should just switch itself off, for all the attention it's going to get. Weight benches and pull-up bars are just part of the seduction furniture in this gym. For the poor sap undergoing Lincoln's Special Induction, there is nothing but Lincoln and her. I allow myself a nostalgic smile and walk away from the gym window, thinking back to the time I underwent Lincoln's Special Induction. We've all been through it, some of us more than once, and for a time it was a legend of the hospitality industry. It went a little like this.
New girl shows up at gym, asking for an induction session.
New girl is instantly floored by honed masculine perfection of Lincoln.
She turns up for induction in newly purchased most-flattering-possible Lycra outfit.
Forty sweaty minutes later, Lycra lies on the shower-room floor while Lincoln shows New Girl a whole new world of aerobic moves.
That's the bullet-point version, of course. There is more to it than that. There is the way he stands four-square, arms folded, a Mount Everest of man in a tight vest and trackpants watching you emerge from the changing rooms in your suddenly too-revealing leotard and joggers. There is his unexpectedly boyish smile coupled with his predictably velvet voice – sophistication and mischief blended inside the body of a god. Well, who could resist that? Even before he puts his wooing wheels in motion, most women are lost.
As the settings on the rowing machine ratchet up and up, so does his flirtation. There are the low-spoken compliments and the almost-but-not-quite jokey remarks. There is the encouragement, the 'believe in yourself, baby, believe you're the best' that makes every new inductee wonder if he thinks she is Special. And yes, she is always Special, for that one day.
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