The Silver Chain

by Primula Bond

  His voice is a rumble in my ear as he strokes my hair. ‘That wasn’t supposed to happen. You’re supposed to be at my beck and call, not the other way around.’

  I bury my face in his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll do whatever you want me to do.’

  ‘Turns out what I wanted was to pleasure you.’ He sighs. I can smell myself on his breath, just a faint tang. He’s tasted me. ‘So hot. So eager. Such a sexy woman. Not much tuition required here, at least not in the oral arts.’

  ‘You make me sound like a tart.’

  ‘Classy tart.’ He chuckles. ‘Lady, wildcat, virgin, whore. Whatever I can get.’

  I bury my head against his chest. ‘I’ve never behaved like that before.’

  He pushes me gently up, makes me sit up so he can look at me. His hair is rumpled. His mouth is still glistening with my juices. I long to kiss it.

  He picks up his glass though, and tosses the rest of the champagne down.

  ‘You’ve only ever treated sex as a pastime to get you through those bored teenage years. With the one guy. Am I right?’

  I shrug, in a very teenage fashion. ‘I told you. I’m very inexperienced.’

  He frames my jaw with his hand. I’m learning this is one of his favourite gestures. It means I can look deep into his eyes, see the way his brows move with his thoughts, the way his upper lip releases the lower before he speaks.

  ‘Maybe you’ve blossomed very recently. Maybe you were plain as a pikestaff before. You’ll have to let me see some photos. How could no-one else have noticed these slender coltish arms and legs, that tiny waist, those beautiful breasts, that amazing hair, your closed, innocent face. How has nobody ever snatched you up and carried you away before?’

  ‘I’ve never been interested. And I’m no pushover.’ I roll onto my side at last, still panting, my body still flinching with delicious surprise. This is easier territory. ‘You’ve seen how I normally dress. It’s easier hiding under unisex clothes.’

  ‘And yet you undressed for that lucky boyfriend of yours.’

  ‘Just the one. In the dark. Usually pissed. Always in a hurry.’ I sit up and move away from him. That’s not strictly true or fair, but none of it matters now. ‘Where I live, by the sea, people look more at boats and rocks than they do people.’

  ‘Well, I’m looking at you now, and I want you to look at me. What you’ve done to me. What you constantly do.’ He pushes me down and off the sofa until I’m on my knees on the floor in front of him. His eyes burn urgently. ‘I don’t want to lose the moment. I’m not all poetry and compliments, Serena. I’ve just licked you to orgasm and it’s my turn now.’

  My breath catches in my throat as he pushes his shirt aside and unzips his jeans. He grabs my hand and pushes it inside his pants, pressing me onto the hardness waiting down there. He tugs on the silver chain and I lift it out cradled in my fingers, revealed to me at last. The second penis I’ve ever seen. A man’s, not a boy’s. Bigger, harder, curving up so majestically as it meets the air.

  He leans back easily, moving my hand up and down the shaft so that it grows even more. ‘See what you’ve done to me. Can you make a happy man very old?’

  It’s more of an order than a question, yet it also sounds like a plea. There’s just him and me here. I could jump up now, simply leg it. Yeah, right. Out into the pouring rain. I could tell him to get stuffed. Yeah, and find my photographs out in the trash tomorrow morning.

  ‘Teach me how, Gustav. I’m a quick learner.’ I lick my lips to cover my naïvety, then realise how suggestive that must look. The answering gleam in his eye tells me I’m right. ‘Teach me how to take you to heaven and back, just like you did for me.’

  It jumps in my hand. He pushes my hand off to show me. I can’t tear myself away. Why would I want to run from that? It looks like it would fit me so beautifully.

  Gustav tugs the silver chain again, pulling me down again with a thump. I start by putting my hands on his thighs. Feel the tensing of muscles there. I stroke my hands up and down, up towards his groin and away. Is he afraid? And if so, why?

  ‘Still your choice, Serena. That agreement can be ripped up at any time. And if you choose to stay here and do what I ask you, you’ll find I’ll sometimes be tough on you. That’s how I’ve been used to operate, especially with women. I think you’ll respond very well to it. I think you’ll like it. I think you want to empty your mind sometimes and let your body be ordered about by someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘Quite simply if you don’t start by passing this one little test for me, the deal’s off. Pleasure me now, like I’ve pleasured you, and I promise you we have some truly amazing times ahead of us.’

  ‘OK. So quit the lecture.’ I press my finger to his lips so hard it makes a dent. He tries not to smile at my cheekiness. But then something steely enters me. A new, cool certainty, that this is fine. More than fine. Being around this guy makes me constantly alert, constantly wondering what’s happening next, and he’s just shown me what a couple of swipes of his tongue can do to me. How the world can tilt in front of my eyes when he licks me. He thinks he’s in charge, and yet he’s also a slave to my new, feminine power.

  Why would I run away from a master class like this? It’s only a few weeks of obedience, after all.

  I’m not going to let on that I’ve never sucked a man before.

  I grip his legs harder, slide my hands right up to his groin. Now it’s my turn to spread his legs a little. My face is right up against him. The heat from him pulses outwards. He smells so clean.

  His glorious ready hardness springs forward in his lap. I lean forward. The soft rounded end bumps blindly against my cheek.

  His hands come off my shoulders, slide under my hair. Yes. I have taught him something. If he touches my hair, I’ll do anything for him. Look at me. I’m kneeling in front of my master. My master, at least until our agreement ceases and we walk away from each other.

  To help me I think about what’s happened so far. That curtailed cocktail, how I didn’t want to leave him. How I obsessed about him all through Polly’s Halloween party and couldn’t get it on with a readily available American millionaire. How I nearly ran all the way to the gallery to find him after he called me yesterday morning. How distant and scary he looked in his suit, how good and dirty it felt when he took me with his fingers, us both standing by the window overlooking the river. What he’s just done to me with his tongue. Cunnilingus. A fantastic old word I’ll never laugh at again.

  The rounded end prods at the corner of my mouth as if it has a life of its own. Gustav rests his head on the back of the sofa, half closes his constantly burning eyes, and for once that’s a relief. His eyelashes leave spidery shadows on his face as it settles into something approaching peace.

  I open my mouth and the most precious part of Gustav Levi slips smoothly into my mouth.

  The silver chain is lying limp across the base of his stomach, catching in the triangular shock of black curling hair, like a decoration winding round a Christmas tree.

  My heart is pounding. Sweat pricks under my arms. But I want to do this. And it’s not so bad, is it? Think about what he did to you, what he’ll do again if you’re a good girl. My body twitches in lazy memory. There’s still moisture slicked inside my thighs. He did that to me. I close my lips as the length of him jumps over my tongue. So long. So hard. His hands close over my ears so now I can only hear the thick pulsing of my own blood. I stretch my jaw wider.

  This isn’t just for him. This is for me.

  He is hard now and huge, pushing into my mouth and shoving to the back of my throat and I realise that this cool, mysterious man is about to lose control of himself at my bidding. I try not to gag, ridiculously remember Polly telling me how it was done, demonstrating on a banana when we were on the beach one day, looking really filthy as she licked this curving yellow peeled fruit and pushed it right down her throat.

  Guys love you
to swallow, she said, biting the banana so that it almost squealed with pain. How I giggled and spluttered. If you swallow they’ll be your slave forever.

  When I next see her I’ll be able to tell her I’ve done it at last. Or are we too grown up for all those confidences now? I’ll tell her what she didn’t tell me, that it only really works if you’re falling for the guy. That’s why I couldn’t have done it for Toga Tomas. Or Jake.

  I push the thick shaft back with my tongue, close my lips round it again, and start to suck it into the wetness of my mouth. As it gives a little buck, and starts to grow even more, so does the balloon of triumph inside me.

  I’m getting wet all over again. Gustav’s big warm hands are jammed over my ears, but stroking and tugging at my hair at the same time. He’s stiffening and swelling as I suck. I don’t know if it’s my breath or his that is gasping and rasping with excitement now, but pride surges through me.

  He thinks I’m his pet. But watch this. He’s my pet, too. His obvious, thrusting pleasure is turning me on. I can taste him. His hands tug at my head, up and down, moving my mouth up and down, he’s a little more rough now, tangling and yanking at my long hair.

  My mouth loosens, lips losing their tight grip. I start to bite instead, nip the taut surface, no idea how hard to bite or how much it might hurt.

  He moans, his hands growing weaker, and elation surges through me again. Here am I, Serena Folkes, just up from the country, with my lips wrapped round one of the most powerful men in the arts world. I am the one making him whimper.

  He thrusts deeper into my mouth. I will myself to exercise control for a little bit longer and start to fondle underneath it, the soft balls shrinking shyly as I encircle the base with my finger and thumb. The chain is tangled up between us. He’s filling my mouth. He’s pushing at the back of my throat and now he’s forcing me down over the velvety surface.

  I nip once, nip a little harder, then suck, my lips sliding up and down, and then he is jerking, pushing himself into my face, he’s jerking against the roof of my mouth, blocking my throat, his fingers are pulling at my hair, pulling me away, pushing me back, and then he’s groaning loudly and painfully, sobbing his control away. His life force is spurting and flowing. It’s hot and thick, and alien. What did Polly say to think about when you were doing this?

  Imagine you’re dying of thirst in the desert. I open my throat and swallow every drop.

  I kneel back at last, wipe my mouth quickly, and watch him. His eyes are closed now, so I can’t tell what he’s thinking. His throat bulges as he regains his breath, swallowing down the shouting excitement. His mouth slowly closes and he lies back, totally spent. I could watch him all night. The lovely man I’ve reduced to this exhausted heap.

  Instinct tells me I can watch him but I can’t kiss him. Can’t do anything except rest my hands on his legs, watch the pulse in his neck judder to a calmer rhythm.

  After a few moments, his eyes still closed, he packs his subsiding erection away into his jeans then lifts his hand and finds my bracelet to unhook it from the silver chain.

  ‘Will you leave me now? You can find your own way to bed tonight.’

  I stop his hand on my wrist. ‘Have I done something wrong?’

  ‘No, sweet girl. I just need some time. Please.’

  I want to sit beside him on the sofa and watch the dying embers of the fire in the enormous grate. But I get up obediently and watch the silver chain fall away from me and trickle against his leg, and as I leave he waves me away as if he really is a Roman emperor. I turn abruptly and walk into the chilly hall.

  How can I sleep after this? How can he dismiss me like this after I know I’ve pleased him? I stop on the landing outside a set of double doors, churning with anger. I’ve a good mind to go straight back down and tell him to act like a normal lover. At least to talk about it.

  I turn to grab the banisters. I’m ready to straddle and slide down them in my fury, and then I catch sight of it. The Rossetti painting he mentioned earlier. The model, Elizabeth Siddal I’m certain, is in typical pre-Raphaelite pose, doomed woman bathed in early evening light from a window outside which a river slowly flows. Her mournful eyes are turned upwards, cheeks and jaw pointing down, a mane of tawny hair falling over a green velvet medieval gown pulled slightly off one shoulder, candles symbolically blown out around her.

  I calm down, looking at that. No matter where I go, I know that every time he passes that priceless picture, he will think of me. My hand comes to rest on the doorknob of his bedroom. Is he a collector? Has he more in here? But the door is locked.

  I glance down at the hall, the flickering strip of light from the sitting room. He must be sleeping now. One day he’ll take me into this bedroom, carry me over its threshold like a prize.

  I run up those shadowy stairs to the little room in the attic, lit only by one lamp.

  I feel light as a feather. I climb up onto the high four-poster bed and fall into the mountain of white cushions, running my hand over my lips, where I just tasted him. Down to the place where he tasted me.

  Then, as the wind rattles insistently at the glass doors to try to get into my bedroom, I fall straight into a deep slumber as if tumbling off a cliff.

  SEVEN

  The girl solemnly lowers her face into the man’s groin. I stand and watch her. I’m leaning against a warm, cracked wall. All I can see of the man are thick, muscular brown legs, hands pushing the girl’s head brutally into him. All I can see now of her is the tension in her hunched shoulders as she grasps the stone seat he’s sprawled on, her knuckles white, her knees on the stone floor and spread apart to take the strain, her toes curling into the cracks of the paved floor.

  I feel dust come off the wall as I try to move away. There’s a metallic rattle and my short progress is stopped. I’m chained. There are terracotta smears on my arms and hands, on my bare legs. I’m naked apart from a scrap of faded, torn cloth wound under my arms and again round my waist. My hair is coiled up on top of my head, and every part of me is dripping with sweat.

  It’s so hot.

  In this low ceilinged, claustrophobic room the shade is impenetrable and black. The top half of the man is hidden in shadow. But it still feels like an oven in here. I glance outside. I make no effort to get out because I know I’m in a kind of prison. The sky was its usual bowl of bright blue when I walked here through the city earlier, but now, through one small window, I see that it’s turned a dull, angry yellow, hanging low over Pompeii and scratched across with grey smoke. The ground is shaking and simmering as if we’ve all been set upon a stove. The air is choking hot. Hotter than I’ve ever known it.

  A pair of hands grabs my wrist. I have a thick metal cuff on both wrists, joined by a stubby chain, and the person unhooks me from the wall and leads me by this chain out of this little chamber and into another one even darker than the first. I am pushed onto my knees just like the other girl. They scrape painfully on the stone floor. That was blood mixed with the terracotta dust on my skin.

  As I fall against the ledge which acts as a bed, the whole world seems to shake. I’m sure I can hear people running and shouting outside.

  But I can’t move. I’m chained up again. Big, rough hands are on my bottom, fanning over it, wrenching the cheeks open. There could be more than two people in here with me, that’s normal business, but I can see nothing and no-one because it’s pitch dark in here.

  I can only hear a kind of grunting, smell musky sweat, I can only see a strip of daylight on the floor, and as someone bends me further forwards and pushes something between my butt cheeks, nudging into the reluctant tightness of my bottom, it’s a finger, no, two fingers, something else thick and hard, I stretch out to scrape at the strip of daylight and all at once it is gone and in its place the chamber is full as the yellow sky crashes right in along with grey clouds and choking piles of dry dust.

  The pillows are pressing down on my head as I clutch at fragments of the nightmare. I fling them off me and thank goodnes
s I’m not in the dark chamber of a brothel at the foot of Vesuvius but in a quiet attic in the middle of London. Far from the world being hot and yellow and about to erupt, it looks cold and grey out there and only good for staying warm in bed.

  In the morning light this room seems bigger than it looked last night. I am dazzled by all the whiteness, the light flooding in framed by three arched windows. Hanging on the door of the wardrobe is a pale blue jersey dress I didn’t notice before and a brand new pair of shiny brown boots. My caramel tweed jacket is arranged over the dress, the blue check picked out perfectly by the dress. I wash quickly in the little white bathroom and get dressed.

  There is a romantic-looking balcony outside the window and although it’s windy and cold out there I step outside to blow the cobwebs away.

  Down below my window is the quiet square, and there’s the sad statue on its plinth, poised for flight and gazing straight at me which is strange, because the other night he was positioned facing down the hill. Parked outside the house is a huge silver Audi four-by-four with a chauffeur standing beside it, built like a tank and uniformed to the hilt. The chauffeur glances up at me and taps his watch.

  The exhibition is complete and ready for tonight’s private view. The gallery looks superb. Better than any graduate show could ever hope to look. Slick, sophisticated, sorted. In the space of a few days my best images have been printed, blown up, framed and hung. The huge space at the top of the Levi Building is filled by my work. My work! I wish my dear old tutor was here to see this.

  There are acres of whitewashed wall with meaningful clusters of mostly black and white photographs grouped according to theme or place. I have spent the day standing on a chair in the middle of the huge empty space of the gallery like Boadicea directing a small army of workers to group the pictures into themes.