by Evie Blake
Valentina licks her lips.
‘I don’t like pain,’ she whispers.
‘We’ll see about that,’ he says, polishing off his glass of wine. ‘Okay.’ He stands up, speaking briskly. ‘Are you ready?’
Valentina follows him down the marble staircase. At the bottom he turns to her. Already she feels something different about him, as if he has almost grown a few inches taller.
‘From here on in, you are subject to my will, Valentina. That means that you must do everything I tell you, exactly, and if not, there will be consequences. I will remind you one last time that if you want me to stop doing anything at all, you have to let me know. Is that clear? All you need say, loud and clear, is STOP. If you want me to tone it down a little, you can say PAUSE. Okay?’
Part of her wants to rebel, but another part of her is listening, silently in thrall.
‘Yes.’ Her voice is almost a whisper.
‘I have decided that I would like you to submit to me first of all in the Velvet Underworld. I want you to go into the room and undress, so that you are in your underwear. I want you to kneel by the side of the bed, with your back to the door. When I come in, you are not to turn around and look at me. You must not look me in the face unless I tell you that you can. You must at all times keep your eyes averted. Is that clear?’
She nods. Her heart is beating furiously, and the palms of her hands are hot and sticky as she clenches her fists. Her logical brain is screaming at her to walk right out of here and never come back, but another part of her is pulsing with curiosity. She thought Leonardo was not her type, and yet what he is offering her attracts her. This experience of delving into a part of herself she has yet to explore. This venture into the unknown is exciting, and frankly sexy.
Leonardo turns on his heel and stalks off down the dark corridor. She is on her own. She unclenches her fists, and puts her hand on the door handle.
Inside the Velvet Underground, it feels like she has entered a warm, throbbing womb. The room no longer feels sinister, as it did when she was in here witnessing Anna the dominatrix and her slave Nicky. Nor does it seem as vast as last Saturday, when the four of them were on the bed. She looks around the room. What if Leonardo straps her to that cross thing and puts pincers on her nipples? She feels sick with fear. She tries to swallow it. Leonardo said that she can stop him at any time. He said that whatever she is subjected to is through her consent, and she has the choice to break the spell of their game. They are in this together. It is a kind of complicity. A trust of sorts.
How strange we humans are, Valentina thinks, as she unzips her little black dress and leaves it draped across the chair by the door. She wonders if he meant she should keep her stockings on and decides that they count as underwear. She pads over to the bed, and kneels down in her new black silk corset and black stockings. As she waits, she feels like a child kneeling by her bed about to say her prayers. An incongruous feeling. She begins to shiver, although the room isn’t cold. She realises that she is terrified.
She hears the door open. Her instinct is to turn around and see who it is, although of course she knows it must be Leonardo. It takes all of her will not to look behind her. Leonardo does not even acknowledge her. She can see his dark figure walking around lighting candles in every corner and turning off the electric lights so that the room grows darker and more atmospheric, long shadows being thrown from some of the paraphernalia. Her knees are beginning to hurt, but she stays as still as possible. She certainly doesn’t want to invite any punishment from her dominator. The suspense is almost unbearable, yet it is exciting her. What is he going to do to her? She is completely in his hands.
She senses that Leonardo is standing behind her, looking at her. Her breath quickens as she feels him standing over her.
‘Stand up, Valentina,’ he says.
She stands up shakily, her legs wobbly after kneeling for so long.
‘Turn around,’ he instructs her.
She turns, careful not to look him in the face. She can see his bare feet in front of her, and his muscular legs in tight black jeans. He has no top on. Above his chest she dare not look.
‘You are not to move, not a muscle,’ he says. ‘Only I can touch you, not even yourself.’
He steps forward and drops the straps of her corset off each shoulder. Her conscience speaks urgently to her.
Valentina, you are letting this man who is not Theo undress you!
She shuts the voice out. It is too late now for morals.
He walks round and unclasps the back of her corset. Then he pulls it free from her body. She is naked, in her stockings, in front of Leonardo. She looks at his stomach, the circle of dark hair around his navel, and trailing up his chest. She is barely able to breathe.
He leans forward and puts his hand between her legs, and feels her with his fingers. She gasps, surprised by his sudden forwardness.
‘Look at me.’
She tears her eyes away from the walnut floorboards and brings them up to Leonardo’s face. His expression is not that of a lover; there is no awe or adoration. Instead he is looking at her as if she is a mirror of himself. She feels a well of intimacy between her and this man. A delicious complicity as they enter the private arena of their own erotic game. He pulls his fingers out of her, and hooks one on to the top of her stocking, dragging it down the length of her leg. He does the same with the other stocking. She has nothing to hide behind now, not even her signature black stockings and suspender belt. She is completely exposed. She knows that he knows by touching her that she is turned on. He knows that at this moment her pleasure is outweighing her fear.
‘Get on the bed,’ he orders her.
Valentina turns around and climbs on to the bed.
‘On your hands and knees.’
Is Leonardo going to take her from behind, like Saturday yet minus Theo and Celia? Theo. The thought of him slays her heart, yet she can’t stop now. And part of him is here with her. He is part of her sexual need.
She is on her hands and knees, waiting, her heart in her mouth. She hears Leonardo moving around, bringing candles closer to the bed, so that she can feel the heat of them all around her. She tries to see where he is in the mirrors that surround the bed, but it is too dark to make out anything distinctly, just lights flickering, and movement. She senses him getting on the bed behind her, and she notices he is still wearing his jeans as he rubs up against her. He ties a blindfold around her head so that she can’t see anything at all, and then he pushes her nakedness against his denim-clad penis. She can feel its hard length against her soft flesh and it makes her feel so primal. She wants to scream at Leonardo, order him to make love to her, but of course she can’t. She has to do whatever he wants her to do. The suppression of her initial instincts is extremely erotic, and her body is now singing with expectation.
‘Go down on your elbows,’ Leonardo tells her, ‘and put your head between your hands. Now push your bottom in the air.’
She does as she is told. She feels extremely exposed now, her backside sticking up like an animal asking to be fucked. Her field of vision is so black that her mind is putting pictures in her head. Leonardo naked behind her. Leonardo coming into her. Leonardo and her fucking. It is so bad, dirty, wrong, yet all she feels is him caressing her bottom, massaging it deeply and pulling his hands underneath her, touching her deep down inside of herself so that she is quivering with desire.
‘Now I think you are ready,’ he says coolly. ‘I want you to keep very, very still, Valentina.’
She looks into the black material of her blindfold and she can see nothing. She holds her breath. What is he going to do? She flinches as she feels something hot against the skin of her bottom. Hot and liquid, very hot, and yet it is not burning her. She hears a crackle from the wick of one of the candles and she suddenly realises what Leonardo is doing. Mio Dio, he is pouring hot wax from one of the candles on to her backside! She is on the verge of screaming STOP or even PAUSE, yet she doesn’t. If she tel
ls him to stop now, then she will never know or understand his world. And with all her heart she wants to. Besides, it doesn’t hurt that much. She thinks about all the times she has played with candles and wilfully trickled wax on to her fingers, only to pick it off a few minutes later. She always enjoyed that feeling of the hot wax as it stung her skin, and the cooling tightness of it on her hand.
She closes her eyes, even though she is wearing the blindfold anyway, and concentrates on the sensations of what Leonardo is doing. He seems to be trailing hot wax from the top of her bottom, over its curve and down towards her legs. He is getting gradually closer and closer to the most tender part of her. Her stomach clenches. Surely not? He wouldn’t actually put wax there? But the sensation of this hot wax is surprisingly erotic. It stings her skin, trickles down her backside, to harden and tighten. She hears herself moan. It feels so strange. Here she is letting a man pour hot wax on to her bottom, and despite the discomfort, she is enjoying this subjugation.
The wax trickles closer and closer to the most hidden part of her. She can feel herself moistening with anticipation. A tiny dribble trickles between her legs but misses her. She is beside herself with anticipation, on the edge of fear and passion. He trails the wax again and again, and she feels it searing, layering and moulding to her skin. She can feel herself throbbing, pulsing spasms deep inside, and then to her utter shock she is climaxing. Leonardo has not even touched her with his mouth or fingers, let alone had sex with her, and yet she is having an orgasm. It is a different type of feeling from before: visceral, the utterance of her deepest need.
Leonardo stops pouring wax on her. Instead he reaches forward and presses his hot fingertip against her. She begins to climb again, and he pushes hard, circling his finger, pawing her, and she is climaxing once more, gasping as if she is drowning in her abandonment. He won’t stop. Despite the fact that she feels as if she is going to disintegrate, he keeps on touching her with his hot waxy finger, making her come again and again. She cries out. Please. But he ignores her. For what is she begging? For him to stop, or continue? If she were not his submissive, would she push him away? His domination of her frees her from her own fears, for she is his and he will choose when to end her tortuous pleasure.
How many times does she climax? It feels like she will fall apart completely, unable to keep her body together, her essence shattered. Finally his finger stills and she collapses face forwards on the bed, her insides throbbing. She feels like she has torn away all the layers of herself in front of Leonardo, as if she is reborn. She lies on her face for a long time. The experience of what has just happened is so overwhelming that she can’t speak, let alone move. She hears Leonardo walking across the room, opening a drawer and coming back to her. He covers her shoulders and back with a light woollen blanket, and then gently scrapes the hardened wax off her bottom, using cotton wool and cold cream. Slowly and methodically he scrapes and wipes, and it feels like a cleansing not just of her body, but of her soul. Finally he has finished. She lies on her side on the king-sized bed, the little blanket draped over her. She feels light headed and tired, as if her whole substance has become ether; as if she is just a shadow of her former self.
Leonardo pulls another blanket out from under the bed and covers her with it. He leans over her, tucking her in, and then he crouches down and pulls off her blindfold. She blinks in the red light of the room. The candles are all blown out now and the room is darker than ever.
‘Well?’ Leonardo asks her, head on one side, his eyes blacker than night.
She says just one word. It is not humiliating, degrading, painful or even sexy. The word she says to Leonardo is ‘Sublime.’
He kisses her on the cheek, and they smile at each other. There it is again, this deep complicity, this equality. They are not in love. They are other people’s lovers and yet they have shared this most private game. She should feel guilty, but she doesn’t.
‘Sleep now,’ he says, tucking her hair behind her ear.
Valentina closes her eyes. She wants to take this feeling of sublimity with her into her dreams. She wants to bring it to Theo.
Belle
DESPITE HER MOTHER’S DEVOUT CATHOLICISM, AND BEING sent to a convent when she was twelve for her education, Belle does not believe in God. Yet every morning she begins her day in one of Venice’s churches, usually the tiny marble Santa Maria dei Miracoli near her apartment, or the more imposing Santi Giovanni e Paolo. She doesn’t know what else to do. She wants God to grant her Santos Devine. Hasn’t she paid her penance by now? Fourteen years with a husband who loathes her, her father dead, her mother insane, Poland lost, childless and alone? Doesn’t she deserve to be given the only thing she has ever really wanted? The man she loves.
It is not too much to ask, and yet Belle knows it is the world. Each moment she spends with Santos is divine, yet tortuous. He warns her. Many times he suggests it best they do not see each other again. He takes her hand in his, and smiles at her wistfully.
‘I don’t want to break your heart,’ he says.
And she wants to scream back at him, And where is your heart? In what dark cave from the past have you hidden it?
He tells her he cannot love only one woman. And yet the way he makes love to her, the way he says her name when he is deep inside her, the way he can sleep all afternoon in her arms . . . how can he not love her?
She hopes, and she prays, and she begs to be granted her heart’s desire.
Often Santos arrives by the back entrance of her building, calling up to her from a boat. She leans over her little balcony and tosses down the symbol of their love, a white rose, which he catches and smells with gusto.
‘Come down, my little Blackbird, come sail with me.’
She puts on her sailor boy’s outfit, not bothering to strap down her breasts or hide her hair inside her cap, sometimes wearing a pair of black silk shorts rather than her white trousers. Santos loves her little shorts. They are so daring. He tells her his first mate had better watch out. And Belle fantasises about the possibility that she might one day accompany him on one of his sea adventures. She imagines herself as a swashbuckling pirate queen, and Santos as her dark captain.
Now Venice is no longer a prison for Belle. It becomes a city of sensuality for her and Santos. The constant murmur of the water lapping against the ancient stone is like the constant measure of her love for Santos. The scent of decay, crumbling plaster and sediment is like the smell of their sex, penetrating and ultimately tragic. Each time she crosses a high arched bridge, Belle wishes it could be a crossing from one man to the next. Yet those bridges never take her anywhere but around in circles, for difficult as it is to leave her husband, it seems it would be impossible for Santos to settle for her alone. The painful truth is that she is not enough for him, and yet he is all she has ever wanted.
Yet love is a generous soul, and Belle’s love for Santos means she still gives all she can to him, knowing that in the end it will be washed away, like everything is in Venice.
This day, though, is a bright one for Belle. Her husband has gone away again, and she is free to abandon the whole day to Santos, her lover. She has given up her other clients. Suddenly no man’s touch will do but his. She leans over her little balcony, dropping a white rose into her lover’s boat. He plucks the petals, scattering them on the verdigris canal. He offers her his arms. She is down in a trice, clambering aboard his boat in her black silk shorts, little white blouse and sailor’s cap. He rows her out into the middle of the lagoon, until they are just one tiny boat bobbing around on a vast expanse of opaque aqua. He feeds her strawberries, the juice of which stains her white blouse. Then they lie down in the rocking boat, and Santos makes love to her.
She watches the seagulls wheeling above her as she pulls her lover deep inside her. She wishes she could stain him with her love, just like the strawberry juice has stained her clothes. She wishes the power of their passion could somehow arouse his heart. Why does he not feel it? she wonders. Why can I not
make him fall in love with me? Yet Santos remains enigmatic as ever. From one day to the next she does not know if he will come, and when he does turn up she lights a dozen candles in the church the next morning in gratitude.
This time it is night. They are sitting on her little balcony overlooking the dark lapping canal, the bleached buildings opposite silent like phantom sentinels of the city. It is a warm night, and Venice creaks with heat, the canal pungent with the flavours of the city. Santos is topless. She admires the fine curls of hair on his chest, the powerful delineation of his shoulders and arms. She is naked, apart from her dressing gown, which trails around them like a waterfall of blue silk. They have just made love. For Belle it has been the most intense and emotional lovemaking of her life. Her eyes are still moist from the tears she shed when she climaxed, and in that moment she saw a flicker of something in Santos’s face. An emotion more than compassion for her heartache, and so much more than the light smile he usually bestows on her. He looked serious. And he looked right into her.
They sit in silence, watching the canal, until Santos turns to her.
‘So you love me?’ he says, looking at her with an expression at once old and young.
She frowns.
‘I have loved you since the day I met you. But I have told you this countless times.’
He shrugs, trying to avoid her gaze.
‘Many women have told me they loved me. But none of them actually did. They always wanted some part of me. Usually my free spirit.’
She takes his hand in hers, locks their fingers together and forces him to look at her.
‘Santos, I don’t want to take away your spirit. Why would I want to do that when it is precisely what I love the most about you?’
‘Ah, Belle, what kind of love is it you feel? I was led to believe that if you are in love with someone, you wish to keep them with you until the day you die.’
