To P – I have never felt so loved.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Exclusive sample chapter

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

‘I know nothing about sex because I was always married.’

Zsa Zsa Gabor

‘So if you could do anything, anything at all, what would you do?’ I asked, handing round the after-dinner mints.

Across the table, Gabbie, who is one of my oldest and best friends, and who was busy helping herself to the last slice of cheesecake, said, ‘I’m assuming we’re not talking about hang-gliding here, are we?’

‘No. In bed.’

‘In bed?’ said Helen. ‘That restricts it a bit. How about out of bed?’

‘You know what I mean: if you could do anything sexually.’

‘Oh, you’re way too coy to be a pornographer,’ snorted Gabbie.

‘Do the things we’ve already done count?’ asked Joan.

We all turned to look at her. Joan is small, lovely, and looks like butter wouldn’t melt. Back in the mists of time she’d been a tour rep for Thomson’s and up until now what had happened on tour had most definitely stayed on tour.

‘Anything,’ I repeated. ‘Any time, any place, anywhere.’

‘And then you’re going to write about it?’ said Helen, topping up her wine glass.

‘Well, yes, if it’s any good I will. I won’t use any of your names, obviously, and I’ll change it enough so that no one knows it was you.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Joan, taking another mint from the box. ‘I’m sure Miguel and Antonio would be chuffed to bits to see their names up in lights.’

Everyone laughed. ‘You’re winding us up,’ said Gabbie.

Joan pulled a face and then laughed. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘We all did crazy things when we were younger.’

‘I didn’t,’ I said, and this time it was me they all looked at. ‘Well, it’s true. I didn’t. I was married by the time I was twenty.’

‘Before then,’ said Gabbie, ‘you must have played around a bit.’

‘I had a couple of boyfriends, but not that many. And Ray and I met when I’d just finished sixth form …’ I began. ‘You know that.’

Although I didn’t say anything, in all the years we’d been together Ray had always preferred his sex the same way he enjoyed his food: plain, nothing fancy and without any peculiar ingredients. For him the very thought of anything that didn’t involve fumbling around under the duvet with the lights off was a sign of moral turpitude, and if he had ever enjoyed it before, it wasn’t the kind of thing you inflicted on your wife.

‘Oh, that is classic,’ snorted Helen. ‘You’re the one who is supposed to be writing a dirty book and you’re the only one who’s stuck to the straight and narrow. Fabulous.’

‘It’s not dirty, it’s erotica, and this is exactly why I’ve got you lot over. So what would you do?’

We were having a fajita evening in the kitchen at Gabbie’s cottage near Somerleyton.

We’ve been doing it for years. We used to meet up once a month when the children were smaller, but these days we get together when we can fit it into our increasingly busy lives. Every time we do it I wish we did it more.

We met at pre-natal classes in a scout hut in a little village just outside Cambridge. We’ve supported each other through backache, heartburn, teething, sleepless nights, terrible twos, troublesome teenagers, empty nests, dodgy marriages, cheating husbands and messy divorces. We’ve wept with each other, laughed with each other, got drunk with each other, and helped each other move house and move on. Remarkably we’re all still friends.

Spread out over Gabbie’s huge farmhouse kitchen was the debris of wrap-them-up-yourself chicken fajitas, tortilla chips, sour cream, salsa, potato wedges, white wine, Spanish beer and a big jug of margarita mix. We’d eaten our way through assorted tubs of Ben & Jerry’s and a twice-baked New York cheesecake made by Joan who, after years of abstinence on the kitchen front, had started working in a cookshop, taken up the apron and turned out to be the most amazing cook.

Gabbie is a solicitor, well spoken, tall and skinny, with the most fabulous long, straight, brown hair. Whatever she’s doing, she always looks as if she has just been ironed. Helen is a gardener: strawberry blonde, ruddy complexion, capable, funny, always wears trousers or shorts and smiles a lot. There’s Joan, tiny, pretty, dark-haired Joan, who manages a shop and is a deacon at her local church. And then there’s me, Sarah, and I’m a writer.

I’d been writing romantic fiction for the best part of twenty years, creating modern fairy tales about handsome, flawed, lovable heroes and complex women with complicated lives, finding their way to their very own happy ever after. For the last couple of years I’d been the main breadwinner, paying the bills while my husband, Ray, went back to college full time. To make ends meet, alongside writing novels, I’d also written for magazines and newspapers, for radio, short stories, travel guides, country house handbooks – in fact anything to make a living. Which was what led a friend, another writer, to send me a newspaper clipping about a publisher that was bringing out erotic fiction specifically written for women by women. My friend suggested that we both have a go at writing something. All they wanted was three chapters and a synopsis. What had we got to lose? After all, she reasoned, the sage advice given to all writers is to write about what you know. We were both married and we knew about sex. More than that, we knew about the sex we would enjoy given half a chance, which wasn’t necessarily the same as the sex we were getting.

To be frank, writing erotica had never been up there on my ‘Ten things to do before I die’ list, but it was a new market, I needed to earn a living and I decided it was worth a shot – after all, what was the worst that could happen? They would reject my idea. What I hadn’t bargained for was that it would help change my life for ever.

You’d think writing about sex would be easy, but when, after submitting my sample chapters, I was given a commission to write my first erotic novel and started work, I discovered it isn’t.

You need to find ways to describe all the bits and pieces and goings on so that it doesn’t sound like a public information film; and once you get past the labelling of parts you need to make it all sound sensual and romantic, and take your reader on a slow enjoyable journey towards a rip-snorting climax.

So no pressure then.

I kept a notebook alongside my keyboard with a whole collection of stick drawings in it, a visual aid to help me to work out what you could do given time, patience and no worries about a dodgy back – man woman, woman woman, man man, twosomes, threesomes, foursomes, orgy – as well as where all the bits go. While you can more or less guess what the business end is up to, where people put their arms, knees or elbows isn’t always as clear, so you need to work it out, so that the mechanics are sorted and therefore more or less invisible, and your hero won’t fall over while mid-fuck.

No one in erotica ever falls over unless they’re being swept off their feet and ravaged. They don’t get cramp, or the giggles, or trip over their pants while they’re trying to take them off. No one passes wind and flaps the covers, laughing furiously. Zips never get stuck, everyone always comes, and no one ever has a spotty bum. Humour and sex don’t mix in erotic fiction, or so my new editor reliably informed me.

‘Good erotic fiction should be like the best sex,’ she said during one of our telephone conversations. ‘A long, slow, satisfying build-up, hitting all the sweet spots, filling you with expectation, getting you more and more aroused, slowly bringing you closer and closer to the edge, making you gasp with pleasure, before finally taking you breathlessly to the grand finale. Erotic fiction should never let you down. Nobody in an erotic novel ever thought: let’s get this over and done with, X Factor’s on at nine. Never, ever.’

The downside as a writer is that you need to have great sex in every chapter in lots of different, ever more exciting ways. In real life, not only is real sex not like that but also it doesn’t need a plot. I’d been married a long time, and sex had long since slipped from something you were doing all the time to something squeezed into the to-do list, between cleaning out the guinea pig and collecting the kids from football practice. And unlike when you’re writing about sex, during real sex you generally don’t need to stop halfway through a really good bit to take the dog to the vet or nip out to buy the ingredients for your child’s home economics bake-a-thon.

I hadn’t got an office, so I was writing my first erotic novel on the family computer in a corner of the sitting room, squirrelling it away after each session in a desktop file labelled ‘This year’s tax receipts’ and constantly reminding myself not to email it to my accountant. With a house full of teenagers the last thing I wanted was for them to read what I was writing, so I put an old-fashioned clothes horse around my desk, hung laundry all over it and told them it was to keep out the draught. My husband, although he knew what I was writing, never peeked. No one else in the family seemed to notice that the same towels and sheets hung there for weeks on end.

Halfway through the first book I stalled, stuttered and finally ran out of ideas. There were only so many ways our heroine could shed her clothes and gasp in breathless anticipation. Which was why Helen, Joan and I were all at Gabbie’s, eating for England. They had volunteered to help me out.

‘So it can be anything?’ said Helen.

I nodded. ‘Anything at all that you’ve ever fantasized about. Anything that you’ve always wanted to do, if you could do it without getting caught, and without risking disease or hurting anyone.’

‘Or something we’ve already done,’ said Gabbie, looking pointedly at Joan.

I nodded. ‘I’m stuck,’ I said. ‘I really do need your help.’

‘How tragic is that,’ said Gabbie, laughing.

I was thinking they might come up with sex on a beach or in a sleeper train, or being ravished by a highwayman, but no: once they got going and were halfway through the Baileys, they were swapping real-life sexploits.

One had had sex on a cross-Channel ferry in the 1970s with a Frenchman she picked up in duty free, and when he told her that he wanted to see her again and asked for her name and telephone number, she lied through her eye teeth and told him her name was Freda and that she came from Margate.

Another had had a three-in-a-bed session with two builders who came to fix her parents’ roof when she had been home from college in her twenties. Another admitted to a drunken lesbian romp while on a painting holiday in Tuscany – as she said, it wasn’t something she particularly wanted to do again but she was glad she’d tried it. Which really did make it sound a bit like abseiling or hang-gliding – but she did add that it was incredibly refreshing to have sex with someone who actually knew where all your bits were.

I made notes – lots of notes.

‘Oh, and then I went out with this guy, after I split up with Keith. Do you remember Stuart?’ asked Gabbie. ‘Big, sort of gingery?’ She mimed tall with hair.

We all nodded.

‘He used to like to spank me.’

I stared at her. ‘And did you like it?’

Gabbie shrugged in a non-committal way. ‘It was OK, I suppose. I think he was hoping it would turn me on, but it didn’t. He kept saying that he’d really like to tie me up.’

‘Oh, we tried that,’ said Helen. ‘The kids were at my mum’s for the weekend. We did the whole thing: candlelit dinner, sexy underwear, silk scarf for a blindfold. Gav in this silk bathrobe I’d bought him for his birthday.’ Helen grinned. ‘God, I mean, he spent hours. It was fabulous. The only trouble was I wriggled so much that he couldn’t get the bloody knots undone when we’d finished and had to cut me off the bed with a pair of scissors. I’d got a blindfold on, so it wasn’t until he took it off I realized he’d used Molly’s skipping rope. God, she was livid.’

‘I blame Cosmopolitan,’ said Gabbie, sucking chocolate out of her teeth.

‘I’ve always fancied doing that,’ I said, casually. ‘Being tied up.’

‘You should suggest it to Ray,’ said Joan. ‘Lots of men get off on that kind of thing. You know: helpless virgin, tied to a bed.’ She rolled her eyes and waved her hands, squealing, ‘Help, help,’ in a very passable impression of Penelope Pitstop.

What I didn’t tell them, and had never really admitted to myself until then, was that I’d fantasized about being tied up and spanked for years: not all the time, obviously, and it wasn’t my only sexual fantasy, but it was there, carefully hidden and tucked at the back of my mind, and it was something I constantly revisited. The idea was a huge turn-on and had been for as long as I could remember – certainly long before my thoughts had turned to sex.

When it came to playing cowboys and Indians as a child, I had been the one who always volunteered to be held captive and tied to a tree. Want someone to hold hostage or whip until they give up the whereabouts of the cowboy encampment? Oooooo, oooo, yes please, that’d be me.

As I got older the fantasies became more explicit, and eventually sexual, and evolved to being put over someone’s knee and soundly spanked, or being whipped with a riding crop, tied up or down, and made to do all sorts of interesting naughty things that my mother never told me about and certainly wouldn’t approve of. But in all that time I had always kept these thoughts to myself. There was a part of me that was afraid to admit how much the idea excited me.

‘Bob used to like me to tie him up,’ said Joan conversationally, ‘and thrash him with the cane on the feather duster. It wasn’t really my kind of thing but he liked it. I used to find the feather duster upstairs in the bathroom and think: Oh, here we go again. He bought me a French maid’s outfit the Christmas before we split …’

In my fantasies the someone who did those wonderful things to me was always a broad-shouldered, dashingly handsome Prince Charming, who was good-looking in a clean-cut preppy kind of a way, and who was totally in control. He didn’t say very much because, as is the way with fantasies, he always knew exactly what I wanted and when I wanted it, and was terribly good at giving it to me right on cue.

I’d be wearing high heels and I’d squeal in a girlie way, and after he had spanked me he would carry me over to a big four-poster bed and tie me down and blindfold me, before going to work with his knowing fingers and even more knowing tongue; then, when I was baying for more, he would make love to me, long and slow, until we both finally came. Visually it was a treat of rich colours, soft leather, huge four-poster beds, hairy chests and muscular torsos, and it was a fantasy that I kept on having, as I reworked the details.

I’d never told anyone about wanting to be spanked or whipped or tied down, because I was pretty much convinced that I was alone in thinking those kinds of things and finding a sexual charge in them. I assumed that they were definitely too weird to talk about, and certainly way too weird to do anything about. Yet here were my best friends talking about exactly that. Maybe what I wanted wasn’t that unusual after all.

As I’d been taking notes, I was the only one who hadn’t had a drink, and I drove home thinking through what the girls had told me. Looking in through the sitting-room window, I could see Ray slumped on the sofa watching TV in his tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. We’d been together for a long time; we had kids, dogs and a home together. Things weren’t great between us. Money was tight, and while I was working every hour I could to try to keep our noses above water (he had been made redundant in a departmental rationalization and was now back at college, retraining), he refused to help by even thinking about a part-time job or helping round the house. As far as he was concerned, all that, and the children, were my responsibility, whether he was working or not. I was tired in lots of ways.

If you asked him, Ray would tell you with some pride that he was an old-fashioned man – a man who liked his wife at home. A proper family was what he called it. He’d probably have had a heart attack if I’d mentioned the whole tying-up thing. He was, and still is, a very practical man, a careful man; for him romance, luxury and adventurous sex were things other people had and I’d always felt he rather despised them.

As I unlocked the front door I thought about what Gabbie had said about sharing my fantasies with him, and realized with a growing certainty that it was probably too late.

Ray didn’t even look away from the TV as I slipped off my coat. ‘How did it go?’ he asked.

‘Oh, OK. I just want to get some of these notes down before I forget them,’ I said.

He nodded, eyes still firmly fixed on the TV screen. With a sigh, I walked over to the computer, turned it on and got to work.

Over the next few weeks in every spare moment I worked on my first erotic novel. I reworked my friends’ adventures and wove in all the things that turned me on. And more and more I had a sense of escaping into a fantasy world where anything was possible. I started to write all those things that had fuelled my fantasies for so long – and it was heady stuff. Most of them revolved around a tall, dark, handsome older man, who took control, and understood the heroine and what she needed and wanted, and gave them without question – with unconditional love and understanding. He was my Prince Charming, the alpha man of my fantasies.

I wondered, as I wrote, if that was what I thought I’d seen in Ray when I first met him. He was fifteen years older than me; I’d been working in a hotel for the summer when he asked me out. I’d seen him as capable, strong and silent. Things that at eighteen I had naively taken as positive qualities had, over the years, revealed themselves to be altogether less positive, and traits that probably a woman of his own age would have instantly recognized. He was stubborn and uncommunicative, and had, I suspected, chosen a much younger wife so that he could try to mould her into the woman he wanted. We got along fine until I wanted to grow up and have a life of my own.

Although I hadn’t anticipated it, writing erotica was the perfect escape from the realities of a crumbling marriage. All those things that I’d never told anyone before, all those things I had longed to explore, finally had a place and a purpose.

I also spent a lot of time doing research on the internet, which up until that point I’d mostly used to buy shoes and books. Not altogether sure what I’d find, I was nervous, excited, sometimes shocked and sometimes delighted. The internet opened up a whole new world. I rapidly discovered that far from my being alone in my fantasies there was a whole sub-culture out there that I had known nothing about, and lots and lots of people who felt the same as I did. I wasn’t so much relieved as stunned. And even better was that I found I had a name: I was a submissive.

In my fantasies, at least, I was a submissive – the one who gets spanked and tied up and gets all the attention. Submissive. I certainly didn’t see myself as submissive in real life, but sexually I could see that it was a good fit.

Having sold my first attempt at writing female erotica, I wrote more – a lot more. The stuff that had fuelled my fantasies for years was suddenly fuelling my fiction and my finances; and having finally found a home for all those things I’d been dreaming about since my teens felt good. Having an outlet for my innermost thoughts helped paper over the cracks in my increasingly unhappy marriage, and I was having the best sex of my life, albeit on the page.

Over the next five years I wrote twelve novels and countless short stories. The books and short stories always involved some degree of bondage and submission, and other sexual shenanigans that can be loosely described as S&M (sadism and masochism) and BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism), but in all that time, as I was writing about it and fantasizing about it, I never once tried any of it – not one single glorious black-leather, high-heeled, handcuffed moment of it. And Ray never read my books. Not one, ever.

Books, as Ray was eager to point out to anyone who would listen, were not his thing – and eventually, neither was I.

Finally the cracks just got too big and we separated. We were divorced within a year. It took me a while to get myself together, but after a few months I started, very tentatively, to date again. Fresh out of a long-term relationship, I wasn’t altogether sure exactly how or where to begin. So after a few false starts I turned to the place where a lot of us begin again: internet dating websites.

I think we’re often drawn to various incarnations of the devil we know – a type – and, having been married a long time, I certainly was. The men I dated after leaving Ray all seemed to have been cut from the same cloth. I was obviously doing something wrong. The men were all steady and practical, and I was still having married sex; I was just having it with new men.

Then along came Henry, my first attempt at trying to combine what passes for normal with some of the things I’d been fantasizing about.

After two glasses of house red and a light supper on our first weekend away together, I asked Henry if he’d ever thought about spanking anyone. You know – for fun. His eyes widened and his face took on an expression similar to the one I’d last seen on the face of a woman I’d offered a bacon butty, seconds before discovering she was a hard-line vegan.

Henry visibly stiffened and said, all outrage and horror, ‘Good Lord, certainly not! What on earth do you think I am – some kind of a pervert?’

Well, yes, hopefully.

‘Don’t you have any fantasies?’ I pressed, emboldened by strong drink and a nasty sinking feeling. The relationship had been pretty much doomed since lunchtime, when we’d been about to go Dutch on an uninspiring quiche and green salad when Henry had pointed out that actually I’d had a cappuccino and a sweet.

‘Of course I have fantasies,’ he said, ‘but mostly they involve world peace and captaining the English cricket team during a one-day test at Headingley.’

Buddhists, what can I tell you?

So how did he feel about underwear? What sort of thing did he like? I asked, giving it one last shot and my voice dropping to a seductive purr.

‘I haven’t given it a lot of thought, to be perfectly honest.’ He paused and then said, ‘Something from Marks, probably.’ I watched him slipping a bread roll into his pocket in case he got a bit peckish later. It wasn’t the answer I’d hoped for, to be honest.

So that was it: I was a pervert. My first very tentative attempt at expressing what I wanted – fuelled by a little wine and a lot of nerve – had been thrown back in my face. It confirmed what I had feared: nice men didn’t find this kind of stuff acceptable.

It was during that weekend that I decided it was time I found some way to let the genie out of the bottle and go in search of something else – something a little more rock and roll. I was in my mid-forties with a broken marriage and three children in their late teens and early twenties, and I wanted to try some of those things I had always dreamed of and been writing about, before it was too late. What had I got to lose?

It’s a scary journey to start all on your own. What I needed was a guide: someone to help me find my way through a sexual landscape about which, despite several books, in reality I had absolutely no idea – and more to the point, someone who I felt I could trust enough to bring me out wiser but unscathed on the other side.

It had also occurred to me that maybe when I got to the point of experimenting I would chicken out, so I also needed someone with a sense of humour and a lot of patience: someone who wouldn’t freak out if ultimately I put it all down to research.

I’m not sure I was setting out on a journey to look for a happy-ever-after with anyone, but there definitely had to be a spark, that magic indefinable something between us. What I needed was a hero, a dominant man – referred to as a Dom in the BDSM world – who I could trust implicitly and who I liked, and who was prepared to help me, and spank me, and who I fancied. And we all know how very easy men like that are to find …

Then again, if I didn’t try now, my fantasies would stay just that and I might as well settle down with someone like Henry and look forward to a lifetime of sensible pants and going Dutch.

When I arrived home after our weekend away I dumped him, put ‘BDSM’ into a search engine and watched the hits roll in. It is astonishing what you can find if you ask the right questions. There is everything you can ever want on the net and much more besides. Some of it in leather, some in plus sizes and an awful lot of it in America.

As I stared at the screen, flicking between websites, it occurred to me that I really needed to work out exactly what it was I was looking for. As research projects go I’ve had far worse. I made a list.

Chapter Two

‘There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.’

Marquis de Sade

A lot of reading, trawling and research later I took out a three-month membership on a well-known international BDSM website. I printed off a picture of Henry and taped it to the edge of my computer screen, just in case I weakened, and spent evenings browsing the site’s personal ads for inspiration, trying to work up the courage to place an ad of my own. After all, that was why I’d joined, wasn’t it? You couldn’t contact anyone unless you had a profile on the site, so I couldn’t email the men I thought looked interesting until I’d taken the plunge and posted something.

The trouble with real life, unlike fiction, is that you have no control over the outcome or how the plot develops. I was nervous of making the move, nervous of making a terrible mistake, scared that I’d be exposing myself to things that I had no understanding of with people I didn’t know.

In the end, bizarrely, it was Henry who convinced me to get on with it. I’d read and re-read my profile, editing and adding to it until I’d almost lost sight of what I was trying to say, and was sitting with my finger hovering above the ‘post’ button for the fifth or sixth night in a row, trying to work up the courage to press it. I was about to have another go at editing my latest attempt when Henry rang and said he was sorry for whatever it was he’d done, and that he’d got tickets for an open-air concert at the weekend. Maybe I’d like to go with him?

And I almost said yes, except that he hadn’t quite finished.

‘I’d really like us to be friends, Sarah,’ he said. ‘The sex thing gets in the way a bit, don’t you think? The tickets are thirty pounds each. I’m happy to take a cheque. I thought perhaps you could come over and pick me up.’

I didn’t want a relationship with anyone who thought that sex got in the way. He was still talking when I pressed ‘post’.

As I did, a little message popped up on the computer screen:

‘Thank you for posting on our website. Your profile will appear on our system within twenty-four hours, although it is currently available for you to view and may still be edited. You may remove your profile or make it invisible at any time.’

My heart lurched. What the hell had I done?

‘So what do you think?’ said Henry.

‘I think that I’m busy on Sunday,’ I said, and hung up, still staring at the message on the screen.

Bloody hell! What if I attracted an axe-wielding psychopath? What if the website accidentally posted my real email address? Or my real name? Worse still, what if after all this whittling and worrying I didn’t get a single reply?

A new message popped up alongside the first. ‘Members with photos on their profiles attract more replies.’

I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to post a photo. What if someone recognized me? I flicked through the ones that had caught my eye – some had photos, but not all; some were full-faced, others pixellated, some were naked, some dressed. There didn’t seem to be a norm: you posted what you were happy with.

I clicked through to my profile to read it one more time. I could always take it down.‘Forty-something female novice submissive, with lots of imagination but no real-time experience, seeks a man to show her the ropes.’

There was a lot more but that was the gist of it. In the end I also posted a current photograph of myself on holiday in a sundress on a beach sipping a cocktail, with the face pixellated out.

Then I waited – and worried.

Maybe I’d made a mistake; maybe this was best kept as a fantasy. Maybe I’d just take my profile down before any harm was done. Maybe I’d give up on men and get some cats.

I was on tenterhooks all day, refusing to look at the site, wanting to peek at the website inbox but resisting the temptation.

That evening, when I’d finished my day’s work, I opened up my account on the website. There were forty replies. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or terrified.

Taking a deep breath to steady my nerves, I opened the first one: ‘Hi, I saw your profile. Nice picture. My name is Craig and I’m a taxi driver and live just outside Cambridge. I’m into …’ It took about ten seconds for my anxiety to fade. These were real people, looking for the same thing as I was. There were some great emails among that first batch, including one from a woman, who emailed to offer advice.

The profiles were no longer nameless, faceless weirdos; they were people like me, and yes, they all had what other people might think of as unusual sexual tastes, but they were also looking for the same things as the rest of us – love, affection, sex, physical connections, understanding, companionship, someone to share things with, somewhere to belong.

I’d read dozens of other profiles before posting mine and I had composed an email to send to anyone who caught my eye. It didn’t take me long to weed out the one-liners, the men who replied with a photo of their wedding tackle, and those who came across as illiterate, barking mad, wannabes or just plain weird. Though, oddly enough, in all the time when I met men from BDSM websites I met only one genuinely scary man – far fewer than on the straight sites I’d signed up to.

Over the next few days as the replies arrived I went through them all, reading every single one. I made a list of possible Doms to contact and ended up whittling those down to around a dozen before replying:

Thank you for replying to my recent ad.

I am a complete novice in this kind of lifestyle and I wondered whether it would be possible to make contact and/or talk?

I am deeply attracted to the idea of submission. I’ve written erotic fiction for several years and realized almost immediately that the thing that aroused me most was the idea of being submissive.

The trouble is I’m not sure how much of this is pure fantasy and how much I would, in real life, be able to cope with.

I am not a time-waster but I am naturally cautious while at the same time looking for a sane and safe and intelligent way to explore my sexuality. I wonder if you would be happy to talk to me?

Thank you for your time.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Over the next couple of months I spoke to almost all of the ones on my list and I met several. I was looking for someone whose kinks matched my own and who felt right. It was tricky – after all, mine were still all imaginary, untried kinks.

It’s very odd meeting someone whose main shared interest isn’t something like gardening or films but what you like sexually. Before my first meeting I was a bag of nerves and sat in the car wondering if I should just text him and say I’d chickened out.

We had arranged to meet for coffee. Heading for the café, I half expected somebody in black leather and studs. Instead, I met a lovely man who was very keen to spank me and lock me in a large dog cage overnight. He was quietly spoken with charming manners, taught at a university and advised me not to rush and to enjoy the journey. While it was obvious from the second we met there was not a molecule of chemistry between us, he offered me a trial run, and to be a listening ear if I ever felt the need.

Later I met a pilot who liked to write obscenities on his partner in felt tip and then flog them; a fireman, who I really thought might be it, until he spent the whole time we were having coffee talking about anal sex; and a librarian, who was an absolute sweetie and with whom I’ve remained friends, and who was into pony girls and showed me pictures of his ex-wife dressed up in a harness, saddle, bells and buckles – she looked fabulous, although to be fair she was more Shetland pony than Arab filly. But none of them felt right, and I needed it to feel right for me to even consider taking the next step.

‘How do you feel about handcuffs?’ asked my lunch date as he reached across the table to top up my glass.

‘In what way?’ I asked, trying hard to sound nonchalant. The pub I’d chosen to meet at was busy; there were other people within earshot. This was the third Dom I’d met in the last couple of weeks.

‘Well,’ he said, moving his chair in closer and leaning towards me across the table. ‘I’ve got quite a collection of restraints – everything from vintage shackles right through to some lovely little stainless-steel cuffs that I bought in the Far East while I was on holiday there last year. They’ve got little tiny rows of teeth on the inside.’ He mimed. ‘I’m not a great fan of cable ties. Actually, I’ve brought a few of my favourites along with me in the back of the car,’ he continued enthusiastically. ‘Maybe you’d like to take a little look after we’ve eaten?’

I turned my attention back to my salad, decided not to bother with the wine, and instead counted down the minutes till my mobile pinged to announce an incoming text message. I’d arranged for Joan to text me. If it was going well I’d text back a pre-agreed reply. Anything else, including silence – particularly silence, and she would call out the cavalry. If I felt the need to escape, it was an easy get-out-of-jail-free card.

I’d read the incoming text, look concerned, and say something along the lines of ‘Oh no! Look, I’m so sorry, but I’ve really got to go. I’ll ring you this evening/some time later/the very second Hell freezes over.’ And I could be up and away without either of us losing face.

Right on cue the phone pinged. I whipped it out of my handbag and rearranged my face into an expression of deep regret.

‘Don’t tell me, you have to go,’ said the man with a sigh before I had a chance to say anything. ‘What is it? What is it that I’m doing wrong?’

Where to begin? Showing me pictures of handcuffs you’ve known and loved while we waited to be shown to a table? Being a foot shorter and twenty years older than you said on your profile? Asking the waitress for the cheapest thing on the menu and then adding, ‘You didn’t want a starter, did you?’ Turning up in a particularly nasty beige Bri-Nylon car coat?

If I hadn’t been so damned polite, I would have pretended I had no idea who you were and just carried on walking.

I smiled and rested my hand very lightly on his. ‘A lot of this is about chemistry, isn’t it? And let’s be honest, there isn’t any, and I think you know straight away, don’t you?’ I said, in a voice that implied he was the kind of person who was sensitive to that kind of thing. ‘You’re a lovely man, but not my sort of man. I’m sure you’ll find someone who really appreciates you for who you are.’

He sighed again. ‘You’re right, and besides, if I’m perfectly honest, love, when I first saw you walk in I thought you were a bit long in the tooth for me; and with a bit too much meat on you, if you get my drift. I like my women quite a bit younger really. And slimmer.’

And probably sold with a foot pump, I thought with a fixed smile, as I got up, waved au revoir to Manacle Man, left my half of the bill on the table and headed home, mentally crossing another possibility off my would-be-Dom list.

I was beginning to feel that I was looking for something that didn’t exist. But then, just when I was thinking of giving up, I got an email from Max.

Chapter Three

‘The imagination is the spur of delights … all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything.’

Marquis de Sade

Max had been one of the Doms on my original list of twelve from the very first batch of contacts. In fact, I had contacted him directly after reading his profile and posting mine, but he had been out of the country on business on a four-month contract and, after expressing his regret, said that much as he’d like to help, long-distance Domming really wasn’t his bag. He promised to be in touch as soon as he arrived home, assuming that I hadn’t found someone in the meantime, and he was very happy to talk and answer any questions I had, whether I had found someone or not. He wished me luck.

Max was a few years older than me, around six feet tall, with dark hair shot through with grey. On his profile he came across as witty, confident and warm. It was well written, readable, and in that happy land between a one-liner and being way too long. He also sounded sane, reasonable and, broadly speaking, as if he was looking for the same kind of things as I was. To be honest, he had slipped my mind, so I was really pleased when, after Manacle Man, his email arrived.

Dear Sarah

Thank you for your email. Apologies for the delay in getting back to you, but I didn’t arrive back in the UK until late last week.

First of all let me say I’m honoured that you contacted me.

In answer to the first part of your email, yes of course it is possible to talk. May I suggest that you use the private email address [provided] or if you prefer you can ring me on my mobile [which he included]. This is a mobile number for obvious security reasons, but should we decide to extend our contact then I’d be more than happy to give you my landline number.

As I am sure you realize, there are a vast range of possibilities existing in the Dom/sub world and it’s important that you try and find someone with wants and needs that are similar to your own. It’s better to wait for the right fit than be unhappy or uncomfortable with your choices.

You have obviously gathered that I am a Dom.

My view on the Dom/sub relationship is hard to sum up in a few paragraphs, but basically I don’t believe that subs should be subjected to continual physical pain or abuse. I’d be lying if I said these don’t have a part, but there is much more to be gained in other areas, particularly in the mind.The fact that you write erotic fiction suggests that you already understand the power of the imagination – and I suspect that the anticipation of future events could be important to you. I would obviously be interested in reading some of your work.

There are many ways that fantasy can become reality, but as you have suggested, finding a sane and safe way to express and explore it is often hard. Many people would expect to move forward quickly; however, I suggest that we move at your pace. I do have some fundamental rules of engagement – but let’s talk first and then we can discuss what, if anything, comes next.

Kind regards

Max

He sounded nice, interesting, articulate. Just reading the email gave me a funny little buzz of anticipation, although I had to remind myself that this wasn’t a fantasy, and nor was Max a character in one of my books; this was potentially the real thing, with a real man. I emailed Max back with a list of questions. He replied, taking everything point by point, and then suggested that it might be much easier if we talked on the phone.

Easier yes. Easier actually to dial the number? No.

I sat at my desk and stared at his number for a while, wondering whether I dared ring or not. The thing was he sounded so right that I’d be a fool not to ring; but if he wasn’t, given how many people I’d met and how disappointed I’d been, how was I going to feel? What if he spoke with a high-pitched nasal twang? What if he was like Manacle Man? What if he was not at all as I imagined him? In lots of ways Max felt like the last roll of the dice before I crept back to normal land with my tail between my legs.

I dialled his number but couldn’t quite bring myself to press ‘call’. Lots of what ifs flitted through my mind, but the bottom line was I’d never know what he was like until we spoke. Finally I pressed the button.

The phone rang at the other end – once, twice, three times, four. How long before hanging on for the pick-up came across as desperate? Maybe he wasn’t in; maybe I’d dialled the wrong number.

‘Hello,’ said a deep, cultured male voice.

‘Hello, Max?’ I said. ‘It’s Sarah.’

‘Sarah, great to hear from you. I’m really pleased you called,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

Any nervousness I had had about talking to him evaporated within seconds. Max’s voice was warm and tinged with good humour. He was easy to talk to from the first sentence, answered everything I asked him without hesitation, and made me laugh. It also soon became clear during our first phone call that he was many, many other things besides a Dom.

He liked to cook, liked the theatre, films, travel, books and music, but that natural need to be in charge and take control had informed his whole life and the choices he had made. He ran a successful business, he was confident and articulate, and while his sexual preferences weren’t something he broadcast in his everyday life they were something he was completely at ease with. He was a breath of fresh air.

Over the next couple of weeks we spoke most evenings, until it became obvious that the next step was meeting or calling it a day.

‘So,’ said Max at the end of a marathon session on the phone, ‘would you like to meet?’

‘Yes, I’d like that.’

‘But?’ he prompted. I knew he’d heard it in my voice.

We’d got on really well on the phone and chatted for hours, but I was worried that when we met we might not be what the other had imagined. I told him so.

‘There’s only one way to find out. But before we meet, we need to talk about how things progress from here. I want you to understand that, for me, BDSM is a real-life thing –’

‘I know,’ I began. ‘We’ve talked –’

‘You need to understand what you’re getting into.’ Max sounded cool and businesslike. ‘There are rules of engagement that we both need to observe when we play together. I’ve drawn up a contract.’

‘Are you serious?’ I said. I’d seen and written contracts in BDSM novels but I wasn’t sure that they existed in real-life BDSM relationships.

‘Contracts are a big part of the BDSM life. It’s for my protection as much as yours. Have you thought about how one of your friends would react if she came in and found you tied up and me horsewhipping you?’

I hadn’t.

‘The contract shows that you’ve given me consent. I know we’ve talked about the things that turn us both on, but we also need to discuss the point beyond which you are not prepared to go, and the things you find unacceptable.’

‘Surely those things are obvious?’

He laughed. ‘You would have thought so, wouldn’t you, but it’s better if they’re spelled out and down on paper.’

I said it all sounded a bit formal.

‘It is,’ Max said. ‘We’re moving this up a gear. You need to learn to be frank and honest with me – the relationship between Dom and sub is far more open and intimate than one between straight couples. And you’ll need to choose safe words.’

I’d written about safe words in my books, so I knew what they were: they’re used between BDSM partners to stop any activity that is going too far. Max wanted me to choose three: one that would tell him that everything was OK, should he ask, one for ‘slow down’ and one for ‘stop’.

For the first time since we’d started to talk on the phone I felt uneasy and nervous, and he picked that up. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I know you’re unsure about what you can cope with, but we can only find your limits by trial and error. We’ll take it really slowly. And for my part of the bargain I promise I’ll keep you safe, answer your questions as best I can and try to give you all the things you’re looking for.’

‘And all this is in writing?’

‘It is,’ he said. ‘Also when we’re playing I will expect you to give me total and complete obedience.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Really?’

‘It’s not negotiable,’ he said.

‘Bloody hell! I need to think about that.’

Max laughed. ‘OK. Well, I’m not going anywhere. You OK?’

‘I’m fine. I suppose I’m just coming to realize what a big thing this can be.’

‘It changes your life for ever,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’

After I had hung up I read and re-read everything he had sent me.

Max had been married in his early twenties and had adult children, and was separated from his long-term girlfriend, Abby, with whom he had had a daughter. She was called Ellie and she was six. He and Abby had parted amicably and he was still in contact with her, and despite Abby moving halfway across the country he saw Ellie regularly. He also had a good relationship with his ex-wife and his grown-up children. He seemed ideal, but endless phone conversations and half-a-dozen emails were certainly no guarantee that he was what I was looking for, nor that he was telling the truth: anyone can be anyone on the phone.

What did I do next? I went downstairs, made a mug of tea and then picked the phone up and dialled his number. Max picked up on the second ring.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘That was quick.’

‘Can we meet?’ I said. ‘Before I bottle out.’

‘Of course,’ Max said. ‘How about lunch next week?’

Max insisted I choose the place and the time, so that I would feel safe. The rules were that I picked somewhere very public but with the potential for privacy – somewhere where, if we saw each other and didn’t like what we saw, we could smile and walk on. No games here with text messages. Max said if we didn’t click he would have no problem with either of us calling it a day and that I shouldn’t either. And lastly I should choose somewhere where we could actually get a decent lunch if we liked the look of each other, although he was quick to remind me that at this point there were no strings.

I suggested we meet outside Norwich Cathedral, which wasn’t that far from where I lived. I’d worked in Norwich for four years at the end of the 1990s and still had lots of friends there; the shopping is fabulous, and there are some great places to eat in and loads of places to wander round – all of which meant I had places to go to and people to see if the meeting with Max didn’t work out.

So it seemed a good choice. We could take a look around inside the cathedral and talk in relative privacy. There were a couple of good restaurants and some nice cafés all within easy walking distance. Being a staunch atheist, Max thought the cathedral was a great idea.

At this point I was feeling good, a bit nervous maybe, a little bit excited, but in a good way, and certainly in control. Then Max sent me another email and the balance of power began to subtly shift:

Dear Sarah

It was good to speak this evening and I’m delighted that we are finally going to meet. In future if we continue with our liaison you will call me Sir unless given permission to do otherwise. In the hearing of other people you may call me Max.

When we meet you will wear a white blouse, loose-fitting dark skirt and high-heeled shoes.

You will also wear clean white underwear and black stockings. You may choose whether to wear a suspender belt or not; if you make the wrong choice you will be punished.

You may wear a suitable coat.

You will measure the size of your neck and wrists and let me know the measurements so that I can have a collar and cuffs made for you.

You may be physically examined to see if you complied exactly with my instructions.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot: I’m really looking forward to meeting you at last. See you next week.

With kind regards

Max

As I read and I re-read his email, I was torn between thinking just who the hell does he think he is and being really excited. Finally, this was my chance to try this stuff for real, while another part of me – some people would probably say the saner, more sensible part of me – was extremely nervous. Was this really what I wanted? Physically examined? Was he mad?

There was still time to back out. Meeting him didn’t imply any kind of commitment, I reminded myself. I’d met enough men on straight dating sites and walked away without a second thought to know that it was no big thing, and in essence at least this was no different, but that wasn’t how it felt at all.

I barely slept. The next morning I re-read the email and emailed back. What I didn’t do was comment on any of Max’s conditions or agree to them. I needed to take this one step at a time.

… I’m excited about the whole idea; the combination of imagining and apprehension and excitement is a heady one. I am also very nervous about meeting up and moving this from a fantasy towards a reality, but would very much like to try. You do know that I’m just as likely to run a mile, don’t you?

His reply excited me even more:

One of the joys of being a submissive is the anticipation of things to come, the emotion produced by fear of the unknown. I will always try and describe what will happen to you before doing it. This way you will experience double the pleasure, first in your imagination and then in reality. See you soon.

Max

So this was it. Finally. I switched off my computer and went back downstairs. It felt as though I was teetering on the brink of something huge.

Chapter Four

‘There is no fulfilment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire.’

Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel’s Dart

I was early. For some reason the outer doors into the cathedral porch were locked when I got there. It was pouring with rain, and my feet – crammed into high heels that I’d only ever worn once, for two hours, to a friend’s wedding – were wet and cold and hurt like hell. On the walk up from the car park a freak gust of wind had turned my umbrella inside out and wrecked it, and I wasn’t altogether sure exactly how waterproof my coat was. This was not at all how I’d imagined my first meeting with Max. I was nervous enough without going from coiffured to quagmire in the space of a short walk.

Having wandered up and down the street a few times, I finally managed to find some shelter from the rain, but not from the biting wind, although at least I had a view of the main doors.

My feet ached and I could feel my carefully constructed appearance rapidly dissolving – hair, make-up, composure: going, going, gone. A party of Asian tourists trekked past me with their guide. Wide eyed and curious, wrapped up in colourful cagoules and peculiar hats, they nodded and smiled in my direction, holding up umbrellas over their cameras to take pictures of me sheltering, wet and dripping, under one of the stone arches. Maybe they thought I was performance art.

The minutes ticked by. I was getting more anxious with every passing second. I glanced down at my watch. Max and I had agreed to meet at 11.00 a.m. As I said, I’d arrived early – I’m always early. It was almost ten past. I found myself peering into the faces of strangers under umbrellas as they scuttled by. I have a problem with people who are late.

Maybe Max wasn’t going to show up after all, maybe he had just been stringing me along, maybe he was just a fantasist: my brain cheerily offered all kinds of explanations for his tardiness, each darker than the previous one. With a growing sense of disappointment, I considered my options. Up until that point I hadn’t realized exactly how high my expectations had been.

If it had been sunny I probably wouldn’t have minded waiting around a little longer, but I’d had enough. Another two minutes and if he hadn’t shown up I’d head off for lunch on my own, a little older, wiser and considerably wetter. Maybe my hopes were too high, but I was deeply disappointed that Max had stood me up. During our email exchanges and telephone conversations he had seemed genuine and genuinely interested. I was just turning to leave when someone touched me on the shoulder.

‘Off somewhere? You look like you could use a coffee,’ said a familiar voice.

I glanced round and looked into a pair of amused blue eyes ‘Max?’

He grinned from under the shelter of a large black umbrella. He was slightly out of breath. ‘I’m so sorry I’m late. I got caught up in an accident on the ring road,’ he said. ‘Did you get my text?’

I shook my head. Why in heaven’s name hadn’t it occurred to me to check my phone? How stupid was that?

‘Are you OK?’

I nodded.

‘Good.’ Still smiling, he reached out and brushed a stray, very damp strand of hair off my face. ‘Come on. There’s a café just round the corner. Let’s go and get warmed up.’ With that he took my arm and we made our way out of the cathedral precincts and across the road. ‘You look like you need towelling off. We could find a shop –’

I shook my head. ‘No, it’s OK. I’ll be fine, really.’

‘You’re sure?’

It felt easy and very natural. I felt comfortable with Max from the moment we met and there was definitely a crackle of mutual attraction – the chemistry thing, that thing I’d been looking for unsuccessfully on straight dates. I smiled.

He grinned at me. ‘Good to meet you at long last,’ he said.

We hurried across the road, huddling together under his umbrella. Max opened the café door for me, found a table and, when the waitress arrived, ordered for both of us, which I found a bit unsettling.

‘Is that a Dom thing? What if I don’t like what you’ve ordered?’ I said in an undertone as the girl left.

‘But you do,’ he said.

‘You can’t know that.’

‘Trust me.’

‘I could be gluten intolerant.’

‘And are you?’ he asked, his expression amused.

‘No.’

‘Well, in that case you’ll be able to enjoy your cake, won’t you?’

I didn’t say anything; I just raised my eyebrows. After a second or two Max held up his hands in surrender. ‘OK. It was easy. When you came in, the first thing you did was look in the cake cabinet, and I noticed the cakes your eyes lingered on.’

I laughed. ‘Lingered on?’

His smile widened. ‘Well, OK – lusted after. It’s OK, I really like a woman with a healthy appetite. And every time we’ve spoken on the phone, at some point during the conversation you’ve mentioned needing a cup of tea.’

Was I that obvious? And was it that simple? I really hoped not. I didn’t want the Dom/sub relationship to be some trick or sleight of hand.

A few minutes later the waitress reappeared with our order: a pot of Earl Grey for him and good old builders’ tea for me. Alongside it on the tray was a slice of lemon drizzle cake.

Max raised his eyebrows in a silent question. He was right. He’d ordered my favourite cake, although I wasn’t about to tell him that. He laughed as he poured tea for us both.

‘Come on, eat up and stop bristling,’ he said. ‘Would you prefer to stay here and talk or shall we go for a walk? It looks like the rain is easing up and there’s a really nice little restaurant which a friend recommended in the lanes.’

‘In these shoes?’ I said ruefully. ‘Isn’t there any chance I can be kinky in flats?’

He threw back his head and laughed. ‘I’m sure I saw a shoe shop round the corner. We’ll go there first, if you like. I prefer any pain I inflict to be deliberate rather than accidental.’

I looked at him and smiled. ‘It’s fine. I’ve got spare shoes in my bag,’ I said.

‘OK, in that case we’ll walk, then, shall we?’

I nodded.

Max was very upright, with broad shoulders, and his demeanour was slightly stiffer than I’d expected from talking to him on the phone, although there was no mistaking the mischief in his eyes. There was a slightly leonine quality about him – he wore his hair swept back off his face, he was heavily set, with a web of laughter lines picking out large blue eyes. While we were in the café I noticed his hands, which were large and very still, something I noticed particularly because I gesticulate all the time and find it almost impossible to talk without moving my hands. He wasn’t handsome in any traditional sense but his features were strong, even and nicely made, and it was obvious from the way he moved that he looked after himself and worked out.

We settled into easy conversation. We talked about our journeys, my job, his trip to Europe, the weather, my choice of footwear, the tourists, the cake – all very comfortable and conversational, but it was impossible to ignore the undercurrent of expectation that was beginning to build up between us.

‘So,’ he said, ‘have you done as I asked?’

I stared at him; the words made my heart flutter. I nodded.

‘Is that a yes?’ he pressed.

‘Yes,’ I said, not quite meeting his eyes; God, this felt so tricky. I was aware that this was the moment of transition when potentially it all finally began to become real.

‘Good. You understand that if we continue with this arrangement you will call me Sir, but not today. Today you can call me Max, but if we take this further it is one of the few things that are non-negotiable. Do you understand?’

I nodded.

‘And I want you to answer me with a word, not a gesture, from now on. So, are you wearing stockings and suspenders or did you decide on hold-ups?’ he asked.

I was wearing stockings and suspenders, not wanting to risk the possibility that the hold-ups wouldn’t.

Max raised his eyebrows. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘Stockings and suspenders,’ I said, glancing around to see who might have overheard our conversation, feeling my colour rise. ‘I’m finding this hard. I’ve never done anything like this before.’

‘I know,’ he said, and then he took an envelope from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table towards me. ‘Do you remember what I said?’

How could I possibly forget? I’d read and re-read the email so many times that I could practically recite it in my sleep. I stared down at the envelope, deciding to play dumb.

‘Let me refresh your memory, Sarah. If you make the wrong choice, then you will be punished.’

‘And if I make the right choice?’

‘If you make the right choice, then you will be rewarded.’ His expression was neutral but I could see the amusement in his eyes. ‘Why don’t you open it while I try and attract our waitress’s attention?’

I picked the envelope up, peeled it open and took out the card inside. Glancing down, I read the words neatly written in block capitals across the centre. I could feel Max watching me.

According to the card I should have been wearing hold-ups and my punishment for not doing so was to be spanked. Soon. At a time and place of my choosing.

I looked across into Max’s face and from him up into the face of the waitress, who was standing by the table holding a pen and pad.

Max was smiling, triumphant. ‘More tea?’ he asked.

Chapter Five

‘Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.’

Marquis de Sade

Max and I spent the afternoon together. We ate lunch. We walked round the castle. We explored the shops. We talked and talked and talked, and at no time did Max mention the card or my punishment. As he walked me back to my car he shook my hand and kissed me on the cheek.

‘Call me when and if you’re ready,’ he said as a final farewell.

As I watched him walking away, I wondered exactly what I’d started. Was I ready? It felt as if this was one of those now-or-never moments. Taking a deep breath, I took the phone out of my bag and scrolled down to his number. He was still so close that I could hear the phone when it started ringing. I saw him pull the phone out of his pocket, saw him look at the caller display, saw him smile as he turned back to look at me.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Fancy it being you.’

A week later and Max was wearing much the same expression as he pulled a mask down over my eyes. The mask was nothing threatening, a black, silky little number, not dissimilar to the kind of thing they hand out free on airlines.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, as the lights went out.

I nodded.

‘I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Sarah. From now on you have to say “Yes, Sir.” Or come to that, “No, Sir.”’

Have to? I pulled a face – preposterous. But this was supposed to be me being punished, and earlier we had signed a contract, designed to protect us both, and yes, I had signed up to calling him Sir.

‘I’m waiting,’ he said. His tone was unmistakably crisper.

‘Yes, Sir,’ I mumbled. It felt ridiculous and made me feel stupidly self-conscious. Today was the day when I was supposed to be receiving my punishment for not wearing hold-ups, and in a perverse way, my reward – for being bad by some contrived set of fantasy rules that we had set in motion.

‘Very good,’ Max said. ‘It will get easier, I promise you, until in the end it’ll be second nature.’

I very much doubted that. I stood still – possibly the stillest I’ve ever been in adulthood – blindfolded, wondering what would come next.

‘So here we are at last,’ murmured Max.

He wasn’t alone in feeling that way and I wondered if he had any idea just how much I had agonized – once the giddiness of our first face-to-face meeting had evaporated – about whether to meet him again or just ring and call the whole thing off. I also wasn’t altogether sure how I felt about being punished for a made-up crime. I was heading into completely uncharted water here.

Since we had met for lunch Max and I had spoken every night on the phone.

I had no questions left – only a decision. He had sent me a contract the evening after our first meeting so that I might have a better idea of what to expect if I took it to the next stage. He had also mailed me a long list of book and film titles and links to websites, so that I could find out more about the reality of the lifestyle. But, as he said, he couldn’t make that final decision for me; nor would he attempt to coerce or force me into making it. I was always free to change my mind. If I was unsure about taking the next step it was better to walk away and take more time to think about it than to commit to something I was uncomfortable with – and it would be a commitment.

He was keen to impress on me that for him BDSM was not a joke. If I didn’t want to abide by the rules that was fine, but then he wasn’t the Dom for me. He also pointed out that once I had taken the step there was no going back. You couldn’t unknow something – and it had the potential to change my life and the way I looked at relationships for ever.

So not exactly a lightweight thing, then, I’d joked. This wasn’t quite what I’d imagined when I’d fantasized about being tied up and spanked.

For once Max didn’t laugh. ‘No, that’s true. It changes you,’ he said. ‘You need to bear that in mind before you go any further. And yes, it’s a game and in some ways it’s just role play, but getting involved in BDSM is not without consequences, and the effects and the pay-off are real.’

The contract itself had come as no great surprise. Contracts are common currency and typical for people involved in a BDSM relationship in fiction. I’d written them myself for several books, and the ones I had drawn up for my novels had been a good deal more extreme and a lot pervier. The difference, of course, was that this one wasn’t a work of fiction for some long-limbed, doe-eyed virgin. It was about me.

CONTRACT

On this _th day of __________, 20 ___, I, ___________, hereafter referred to as the submissive, offer myself to Max _________, hereafter known as her Master, for His pleasure in a BDSM relationship defined in detail as follows.

The submissive understands that her Master is a strict Dominant, and that she is a willing submissive masochist to be used for His pleasure. The submissive expects and longs for the Domination of her Master and is willing to endure any punishments deemed appropriate by her Master. The submissive hereby grants permission to her Master to inflict any punishment that He may deem appropriate to the submissive totally for His enjoyment and the pleasure.

The submissive will refer to her Master as ‘Sir’ at all times when they are together, unless instructed to do otherwise.

The submissive will not speak until spoken to or given express permission to speak and will be respectful in her conversation and comments.

The submissive will be under her Master’s complete and total control and will immediately obey and comply with any order or instruction given to her with the full joy of knowing she is His property and His to use however He chooses.

If the submissive displeases or disobeys her Master in any way she expects to be punished in any way He so chooses, as necessary for her inappropriate actions.

The submissive also agrees not to make any change in her physical appearance without the prior approval of her Master.

The submissive agrees to full participation in any and all activities her Master desires as she does not know the extent of her limits with Him at this point and desires to learn how complete is her submission. These activities may include but not be confined to:

Bondage of short or long duration

Pain threshold

Nipple and other clamps

The use of toys

The use of any safe stimulation chosen by her Master

Any and all sexual activities that her Master may wish to partake in, which involve the total use of the submissive for His physical pleasure

In return for her complete compliance and obedience the submissive expects the following:

The right to use safe words or signals if she finds the play to go past her as yet unknown limits

That her Master and the submissive will have open and honest communication with each other so that she may learn her limits

The knowledge that her Master may reward her for good behaviour and compliance

Her Master will practise safe sex

Her Master will be responsible for the submissive’s safety during all play and ensure that no permanent harm or damage will befall her

Name:

Signed:

Safe words:

We had talked about a sex clause. Despite fancying Max and feeling an unmistakable chemistry between us, I wanted to wait a little while until we knew each other better before having full sex – which with hindsight seems crazy – but I thought it was telling, and certainly made me trust him more, that he’d put a line through it without comment.

We could reconsider it at a later date, he said.

I nodded, although I didn’t think either of us believed we would wait for long.

‘You know that this contract is complete nonsense, don’t you?’

‘Not if you believe in it,’ Max said calmly, picking up the pen and handing it to me.

I took another look. ‘Can’t we do what we’re going to do without this?’

‘No,’ said Max. ‘There are some things that you can pick and choose, Sarah, but this isn’t one of them. If you don’t sign it we don’t take the next step.’

‘But no one is going to enforce this.’

‘They don’t have to. It’s for our benefit. If you don’t trust me enough to sign it, Sarah, that’s fine, but we don’t play without it.’

I read it again. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Never more so.’

I was torn between frustration, amusement, annoyance and apprehension. If I signed it, it was a sign that I took all this seriously and that we were moving forward. Surely after I’d come this far it was what I wanted.

‘It’s mad,’ I said.

‘Possibly.’

I agonized. When it came right down to it, I realized I was also afraid. Afraid of him? Of me? It was hard to be specific.

‘You have to trust me. I’ll look after you and I promise not to do anything to you that you can’t cope with. I promise …’

And he was right: if we wanted to move this on, then I had to trust him. Looking back, I have no idea why I believed him, but I did.

The contract was currently sitting on my office desk, all signed and sealed. Even as I’d added my signature there was still a part of me that thought it didn’t really count and that, when you got right down to it, it was all completely crazy. I knew full well that in reality no one could hold me to a contract like this if I didn’t want to comply with the conditions.

As I passed the pen over to Max, as if reading my mind, he looked across at me and said, ‘Sarah, this contract is only as meaningful as you make it. I want you to understand that for me this isn’t some kind of joke. Have you read the list of hard limits that I sent you?’

I had. Hard limits are areas of engagement between a Dominant and a submissive which are off-limits: no-go areas. Both subs and Doms can have them, list them, discuss them and expect their limits to be respected. Once again they were things I had read about before, but they had never related to me, or anyone or anything I’d actually been involved in. It was the last part of the bargain to be sealed before we could play:

No breath or underwater play

No animals, no children or minors

No electrical play

No scat

No suspension

No needles, blood or blades

Max asked me if there was anything I wanted to add before we both signed. I said I wanted to include no photographs and no video, and also reserve the right to add things to the list as I discovered more about the lifestyle. Max agreed, happy to accept that our contract was a work in progress, and watched while I added the clause.

Standing there now, blindfolded and alone, it occurred to me that that still left an awful lot of things that weren’t hard limits. An awful lot of things that Max could do to me and not break our contract.

‘I’m scared,’ I murmured.

‘I will keep you safe,’ Max said. ‘I promise.’

I swallowed hard, trying to quell my nerves. I was trembling.

The room was still and there was complete silence. Seconds ticked by. I was tempted to ask Max what was going to happen next. What he was playing at? What was he going to do to me? Hadn’t he said that he would tell me what he was going to do? Despite being desperate to say something, I was also painfully aware that less than half an hour earlier I’d signed up to the ‘not speaking unless spoken to while we were together’ thing and I’d already broken the rule once. This was going to be so much trickier than I had imagined. At forty plus I’d never willingly kept quiet about anything in years. I had an opinion and a wisecrack for every occasion.

It was so quiet now that I swear I could hear my heart beating. Where the hell was Max? My senses struggled to reach out from beyond the mask, struggling to track him down. Had he slipped away? Gone home? Had I blown it already with the whole Sir thing?

Finally, after what seemed like an age, I heard Max moving and sensed him circling around until he was standing behind me, so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. I shivered.

We were standing in my sitting room, and – if I had taken my mask off – I would have been able to see us both reflected in the mirror that hung above the fireplace. Being unable to see meant that I was totally focused on every sound and every sensation. That alone was heady stuff. Max stroked my cheek and I sighed with a mixture of relief and an intense abstract rush of desire.

‘There, not so bad, is it?’ Max said. I didn’t know what to say. It was much, much worse and much, much better than I’d imagined. My whole body felt as if it was awake and waiting, tingling, every molecule listening for whatever it was that was coming next. Excitement, expectation – it was hard to pin down exactly what it was that I was feeling.

Max’s fingers moved down across my shoulder to the zip of my dress. Very slowly he began to undo it. I felt my pulse quicken and swallowed hard to quell the heady mix of nerves and exhilaration. He pressed his lips into the curve of my neck, to my spine, sending wave after wave of tingling sensations through me.

He ran his fingers through my hair, tugging at it, toying with it, moving my head around. I wasn’t sure if he expected me to resist or go with it. I started to tremble, adrenaline coursing through my veins like champagne as his lips brushed my naked shoulders, breathing me in. I felt the zip working its way lower; Max was unhurried, his fingers deft and confident.

I realized I was holding my breath. We hadn’t kissed since we’d met, at least not in a sexual way – our lunch at the restaurant had ended with a handshake and the kind of peck on the cheek I’d give to a maiden aunt. Those kisses on my shoulders felt as if they were seared into my skin.

Doms didn’t kiss their subs on the mouth, he’d said. It had made sense then, but now? I was going to say it felt weird to be undressed by a man I hadn’t kissed but actually when you got right down to it the whole damned thing was weird.

‘Don’t try and rationalize it,’ Max had said, when I’d been trying to work out, and justify, why I wanted to do this. ‘You’ll drive yourself crazy. Just accept that this is what you like, and want, and that it is a part of your nature. This is what you need, Sarah. It’s not strange or weird; it’s just part of human sexuality. I can give you what you want.’

Easy for him to say. Although I was beginning to realize that he was right. I hadn’t felt so alive in years. I felt like a present being slowly and skilfully unwrapped by him. This was what I had written about for so many years; this was what I had dreamt about. Finally here I was. This was for real.

As Max’s fingers brushed my skin, I could almost see the sensations in my head, like pinpricks of light exploding in a sea of velvety darkness.

I shivered as the zipper slipped down another inch or two more, stunned by how long he was taking. How long was it since someone had taken the time to do this properly? My emotions seesawed back and forth. I wondered if Max was expecting me to call a halt. The safe words we had agreed on were: gold for ‘everything is OK’; silver for ‘please slow down’; lead for ‘stop, stop now’.

He was taking it oh-so-slowly, the slightest touch of his fingers, lips and tongue making me gasp.

Gold, silver, lead: I repeated the words over and over in my head. It would be so easy to stop this before it even began, but I didn’t want to stop – far from it. I wanted it so much. I had waited so long to play this game for real. Behind the mask, crazily, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the last time I had felt this excited, this turned on or this bloody nervous.

Max eased the dress off my shoulders and let it slip down over my arms before letting it slither to the floor. Despite the mask I reddened, extraordinarily self-aware, imagining his expression as he looked me up and down, imagining what he could see.

He made a soft throaty noise of approval. ‘Nice,’ he purred. ‘Very nice.’

Under my dress I was wearing a black satin corset and black seamed stockings teamed with black court shoes. Max and I had had long email exchanges about what I liked to wear and how he liked his submissive to dress. We’d exchanged dozen of photographs of outfits. Before today’s meeting Max had asked me to send him pictures of my favourite lingerie and a selection of dresses – without me in them – so that he could choose what I wore for our first real encounter.

From now on whenever we were together, he explained, he would decide what I wore. He would email me instructions and would also go through my wardrobe, and we would go shopping for anything he felt I lacked. And from now on when we were together I wasn’t to wear any underwear.

I’d stared at him. Seriously?

Max had nodded.

I hadn’t gone braless since God knows when, and I certainly had never gone knickerless. When I protested about how awful fitted clothes looked without some sort of support under them, Max conceded that with some outfits, yes, I could wear a bra, but he would decide which ones, and the only bras I could wear in his company should fasten at the front unless otherwise instructed. A submissive’s body no longer belongs to her, he said, and she should always be available for her Master. I stared at him. ‘Available?’

He nodded.

Now Max trailed a finger across my shoulders in the same way you might stroke a piece of sculpture. It was the most astonishing sensation, hard to put into words. Dressed to please, elevated to an object of pure desire and pleasure, I have never felt more female or, perversely, more powerful.

‘You look fabulous,’ Max murmured after a few moments more. ‘Put your hands behind your back.’

I did as I was told, lulled by his voice and a peculiar sense of euphoria.

Max caressed my shoulders and neck, his touch proprietorial. One hand stroked up and down my back while the other hand worked its way into the top of my corset, his long, strong fingers cupping one of my breasts. His thumb brushed across my nipple, which stiffened in response. He let out a soft sigh that made me quiver, my skin tingling, electrified by his touch. His hands were cool and almost dispassionate, caressing, squeezing, exploring and kneading.

I gasped as the intensity increased and he nipped and twisted my nipples, before folding the top of the corset down so that first one and then both breasts were exposed.

I could feel the cool air on my naked flesh and a charge of expectation. I could sense his growing excitement along with my own. All the joking and banter were over and I realized that Max wanted and needed this as much as I did. He moved so that he was standing in front of me. I felt his lips close around my nipple, sucking, nipping, biting, drawing my nipple deep into his mouth, making me gasp, the sensations coursing through me like ripples of white light.

As Max pulled away, my body clamoured for more. His lips moved to the other nipple, eagerly licking and sucking his fingers as they worked on the heavy swell of my breasts. As he pulled away, I heard a sound I didn’t immediately recognize. An instant later I felt the unexpected bite of something cold and metallic clamping tightly down onto my nipple. I shrieked in surprise and pain, trying to pull away as little teeth bit down harder, holding the clamp fast, and as I exhaled I heard the tinkle of bells.

I discovered later that they were nipple clamps with a string of tiny silver bells hanging from them.

Now every movement, every shudder and every gasp were echoed in silvery tinkling sounds. The teeth bit into my engorged nipples, sending tiny hot splinters of pain and pleasure through me.

‘Beautiful,’ Max whispered, stroking the bells’ strings, making me gasp.

Max and I had talked a lot about what I liked sexually, areas I wanted to explore, things that were a definite no-no and represented a deal breaker – the hard limits beyond which I wouldn’t go – and those things that I might like to try once my confidence had grown. I’d told him things I had never told anyone else. I’d just signed off on it, hadn’t I? We’d definitely talked about the fact I didn’t want to be tied up until I knew Max better, so I didn’t think twice when something cool and smooth clicked onto one wrist, although I had a blinding flash of revelation as the second cuff snapped home.

I gasped and opened my mouth to protest. Bugger the no talking rule.

‘What the hell do you think you are you doing?’ I gasped, little bells tinkling furiously. I struggled to free my hands, even though I knew it was pointless.

‘That’s what the hell do you think you’re doing, Sir,’ said Max. ‘You said no ropes. And now I’m going to have to punish you for talking without permission too.’

I was stunned. Semantics: Max had got me handcuffed and helpless with semantics. There was some part of me that loved the fact that he had outwitted me and another part that was furious. Not much of me was anxious.

‘Do you want me to stop?’ Max asked, serious now. ‘If you’re not happy I can always take them off.’

I found it hard to speak.

‘Are you OK?’ he repeated, seeking an answer. ‘I’m not going on until you tell me.’

‘Yes, I’m fine, just bloody annoyed,’ I snapped, after a second or two, and added more haltingly, ‘Sir.’

Max laughed. ‘Pleased to hear it,’ he said, ‘and I’m glad to see you’re getting to grips with the Sir thing.’ As he spoke he traced the line of my jaw with a finger.

Despite the trick, I felt more excited than I had in years. I also had no doubt that had I asked Max he would have taken the cuffs off. I couldn’t have gone this far if I didn’t have an underlying trust in him and feel inherently safe. No one else can make that call for you. I trusted him.

‘Are you ready?’ he said.

Ready for what? ‘I think so, yes – Sir,’ I said.

‘Good,’ Max said, and I could hear the warmth and approval in his voice. He led me across the room and had me stand while he settled himself on a chair. He stroked me gently until I was completely still and those little bells finally stopped ringing.

‘I’m going to put you across my knee and then I’m going to spank you. But before I do, I want you to ask me to do it,’ he said.

I froze. ‘I have to ask?’ I said incredulously.

Max laughed. ‘Yes, and you’ve broken the no talking rule again – and not calling me Sir. You’re only supposed to speak when you’re spoken to, and only answer the question you’ve been asked.’

‘I’m going to find that hard.’

‘Really?’ he said, with mock surprise. ‘Now ask me.’

I’d never found it particularly easy to ask for what I wanted sexually. Had I told him that? I tried to remember. Ask? In my fantasies all this happened without a word being spoken.

‘Well?’ pressed Max.

‘I want you to spank me.’

‘Want?’ There was more than a hint of rebuke; submissives can’t demand anything. ‘Ask nicely, Sarah.’

It was the kind of thing adults said to small children and said in almost exactly the same tone. A little charge of humiliation stoked the fire of desire.

‘Please will you spank me?’

‘Better, but not quite good enough. Sir,’ added Max. ‘Ask me again, properly this time.’

‘Please will you spank me, Sir?’ I murmured, squirming with embarrassment.

‘Very good. Here, let me help you.’ Very gently he guided me down over his knees, which was not elegant and certainly not easy in handcuffs, with the little clamps biting into my skin and sending little flares, bright as stars, through my consciousness. When you are blindfolded, pain and pleasure are not just sensations but colours; bright, unexpected flashes of colour.

Then, when I was calm, the bells were still and my breathing had slowed, he pulled down my knickers. I was so stunned that I almost stood up again. I had to remind myself that I’d agreed to all this. I had, I really had.

‘Gently, gently,’ he murmured.

Gently, my arse, I thought, although under the circumstances maybe that wasn’t quite the right phrase. I was flooded with a wave of panic and a horrible squirming embarrassment. In my fantasies I was altogether more lithe and the scene of my spanking more subtly lit; certainly I was not in broad daylight in my sitting room. Had Max been expecting lithe? Did Doms get put off? In fantasies they didn’t, but in the flesh – the acres of flesh, offered my brain helpfully – maybe they did. I could feel myself blushing scarlet. Then I wondered if it was this, the sense of discomfort and humiliation, that Doms got off on? More than that, this felt like my fantasy – the sense of exposure, the vulnerability. I shivered. I was doing it; this was it.

Max, meanwhile, didn’t seem at all put off – quite the reverse, in fact. He made soothing appreciative noises and stroked my thighs and backside, easing the tension from my body, and gradually, remarkably, unexpectedly, I began to relax.

‘Gently,’ he murmured. ‘You’re fine, Sarah. Just fine.’

And just when I had been lulled into stillness, Max hit me, one big flat-handed, stinging, spanking slap that ricocheted through my body. The slap wasn’t hard, but it was enough to make me cry out in surprise and pain – my whole body flexed.

I had been so busy thinking about the fantasy and more recently thinking about the indignity of having my bum up in the air that it hadn’t really occurred to me that spanking would hurt – and it really did hurt. How come I hadn’t factored that into my fantasy?

Then Max slapped me again, slightly harder this time, which sent another hot stinging wave coursing through me. Before I could recover, there was another slap and then another.

Instinctively I squealed and kicked, bucking and writhing against his thighs, wanting him to stop, begging him to stop, yet at the same time wanting him to continue. This was what I had dreamt of, this was what I had wanted, and now it was happening I wasn’t altogether sure that I liked it. It made me squeal and wriggle and gasp for breath, and I kicked some more as my eyes filled with tears. The bells kept on tinkling, more frantically now.

‘If you want me to stop, all you have to do is say the word,’ said Max.

I knew that. I really truly knew that. I could make it stop, so why didn’t I? Because in among the pain there was something else: a glow of need and desire, a rolling, aching want.

Max slapped me again. Being spanked hurt more than I had ever imagined; it wasn’t at all like my fantasy. Yet there was something else lurking under the surface. It was liberating to make a fuss, to be so directly connected to how I felt and to react to it. I’m rationalizing this after the event. At the time it felt like a great raw emotional force steaming through me, and it set me free.

One of the things Max had said to me over lunch was that there was no going back – once you crossed over, there was no unknowing what you discovered about yourself – and I had a glimpse of what he meant. How could anyone sane like something that hurt them? It was impossible to make sense of it, yet it was an amazing, free-fall cascade of sensations with no walls between what I felt and what I was and my reaction to it; it felt as though I was completely connected to every part of myself.

The blows weren’t that hard but they were shocking. I gasped for breath, tears trickling down my face, and then between strokes Max began to massage the hot, stinging flesh of my backside, stroking the hand prints, and slowly started to go further, opening my legs wider – touching me, exploring. Letting go and letting him touch me without boundaries, without hindrance, added to my excitement.

I groaned with pure animal pleasure as he found the warm wet folds of my sex and I felt my whole body start to respond as he stroked me in altogether more intimate ways. The pain had brought me so far, and the pleasure that took over was intense and all the deeper for the spanking. I could feel my heart rate quicken, the warm glow across my backside echoing the one that was beginning to grow low down, deep in my belly.

Max slid a finger inside me, making me moan with pleasure. He slid deeper, deliberately brushing my clitoris as his fingers began to work in and out. I was stunned by how intense the sensations were, as if the pain had amplified what I was feeling. Where did the desire come from? Was this about the pain, the embarrassment, the sense of helplessness? I had never experienced anything quite so all-consuming before, and as I began to move with his caress I could feel his erection pressing against my torso through his trousers.

My whole body was focused on his touch as I moved instinctively, relishing the attentions of his knowing fingertips, the way he teased me into reaching out for each delicious sensation.

God, this was fabulous and the sweetest of tortures! I was so close to the edge now that I thought I would die, gasping, whimpering with pure undiluted pleasure as he brought me closer and closer to oblivion. I had not expected this. My hips lifted in time to his touch, longing for release …

‘Please,’ I whispered, shocked at my own need. ‘Please.’

Max chuckled.

Hadn’t we just agreed that there would be no sex, not today, perhaps not ever? This was down to me. There was a part of me that had been thinking I could have a ‘real’ relationship alongside a BDSM one – naïve but true. In an early conversation Max had pointed out that it was quite possible to have a BDSM relationship and never have full sex or in fact any sexual contact.

Never? I’d asked. Never, he’d said. Other couples did it where one was involved with a partner who didn’t engage in BDSM.

It had all sounded so perfectly feasible when I’d got my clothes on and we’d been deciding whether to have the sea bass or the lamb for lunch. I had taken everything Max had said to heart, and fondly imagined going off to see someone like Max for a weekly spanking and a bit of light bondage, alongside another more conventional relationship, a bit like going to a t’ai chi class or having my legs waxed. I realized now that for me that would be close to impossible. I was aching for him.

‘Please,’ I sobbed. ‘Please.’

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘And that’s the fourth time you’ve broken the rules.’

‘Please, Sir,’ I gasped.

How could you feel like this, share this intimacy, this exposure with someone, and then go home to a boyfriend or a husband, girlfriend or wife? I realized I couldn’t switch off my emotions and isolate my sexual need; I needed to have both together in the same relationship.

My body was aching for Max in a great rush of animal lust – something that in all the years I’d been having sex, even lust-driven hungry sex, I don’t think I’d ever felt before. It was earthier and more physical than anything I had ever experienced. And I could sense Max’s excitement growing along with my own. I heard his breath quicken to match mine. Maybe this was where mutual desire overturned the rules?

Eagerly I leaned into his caress. I brushed myself against his engorged cock. It felt like a challenge. Maybe I could make him break the rules. How hard could it be? I was an instant away from the long, tumbling descent towards orgasm. I wanted him to take me there. I wanted to take him with me.

I arched my back. I pressed down onto his lap, brushing myself against his fingertips, seeking his caress, gasping as he stroked my clitoris, riding the great waves that threatened to drown me. I groaned, feeling the first ripples – which was exactly the moment Max stopped.

I howled in protest.

Max laughed and let me slide gently onto the floor.

‘I said not yet,’ he said, in answer to my indignation and frustration.

‘Not yet?’ I gasped, ragged, hot and desperate.

‘It’s your own fault. You can’t stick to the rules. No talking. And here, with me, I’m the Dom and things happen according to my timetable, not yours.’

‘Are you planning to punish me some more, Sir?’ I said, thinking about how much I’d enjoyed my punishment up until now.

‘Possibly. By stopping now and going home if you can’t be quiet.’ He knelt down beside me and unlocked my handcuffs, gently massaging each wrist in turn before taking off my mask. I blinked in the light and peered up at him. His eyes were alight with mischief and delight. I suspected mine were ringed with mascara.

‘How are you feeling? Are you OK?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said. He was right: it was getting easier.

‘Good. Would you like to touch yourself?’

My eyes widened. No, I would not.

‘Well, would you?’ he repeated.

I’d never admitted to anyone that I masturbated. Not that it had ever come up much in conversation. God, what if he asked me to do it in front of him? I said nothing but my face obviously gave me away.

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ he said. ‘From now on I forbid you to masturbate unless I give you express permission.’

I bristled. ‘Are you serious?’

‘You are going to be such a pleasure to train,’ said Max, laughing. ‘I’m making a note of every time you break the rules, you know. And you will pay for every last one you break.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘Yes, really. And that, in case you hadn’t noticed, is another one.’

He helped me to my feet, and as he did he kneaded the tender muscles of my backside, making me wince and momentarily forget the warm, dull, throbbing ache between my legs. Finally he removed the nipple clamps, which made me yelp with pain and then gasp as the blood flooded back into the sensitive flesh. Then he rubbed them, which I thought was a kindness until I realized that actually it made the discomfort much, much worse.

‘While we’re playing I want you to keep your eyes down and your hands behind your back, as a sign of humility and submission. And now I’d like a cup of tea. Earl Grey. Black.’

I stared at him. My legs were jelly, my whole body was tingling, I’d been a nanosecond from orgasm and the man wanted tea?

‘Be careful,’ he said. Obviously the disbelief showed on my face. ‘Remember, humility and submission. Do you have lemon?’

I managed not to swear. Frustrated and annoyed, I teetered into the kitchen and made Max a pot of tea, on a tray with a bone-china cup and saucer, retrieved from a box of nonsense that hadn’t seen the light of day for years. I was being sarcastic. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything.

‘Very nice,’ he said, as I slid the tray onto a little table alongside the sofa.

‘I’m fresh out of doilies,’ I said.

‘Next time,’ he said, pouring himself a cup. ‘And by the way that’s another two for the punishment list. Sir and no speaking, remember? When you’re not otherwise occupied I would like you to kneel beside me.’

‘Kneel?’

He nodded. ‘Assuming you want to continue with your training? Or have you changed your mind?’

I could hear from his tone that he was serious. I knelt.

‘Would you like to hear about how I got into BDSM?’ he asked, setting the cup and saucer back on the side table.

What I wanted was for him to finish what he had started, but I could hardly say that, so instead I said, ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Is the right answer,’ he said.

Chapter Six

‘Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.’

Marquis de Sade

‘I was probably twenty, maybe twenty-one, and my company had sent me to work in one of their European offices,’ said Max. ‘I was green as grass. Anyway, I started seeing this girl, Eva. A mate of mine set me up with her; she was a bit older than me, but not much, twenty-three, twenty-four. Really tiny, attractive.’ Max smiled.

‘Eva was nothing like any of the girls I‘d gone out with before. She liked a drink, and dancing – and she loved sex. I’d come from a small town in the south-east, where nice girls just didn’t, so that was one big difference. I couldn’t believe my luck.

‘We’d meet up after work – she’d got a little flat near the railway station. We’d do the usual stuff: there were a couple of bars, nightclubs, we’d have a few beers, go dancing, drinking, go back to her place.

‘Her flat was on the top floor above a row of shops; it was one big room with a shower and toilet off the stairs, all the usual stuff, but the first thing you noticed when you went in was a huge carved four-poster bed.

‘God knows where it came from or how old it was. Eva told me it had been there when she moved in. The only way her landlord would have been able to get it downstairs would have been to saw it into pieces, so she told him to leave it. We used to camp out on it, use it as a sofa, as a picnic table, somewhere to watch TV from. Sex, fun, music …

‘Her flat was above a delicatessen. She was so foreign.’

‘And exciting?’ I said.

Max nodded. ‘Total culture shock. Anyway, we’d been seeing each other for a couple of months. My best mate, Charlie, was dating Eva’s best friend, Greta. We’d all got the weekend off and we’d been planning to do something all together, but at the last minute Greta got called in to work and Charlie said he didn’t want to play gooseberry, so there was just Eva and me.

‘When I met her at the bus stop she said that there was somewhere she wanted to take me. I didn’t really mind where we went as long as I was with her and we ended up back at her place.’

Max smiled. ‘She was built like a boy, with short, spiky, white-blonde hair, long skinny legs and the biggest greenest eyes you’ve ever seen. And she was dynamite between the sheets. She was the most uninhibited person I’d ever met – not that I had been out with that many in my short romantic career. Eva was always up for it, full on, all the time, as far as I could make out.

‘She was incredibly vocal, liked to bite and was bossy. Very bossy. I’d never come across anyone like her before. I’d be in bed with her and she would tell me what she wanted: “Hold my hands down, tighter – now fuck me faster, faster. That’s it and touch me there – just there …” If I didn’t do it right she’d take my hands and show me exactly what it was she wanted, and when she didn’t get it she was only too happy to do it herself.

‘Up until then the only sex I’d ever had was fumbling around in the dark in the back of a car or in the sports pavilion. Just getting it was enough without thinking about technique.’

Max laughed. ‘I’ve got this memory of her, naked except for leather riding boots and bright red lipstick, showing me exactly how she liked to be stroked. I couldn’t keep my hands off her. I’m amazed we didn’t get ourselves arrested, some of things we got up to.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.